of his implements on the body of some poor woman who had confided herself to his professional care?

Now, suppose, on the other hand, that, as a man of science, I accept agnosticism as the intellectual answer to the great problems of life and destiny. In this universe is there any God? Did it spring from the hand of a Creator? Does it show a moral purpose? I do not know. I do not know. There is hardly anything in nature which science is not ready to account for by some other than the theistic hypothesis; and the God of my childhood has thus disappeared forever. Then, of course, the immortality of the soul becomes to me as the shadow of a dream. Then the idea of a revelation of divine will ceases to be believed. I find myself in a world of anguish and stress and strain. What is the signification of this universal "struggle for existence"? What is the meaning of the tiger's claw, the shark's tooth, and the serpent's fang? What is Duty but enlightened selfishness, or Right but the will of the strongest power? What to me are mercy and pity but misdirected emotions that block human progress?

Here, in a hospital or asylum under my charge, is an incurable cancer-patient, a hopeless lunatic, or a dying child. They are lives which are merely a burden to society, and utterly valueless to the world. Is there any reason why I should not utilize them for purposes of science? Pretending to operate for the woman's benefit, may I not really do so just to "test the efficiency" of my newly imported instrument? Extirpating one cancer, may I not plant another in healthy tissue to see if it will grow? Upon this dying babe may I not try some new operation with as little stir of emotion as if it were a puppy or a rabbit? What are these ignorant beings to me but the very dregs of humanitypersonalities which in a few days at the uttermost would probably pass into the everlasting silence? On what ground do you forbid me if I would hasten the day of their departure by using them as "material," when I do so only for the greater benefit of scientific discovery? Do you tell me that this is all wrong? Yes, if judged by the principles of Jesus Christ; but why wrong if the ideals of Jesus were impracticable for human conduct, if his life was a failure, and God but an animis

tic development from a prehistoric fetich? I am not claiming for Christianity more than belongs to her. The most pronounced advocate of human vivisection among my acquaintances is a physician who is also a Presbyterian elder, and its strongest opponents are Unitarians to whom Jesus was but a man. But, with all exceptions, the practice rests upon the practical negation of God. It will continue to increase with the advancing tide of skepticism, until God and Duty have again acquired their old meaning for scientific men.. SCIENTIST.

Prohibition vs. Total Abstinence

To the Editors of The Outlook:

The Outlook of August 11 contained an article from a Kansas Prohibitionist, in which he says:

Thirdly, because the law in Kansas has shown that the making of liquor-selling illegal is the making of liquor-drinking dishonorable, keeping large numbers of people from this dangerous habit. If a man will drink, there are no side entrances through which he can drag his family in after him.

The readiness with which some people believe that things are as they wish them to be or think they ought to be—is surprising. Where "J. H. " lives, and what are his opportunities, I do not know, but I do know that he is entirely mistaken as to the effects of prohibition.

I came to Kansas forty-four years ago, and have always been a worker in the temperance cause. I helped to secure the adoption of the prohibitory amendment, and for ten years helped to enforce it; but candor compels the reluctant admission that all of my work in that direction was worse than wasted. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I neither can nor wish to" close my eyes and go it blind" in reform work, and, as it is now clear that the temperance cause is being held back instead of promoted by its professed friends, I beg permission to make a few statements about prohibition and temperance in Kansas.

1. It is true that there is less drunkenness in Kansas than in any other State with as many people-but this was as true forty years ago as it is to-day. An unusually large part of its early settlers were temperance people, and the State has never lost its relative position.

2. Prior to the "Gospel Temperance

Movement" we had restrictive laws, but (like prohibition) they did more harm than good. They diverted attention from the fountain of the evil-the drink habitand, consequently, it spread steadily; but when the blue ribbon movement came, it went forward with leaps and bounds—and it did this faster and faster

every year.

3. Unfortunately, we were soon lured by the ignis fatuus of prohibition into taking what looked like a short cut to the goal of universal sobriety, and for twenty years we have relied almost entirely upon law-law-law. During about half that time the impetus we had received kept us going forward, though with steadily decreasing speed, but during the last half we have lost ground faster and faster.

4. At the present time there is hardly a village in the State with a few hundred inhabitants in which liquor cannot be obtained by every resident who wishes it. We have spasms of "law enforcement," but they constantly grow more infrequent, weaker, and farcical. The custom of "licensing by means of monthly fines" is now common even in small places.

5. "Making liquor-selling illegal" is not "making liquor-drinking dishonorable." On the contrary, the drink habit is spreading and becoming increasingly fashionable. Even the preachers seldom urge total abstinence upon the members of their congregation. They have eagle eyes for the "jointist " far away, but cannot see the dram-drinkers on the pews before them and at their official boards. The truth is that there are fewer total abstainers in Kansas to-day than there were twenty years ago. In the fashionable and lower circles drinking is now almost universal, and in the middle walks it is also fast becoming the rule instead of the exception. And the reason for all this is that our temperance people bring all their batteries to bear on the "dram-seller," and pay almost no attention to the dramdrinkers, but for whose support there would be no dram-sellers. However, here, as well as everywhere else, public drunkenness is less common than formerly.

6. The demoralizing effect of prohibition in politics is sickening. Scores of thousands of our men talk and vote for prohibition, and yet pay men to violate.

the law for their own gratification. They are opposed to "open saloons," but not to joints. That is, they are for prohibition for some people, but not for themselves and friends. And the result is that the vicious element is easily handled by the worst men in all parties, and controls many of their nominations.

7. An appalling fact is that hundreds of thousands of cases of perjury are committed every year under the drug-store provisions of our law.

8. Reflection and observation have convinced me that, in this as in nearly all other reforms, reliance upon law has, and always will be, a failure. Men cannot be forced or driven upward, but they can be persuaded to rise. They can also be helped, but only when they are willing. Improvement is always individual-one at a time, not in masses. The real issue is not between prohibition and restriction, but between force and love-between pagan and Christian methods. And I feel sure that the temperance cause will continue to lose ground until its advocates abandon compulsory methods and confine their efforts to persuading men and women to properly regulate their own lives.

9. "Moral suasion" and "legal suasion" methods cannot be carried on successfully together. They are absolutely antagonistic. The legal always paralyzes and supplants the moral, and unites the most of the drinkers into active defenders. and extenders of the habit.

Every candid observer knows that the temperance cause has long been losing ground, and I submit that it must continue to do so until we again place the ax at the root of that upas-tree, the drink habit. For more than ten years I have sought for an opening in which to renew total abstinence work upon a new plan, but until lately most temperance men have been too infatuated with prohibition to candidly consider any other policy. Is there not now some place where the good people are ready to see what can be done by love, persuasion, and reason?

Topeka, