654 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



he does not abstract or destroy any portion of the taxable property 

 of the State; the aggregate of values remains the same." — Opinion 

 of Justice McKinstry. 



Suppose, "were such a thing possible, that the entire tax rolls 

 exhibited nothing but indebtedness. Taxation under such circum- 

 stances would, of course, be wholly fanciful, as having no actual 

 basis for its exercise." — Opinion of Chief -Justice Wallace. 



♦«» 



AN APOSTATE DEMOCRACY. 



By FEANKLIN SMITH. 



~TTT~ERE the founders of the American Republic to return to the 

 V V scene of their memorable achievements, that which would 

 surprise them most would not be the railroad or telegraph ; it would 

 be the change in the principles and practice of government that has 

 taken place since their day. I do not mean to say that the mar- 

 velous discoveries of science would not arrest their attention. By no 

 means were they without appreciation of the things that make for in- 

 dustrial progress. But to them the thing of most importance in the 

 affairs of life was government. They felt that all was lacking where 

 a people lacked the guarantee of freedom and justice. Where these 

 were had, all else was possible. Sooner or later it would come as the 

 triumph of individual thought and effort. Not so now. The govern- 

 ment that insures freedom and justice, leaving the citizen to work 

 out his own destiny, moral and industrial, is not the ideal of the 

 statesman and philanthropist of to-day. Reverting to the ideal of 

 feudalism, one that took the Anglo-Saxon four centuries to get away 

 from, they conceive the government to be best that governs most. 

 But in the eyes of the founders of the republic such a government 

 was intolerable; for it was to escape despotism that they fought the 

 Revolution. 



These patriots were under as little delusion about the nature of 

 democracy as a political power as they were about the nature of 

 autocracy. What the history of the ancient and mediaeval republics 

 had taught them of its capacity for corruption and despotism their 

 own experience had in no way tended to revise and correct. It had 

 accepted bribes; it had exercised a religious intolerance that rivaled 

 the Inquisition; it had sought to fill its exchequer by means as re- 

 pugnant to honesty and freedom as those of any Valois despot. As 

 ardent a democrat as Jefferson had no more taste for the tyranny 

 of the majority than for any other tyranny. Upon his first 

 inauguration, he seized the occasion to warn his countrymen 



