AN APOSTATE DEMOCRACY. 659 



their political creed. But if not averse to the encouragement of in- 

 dustry that a moderate tariff would give, they never imagined that 

 the throttling of trade, such as began with the Morrill act and ended 

 with that of Mr. Dingley, would come to be defended as a blessing 

 in itself, and turned into a gospel of national wealth and happiness. 

 ISTor did they conceive that the Constitution, framed while the mem- 

 ory of the countless evils of an irredeemable currency was still fresh, 

 would ever be quoted in approval of a step so calamitous. Least of 

 all did it occur to them to resort to the power of taxation to suppress 

 the right of a bank to issue its notes, and, with such tyranny as a pre- 

 cedent, to crush a growing traffic in a wholesome food, like the 

 chemical substitutes for butter and cheese, and to extinguish a gam- 

 bler's passion, like the patronage of a lottery or the solution of miss- 

 ing-word puzzles. They believed with Mr. Spencer that government 

 had a different object. When, however, a nation becomes perverted, 

 as Americans have been, by the evils and ethics of war, the main- 

 tenance of peace and freedom ceases to be an article of passionate 

 faith; it is no longer an object of ceaseless pursuit. With ideas and 

 feelings unconsciously and irresistibly shaped, not by constitutions 

 and rational discussion, but by militant necessities, people do not 

 look to themselves for the blessings of life; they look to the power 

 that has shielded them from ruin. To it they intrust, without a 

 doubt of their wisdom or a suspicion of their enslavement, a thou- 

 sand duties that they alone should assume. 



It is not the ignorant and thoughtless that fall a prey to the 

 operation of a social law that they do not understand. People of in- 

 telligence and learning as well yield to the bondage of their environ- 

 ment. A member of the United States Supreme Court has repudi- 

 ated as completely as any blatant socialist the peerless truth that the 

 only government of a free democracy is the one that Jefferson 

 described — the one that " shall restrain men from injuring one an- 

 other " and " leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pur- 

 suits of industry and improvement." In an address before the 

 American Bar Association, Justice Brown endowed the State with 

 the paternal authority of a feudal despotism. " It may," he said, 

 " fix the number of hours of a legal day's work, provide that pay- 

 ment be made at certain stated periods, protect the life and health of 

 workingmen against accidents or diseases arising from ill-constructed 

 machinery, badly ventilated rooms, defective appliances, or danger- 

 ous occupations, and may limit or prohibit altogether the labor of 

 women and children in employments injurious to their health or be- 

 yond their strength. ... It may," he added, describing still further 

 the attributes of a government of the fourteenth century instead 

 of the nineteenth, " by constitutional amendment, if necessary, for- 



