LEGISLATIVE AIDS TO AGRICULTURE. 25 



gets an undue return for its investments, that return must come 

 either from an undue extension of the hours of labor or the un- 

 duly depressed price of wages in some department of human in- 

 dustry. And whenever taxation is authorized by law for the 

 benefit of the few to be taken from the earnings of the many, 

 then that legislation is unjust and oppressive, and ought to be 

 abrogated, whether the laws are the enactments of a republic or 

 the decrees of an empire. 



Why is it that in this State of ours, containing less than a 

 million and a half of inhabitants, and less than eight thousand 

 square miles, one hundred and seventy days of a year — and not 

 that for a single year, but nearly that time in every year — must 

 be taken up for legislation, — a longer time than is taken by the 

 Congress of the United States in legislating for a country con- 

 taining more than three millions of square miles, with eleven 

 thousand miles of boundary, and forty millions of people, with- 

 all their varied interests and relations, domestic and foreign ? 

 And I by no means set up Congress as a pattern, either of celer- 

 ity or accuracy of legislation. The reason is that nine-tenths 

 of all our legislation are for private objects, and to give private 

 advantages to somebody over somebody else, or to meet special 

 cases only. True, it is said by the compiler of the Acts of the leg- 

 islature, that the largest portion of them are general laws ; but of 

 what kind ? Most of them might as well not have been passed ; 

 some are changes and alterations, but not betterments ; many are 

 passed without discussion, without being understood, and without 

 thought. In proof of which I can point to Act upon Act passed 

 at the same session to make the first either operative or intelli- 

 gible. In proof that the legislature is most of the time engaged 

 in the discussion of private and not general laws, let me cite the 

 fact that the committees which sit the longest and work the most 

 laboriously — and no one is more ready to accord them industry 

 and ability than myself — are those that hear the petitions of pri- 

 vate individuals for private Acts for their own proper benefit. 

 Take for example the committees on railways and manufactures 

 and banks and banking. 



You may think my strictures upon what are called general 

 laws are too sweeping and too stringent. But take some ex- 

 amples of the so-called general laws. Every Act affecting in 

 any degree, however minute, the public, is classified as a general 



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