Reflect besides, that the party in power has but one motive, to wit: to retain its hold; and that it cannot do this unless it keeps the ship of state, crowded with sails, before the popular winds; and it becomes plain, that we cannot have the corrections which science and ethics prescribe, because they are unpopular. We are therefore always likely to have measures, which science and ethics forbid, though they are popular. No wonder, then, that the public mind is puzzled, and that men should spring up all over the land suggesting more puzzles to a distracted people. We cannot present all these puzzles, and select therefore the one, which is the condensation of the whole batch; viz: Britton A. Hill's "Absolute Money" scheme. He boldly advocates the abolition of all specie money, even the specie standard. He claims, that public and private business shall be conducted on the principle of forced loans, that is: money kept current by the force of legal tender acts. He does not recoil a moment from a circulation of 2150 millions of paper money. Had not France 9000 millions of assignats? He argues that his paper money would

1. Unite the people of the United States by ties stronger than any now existing.

2. It would abolish financial and monetary centralization. 3. It would free us from dependence on foreign nations.

4. It would extinguish our public debt.

5. It would relieve us of taxation and give us free trade. 6. It would furnish a uniform and elastic legal-tender money. 7. It would lower interest and give us plenty of money. 8. It would abolish specie money.

The only trouble with this array of assertions is, that the Government of the United States; is not omnipotence. It can make its money worth less than gold or silver or merchandize, and it can demoralize its people; so can it fan the passion for money; but it cannot prescribe ethics, nor create words, nor change the world's opinion, nor scientific axioms.

Mr. Hill must excuse us, but his arguments against a specie standard of value remind us of the Irishman who said: "it was a great mistake to let the sun shine in daytime, when it was entirely unnecessary." His error was, that he took the daylight that existed, and was the result of sunshine, as the product of some quality of the earth. Mr. Hill's misconception is similar. He thinks, that the conditions which prevail, with a paper money that rests on a specie standard, would exist also with his "absolute money." But the truth is, that as there would be no daylight at any time, if the sun did not shine, so would. there be no good paper money, if there were no stable standard

of value.

The development of which Loring von Stein speaks in the quotation in the beginning of this chapter would never take place; and there would be no future for Hill's absolute money.

Mr. Hill would, however, also find, that after he has made his money a legal tender, that he has to go one step further, and make it the warrant for expropriating all possessions in every man's hands. The clauses in our Constitution, forbidding seizures of property, except for public uses, would have to be repealed and clauses substituted, that would arm every man with authority to take any property he wanted on tendering "absolute money." We presume, this power would have to be given direct without the intervention of a jury to find the value. Or? what a nation of jurymen we would be! It would be a bellum omnium contra omnes-plus a jury.

All that is proper in money we should not have, and all that is improper about it we would have. And all on the pretence, that the government is the absolute owner of all the wealth in the country, and that there are no ethics to be observed in its disposition. The world would answer, as it did Chase's bravadoes, by premiums on gold, and depressing the absolute money. There could be no credit, for there could be no "credo." America would then be the illustration of Almendingen's conception, "that there may be a legal status in full bloom, and a complete fulfilment of all state objects, if all the citizens were devils as well as the heads of the state were devils, provided there was only social and political order." In such a state, it would be a hardship to live, for all, that are not devils. Angels and gods would certainly be out of place there. Deviltry would enforce its absolute order, and the atheist's paradise would exist.

We need not argue about the " inexportable money" of Mr. Carey of Philadelphia, nor the "interchangeable money of Mr. Cary of Cincinnati, for what we have said of Mr. Hill's "absolute money" applies to them, so far as they lack the ethical principle, without which "the love of money degenerates into a raging passion." We regard all such schemes. as children of a frame of mind, that always ensues, when ambitious men like Chase upheave the social and political anchors and leave the moorings, in which society was at least safe, even if it was not as well supplied with money as it should have been.

