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 the sheik, the personification of pomp and pride.

"Where is she?" he asked in his native tongue. The passengers were by this time aware of the visitation, and began to straggle on deck, filled with curiosity.

"What the devil do you mean by coming aboard in this manner?" demanded the now irate Captain Perry, shoving a couple of retainers out of his path and facing the beaming suitor. An interpreter took a hand at this juncture and the doughty captain finally was made to understand the object of the visit. He laughed in the sheik's face and told the mate to call up a few jackies to drive the "dagoes" off. "Rip" Van Winkle interfered and peace was restored. The cruise had changed "Rip" into a happier and far more radiant creature, so it was only natural that he should have shared the secret with Mary Valentine. He had told the story of the sheik's demand to her as soon as he came aboard, and she had divulged it to Peggy the instant "Rip" was out of sight.

Brewster found the sheik sitting in state on the upper deck impatiently awaiting the appearance of his charmer. He did not know her name, but he had tranquilly commanded "Rip" to produce all of the women on board


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 so that he might select Peggy from among them. Van Winkle and Bragdon, who now was in the secret, were preparing to march the ladies past the ruler when Monty came up.

"Has he seen Peggy?" he asked of Van Winkle.

"Not yet. She is dressing for the occasion."

"Well, wait and see what happens to him when she gets over the first shock," laughed Monty.

Just then the sheik discovered Peggy, who, pretty as a picture, drew near the strange group. To her amazement two slaves rushed forward and obstructed her passage long enough to beat their heads on the deck a few times, after which they arose and tendered two magnificent necklaces. She was prepared for the proposal, but this action disconcerted her; she gasped and looked about in perplexity. Her friends were smiling broadly and the sheik had placed his hands over his palpitating heart.

"Lothario has a pain," whispered "Rip" Van Winkle sympathetically, and Brewster laughed. Peggy did not hesitate an instant after hearing the laugh. She walked straight toward the sheik. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes were flashing dangerously. The persistent brown slaves followed with the

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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38 hardships of life would not be eliminated if the laws of nature acted directly and without interference. The task of right living forever changes its form, but let us not imagine that that task will ever reach a final solution or that any race of men on this earth can ever be emancipated from the necessity of industry, prudence, continence, and temperance if they are to pass their lives prosperously. If you believe the contrary you must suppose that some men can come to exist who shall know nothing of old age, disease, and death.

The socialist enterprise of reorganizing society in order to change what is harsh and sad in it at present is therefore as impossible, from the outset, as a plan for changing the physical order. I read the other day a story in which a man dreamt that somebody had invented an application of electricity for eradicating certain facts from the memory. Just think of it! What an emancipation to the human race, if a man could so emancipate himself from all those incidents in his past life which he regrets! Let there no longer be such a thing as remorse or vain regret! It would be half as good as finding a fountain of eternal youth. Or invent us a world in which two and two could make five. Two two-dollar notes could then pay five dollars of debts. They say that political economy is a dismal science and that its doctrines are dark and cruel. I think the hardest fact in human life is that two and two cannot make five; but in sociology while people will agree that two and two cannot make five, yet they think that it might somehow be possible by adjusting two and two to one another in some way or other to make two and two equal to four and one-tenth.

I have shown how men emerge from barbarism only by the use of capital and why it is that, as soon as they


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User:Ssuuna Peter

Am a Luganda Wikimedia

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Rh often been remarked that the sovereign people has clothed itself with all the old prerogatives and is as tenacious of them as any other depository of political sovereignty ever was. The sovereign majority will not submit to criticism; it punishes criticism more harshly than by any press laws; it is as eager for flattery as any monarch and as inaccessible to harsh truths; it will not be sued for its debts; it claims the prerogative of deciding on its own obligations and sometimes shows an obliquity of conscience in this regard as great as that of some of the absolute monarchs of history. It is as tenacious of its honor, in the sense of demanding all due respect, as any other form of the state, but it is not always careful of its honor, in the sense of responsibility to itself, to do and to give all which may fairly be demanded of it — it is not always sensitive to its international reputation.

We are here engaged, however, more particularly with the behavior of democracy under representative institutions. Here it is marked by a jealous desire to hold in reserve as much power as possible and to delegate only what it cannot keep; one of its maxims, accordingly, is "measures, not men," expressing its desire to pass upon measures at the polls, when the mass meeting is no longer possible. In its jealousy of aristocracy it condemns, under that name, any prestige of wealth or education; it prefers to rob itself of useful forces rather than to recognize in those forces any contradiction to the notion of equality. The forces nevertheless exist and work out their results. Wealth is power, and knowledge is power; if it were not so we men would never work as we do to secure wealth and knowledge. When, therefore, wealth is denied any public recogni-


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266 tion as a real and honorable force, which, like other forces, needs only to be regulated to be properly and honorably useful, it avenges itself by recourse to secret methods, to dishonorable uses, and exercises corrupt influence. Knowledge has no more honorable application than to the service of the state; its power, in open and public use, brings the highest gratification to its possessor, while it is ennobled by such application. If, however, we regard the superiority of knowledge in public affairs with suspicion and distrust, we rob ourselves of its service while it remains honorable, or we drive it, when employed in political life, into hypocritical humility and petty devices of cunning.

When it comes to actual political activity, the great practical need of a democracy is organization. As we saw, the town-democracy is made up of an unorganized body with good intentions but few positive convictions and well formed wishes; hence it is a prey to a united and determined minority. The union of all the good, a union long talked about and long looked for, would no doubt defeat all selfish factions; but the union of all the good lacks cohesive force and dissipates its energies in fruitless discussions. Now when the democracy is large, and no longer local, organization takes the place of acquaintance, sympathy, and personal influence; parties rise into the highest importance. To be in the minority is to be nothing; to be in the majority is to enjoy power and dignity and honor. Party success depends upon organization; every exertion to secure unity and singleness of determination is demanded in a close division, and party loyalty and party effort are prized as the highest political virtues. The severe party discipline and party warfare which belong to a legislature are here transferred to the mass of electors,


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Rh this life to immortality, and the moral obligations which depend on that relation; and we must agree in our estimate of the value of conscience in all human affairs. These are only a few of the broad and fundamental principles which underlie human affairs, unanimity in regard to which is necessary in a body of men who aspire to form a nation. Men will always differ in regard to the particular application of these principles to especial cases, and therefore parties will always exist, but these principles underlie all parties and are essential to the unity of the commonwealth.

Here, then, we have an outline of what a nation is, what is requisite to its formation, and what is required for its permanent prosperity — matters which the events of the last ten years have brought into new prominence and new interest. We count them into the results of our great civil crisis. It gave us a feeling of unity and nationality, it gave us a history, it vindicated us to ourselves and to posterity as a people who could understand and respond to an ideal good, and it fixed our attention on the conditions requisite to the development and establishment of a nation.

Far be it from me to glorify war. We need only estimate our position to-day in order to see that the evil results of the war are not confined to the destruction of property, the loss of life, and the crippling of industry. There are other results directly traceable to war: diminished respect for law, love of arbitrary processes, respect for force, and a tendency to sacrifice principle to a narrow expediency, which awaken our anxiety and demand our efforts to counteract them. In view of these evils and dangers we cannot glorify war. It is a harsh experience, full of the education and full of the evil which inheres in all adversity. One thing only


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 jewels, but she ignored them completely. Brave as she intended to be, she could not repress the shudder of repulsion that went over her as she looked full upon this eager Arab.

Graceful and slender she stood before the burly Mohammed, but his ardor was not cooled by the presence of so many witnesses. With a thud he dropped to his knees, wabbling for a moment in the successful effort to maintain a poetic equilibrium. Then he began pouring forth volumes of shattered French, English and Arabic sentiment, accompanied by facial contortions so intense that they were little less than gruesome.

"Oh, joy of the sun supreme, jewel of the only eye, hearken to the entreaty of Mohammed." It was more as if he were commanding his troops in battle than pleading for the tender compassion of a lady love. "I am come for you, queen of the sea and earth and sky. My boats are here, my camels there, and Mohammed promises you a palace in the sun-lit hills if you will but let him bask forever in the glory of your smile." All this was uttered in a mixture of tongues so atrocious that "Subway" Smith afterward described it as a salad. The retinue bowed impressively and two or


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332 The Federalists opposed the creation of frontier states which should share, on an equal footing in some respects, with the old ones in the federal Union. They thought that the wishes, tastes, interests, and methods of the two classes of states would be inconsistent, that they would clash, and that the things which the old states held dear would be imperilled. This view afterwards became a subject of ridicule. New states were not new very long before they became old; they filled up with population, acquired capital, multiplied their interests, and became conservative. It seemed an idle and pedantic notion that there could be any political difficulty in the combination of new and old states; the more we got in, the bigger we grew — and that was the main point. Then again all political struggle centered in the struggle of North and South for supremacy in the Union; the other elements which were included in the struggle have blinded us to the fact that that was the real character of it — a struggle for supremacy in the Union. Just as certainly as you have a unit-group inside of which different elements can be differentiated, just so certainly will those elements strive for the mastery; it is a law of nature and is inevitable. In the Constitutional Convention of 1787 the one great question was: If we have a union, who will rule in it? It was not until equal representation in the Senate was agreed upon that union became possible. Then the great division was between large states and small ones. The resolutions of '98, by Virginia and her daughter, Kentucky, were aimed at a Yankee President and his supporters, by whom Virginia would not be ruled. As soon as the system was in full operation, the alliance of Virginia and New York attempted to control it; they threw the Federal party and the East out of power,


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 three graceless Americans applauded as vigorously as if they were approving the actions of a well-drilled comic opera chorus. Sailors were hanging in the rigging, on the davits and over the deck house roof.

