420 
Annual Be poet of the 
stable institutions, and men trained to cooperate, the world can do 
things now which it would have been madness to attempt a cen¬ 
tury earlier. 
The Jews have but four punishments—maiming, whipping, fines 
and death. The middle ages in Europe had no more. Government 
was not stable enough for imprisonment. Now we can dispense 
with the gibbet and the lash, because, as in France, six dynasties 
may rise and fall, but the convict, sentenced to four walls for life, 
never sees the sun. A secret, says Emerson, guarded by a bit of 
wafer, goes safely round the globe. When Montaigue wrote his 
essays, a Frenchman would haye been mad to trust his mansion- 
house without drawbridge and sentinel. To-day the county pal¬ 
aces of England, crowded with wealth, are safe with a superannu¬ 
ated housekeeper and a butler who cannot walk; for the day of 
the pistol is over, and 
Sovereign Law, the state’s collected mil, 
Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill. 
My friend, Colonel Montgomery of Kansas, told me he never 
lighted a candle in his log-hut, lest they should aim successfully at 
him through the gaps. The same is the case to-day with the hunt¬ 
ed republicans of Mississippi. Such a community can hardly be¬ 
lieve in a social state like that of Vermont, wheie one rarely locks 
his front door, and where the great barn stands all night open with 
half a dozen 2:40 horses inside. Once books in libraries were 
chained for safety to the shelf. When a king borrowed them he 
left jewels in pawn, or gave bond to return the volumes. Now we 
lend 20,000 volumes a month, and are sure a dozen will cover all 
the losses. I think we can trust the people to-day as much in cur¬ 
rency matters as we can in lending books. 
When Pope’s father retired from business, he put all his property 
(£20,000) into a box, and took out each day enough for his ex¬ 
penses. If, as Macaulay thinks, this was not a solitary instance, then 
the joint-stock banks of England, and the Scotch banks would have 
been impossible at that time; as Bagehot says, they are now in 
France, for this very reason. Different habits prevail among the 
British race to-day, and the best system of banking in the world has 
become possible wherever that blood flows. 
Railways could not have been built in Elizabeth’s day had any one 
invented them. “ The capital could not have been collected,” says 
