20 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 



The value of liberty is that it enables the mind freely to 

 conform to law. The liberty that does not pass instantly 

 into law is like the seed that is not sown in the soil. It abides 

 alone. Liberty that confines itself to its narrow field, that is 

 content to knit skilfully together the past and the future at 

 the one plastic point, the present, is not weak, it is well-nigh 

 omnipotent. It only requires long times and large spaces in 

 which to unroll its power; it merely calls for material of 

 every order and the union of every law by which to record 

 its work. There is no reason in any limitation of liberty 

 why, under the laws of inheritance, man should not in time 

 walk the earth with the bounding life of an archangel, gov- 

 ern it with the strength of an archangel, and take home its 

 thoughts and feelings to the pure and serene experience of 

 an archangel. 



The one law of this progress is continuous intelligence and 

 virtue. 



THE INCREASE OF INSANITY. 



By A. O. Wright, Secretary of the State Board of Charities and Reform. 



The United States census of 1860 showed in the state of 

 Wisconsin 283 insane persons. The census of 1880 will show 

 probably about 2,000. This is not an isolated fact. An in- 

 crease of insanity is shown by these two enumerations in 

 the twenty years from 1860 to 1880 in every state of our 

 Union, and in some of them as great an increaee as in Wis- 

 consin. Is the increase a real increase, and what are the 

 causes of it? 



I. This is not all a real increase. The census of 1880 was 

 taken much more accurately than ever before, and this in- 

 creased accuracy shows itself especially in the enumeration 

 of the defective classes. The United States deputy marshals 

 were sometimes careless in counting the numbers of popula- 

 tion, and much more careless in gathering such special sta- 

 tistics as those of the defective classes. Their sins were 