"Smile for the gentleman, Peggy," commanded Brewster delightedly. "He wants to take a short bask."

"You are very rude, Mr. Brewster," said Peggy, turning upon him coldly. Then to the waiting, expectant sheik: "What is the meaning of this eloquence?"

Mohammed looked bewildered for a moment and then turned to the interpreter, who cleared up the mystery surrounding her English. For the next three or four minutes the air was filled with the "Jewels of Africa," "Star," "Sunlight," "Queen," "Heavenly Joy," "Pearl of the Desert," and other things in bad English, worse French, and perfect Arabic. He was making promises that could not be redeemed if he lived a thousand years. In conclusion the gallant sheik drew a long breath, screwed his face into a simpering grin and played his trump card in unmistakable English. It sounded pathetically like "You're a peach."

An indecorous roar went up from the white spectators and a jacky in the rigging, sud-


text: Poems (Osgood)/Lines suggested by a Mourning-Locket


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 denly thinking of home, piped up with a bar or two from "The Star Spangled Banner."

Having accomplished what he considered to be his part of the ceremony the sheik arose and started toward his launch, coolly motioning for her to follow. So far as he was concerned the matter was closed. But Peggy, her heart thumping like a trip-hammer, her eyes full of excitement, implored him to stop for a moment.

"I appreciate this great honor, but I have a request to make," she said clearly. Mohammed paused irresolutely and in some irritation.

"Here's where the heathen gets it among the beads," whispered Monty to Mrs. Dan, and he called out: "Captain Perry, detail half a dozen men to pick up the beads that are about to slip from his majesty's neck."


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Rh upon which you find New England going over forthwith to secession and disunion. Then, as the new states came in, the divisions of the old ones sought their alliance. The coalition of the South and West in the '20's could not be consolidated because the new states came in so fast. The slave states and the non-slave states then became the most clear, important, and positive differentiation there was. With the census of 1840, however, it became clear that the slave states could not retain the proportional power and influence which they had had in the confederation; and it was their turn to become disunionists. Fifty years of our history have gone into that struggle, for it is not more than well over now. Meanwhile other great interests have been neglected and great abuses have grown up unnoticed: war taxation and war currency are still here to plague us. Our people have come out of that struggle with a great confidence that nothing can ever again put the Union at stake. Let us not make that error. The Union is always at stake. Instead of being a system which can stand alone and bear any amount of abuse, it is one of great delicacy and artificiality which requires the highest civic virtues and the wisest statesmanship to preserve it. It will be threatened again whenever there is a well-defined group which believes its interests jeopardized inside the Union and under the dominion of those who control the Union.

At the point which we have now reached the whole continent has received a first occupation and settlement; and from now on the process will be one of consolidation and condensation. This will raise the organization over the whole country. That process cannot go on too rapidly at the present stage, for the more rapidly it goes on the quicker it will tide us over the dangers


text: Poems (Osgood)/Why will a Rose-Bud Blow

title: Poems (Osgood)/Why will a Rose-Bud Blow


text: Poems (Osgood)/Fanny's Error

title: Poems (Osgood)/Fanny's Error


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334 in which we find ourselves — dangers due to the great differences in the social and political organization which now exist. In all the past the rapidity of our growth has been one of our best safeguards; no state of things has existed long enough to allow people to understand it, to base plans upon it, and to carry them out, before the facts have all changed and frustrated all the plans. There have been plenty of presidential aspirants in the United States who have found that four years was a long time to bridge over with combinations based upon the assumption that circumstances in states and sections would remain that long unchanged.

There has been, however, another and apparently contradictory evolution side by side with the one already mentioned, and it is the combination of the two which has given to our history its unique character. The public men of the Revolutionary period were not democrats — they feared democracy. The Constitution-makers were under an especial dread of democracy, which they identified with the anarchism of the period of 1783-1787. They therefore established by the Constitution a set of institutions which are restrictions of democracy. They did not invent any of these institutions, for all of them were already familiar in the colonies, being of English origin and developed and adapted to the circumstances here. Their general character is that while they ensure the rule of the majority of legal voters, they yet insist upon it that the will of that majority shall be constitutionally expressed and that it shall be a sober, mature, and well-considered will. This constitutes a guarantee against jacobinism. Now the whole genius of this country has been democratic. I have tried to show that its inherited dogmas and its environment made it so inevitably. Down through our


text: Poems (Osgood)/New England's Mountain Child


text: The New York Times/1918/11/11/Nation-Wide Call to Aid War Work


text: Poems (Osgood)/The Baby and the Breeze

title: Poems (Osgood)/The Baby and the Breeze


text: The New York Times/1918/11/11/To Parade in Washington


text: Poems (Osgood)/Lines

title: Poems (Osgood)/Lines


text: The New York Times/1918/11/11/The New York Times Contribution


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Rh history, therefore, the democratic temper of the people has been at war with the Constitutional institutions. When the Constitution was established there was no such thing as universal manhood suffrage here; the suffrage was connected with freehold in land. This restriction, measured by the number of people it excluded, was a very important one. It was not until after the second war with England that a movement towards universal suffrage began in the old states; then it ran on with great rapidity until universal suffrage was established in them all. The democratic temper also seized upon that device in the Constitution which was the most positive new invention in it and which was developed as a safeguard against democracy, viz., the electoral college, and turned it into a mere form through which the voters should directly elect their own President. The same sentiments called forth an unwritten law that the President should serve only two terms and has always loudly favored one term. Perhaps, since the great precedent was the purchase of Louisiana by Jefferson, democracy ought also to be credited with forcing an unwritten addendum on the Constitution that the federal government could buy land. Democracy has chafed, at one time and another, against the veto of the President, the power of the Senate, and, above all, against the prerogatives of the judiciary — all of which are institutional checks on democracy. The most recent effort in the same direction is the plan to nominate senators by party convention and to compel the legislators to vote for the candidates thus set before them. No one will deny, moreover, that a democratic spirit has been breathed through all our institutions, has modified their action and determined their character. Opinions would differ as to whether its effect


text: The New York Times/1918/11/11/Daniels Aids United Drive


text: Poems (Osgood)/The Child Playing with a Watch


text: The New York Times/1918/11/11/Clergymen Aid War Drive


text: The New York Times/1918/11/11/Page to Leave Shipping Board


text: The New York Times/1918/11/11/Policeman Kills Hotel Thief


text: Poems (Osgood)/Why don't he Come

title: Poems (Osgood)/Why don't he Come


text: The New York Times/1918/11/11/YMCA in War Spent $54,354,034


text: Poems (Osgood)/On a Picture

title: Poems (Osgood)/On a Picture


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Rh until recently unknown as a social force, but now seen to be the great engine which controls the whole. So too we find that the government, however free may be its form, inherits traditions and bears names of authority. Power of control must be lodged somewhere, at least as a reserve for those cases in which malice, evil, and passion raise their heads. But those who are clothed with this power undergo an inevitable temptation to abuse it. They have an opportunity to exert upon the social body a power not justly theirs as individuals. They may use this influence selfishly for themselves or their favorites. For the more completely we popularize a government, the more we trust it; we put our interests of all kinds at its mercy. Hence it occurs that the government, either ignorantly from want of knowledge to use the great powers it possesses for the general good, or with corrupt motive, inflicts harm upon the citizen. It is, therefore, necessary for us to agree what powers we will give to the officers of government, and what restrictions we will put upon them. Our determinations in regard to these things — what we will do and allow to be done, or what we will not do or not allow to be done by each other; what things the government shall do or shall not do on our behalf — constitute the body of our laws. Still again: when the mass of the population governs, an important question arises as to how its will is to reach an expression. An opportunity offers itself for manipulating this body in order to make it do what a few desire that it shall do. Every such body is subject to manipulation and any clique, party, or corporation which has a definite object which it pursues steadily and energetically, is able to lead the mass of uninstructed or indifferent citizens.

