AN APOSTATE DEMOCRACY. 671 



culosis, officials may subject them to tests, and, if necessary, seize 

 and kill them. In many States the pedigree of an animal has 

 become more important than that of a man, and any falsification 

 of the family tree of a. horse or pig is severely punished. Other 

 legislation assumes that Yankee prudence and shrewdness have 

 passed away. Instead of facilitating redress against all frauds, it 

 contains elaborate provisions in regard to the sale of bogus seeds 

 and fertilizers. Finally, there is a mass of legislation, like beef-in- 

 spection laws and laws for the regulation or suppression of oleomar- 

 garine, that pretends devotion to the public welfare. But its prin- 

 cipal object is to cater to greed and to establish monopolies. 



Of the liveliest interest to the philanthropic statesman have been 

 all subjects that relate to humanity, morality, and education. It has 

 seemed as if he thought that without his malevolent interference 

 his fellows would lapse into hopeless ignorance and barbarism. 

 Accordingly, he has been at infinite pains to suppress intemperance, 

 to stimulate sympathy and acts of kindness, and to break down any 

 monopoly of intelligence and learning. In all the States there 

 have been established huge and costly mechanisms for the wholesale 

 inculcation of public and private wisdom and virtue. That no child 

 might, through a perverse inclination or parental neglect, wander 

 from the ranks of the droves crowding the public schools, compul- 

 sory education has been established. Agents have been appointed 

 to hunt down little delinquents, and veritable prisons constructed to 

 force them to quaff at the fountains of knowledge. More antagonis- 

 tic even to the principles of a free democracy are the private organi- 

 zations invested with the police powers of the State to suppress 

 cruelty and vice. Outside of the machinery of responsible govern- 

 ment, they wield an authority not subject to the checks of the police. 

 The State has no more to do with the appointment of their agents, 

 who may be grossly ignorant and incompetent, than with the 

 appointment of the agents of a railroad or insurance company. 

 Although supposed to be superior men, I have known them to prac- 

 tice tricks to catch their victims that would disgrace a knave, and to 

 violate private rights with a recklessness hardly surpassed in Russia. 

 The great mass of legislation in regulation of bibulous habits and 

 customs is another reckless invasion of private rights. Without 

 trying to discuss a subject that would fill a volume, I may mention 

 two laws at least that illustrate in an alarming way the assimilation 

 of democratic institutions with those of feudalism. One is the liquor 

 law of New York, with its multitude of despotic and discriminating 

 provisions, inviting evasion, and its centralized officialism, already 

 shown to be grossly inefficient, if not depraved, to enforce them. 

 The other is the dispensary law of South Carolina, which has created 



