governmental interference with his actions must be injurious and improper; if he is not, every governmental interference is beneficial, and Government should control every one of his actions. There can be no limit to a natural law, except the limitation produced by an opposing natural law.

Let us now, by the light of these principles, examine some of the leading systems of Government. By doing this, we shall find that all Governments that have ever existed have proved failures, if we consider the well-being of the governed the true and proper object of Government; and it is very apparent that their failure can be traced to the ignorance or disregard of natural laws, and to the non-recognition and protection of the rights of humanity. And we shall also find, that the nearer a Government has been based on the full recognition of the rights of humanity, the less injurious, or the more advantageous, has it proved.

The Jewish Theocracy was based on the idea that the Jews were the favored children of God, who would deliver their enemies into their hand; sconsequently the Jews lived in constant warfare with nearly all the nations with whom they came in contact, and their nationality ended by the sword. They fulfilled the prediction, that those who draw the sword shall die by the sword.

The Grecian Republics were all based on the interests of a class in the city which formed the nucleus of each Republic. Their Governments recognized and protected only the rights of this class, whilst they ignored and disregarded those of all the rest of humanity. The Greeks divided humanity into two classes the Greeks and the barbarians, the latter comprising all the other races. Their philosophers held that the citizen must be a man of leisure, except when occupied with arms or in the Council of the State. Xenophon, it is true, admitted agriculture to be an occupation that formed obedient citizens and robust soldiers. But Aristotle was unwilling that any labor should degrade and bend the noble form of a freeman. Aristotle maintained that the barbarians were born to be slaves, and were incapable of being anything else; that as slaves they were better off than as freemen; that they possessed only sufficient mind to comprehend the orders of their masters; that they were incapable of virtue, and therefore not

capable of enjoying happiness; that they had no natural rights, and that it was as legitimate to hunt them for the purpose of reducing them to slavery, as to hunt and kill the wild beasts of the forest.

Every colony and dependency of the Greek Republics, was governed despotically, and solely for the benefit of the governing class of the parent city. Aristophanes states that more than one thousand cities were subject to the Hellenic sway. Contributions were levied within and without the State: in one place, in the form of confiscations and penalties; in another, by means of war contributions; in another, by monopolies. No one thought of the resources produced by labor. More than three-fourths of the population of Athens were slaves. The State maintained public physicians, professors, and artists to decorate the public buildings. Notaries and attorneys were paid by the State. Education was gratuitous. It was to these erroneous economic habits of living mostly at the expense of the State, that are attributable the loss of the liberties of Greece, as well as the little development which her industry attained. We shall find everywhere, that liberty is the child of labor and economy. The public distributions of the State having become periodic, all persons desirous of popularity, purchased the good-will of the multitude by largesses, which exhausted the State, without enriching the receivers, merely inducing them to disregard, more and more, the important fact that labor is the main source of the well-being of all. Plato remarked, that this fatal system had rendered the Athenians indolent, grasping, intriguing, and fickle. The people were flattered by enormous contributions levied on the wealthy, or by confiscations. An Athenian orator said openly, that the distributions of money were the cement of democracy. Thus based on slavery, and on the interests of a single class of each parent city, the Governments of Greece rested on no permanent basis. Constant wars between the different Grecian States, as well as with foreign nations, became their normal condition, and they soon fell a prey to foreign invaders.

Rome rested on a broader basis, in consequence of the policy pursued of incorporating into the State every conquered city and province. This prolonged her existence as a nation

long beyond that of the Grecian States. But slavery also became the basis of her internal and social polity, and war and plunder that of her foreign policy. Under these circumstances industry and commerce could not be developed, and without these man cannot progress. Rome, like Greece, attacked the rights of humanity, instead of protecting them; and therefore, eventually, shared the fate of Greece, by becoming also the prey of foreign invaders.

As to the feudal States of Medieval Europe, they all rested on brute force, on class interests, and on serfdom. Like Rome, war and rapine were their foreign policy, and serfdom the basis of their industrial and social polity. Under such a system of Government, industry and commerce were crushed, and human well-being and progress were impossible. Even England, always claimed as being the home and refuge of liberty, protected few or none of the rights of the masses. Her vaunted Magna Charta is merely the recognition by King John of the rights of the nobles and the clergy. Those of the people are almost ignored in that instrument.