This is especially the case with regard to party govern-


text: Poems (Osgood)/Ellen Learning to Walk

title: Poems (Osgood)/Ellen Learning to Walk


text: Poems (Osgood)/On Parting for a time with an Infant's Portrait


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394 ment — and no other kind of government is possible, so far as we can yet see, in a republic. The party tends to become a unit inside of the nation. It acquires vested interests, traditions, history, glory, all of which give it momentum. It is able to carry measures under the party name irrespective of their wisdom. It is able to cover up and conceal wrongs under the mantle of past achievements. Its watchwords and its slang acquire infallible authority. When a party has reached this stage, it is a valuable piece of property. It is like an army trained and disciplined to obey orders without asking questions or making objections. Then the question is, who is to command; and a man or a clique who holds the authority over it can do with it what he chooses. It is a machine all finished and oiled to work smoothly and it obeys as well one hand on the lever as another.

Hence arise a mass of questions as to the means to be used for securing a true, spontaneous, and original expression of public opinion; and the answers to these questions are not always laws, though they may require that authority, but they are political usages applying to the constitution of party committees, the authority of caucuses, the rules of the primary meeting, the binding force of party nomination, and also the forms of legislative procedure.

You see then that in our modern society changes of immense scope have been made in the fundamental principles of the social order. All traditions of government and society have been called in question and put on trial. New interests, new institutions, new faiths, new conceptions of life have arisen within two or three centuries. Industry and commerce have changed their form, education has been revolutionized, the press has come into being. Now the question arises as to what


text: Poems (Osgood)/Lucy's Gem

title: Poems (Osgood)/Lucy's Gem


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Rh notions, accept true ones, and so put the latter in practice as to engender a sound public opinion and an incorruptible public morality. As a political measure to help bring this about, I place the restoration of true value money first of all.

It appears to me that Mr. Tilden has shown a more correct, detailed, statesmanlike knowledge of the evil, the remedy, and the process of cure than any other public man who is eligible. I say statesmanlike knowledge, because I mean to distinguish between a lecture on political economy which would be suitable for me, and the program of a statesman which is what we want from him — a distinction which has rarely been observed in Congress or in the Cabinet.

I am, of course, utterly opposed to the repeal of the resumption act or any part of it, and I disapprove of any concession on that point, in form or substance, by Mr. Tilden or anybody else.

I know that the soft-money democrats have claimed that Mr. Tilden has surrendered on the currency question, and the republicans have hastened to accept their authority as conclusive on that point. Mr. Tilden's opinions on this point are not new, nor were they first placed before the public in his letter, but if he does not in that document lay down hard-money doctrines, then language has no meaning, and I could not express hard-money doctrines myself. The soft-money men have, within a year or two, begun to use some hard-money phrases in forced, artificial, and impossible applications; they find those phrases in Mr. Tilden's letter, and that is the ground on which they claim his surrender.

Mr. Hayes has made a very distinct avowal that he will resist the repeal of the resumption act unless something better is put in its place, and if he is elected I shall


text: Poems (Osgood)/The Daisy's Mistake

title: Poems (Osgood)/The Daisy's Mistake


text: Poems (Osgood)/The Life-Voyage

title: Poems (Osgood)/The Life-Voyage


text: Poems (Osgood)/The Child and its Angel-Playmate


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24 his own labor and self-denial, and of injustice that the idle and the industrious, the self-indulgent and the self-denying, shall share equally in the product. Aside from the a priori speculations of philosophers who have tried to make equality an essential element in justice, the human race has recognized, from the earliest times, the above conception of justice as the true one, and has founded upon it the right of property. The right of property, with marriage and the family, gives the right of bequest.

Monogamic marriage, however, is the most exclusive of social institutions. It contains, as essential principles, preference, superiority, selection, devotion. It would not be at all what it is if it were not for these characteristic traits, and it always degenerates when these traits are not present. For instance, if a man should not have a distinct preference for the woman he married, and if he did not select her as superior to others, the marriage would be an imperfect one according to the standard of true monogamic marriage. The family under monogamy, also, is a closed group, having special interests and estimating privacy and reserve as valuable advantages for family development. We grant high prerogatives, in our society, to parents, although our observation teaches us that thousands of human beings are unfit to be parents or to be entrusted with the care of children. It follows, therefore, from the organization of marriage and the family, under monogamy, that great inequalities must exist in a society based on those institutions. The son of wise parents cannot start on a level with the son of foolish ones, and the man who has had no home discipline cannot be equal to the man who has had home discipline. If the contrary were true, we could rid ourselves at once


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370 convention in this country. Many of them were young men, representing the hope, strength, faith, and purpose of the younger half of this generation, to which I turned long ago with all my confidence for the national future. I believe that few men now over forty-five appreciate the wide divergence of their political faiths from those of the men now under forty-five. Mr. Tilden's nomination was wrested from this convention by the conviction that he was the real leader of the party, the representative of its strength, the champion of its best principles, and the embodiment of its hope. The party came to him in that sense and took him for its chief because he was its head. That this was not purely and consistently and thoroughly true, belongs to the nature of all political parties and does not invalidate the criticism as a broad and sound one on the action of the convention. It appears to me, therefore, that Mr. Tilden's relation to his party is that of such dependence only as properly exists between leader and followers.

The question of the currency, to me, stands before any other. We must all grow better together. The sovereign's conscience is always hardest to move. He blames his ministers, his army, his people — anybody but himself. It is so also of the sovereign people. We are just now treating some of our old idols very harshly, and we are slow to learn that, if we govern ourselves and have our own way, we must blame ourselves for results. If we are to have any reform which shall be real, it must begin and spread far in the minds and consciences of the sovereign people. We must have a finer honor, a higher tone, a severer standard, a more correct judgment about ourselves. The sovereign people must recognize their own errors and follies and shoulder their own blame; they must repent and amend, discard false


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 SPECULATIVE LEGISLATION

Germans have lately invented a new department of social interest — Socialpolitik — which is neither politics, political economy, nor social science; it is in fact a department of speculation as to legislative measures which might be adopted to alter existing social relations. Any legislation which does not proceed out of antecedents, but is invented in order to attain to ideals, is necessarily speculative; it deals with unverified and unverifiable propositions and lacks all guarantees of its practicability or of the nature of its results. It is, however, very easy and fascinating to plan such legislation; the enterprise is sure to be popular and remonstrances against it are sure to produce irritation. Such remonstrances imply that the speculators have undertaken too much or are too confident and self-assured.

Nothing can be more antagonistic to the spirit of Anglo-American law than speculative legislation. That law is marked by slow and careful growth, historic continuity, practical sense, and aversion to all dogmatism and abstractionism. While it is as broad in its general maxims and generalizations as the facts will warrant and bold enough to draw all the deductions which legitimately follow, it refuses to assimilate unverifiable elements.

Speculative legislation is really advocated by assertions which are predictions, and it is impossible to meet it by arguments which are other than contradictory predictions. But all men of sober thought and scholarly responsibility dislike to argue by predictions.

The most remarkable case of speculative legislation


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388 matter to bring into harmony. The miners form a community which is to a certain extent isolated and peculiar. It is not easily acted upon by currents of thought which are strong in the rest of the state, and it is, at the same time, open to agitation and internal commotion and strife, or to temporary fits of feeling and irregular notions. Hence arise peculiar and important social phenomena in mining towns where laborers of different nationalities are assembled. The position of women and children, the relations of marriage and the family, the condition of churches and schools, all tend to become anomalous, and strange or hostile to our civilization.


text: Poems (Osgood)/A Song (Yes! "lower to the level")


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 FOREWORD TO "THE ANTHRACITE COAL INDUSTRY"

[1901]

anthracite coal industry ranks as one of the most important in the United States, not so much on account of its magnitude as on account of its peculiar position in our industrial system, and the great number of social and economic questions which cluster around it. It is a limited natural monopoly. It is an extractive industry, the stock of which is exhausted as it is exploited. All the facts which can be learned about it are, therefore, as interesting to the investor as to the economist and geologist. The amount of supply, and the length of time before it will be exhausted, are matters of public welfare. Economizing of the supply and improvement of the methods of working, therefore, interest us all. The policy of management of the industry has turned upon a series of most interesting and important changes in labor supply, modes of transportation, aggregation of capital, and legislation. Therefore we have here a most instructive history for the statesman and man of affairs. The industry has also been the arena of many experiments in labor organization, and of many industrial wars over wages, hours, rules, methods, etc. It brings into co-operation a variety of interests, mining, transportation, banking; and the subdivision of interests is such that the industry, as a whole, is a cluster of interests which it is no easy


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Rh duty, that it is a law to itself, and so on, then it is not strange that families are broken up and lives are blighted later on. We can build nothing strong on passion. We build strongly only when we build on duty.

Nor can the novels be thought much more fortunate in their teaching about the relations of parents and children than in what they say about love and marriage. We stand here midway between the old doctrine that the parent had all the rights and the child all the duties, and the new doctrine which is that the child has the rights and the parent the duties, but that the child owes respect, deference, and obedience where he meets with affection and care.

