5 i6 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fruits and edible roots, devour the toil of many million laborers 

 and the productive value of at least one million square miles. The 

 fertility of that enormous area is thus not only wasted, but turned 

 from a blessing into a concentration of curses. Mankind, indeed, 

 would gain by the result if the fruitful fields of that poison-har- 

 vest were wholly withdrawn from human use ; but if even only 

 half their surface were devoted to the production of wholesome 

 food, pauperism would disappear before the blessings of an un- 

 paralleled abundance — an abundance far exceeding the prosperity 

 of the happiest provinces of pagan Italy or Moorish Spain. Add- 

 ing the indirect benefits resulting from the decrease of disease and 

 crime, it is no exaggeration to say that half the weight of human 

 misery would thus be lifted from the scale of weal and woe. 



Our political economists would be scandalized by studying the 

 free-and-easy financial methods of ancient empires whose rulers 

 often permitted a large percentage of the public taxes to cling to 

 the pockets of ill-controlled collectors; but the live-and-let-live 

 carelessness of those potentates was associated with a belief in the 

 justice of the general claim to earthly happiness, and the evils of 

 absolutism were mitigated by the liberality of the absolute Caesars. 

 Every city of the Roman Empire had its free wrestling-ring and 

 foot-race course ; every provincial metropolis a free circus, with 

 accommodation for many thousand spectators. Free baths were 

 thought as indispensable as free public fountains of pure drink- 

 ing-water. Holidays were multiplied to satisfy the needs of an 

 increasing population deprived of the rustic sports of their ances- 

 tors. Every community had its weekly and monthly festivals. 

 In Greece even the hostilities of civil wars were suspended to 

 insure free access to the plains of Corinth, where the Olympic 

 games were celebrated with a regularity that made their period 

 the basis of chronological computation for a space of nearly eight 

 hundred years. When Rome became the capital of the world, the 

 yearly disbursements for the subvention of free public recreations 

 equaled the tribute of a wealthy province. As a consequence, dis- 

 content with the rule of such autocrats was so rare, that the peace 

 of an empire equal in extent to the entire area of modern Europe 

 could be preserved with a standing army of less than one hundred 

 thousand men. 



The modern alliance of canting hypocrisy and bullying despot- 

 ism has tried a different plan. Enjoyments are reserved for 

 aristocrats by the grace of the orthodox Deity, while the worship 

 of sorrow is enforced on millions of toilers, whose desire of recre- 

 ation is suppressed as a revival of impious worldliness. The 

 Caesars silenced the clamors for liberty with free bread and free 

 circus games ; the Czars silence them with the knout ; but those 

 cowed victims of knout and cross can not be expected to die in 



