190 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of doing this, yon persist in doing other things. Instead of securing 

 me the bread due to my efforts, you give me a stone a sculptured 

 block from Ephesus. I am quite content to enjoy only what I get by 

 my own exertions, and to have only that information and those pleas- 

 ures for which I pay. I am quite content to suffer the evils brought on 

 me by my own defects believing, indeed, that for me and all there is 

 no other wholesome discipline. But you fail to do what is needed. 

 You are careless about insuring to me the unhindered enjoyment of 

 the benefits my efforts have purchased ; and you insist on giving me, 

 at other people's expense, benefits my efforts have not purchased, and 

 on saving me from penalties I deserve." 



" You are unreasonable. We are doing our best with the enormous 

 mass of business brought before us : sitting on committees, reading 

 evidence and reports, debating till one or two in the morning. Ses- 

 sion after session we work hard at all kinds of measures for the public 

 welfare devising plans for educating the people ; enacting better ar- 

 rangements for the health of towns ; making inquiries into the impurity 

 of rivers; deliberating on plans to diminish drunkenness ; prescribing 

 modes of building houses that they may not fall ; deputing commission- 

 ers to facilitate emigration ; and so on. You can go to no place that 

 does not show signs of our activity. Here are public gardens formed 

 by our local lieutenants, the municipal bodies ; here are light-houses we 

 have put up to prevent shipwrecks. Everywhere we have appointed 

 inspectors to see that salubrity is maintained ; everywhere there are 

 vaccinators to see that due precautions against small-pox are observed ; 

 and, if, happening to be in a district where our arrangements are in 

 force, your desires are not well controlled, we do our best to insure 

 you a healthy " 



" Yes, I know what you would say. It is all of a piece with the rest 

 of your policy. "While you fail to protect me against others, you insist 

 on protecting me against myself. And your very failure to do the 

 essential thing results from the absorption of your time in doing non- 

 essential things. Do you think that your beneficences make up for 

 the injustices you let me bear? I do not want these sops and gratui- 

 ties ; but I do want security against trespasses, direct and indirect 

 security that is real, and not nominal. See the predicament in which 

 I am placed. You forbid me (quite rightly, I admit) to administer 

 justice on my own behalf; and you profess to administer it for me. I 

 may not take summary measures to resist encroachment, to reclaim 

 my own, or to seize that which I bargained to have for my services : 

 you tell me that I must demand your aid to enforce my claim. But 

 demanding your aid commonly brings such frightful evils that I prefer 

 to bear the wrong done me. So that, practically, having forbidden 

 me to defend myself, you fail to defend me. By this my life is viti- 

 ated along with the lives of citizens in general. All transactions are 

 impeded; time and labor are lost; the prices of commodities are 