Enough, now, has been said to show that what we need in this department, confused as it is by old theories and new, by old traditions and new fashions, by old creeds and new philosophies, is a scientific method which shall descend to a cold clear examination of facts and build up inductions which shall have positive value. That is what sociology attempts to do. If we can trace the evolution of society from its germ up to its present highest forms, we may hope to identify the forces which are at work in it and to determine their laws. We can disabuse our minds of arbitrary codes and traditions and learn to regard society as a growth under law. We may then hope to understand what we see about us, and if remedies are either desirable or necessary, we shall stand some chance of selecting them intelligently.


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84 wondered lately to see a corporation formed which had a capital of a billion. No one will wonder at such a corporation twenty-five years hence.

There seems to be a great readiness in the public mind to take alarm at these phenomena of growth — there might rather seem to be reason for public congratulation. We want to be provided with things abundantly and cheaply; that means that we want increased economic power. All these enterprises are efforts to satisfy that want, and they promise to do it. The public seems to turn especially to the politician to preserve it from the captain of industry; but when has anybody ever seen a politician who was a match for a captain of industry? One of the latest phenomena is a competition of the legislatures of several states for the profit of granting acts of incorporation; this competition consists, of course, in granting greater and greater powers and exacting less and less responsibility.

It is not my duty in this place to make a judicial statement of the good and ill of the facts I mention — I leave to others to suggest the limitations and safeguards which are required. It is enough to say here that of course all power is liable to abuse; if anybody is dreaming about a millennial state of society in which all energy will be free, yet fully controlled by paradisaic virtue, argument with him is vain. If we want results we must get control of adequate power, and we must learn to use it with safeguards. If we want to make tunnels, and to make them rapidly, we have to concentrate supplies of dynamite; danger results; we minimize it, but we never get rid of it. In late years our streets have been filled with power-driven cars and vehicles; the risk and danger of going on the streets has been very greatly increased; the danger is licensed by


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Rh to prejudice by using analogies drawn from democracy to affect sentiment about industrial relations. Industry may be republican; it never can be democratic, so long as men differ in productive power and in industrial virtue. In our time joint-stock companies, which are in form republican, are drifting over into oligarchies or monarchies because one or a few get greater efficiency of control and greater vigor of administration. They direct the enterprise in a way which produces more, or more economically. This is the purpose for which the organization exists and success in it outweighs everything else. We see the competent men refuse to join in the enterprise, unless they can control it, and we see the stockholders willingly put their property into the hands of those who are, as they think, competent to manage it successfully. The strongest and most effective organizations for industrial purposes which are formed nowadays are those of a few great capitalists, who have great personal confidence in each other and who can bring together adequate means for whatever they desire to do. Some such nucleus of individuals controls all the great joint-stock companies.

It is obvious that "concentration of wealth" can never be anything but a relative term. Between 1820 and 1830 Stephen Girard was a proverb for great wealth; to-day a man equally rich would not be noticed in New York for his wealth. In 1848 John Jacob Astor stood alone in point of wealth; to-day a great number surpass him. A fortune of $300,000 was then regarded as constituting wealth; it was taken as a minimum above which men were "rich." It is certain that before long some man will have a billion. It is impossible to criticize such a moving notion. The concentration of capital is also necessarily relative to the task to be performed; we


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 of their country; it is far more their wisdom, their economy, and, above all, their probity. If ever in the British Islands the useful citizen should lose these virtues, we may be sure that, for England, as for every other country, the vessels of a degenerate commerce, repulsed from every shore, would speedily disappear from those seas whose surface they now cover with the treasures of the universe, bartered for the treasures of the industry of the three kingdoms."

It must be admitted, that Trade tries character perhaps more severely than any other pursuit in life. It puts to the severest tests honesty, self-denial, justice, and truthfulness; and men of business who pass through such trials unstained are perhaps worthy of as great honour as soldiers who prove their courage amidst the fire and perils of battle. And, to the credit of the multitudes of men engaged in the various departments of trade, we think it must be admitted that on the whole they pass through their trials nobly. If we reflect but for a moment on the vast amount of wealth daily entrusted even to subordinate persons, who themselves probably earn but a bare competency—the loose cash which is constantly passing through the hands of shopmen, agents, brokers, and clerks in banking houses—and note how comparatively few are the breaches of trust which occur amidst all this temptation, it will probably be admitted that this steady daily honesty of conduct is most honourable to human nature, if it do not even tempt us to be proud of it. The same trust and confidence reposed by men of business in each other, as implied by the system of Credit, which is mainly based upon the principle of honour, would


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352 Americans, is a grim necessity to which sober men may be driven in the last extremity to ward off violent hands from all which makes life valuable, and no flowers of rhetoric can make us see in it anything else than the dire necessity of a peaceful citizen when his life, his family, his fireside, and his country are in danger from the rage of a misguided foe.

The war taught us also the value of moral forces in national life. We were in danger of falling into all the vices of a long and lazy peace. Our interests were centering in mercantile and industrial pursuits until it seemed that, as a nation, we might hold no cause worth the injury which must result from an interruption of industry. It seemed that our country might come to mean to us only a territory teeming with wealth for which we desired to scramble without interruption. Patriotism was a virtue which languished for want of exercise. It could no longer live on the story of great deeds done by a former generation, for the love of country, like every other love, grows by what it demands, not by what it brings; those who love their country are those who have paid for it, not those who have enjoyed its blessings after it was bought. But the great crisis of our recent history offered to our people an ideal good. It held up before the mind of the nation a good to be won which was worth more than gold or raiment. It called them to win for their children another inheritance than lands or stocks and that was the inheritance of a nation which should be to them a true nursing mother by its traditions of labor, patience, suffering, and self-denial. The people responded to the call. They proved to all the world and to themselves, which is far more important, that they could understand such a call, that they could appreciate a higher and ideal good, and


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 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS

[1872]

is rising in modern history which reaches one after another of the institutions, beliefs, and traditions which we have inherited from the past. As it touches the bad ones, they crumble, one after another, and fall beneath its waves. Some call this tide "revolution." They see only its destructive side and its iconoclastic spirit and as they watch its advance, they fall under its fascination. The demon of destruction which lurks in every human breast is aroused and men are eager to participate in the work of overthrowing and destroying. It is true, indeed, that this new movement has several times manifested itself in revolution. It did so in England; it did so in America; and it did so in France; but the thoughtful student of history will see in these manifestations no reason to "glorify revolution." He will rather see in all such internecine strife the sad side of human nature. He detects only the mad passions of men: on the one hand fanatical devotion to effete institutions and rotten traditions and on the other side the senseless love of ruin. He will tell us that if this is the true manifestation of the so-called modern spirit, then an enemy to civilization is abroad on the earth compared with which the barbaric lust for destruction of the Huns and Vandals sinks into insignificance.

But, in fact, the new movement is not simply destructive; it has also its positive and constructive side; it


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 be surprising if it were not so much a matter of ordinary practice in business transactions. Dr. Chalmers has well said, that the implicit trust with which merchants are accustomed to confide in distant agents, separated from them perhaps by half the globe—often consigning vast wealth to persons, recommended only by their character, whom perhaps they have never seen—is probably the finest act of homage which men can render to one another.

Although common honesty is still happily in the ascendant amongst common people, and the general business community of England is still sound at heart, putting their honest character into their respective callings, there are, unhappily, as there have been in all times, but too many instances of flagrant dishonesty and fraud, exhibited by the unscrupulous, the over-speculative, and the intensely selfish in their haste to be rich. There are tradesmen who adulterate, contractors who "scamp," manufacturers who give us shoddy instead of wool, "dressing" instead of cotton, cast-iron tools instead of steel, needles without eyes, razors made only "to sell," and swindled fabrics in many shapes. But these we must hold to be the exceptional cases, of low-minded and grasping men, who, though they may gain wealth which they probably cannot enjoy, will never gain an honest character, nor secure that without which wealth is nothing—a heart at peace. "The rogue cozened not me, but his own conscience," said Bishop Latimer of a cutler who made him pay twopence for a knife not worth a penny. Money earned by screwing, cheating, and over-reaching may for a time dazzle the eyes of the unthinking; but the bubbles blown 22


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348 pulls down only to build better. It bears a freight of new ideas, doctrines, and institutions, rich with fruits of peace, joy, and prosperity. Its violent manifestations are only the fight which it has to wage for its birth-right. It is true, indeed, that the blood which is spilled upon its garments leaves deep stains; nay more, that those stains must be washed out in long suffering and patient toil and steady devotion to duty before the movement can renew its march. The fight is never over when the banner is furled and the arms are returned to the arsenal. On the contrary, that is just when the fight begins — a new fight and a hard one; not a fight of guns, but of ideas; not of artillery, but of discussion. The warfare of the battle-field only secures freedom of discussion and tames the party which sought to cut it short by an appeal to arms. Then arises a new question: whether those who won the victory under the inspiration of physical combat have the patience, the tenacity, and the self-denial to secure its fruits by establishing and spreading sound principles, by founding and fostering good institutions, and by engrafting upon the culture and civilization of their country the new convictions which they have won. To destroy old traditions is easy, but no nation can do without traditions unless it is willing to become the prey of demagogues and mountebanks and to chase every day a new chimera. But traditions must be cared for through a tender process of germination until they take root and acquire vitality and that is a labor of time, patience, and self-sacrifice.