Von Holst, the latest writer on American politics, says well: "The quickest horse on the road to despotism is a principle ridden without bridle." St. Simon said almost a century previous: "Americans are still children in politics." Put the two

together and review what has been said in this chapter, and it will, we think, appear: that America has ridden principles like children, and has advanced very far in despotism. Let us see, whether we cannot put bridles on all the several principles involved.

First principle: The United States need for themselves and their society, besides their metallic money, a supplemental paper medium based on the specie standard.

Second principle: The paper medium must be issued by the authority and under the control of the federal government.

Third principle: It must be uniform and identical in value in every part of the Union.

Fourth principle: The amount issued must be in accordance with, and adequate to, the wants of society as well as its governments.

Fifth There must be public establishments for the deposit of public and private surplus moneys, and they may and should be used to equalize payments and exchanges in different parts of the United States.

First bridle: No corporations chartered either by Congress or the state legislatures, nor any individuals, must have the issuing of the national medium at their pleasure.

Second bridle: The United States must not issue the national medium arbitrarily as forced loans, but upon the demand of trade and on uniform and identical conditions for all, and they obligatory on the Government and its offices.

Third bridle: The profits made on the paper issued must go to those, who fulfil the conditions on which it is issued.

Fourth bridle: The establishments erected for this purpose shall be under the co-operative management of federal, state, municipal, and individual supervision. Congress to pass the necessary laws, the Executive to issue the instructions and regulations, and the said managing direction to administer them.

And now the reader can easily find the right, but also the wrong in Hamilton's Bank 1792, in Dallas's Bank 1816, in the pet-bank system 1834-37, in the sub-treasury 1837-60; in all the bank-note issues for the last century, in Chase's greenback, in the national banking system 1863-80, and last not least, in Sherman's ground and lofty tumblings as to resumption and refunding.

And when the right and wrong in these things is found, it will be at once perceived, that none of the existing institutions, be it the sub-treasury or the banks or the mint, will answer the chief object in view; but that each of these should be remitted.

to their strictly appropriate inherent functions. The mint to coinage, the sub-treasury to the comptrolling of accounts, and the banks to dealings in money accrued to them by their own capital and credit or by their depositors. That done, and while it is being done, erect the public co-operative establishments already suggested, and confine these as near as possible to their sphere as to issues of a national paper medium, which includes of course the facilitating of payments and exchanges upon the money-order idea all over the land, and also to foreign countries.

In conclusion, let us say, that we flatter ourselves to have suggested nothing, that is not strictly within the powers of the Constitution, and sustained by the most advanced thinkers of our age, on the subject of paper money. We submit it confidently to the reader's criticism.

CHAPTER XVI.

FEDERAL TAXATION.

"With all governments, to do evil is easy, but to effect beneficial change, difficult."-Grote.

As we enter upon the subject of this chapter, two episodes in our life present themselves to our mind, which we allow ourselves to mention. The first was the statement of our teacher in geography in 1828: that the United States had the best systems of taxation; the second was the remark of a professor in Strasburg in 1873, whose lectures on taxation we were attending: that America ever had, and had then, the worst systems of taxation. The former remark was one of our chief inducements to emigrate to this country; the latter was our principal incentive to study the subject anew, preparatory to our work; and a forty years' experience in America enables us to understand, that the instructor of our youth had taken low taxes and simple methods of collection for his criterion, whilst the professor who taught us in old age judged by the standard of politico-economic science. The paradox was solved by applying to America the above quotation from Grote for then we comprehended, that the United States started with some well-set phrases on the subject, and enjoyed for a long time fortuitous social and political conditions, and with them the luxury of opposing even light taxation. It presented, in justification of its heedless course, the usual ad captandum sophistries. Thus the country drifted into evil taxation imperceptibly, and when the dire exigencies of the war 1861-65 came, it had neither empirical nor scientific guides for its action, and plunged into the most massive tax wrongs, which the world had ever seen, and it is now so extremely difficult to effect a correct beneficial change.

It may, under these circumstances, be well to bring to our minds a few historic data as to the development of ideas on taxation, which those, who had to decide this matter, underwent before and since this Union was established.

England had taxes that were never enacted by parliament;