6o 4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ficient to restrain the average possessor of personal property from 

 forcing other men to pay the taxes for which he is justly liable, by 

 methods unquestionably immoral, if not absolutely criminal." Fur- 

 ther evidence of the same startling and deplorable fact, one recalling 

 the cruel indifference of the privileged classes of the ancient regime 

 to the sufferings of the people that bore the burdens that they ought 

 to have shared, is to be found in the universal tendency of people 

 to get public improvements at the expense of others, such as free 

 baths, normal schools, interoceanic canals, etc., and the shocking 

 prevalence of crimes of violence in every part of the country. To be 

 sure, there are coupled with this alarming decadence extraordinary 

 religious, philanthropic, and pedagogic efforts to rescue society from 

 the depths of degradation to which it is sinking. But, as is shown 

 by the history of the unparalleled moral enthusiasm of thousands of 

 ascetics and teachers of the highest character during the decadence of 

 Rome and the disorders of the middle ages, they will be absolutely 

 ineffective as long as the conditions prevail that engender envy, 

 hatred, deception, plunder, and murder, destroying not only morality, 

 but every vestige of fellow-feeling and patriotism. " There is a na- 

 tion," says Mr. Bodley in his new book on France, bringing out this 

 profound and important truth, " to the members of which French- 

 men are more revengeful than to the Germans, more irascible than 

 to the Italians, more unjust than to the English. It is to the French 

 that Frenchmen display animosity more savage, more incessant, and 

 more inequitable than to any other race." Precisely the same effect 

 is to be noticed in the United States — the inevitable effect of every 

 form of aggression, even though it have the most benevolent object 

 in view. 



Yet the conclusion is not that people should abstain from politics. 

 That would involve greater evils than those that now prevail. It 

 would be submission to aggression — freedom to predatory politicians 

 to continue their pillage. The thing to be done is to take up arms 

 against them, and to wage relentless war on them. But the object 

 of the struggle must not be the substitution of one set of politicians 

 for another, but to reduce to the smallest possible limits the sphere of 

 all political activity. Until this is done there can be no release from 

 so important a duty to self and to the community. 



Sir W. Martin Conway, with bis two Swiss guides, Antoine Maqui- 

 guez and Louis Pellissier, on September 9, 1898, reached the top of Ylli- 

 mani, Bolivian Andes, near La Paz. The party wei*e five days reaching the 

 summit, 22,500 feet above the sea, from the highest point of cultivation. The 

 guides were the same who ascended Mount St. Elias in 1897 with Prince 

 Luigi of Savoy. 