Ten years ago this tide of modern history reached to one of the inherited institutions of this nation. Foremost in many respects as we were in our sympathy as a nation with all the new ideas and institutions, we yet


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Rh had in our midst an institution which represented and rested on the grossest falsehood invented in the past — perhaps we had even developed the wrong into phases more revolting than it had elsewhere attained. With a social and civil system which was democratic from its broadest principle to its slightest development, we yet had an institution whose essential spirit was aristocratic. With a mercantile system running to excess even in its application to all the relations of life, according to which services rendered commanded a pecuniary recompense, we yet had a system of labor within our national frontier under which one set of men did all the work and another set of men took all the pay. All history might have taught us that inconsistencies so gross could never endure; that a united nation never could be built out of elements so discordant, producing a grotesque civil, social, political, and mercantile monstrosity. Under the influence of modern inventions which were rapidly uniting us as far as space and time were concerned, it was inevitable that sooner or later this alternative must come to a decision; either the attempt to form this people into one homogeneous nation must fail or else the discordant elements must be eliminated. The enactments on which the existing status was based might avail to this extent, that the changes could not be wrought out without a frightful convulsion, but they could not avail to prevent the decision of the alternative. The modern doctrines of equality, justice, and right reason, as practical principles on which governments ought to be based, had wrought upon the consciences of our people until a majority were hostile to one of our inherited institutions which enjoyed the sanction of law. It was only another phase of the modern revulsion against all forms of privilege and caste, which had already pro-


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 forwards by the edge of the flannel which kept on the dressing.

In five or six minutes I felt slightly the end of her second finger—and presently it was laid flat with the other, and she continued rubbing in that way round and round for a good while; it then came into my head, that I should fall in love—I blush'd when I saw how white a hand she had—I shall never, an' please your honour, behold another hand so white whilst I live

—Not in that place: said my uncle Toby

Though it was the most serious despair in nature to the corporal—he could not forbear smiling.


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 The young Beguine, continued the corporal, perceiving it was of great service to me—from rubbing for some time, with two fingers, proceeded to rub at length, with three—till by little and little she brought down the fourth, and then rubb'd with her whole hand: I will never say another word, an' please your honour, upon hands again—but it was softer than satin

—Prithee, Trim, commend it as much as thou wilt, said my uncle Toby; I shall hear thy story with the more delight—The corporal thank'd his master most unfeignedly; but having nothing to say upon the Beguine's hand, but the same over again—he proceeded to the effects of it.


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350 duced so many crises in Europe. Our turn had come. We had been foremost in accepting the modern principles; we must now put our institutions into complete consistency with them. Here, as elsewhere, the advocates of the abuse sought the arbitration of force and the first consequence of the new convictions was a bloody and desolating war, but the subsequent consequences have, I believe, been such as to educate and develop the nation. The destructive feature was first manifested, but we are now going through the constructive developing and consolidating movement. Let us see if this is not so.

It is easy for us now to look back and philosophize upon the events, but at the time none of us were so wise. One thing only the popular mind did discern, and discern clearly, even in the midst of the storm, and that was the main gist of the question at issue. The people did see that it was a question whether we should form one homogeneous nation, or whether the discordant institution should be maintained.

With the decision of that question the nation was born; or, perhaps I should say, attained its manhood. For the life of this nation up to that time had been a kind of boyhood. We had rollicked in the exultation of youth. We were conscious of vigor and freedom. We knew few of the burdens of national life. We had no powerful neighbors to impose fear upon us. We were not entangled in any weary diplomacy. We had the sea between us and our enemies and we did not feel the burdens of national defense. We had no old traditions to cramp us; no vested interests to respect; no complicated rights to fetter our movements of public policy. We were an experiment and we rejoiced in the evidences of our success. We undertook other experiments in


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 The fair Beguine, said the corporal, continued rubbing with her whole hand under my knee—till I fear'd her zeal would weary her—"I would do a thousand times more," said she, "for the love of Christ"—In saying which she pass'd her hand across the flannel, to the part above my knee, which I had equally complained of, and rubb'd it also.

I perceived, then, I was beginning to be in love

As she continued rub-rub-rubbing—I felt it spread from under her hand, an' please your honour, to every part of my frame

The more she rubb'd, and the longer strokes she took—the more the fire


text: The New York Times/1918/11/11/To Tell of Columbia's War Activities


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 by unscrupulous rogues, when full-blown, usually glitter only to burst. The Sadleirs, Dean Pauls, and Redpaths, for the most part, come to a sad end even in this world; and though the successful swindles of others may not be "found out," and the gains of their roguery may remain with them, it will be as a curse and not as a blessing.

It is possible that the scrupulously honest man may not grow rich so fast as the unscrupulous and dishonest one; but the success will be of a truer kind, earned without fraud or injustice. And even though a man should for a time be unsuccessful, still he must be honest: better lose all and save character. For character is itself a fortune; and if the high-principled man will but hold on his way courageously, success will surely come,—nor will the highest reward of all be withheld from him. Wordsworth well describes the "Happy Warrior," as he

As an example of the high-minded mercantile man trained in upright habits of business, and distinguished for justice, truthfulness, and honesty of dealing in all things, the career of the well-known David Barclay, grandson of Robert Barclay, of Ury, the author of the celebrated 'Apology for the Quakers,' may be briefly referred to. For many years he was the head of an extensive house in Cheapside, chiefly engaged in the American trade; but, like Granville Sharp, he entertained so strong


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Rh social, civil, and political matters, whose apparent recklessness struck older nations aghast, but which we did not fear to make because we were confident of our power to recover from failure. Our relations were free, our powers were abundant enough to endure waste. Withal, we could not find opportunities to manifest all our strength. We could only promise to do and assert our ability to do, and this exposed us to malicious interpretations. In all this we see the indications of youth, of inexperience, of exuberant spirits, of overflowing power.

But the convulsion through which we passed ten years ago had the effect upon us as a nation which a grave trial has upon a man: at one step he passes from youth to manhood. He comes to know the world in which he lives. He appreciates the earnestness of life. His confidence in his own powers may be no less firm, but it is far more sober. He does not tempt the trials of life. He no longer seeks opportunities to waste his energies for the mere sake of exercising them. He husbands his powers and settles down to a less romantic, but far more efficient method of undertaking and working. So it was, I say, with this nation. War had been to us a tradition of glory. During a long peace, interrupted only by a slight foreign war, a generation had grown up which had no knowledge, from actual experience, of what war is; but to the Americans of this generation war is a lurid glory. We never can deceive ourselves as to what it means. It brings to us no poetry or romance, but we have seen the spectre face to face and have recognized its true features. We are yet so near to it that our exultation is dimmed in tears and when we turn our memory back to it, we cannot tell whether a sob or a cheer will burst from our hearts. War, to our generation of


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 kindled in my veinstill at length, by two or three strokes longer than the rest—my passion rose to the highest pitchI seiz'd her hand

—And then, thou clapped'st it to thy lips, Trim, said my uncle Toby—and madest a speech.

Whether the corporal's amour terminated precisely in the way my uncle Toby described it, is not material; it is enough that it contain'd in it the essence of all the love-romances which ever have been wrote since the beginning of the world.


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322 But an industrial society brings to bear upon its members an education widely different from that of a military civilization; the codes of citizenship, the conception of what is heroic, the standards of honor, the selection of things best worth working for, the types to which admiration is due, all differ in the two systems. Militarism is produced by a constant preoccupation with the chances of war and the necessity of being prepared for it, and this preoccupation bars the way when people want to think about the reform of institutions or the extension of popular education or any other useful social enterprise. From all that preoccupation the people of this country have been free; they have been able to give their attention without reserve to what would increase the happiness and welfare of the people.

