POLITICS AS A FORM OF CIVIL WAR. 591 



is restricted. If lie can patronize no letter carrier but the Govern- 

 ment, to which he must pay a certain rate, no matter how excessive, 

 he has to a degree become a slave. The same is true if he can not 

 employ whomever he pleases to cut his hair, or to fix his plumbing, 

 or to prescribe for his health. Still truer is it if he is obliged to 

 contribute to a system of public education which he condemns, or 

 to public charities which he knows to be schools of pauperism, or 

 to any institution or enterprise that voluntary effort does not sus- 

 tain. In whatever way the Government may pounce upon him to 

 force him to work for some one besides himself and to square his 

 conduct with notions not his own, he is still a victim of aggression, 

 and the aggression is none the less real and demoralizing because it is 

 not committed amid the roar of cannon and the groans of the dying. 



To what extent the American people have become victims of this 

 kind of aggression can not be determined with precision. Still, an 

 idea may be had from the volume of laws enacted at every legislative 

 session, and the amount of money appropriated to enforce them. A 

 commonplace little appreciated is that every one of them, no matter 

 what its ostensible object, either restricts or contributes to individual 

 freedom. The examination of any statute-book will soon make pain- 

 fully apparent the melancholy fact that the protection of individual 

 freedom figures to the smallest extent in the considerations of the 

 wise and benevolent legislator. Of the eight hundred enactments of 

 the Legislature of the State of !N"ew York in 1897, for example, I 

 could find only fifty-eight that had this supreme object in view. If 

 we apply the same ratio to the work of all the legislatures of the 

 country, and, allowing for biennial sessions, make it cover a period 

 of two years — namely, 1896 and 1897 — the astonishing result will 

 be that, of the 14,718 laws passed, all but 1,030 aim, not to the libera- 

 tion but to the enslavement of the individual. But to this restrictive 

 legislation must be added the thousands of acts and ordinances of 

 town, city, and county legislatures that are more destructive of free- 

 dom even than the State and Federal legislation. If not more numer- 

 ous, they are certainly more minute, meddlesome, and exasperating. 



As to the amount of plunder passing through the hands of the 

 modern condottieri, that is susceptible of an estimate much more 

 accurate. If we take the expenditures of all the governments of the 

 United States, Federal, State, municipal, county, and town, for a 

 similar period of two years, they reach the enormous total of two 

 billion dollars, equal to more than two thirds of the national debt 

 at the close of the civil war.* Of this sum only about one hundred 



* In order to get at the full amount of plunder, I ought to know how much the benefi- 

 ciaries of tariff and other laws pocket. But statistics on this point are unfortunately not 

 to be had. The amount must, however, be very large. 



