Last Years. 381 



tion of the public seems likely to become weaker and 

 weaker.* 



* I take rather a more hopeful view than is here suggested by Mr. 

 Spencer. The love of private property is strong in men, and those who 

 possess property are the strongest part of society, as they ought to be and 

 always will be. Unjust inroads upon private property are oftenest made 

 either by greedy sharks who lobby for tariff taxes upon articles of prime 

 necessity, or by well-meaning philanthropists who wish to have one enjoy- 

 ment after another made " free " (which can only be done by taxing the 

 competent people for the benefit of the incompetent), or else by unscrupu- 

 lous politicians who seek to subsidize a class of voters by granting them 

 pensions or other gratuities. Our country has suffered greatly from .such 

 abominations, but the reaction, which has been growing in strength for 

 several years, is already very powerful. It was shown, among other things, 

 in the total defeat of the Blair Education bill, and also in the Democratic 

 victories of 1890 and 1892, which to a large extent must be interpreted as 

 a rebuke to McKinleyism. A notable symptom is the declaration in the 

 Democratic national platform of 1892, presaging the revival of the sound 

 doctrine that government has no right to levy taxes for any other purpose 

 than revenue. There are indications that this doctrine will ere long pre- 

 vail, and that the monstrous edifice of trusts and monopolies, overswollen 

 fortunes, labour unions, walking delegates, boycotts, and general bedevil- 

 ment which a high-tariff policy has built for us will topple over and dis- 

 appear. That will involve quite a wholesale destruction of the seeds of 

 communism. 



In spite of many appearances to the contrary, the robust political phi- 

 losophy of Jefferson and Van Buren, which is substantially that of Mr. 

 Spencer, is very strongly rooted in the American mind ; and now that we 

 are recovering from the evil effects of our brief but violent spasm of mili- 

 tancy, it is beginning again to assert itself. In view of the comparative 

 freedom of the United States from militancy it seems not improbable that 

 in the next half century we shall advance toward a sound and healthy in- 

 dustrialism more steadily and rapidly than Europe. Excess of militancy, 

 whether exhibited in actual warfare or in the maintenance of vast arma- 

 ments, is attended with symptoms of social retrogression, and among these 

 symptoms are the tendencies toward socialistic legislation against which 

 Mr. Spencer has so powerfully protested. They are temporary symptoms, 

 of course. As long as the competents are stronger than the incompetents 

 there is no chance for a general and permanent establishment of socialism 

 or of communism. Possibly such systems may achieve a temporary estab- 