Let us sum up what we have thus far gathered from our review of the colonial period. We have seen that the division of labor was slight; that there was scarcely any industrial organization; that, if slavery be left out of account, there was but little differentiation of classes; that the social ties, even before religious enthusiasm died out, were very few and narrow and strictly local; that, after that enthusiasm died out, such ties scarcely existed at all; that the horizon of life was the town and only at second stage the province. We have also seen that the most peculiar characteristics of the colonial society were the equality of its members and the large liberty of self-will enjoyed by individuals. We know that the separate provinces had very little sympathy or even acquaintance with each other; at one time and another, under the influence of a common danger from the Indians or the French, a feeble thrill of common interest ran through some of them, but it never proved


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Rh the continuity of Cotta's argument is broken by considerable gaps in all the manuscripts. There is a curious tradition, that these portions were carefully torn out by the early Christians, because they might prove too formidable weapons in the hands of unbelievers. Cotta professes throughout only to raise his objections in the hope that they may be refuted; but his whole reasoning is destructive of any belief in an overruling Providence. He confesses himself puzzled by that insoluble mystery—the existence of Evil in a world created and ruled by a beneficent Power. The gods have given man reason, it is said; but man abuses the gift to evil ends. "This is the fault," you say, "of men, not of the gods. As though the physician should complain of the virulence of the disease, or the pilot of the fury of the tempest! Though these are but mortal men, even in them it would seem ridiculous. Who would have asked your help, we should answer, if these difficulties had not arisen? May we not argue still more strongly in the case of the gods? The fault, you say, lies in the vices of men. But you should have given men such a rational faculty as would exclude the possibility of such crimes." He sees, as David did, "the ungodly in prosperity." The laws of Heaven are mocked, crimes are committed, and "the thunders of Olympian Jove are silent." He quotes, as it would always be easy to quote, examples of this from all history: the most telling and original, perhaps, is the retort of Diagoras, who was called the Atheist, when they showed him in the temple at Samothrace the votive tablets (as they

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192 may be seen in some foreign churches now) offered by those shipwrecked seamen who had been saved from drowning. "Lo, thou that deniest a Providence, behold here how many have been saved by prayer to the gods!" "Yea," was his reply; "but where are those commemorated who were drowned?"

The Dialogue ends with no resolution of the difficulties, and no conclusion as to the points in question. Cicero, who is the narrator of the imaginary conference, gives it as his opinion that the arguments of the Stoic seemed to him to have "the greater probability." It was the great tenet of the school which he most affected, that probability was the nearest approach that man could make to speculative truth. "We are not among those," he says, "to whom there seems to be no such thing as truth; but we say that all truths have some falsehoods attached to them which have so strong a resemblance to truth, that in such cases there is no certain note of distinction which can determine our judgment and assent. The consequence of which is that there are many things probable; and although they are not subjects of actual perception to our senses, yet they have so grand and glorious an aspect that a wise man governs his life thereby." It remained for one of our ablest and most philosophical Christian writers to prove that in such matters probability was practically equivalent to demonstration. Cicero's own form of scepticism in religious

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 WHO WIN BY PROGRESS?

a former article I endeavored to show that the word proletariat, which is now coming into use as a name by which the wages-class is designated by itself and its friends, ought properly to be applied only to persons who live from hand to mouth, who have no definite industrial reliance for support, who have no capital and no reasonable chance of ever getting any, who touch elbows all the time with crime and occasionally fall into its power, and who increase the population through vice. No such class of persons as this exists in modern society, all assertions to the contrary notwithstanding.

Not even in the slums of great modern cities is there any class of persons who could be called proletarians and yet be distinguished from the dangerous and criminal class; for any honest man who finds himself there and is discontented can make his way, by moderate effort, to other places where the conditions are easier.

It is true that a poor man who is fond of the life of a great city cannot secure health, virtue, and capital for his children there at as easy a rate as he could in the country. What then? Shall his fellow-citizens, many of whom have fled to the country, not because they like it but because they can do better for their children in that way, be called upon to enable him to enjoy the delights of the city on the easy terms of the country? It has been asked whether there is not some remedy for the harsh contrasts of wealth and poverty in great


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 an opinion against the war with our American colonies, that he determined to retire altogether from the trade. Whilst a merchant, he was as much distinguished for his talents, knowledge, integrity, and power as he afterwards was for his patriotism and munificent philanthropy. He was a mirror of truthfulness and honesty; and, as became the good Christian and true gentleman, his word was always held to be as good as his bond. His position and his high character induced the Ministers of the day on many occasions to seek his advice; and, when examined before the House of Commons on the subject of the American dispute, his views were so clearly expressed, and his advice was so strongly justified by the reasons stated by him, that Lord North publicly acknowledged that he had derived more information from David Barclay than from all others east of Temple Bar. On retiring from business, it was not to rest in luxurious ease, but to enter upon new labours of usefulness for others. With ample means, he felt that he still owed to society the duty of a good example. He founded a house of industry near his residence at Walthamstow, which he supported at a heavy outlay for several years, until at length he succeeded in rendering it a source of comfort as well as independence to the well-disposed families of the poor in that neighbourhood. When an estate in Jamaica fell to him, he determined, though at a cost of some 10,000l., at once to give liberty to the whole of the slaves on the property. He sent out an agent, who hired a ship, and he had the little slave community transported to one of the free American States, where they settled down and prospered. Mr. Barclay had been assured that the


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Rh as possible and without reward. So far we have not got many of them to accept the rôle which is thus allotted to them, and although we scold them and tell them that they ought to carry the burdens, do the work, and take the blows while somebody else gets the glory and the pay, we do not seem to make much impression on them. As a class they turn to money-making as a far more pleasant and profitable occupation.

We began with an employer and an employee face to face with each other and we have been brought to notice the lack of industrial organization and the incongruity of class distinctions in the colonial days on account of industrial facts. Already, then, we begin to see that the conditions of the existing social organization are controlling facts for the welfare and interests of men. Let us try to realize the full significance of this observation. We can perhaps understand it better now, having begun with the interpretation of a concrete case. Every one of us is born into society, that is to say, into some form and kind of society — the one which is existing at the time and place; we must live our lives in that society under the conditions which its constitution and modes of action set for us. We can imagine the same human infant taken either to the United States, to Russia, to Turkey, to China, or to Central Africa, and it is plain that his career and existence would be determined in its direction, modes, and possibilities by the one of those societies which should become his social environment. It is equally true, although not so obvious because the contrast is less strong, that a man could not be and become in Massachusetts in the seventeenth or the eighteenth century what he can be and become there in the nineteenth. The social organi-


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 chose to settle, and have endeavoured to pose as semi-independent princes. These feudal chiefs tax, or used to tax, their followers in proportion to their inability to resist their lords' demands. A poll tax, usually at the rate of $2 for married men and $1 for bachelors, is a form of taxation to which, in the absence of any land tax, no objection is made, but the chiefs had also the power of levying special taxes at their own sweet will, when they found their expenditure in excess of their income, and advantage was taken of any delay in payment of taxes, or of any breach of the peace, or act of theft occurring in a district, to impose excessive lines on the delinquents, all of which if paid went to the chief; and if the fine could not be paid, the defaulter's children might be seized and eventually sold into slavery. The system of "forced trade" I have alluded to when speaking on the subject of domestic slavery. The chiefs were all absentees and, while drawing everything they could out of their districts, did nothing for their wretched followers. The taxes were collected by their messengers and slaves, unscrupulous men who were paid by what they could get out of the people in excess of what they were bidden to demand, and who, while engaged in levying the contributions, lived at free quarters on the people, who naturally did their best to expedite their departure. Petty cases of dispute were settled by headmen appointed by the chief and termed orang kaya, literally "rich men." These orang kayas were often selected from their possessing some little property and being at the same time subservient to the chief. In many cases, it seemed to me, that they were chosen for their superior stupidity and pliability. I have made use of the past tense throughout my description of these feudal chiefs as, happily, for reasons already given, the "good old times" are rapidly passing away.

The laws of Brunai are, in theory, those inculcated by the Korán and there are one or two officials who have some slight knowledge of Mahomedan law. Owing to the cheap facilities offered by the numerous steamers at Singapore, there are many Hajis—that is, persons who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca—amongst the Brunais and the Kadaaans, amongst


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 the latter more especially, but of course a visit to Mecca does not necessarily imply that the pilgrim has obtained any actual knowledge of the holy book, which some of them can decipher, the Malays having adopted the Arabic alphabet, but without, however, understanding the meaning of the Arabic words of which it consists. A friend of mine, son of the principal exponent of Mahomedan law in the capital, and who became naturalised as a British subject, had studied law in Constantinople.

There is no gaol in Brunai, and fines are found to be a more profitable mode of punishment than incarceration, the judge generally pocketing the fine, and when it does become necessary to keep an offender in detention, it is done by placing his feet in the stocks, which are set up on the public staging or landing before the reception room of the Sultan, or of one of his chief Ministers, and the wretched man may be kept there for months.