Probably the most remarkable Government that has ever existed is the Chinese. Based on the recognition and protection of the rights of industry, of intelligence, and of capacity, that country was long far in advance of all other nations, both in industry and in the arts and sciences. But it is the most gigantic example of the centralization of power that has ever existed. France is as nothing in this respect compared to China. The area of France is about 200,000 square miles, that of China 1,300,000. The population of France is about 36,000,000; that of China 400,000,000. Everything in China is regulated by the Government, and, apparently, on a just and beneficial basis. There are no castes there. Talent and capacity are said to be the only passports to office and power. The most capable scholars, after a proper examination, are appointed to local offices. The most capable local functionaries, after a due examination, are promoted to district offices; and the most capable of the district officers are promoted to provincial offices, and so on to the counsellors and ministers of the Emperor. What system could be more just, equitable, or proper? It is the system the English are now attempting to introduce, partially, into their administrations; particularly

that of India. But the Upas-Tree does not seem more fatal in its blighting effects, than the interference of Government with individual efforts and actions. Even justice in the distribution of office and power cannot prevent this. The reason evidently is, that a Government official, encountering no competition, and having no especial interest in the consequences of his actions, which fall upon others and not on himself, never initiates a progress; and the minimum amount of effort that will satisfy the requirement of the superior officials, is generally the maximum amount of effort made by their subordinates. It is undoubtedly this intervention of Government in all things, and the non-intercourse with foreign nations, that are the true causes of the extraordinary fact that the inhabitants of China-that great bee-hive of industrynotwithstanding their industry and thrift, make no progress, merely repeating, like the bees, year after year, what their predecessors have done before them. The Chinese appear to have become so thoroughly dependent on Government, that their minds seem to have ceased to act, and, consequently, for a long time, no progress has been realized by them.

The first people of Europe that attained liberty through industry, were the Flemings. Agriculture, manufactures, commerce and navigation, were each made to contribute to enrich them; and the assistance they were thus enabled to afford to their princes, secured from the latter important political privileges, which established the independence of the citizens. There was a great tendency to distinct individuality in the different provinces of the Low Countries. Peopled by different races, speaking different languages, Charles V. found it impossible to consolidate them into a monarchy. He had to take, against his wishes, the position of the head of a republic, or rather of a confederacy of republics. Each province had its own courts of justice, with an appeal to a Supreme Court at Mechlin. Each State had its own Legislative Assembly. The States-General were vested with no legislative authority, possessing only the right of consultation, and of petitioning the sovereign. No subsidy could be voted by the States-General without the express sanction of each of the provincial legislatures. It was a Government not suited for military enterprises, but well suited to the genius of the in

habitants and to their circumstances, which demanded peace. They had no ambition for foreign conquest. Industry never has, for it is by the arts of peace that it attains prosperity, and by them alone that it can hope to maintain it. The Low Countries were as thickly studded with large towns as other countries were with villages. In the middle of the 16th century it was computed to contain 350 cities, and more than 6,300 towns of smaller size. These towns were not the resort of monks and mendicants, as in other parts of the continent, but swarmed with a busy, laborious population. No man ate the bread of idleness in the Netherlands. Antwerp had a population of 100,000 when London contained only 150,000; 250 vessels at a time were to be seen in the harbor of Antwerp, and that city, in the 16th century, was what London is now, the great banking centre of Europe. The merchants of Antwerp rivalled the nobles of other lands in their dress and domestic establishments. Something of the same sort showed itself even in the middle classes. The humbler classes, in so abject a condition in other parts of Europe, felt the good effects of this general progress in comfort and civilization. It was rare to find one so illiterate as not to be acquainted with the rudiments of grammar, and there was scarcely a peasant who could not both read and write, at a time when these accomplishments were not possessed in other countries by those in even the higher classes of life.*

This prosperity and happiness was brought to an end by that cruel bigot and hypocrite, Philip the II., whose true character has been well revealed by the archives of Simancas and the talents of our Prescott and Motley. By his edicts against the Protestants, and by his suppression of the rights of the people, enforced by foreign mercenaries, he spread sorrow and dismay throughout the whole country. The more timid or prudent emigrated to Protestant States, and particularly to England, where no less than 30,000 took shelter, carrying with them the manufactures of the Netherlands. Government and human laws thus destroyed in a deluge of blood, what industry and commerce had patiently and laboriously created. Here again it was the brutal passions of the governing classes,

* Prescott's Philip II.