The punishment for theft, sanctioned by the Korán, is by cutting off the right hand, but this barbarous, though effective, penalty has been discountenanced by the English. On one occasion, however, when acting as H. B. M. Consul-General, 1 received my information too late to interfere. I had been on a visit to the late Sultan in a British gunboat, and anchored. off the palace. During the evening, just before dinner, notwithstanding the watch kept on deck, some natives came alongside and managed to hook out through the ports my gold watch and chain from off the Captain's table, and the first Lieutenant's revolver from his cabin. During our interview next morning with the Sultan, I twitted him on the skill and daring of Brunai thieves, who could perpetrate a theft from a friendly war-ship before the windows of the Royal palace. The Sultan said nothing, but was evidently much annoyed, and a few weeks afterwards the revolver and the remains of my watch and chain were sent to me at Labuan, with a letter saying that three thieves had been punished by having had their hands chopped off. I subsequently heard that two of the unfortunate men had died from the effects of this cruel punishment.


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 On another occasion, some Brunai thieves skilfully dismounted and carried off two brass signal guns from the poop of a merchant steamer at anchor in the river, eluding the vigilance of the quarter-master, while the skipper and some of the officers were asleep on the skylight close by. The guns were subsequently recovered.

Execution is either by means of the bow string or the kris.

I had once the unpleasant duty of having to witness the execution by the bow string of a man named, as it was feared that, being the son of a favourite officer of the Sultan, the execution might be a sham one. This man, with others, had raided a small settlement of Chinese traders from Labuan on the Borneo coast, killing several of the shop-keepers and looting the settlement. So weak was the central government, and so little importance did they attach to the murder of a few Chinese, that, notwithstanding the efforts of the British Consul, remained at liberty for nearly two years after the commission of the crime.

The execution took place at night. The murderer was bound, with his hands behind his back, in a large canoe, and a noose of rope was placed round his neck. Two men stood behind him; a short stick was inserted in the noose and twisted round and round by the two executioners, thereby causing the rope to compress the windpipe. struggles were soon over.

In the case of common people the kris is used, the executioner standing behind the criminal and pressing the kris downwards, through the shoulder, into the heart. This mode of execution has been retained by the European rulers of Sarawak. In British North Borneo the English mode by hanging has been adopted.

Formerly, when ancient customs were more strictly observed, any person using insulting expressions in talking of members of the Royal family was punished by having his tongue slit, and I was once shewn by the Temenggong, in whose official keeping it was, the somewhat cumbrous pair of scissors wherewith this punishment was inflicted, but I have never heard of its having been used during the last twenty years,


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 although opportunities could not have been wanting.

I was once horrified by being informed by an observant British Naval Officer, who had been to Brunai on duty, that he had been disgusted by noticing, notwithstanding our long connection with Brunai and supposed influence with the Sultan, so barbarous a mode of execution as that of keeping the criminal exposed, without food, day and night, on a stage on high posts in the river. I had never heard of this process, and soon discovered that my friend had mistaken men fishing, for criminals undergoing exccution. Two men perch themselves up on posts, some distance apart, and let down by ropes a net into the river. Waiting patiently—and Brunais can sit still contentedly doing nothing for hours—they remain motionless until a shoal of fish passes over the net, when it is partially raised and the fish taken out by a third man, and the operation repeated.

I do not think my naval friend ever published his Brunai reminiscences.

I have already said there is no police force in Brunai; an official makes use of his own slaves to carry out his orders, where an European would call in the police. Neither is there any army and navy, but the theory is that the Sultan and Ministers can call on the Brunai people to follow them to war, but as they give neither pay nor sufficient food their call is not numerously responded to.

Every Brunai man has his own arms, spear, kris and buckler, supplemented by an old English "Tower" musket, or rifle, or by one of Chinese manufacture with an imitation of the Tower mark. The parang, or chopper, or cutlass, is always carried by a Malay, being used for all kinds of work, agricultural and other, and is also a useful weapon of offence or defence.

Brunai is celebrated for its brass cannon foundries and still produces handsome pieces of considerable size. describes cannon as being frequently discharged at Brunai during his visit there in 1521. Brass guns were formerly part of the currency in Brunai and, even now, you often hear the price of an article given as so many pikuls (a pikul=


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 $133 1⁄3$ lbs), or catties (a catty=$1 1⁄3$ lbs) of brass gun. The brass for the guns is chiefly furnished by the Chinese cash, which is current in the town.

In former days, in addition to brass guns, picces of grey shirting (belachu) and of Nankin (kain asap) and small bits of iron were legal tender, and I have seen a specimen of a Brunci [sic] copper coinage one Sultan tried to introduce, but it was found to be so easily imitated by his subjects that it was withdrawn from circulation. At the present day silver dollars, Straits Settlements small silver pieces, and the copper coinage of Singapore, Sarawak and British North Borneo all pass current, the copper, however, unfortunately predominating. Recently the Sultan obtained $10,000 of a copper coin of his own from Birmingham, but the traders and the Governments of Singapore and Labuan appear to have discountenanced its use, and he probably will not try a second shipment.

The profit on the circulation of copper coinage, which is only a token, is of course considerable, and the British North Borneo Company obtained a substantial addition to its revenue from the large amount of its coin circulated in Brunai. When the Sultan first mooted the idea of obtaining his own coin from England, one of the Company's officers expostulated feelingly with him, and I was told by an onlooker that the contrast of the expressions of the countenances of the immobile Malay and of the mobile European was most amusing. All that the Sultan replied to the objections of the officer was "It does not signify, Sir, my coin can circulate in your country and yours can circulate in mine," knowing well all the time the profit the Company was making.

The inhabitants of the city of Brunai are very lightly taxed, and there is no direct taxation. As above explained, there is no land tax, nor ground rent, and every man builds his own house and is his own landlord. The right of retailing the following articles is "farmed" out to the highest bidder by the Government, and their price consequently enhanced to the consumer:—Opium (but only a few of the nobles use the drug), foreign tobacco, curry stuff, wines and spirits (not used by the natives), salt, gambier (used for chewing with the


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first attitude which a little girl learns towards boys is one of avoidance and antagonism. She learns to observe the brother and sister taboo towards the boys of her relationship group and household, and together with the other small girls of her age group she treats all other small boys as enemies elect. After a little girl is eight or nine years of age she has learned never to approach a group of older boys. This feeling of antagonism towards younger boys and shamed avoidance of older ones continues up to the age of thirteen or fourteen, to the group of girls who are just reaching puberty and the group of boys who have just been circumcised. These children are growing away from the age-group life and the age-group antagonisms. They are not yet actively sex-conscious. And it is at this time that relationships between the sexes are least emotionally charged. Not until she is an old married woman with several children will the Samoan girl again regard the opposite sex so quietly. When these adolescent children gather together there is a good- natured banter, a minimum of embarrassment, a great deal of random teasing which usually takes the form of accusing some little girl of a consuming passion for


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 a decrepit old man of eighty, or some small boy of being the father of a buxom matron's eighth child. Occasionally the banter takes the form of attributing affection between two age mates and is gaily and indignantly repudiated by both. Children at this age meet at informal siva parties, on the outskirts of more formal occasions, at community reef fishings (when many yards of reef have been enclosed to make a great fish trap) and on torch-fishing excursions. Good-natured tussling and banter and co-operation in common activities are the keynotes of these occasions. But unfortunately these contacts are neither frequent nor sufficiently prolonged to teach the girls co-operation or to give either boys or girls any real appreciation of personality in members of the opposite sex.

Two or three years later this will all be changed. The fact that little girls no longer belong to age groups makes the individual's defection less noticeable. The boy who begins to take an active interest in girls is also seen less in a gang and spends more time with one close companion. Girls have lost all of their nonchalance. They giggle, blush, bridle, run away. Boys become shy, embarrassed, taciturn, and avoid the society of girls in the daytime and on the brilliant moonlit nights for which they accuse the girls of having an exhibitionistic preference. Friendships fall more strictly within the relationship group. The boy's need for a trusted confidante is stronger than that of the girl, for only the most adroit and hardened Don Juans do their own


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 betel or areca nut), tea (little used by the natives) and earthnut and coco-nut oil. There are no Municipal rates and taxes, the tidal river acting as a self cleansing street and sewer at the same time; neither are there any demands from a Poor Law Board.

On the other hand, there being no Army, Navy, Police, nor public buildings to keep up, the expenses of Government are wonderfully light also.

Other Government receipts, in addition to the above, are rent of Chinese house-boats or rather shop-boats, pawn-broking and gambling licenses, a "farm" of the export of hides, royalties on sago and gutta percha, tonnage dues on European vessels visiting the port, and others. The salaries and expenses of the Government Departments are defrayed from the revenues of the rivers, or districts attached to them.

Considerable annual payments are now made by Sarawak and British North Borneo for the territorial cessions obtained by them. The annual contribution by Sarawak is about $16,000, and by the British North Borneo $11,800. These sums are apportioned amongst the Sultan and nobles who had interests in the ceded districts. I may say here that the payment by British North Borneo to the Sultan of the State, under the arrangement made by Mr. already referred to, is one of $5,000 per annum.

An annual payment is also made by Mr. for the sole right of working coal in the Sultanate, which he holds. for a period of several years. Coal occurs throughout the island of Borneo, and its existence has long been known. It is worked on a small scale in Sarawak and in some portions of Dutch Borneo, and the unsuccessful attempts to develope [sic] the coal resources of the Colony of Labuan will be referred to later on.

In the Brunai Sultanate, with which we are at present concerned, coal occurs abundantly in the Brunai river and elsewhere, but it is only at present worked by Mr. and his partners at Muara, at the mouth of the Brunai river—


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 courting. There are occasions, of course, when two youngsters just past adolescence, fearful of ridicule, even from their nearest friends and relatives, will slip away alone into the bush. More frequently still an older man, a widower or a divorced man, will be at girl's first lover. And here there is no nccd for an ambassador. The older man is neither shy nor frightened, and furthermore there is no one whom he can trust as an intermediary; a younger man would betray him, an older man would not take his amours seriously. But the first spontaneous experiment of adolescent children and the amorous excursions of the older men among the young girls of the village are variants on the edge of the recognised types of relationships; so also is the first experience of a young boy with an older woman. But both of these are exceedingly frequent occurrences, so that the success of an amatory experience is seldom jeopardised by double ignorance. Nevertheless, all of these occasions are outside the recognised forms into which sex relations fall. The little boy and girl are branded by their companions as guilty of tautala lai titi (presuming above their ages) as is the boy who loves or aspires to love an older woman, while the idea of an older man pursuing a young girl appeals strongly to their sense of humour; or if the girl is very young and naïve, to their sense of unfitness. “She is too young, too young yet. He is too old," they will say, and the whole weight of vigorous disapproval fell upon a matai who was known to be


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 the father of the child of Lotu, the sixteen-year-old feeble-minded girl on Olesega. Discrepancy in age experience always strikes them as comic or pathetic according to the degree. The theoretical punishment which is meted out to a disobedient and runaway daughter is to marry her to a very old man, and I have heard a nine-year-old giggle contemptuously over her mother's preference for a seventeen-year-old boy. Worst among these unpatterned deviations is that of the man who makes love to some young and dependent woman of his household, his adopted child or his wife's younger sister. The cry of incest is raised against him and sometimes feeling runs so high that he has to leave the group.

Besides formal marriage there are only two types of sex relations which receive any formal recognition from the community—love affairs between unmarried young people (this includes the widowed) who are very nearly of the same age, whether leading to marriage or merely a passing diversion; and adultery.

Between the unmarried there are three forms of relationship: the clandestine encounter, "under the palm trees," the published elopement, Avaga, and the ceremonious courtship in which the boy "sits before the girl"; and on the edge of these, the curious form of surreptitious rape, called moetotolo, sleep crawling, resorted to by youths who find favour in no maiden's eyes.

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a man uses money—makes it, saves it, and spends it—is perhaps one of the best tests of practical wisdom. Although money ought by no means to be regarded as a chief end of man's life, neither is it a trifling matter, to be held in philosophic contempt, representing as it does to so large an extent the means of physical comfort and social well-being. Indeed, some of the finest qualities of human nature are intimately related to the right use of money; such as generosity, honesty, justice, and self-sacrifice; as well as the practical virtues of economy and providence. On the other hand, there are their counterparts of avarice, fraud, injustice, and selfishness, as displayed by the inordinate lovers of gain; and the vices of thriftlessness, extravagance, and


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 Muara, indeed, signifying in Malay a river's mouth. The Revd. , well known in Australia as an authority on geological questions, thus describes the Muara coalfields:—"About twenty miles to the South-west of Labuan is the mouth of the Brunai river. Here the rocks are of quite a different character, and much older. There are sandstones, shales, and grits, with ferruginous joints. The beds are inclined at angles of 25 to 45 degrees. They are often altered into a kind of chert. At Muara there is an outcrop of coal seams twenty, twenty-five and twenty-six feet thick. The coal is of excellent quality, quite bitumenised, and not brittle. The beds are being worked by private enterprise. I saw no fossils, but the beds and the coal reminded me much of the older Australian coals along the Hunter river. The mines are of great value. They are rented for a few thousand dollars by two enterprising Scotchmen, from the Sultan of Brunai. The same sovereign would part with the place altogether for little or nothing. Why not have our coaling station there? Or what if Germany, France or Russia should purchase the same from the independent Sultan of Brunai?" As if to give point to the concluding remarks, a Russian man-of-war visited Muara and Brunai early in 1887, and shewed considerable interest in the coal mines.

The fairest way, perhaps, of giving my readers an idea of what Brunai was and what it is, will be by quoting first from the description of the Italian, who was there in 1521, and then from that of my friend the late Mr. , who visited the city with me in 1884. description I extract from Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands.

"When," says he, "we reached the city, we had to wait two hours in the prahu (boat or barge) until there had arrived two elephants, caparisoned in silk-cloth, and twelve men, each


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 fidant and ambassador whom he calls a soa. Where boys are close companions, this relationship may extend over many love affairs, or it may be a temporary one, terminating with the particular love affair. The soa follows the pattern of the talking chief who makes material demands upon his chief in return for the immaterial services which he renders him. If marriage. results from his ambassadorship, he receives a specially fine present from the bridegroom. The choice of a soa presents many difficulties. If the lover chooses a steady, reliable boy, some slightly younger relative devoted to his interests, a boy unambitious in affairs of the heart, very likely the ambassador will bungle the whole affair through inexperience and lack of tact. But if he chooses a handsome and expert wooer who knows just how "to speak softly and walk gently," then as likely as not the girl will prefer the second to the principal. This difficulty is occasionally anticipated by employing two or three soas and setting them to spy on each other. But such a lack of trust is likely to inspire a similar attitude in the agents, and as one over- cautious and disappointed lover told me ruefully, "I had five soas, one was true and four were false."

Among possible soas there are two preferences, a brother or a girl. A brother is by definition loyal, while a girl is far more skilful for "a boy can only approach a girl in the evening, or when no one is by, but a girl can go with her all day long, walk with her and lie on the mat by her, eat off the same platter, and


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 furnished with a porcelain vase, covered with silk, to receive and to cover our presents. We mounted the elephants, the twelve men going before, carrying the presents. We thus proceeded to the house of the Governor, who gave us a supper of many dishes. Next day we were left at our leisure until twelve o'clock, when we proceeded to the King's palace. We were mounted, as before, on elephants, the men bearing the gifts going before us. From the Governor's house to the palace the streets were full of people armed with swords, lances and targets; the King had so ordered it. Still mounted on the elephants we entered the court of the palace. We then dismounted, ascended a stair, accompanied by the Governor and some chiefs and entered a great hall full of courtiers. Here we were seated on carpets, the presents being placed near to us. At the end of the great hall, but raised above it, there was one of less extent hung with silken cloth, in which were two curtains, on raising which, there appeared two windows, which lighted the hall. Here, as a guard to the King, there were three hundred men with naked rapiers in hand resting on their thighs. At the farther end of this smaller hall, there was a great window with a brocade curtain before it, on raising which, we saw the King seated at a table masticating betel, and a little boy, his son, beside him. Behind him women only were to be seen. A chieftain then informed us, that we must not address the King directly, but that if we had anything to say, we must say it to him, and he would communicate it to a courtier of higher rank than himself within the lesser hall. This person, in his turn, would explain our wishes to the Governor's brother, and he, speaking through a tube in an aperture of the wall would communicate our sentiments to a courtier near the King, who would make them known to his Majesty. Meanwhile, we were instructed to make three obeisances to the King with the joined hands over the head, and raising, first one foot and then the other, and then kissing the hands. This is the royal salutation. All the persons present in the palace had their loins covered with gold embroidered cloth and silk, wore poiniards with golden hilts,


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 whisper between mouthfuls the name of the boy, speaking ever of him, how good he is, how gentle and how true, how worthy of love. Yes, best of all is the soafafine, the woman ambassador." But the difficulties of obtaining a soafafine are great. A boy may not choose from his own female relatives. The taboo forbids him ever to mention such matters in their presence. It is only by good chance that his brother's sweetheart may be a relative of the girl upon whom he has set his heart; or some other piece of good fortune may throw him into contact with a girl or woman who will act in his interests. The most violent antagonisms in the young people's groups are not between ex-lovers, arise not from the venom of the deserted nor the smarting pride of the jilted, but occur between the boy and the soa who has betrayed him, or a lover and the friend of his beloved who has in any way blocked his suit.

In the strictly clandestine love affair the lover never presents himself at the house of his beloved. His soa may go there in a group or upon some trumped-up errand, or he also may avoid the house and find opportunities to speak to the girl while she is fishing or going to and from the plantation. It is his task to sing his friend's praise, counteract the girl's fears and ob- jections, and finally appoint a rendezvous. These affairs are usually of short duration and both boy and girl may be carrying on several at once. One of the recognised causes of a quarrel is the resentment of the


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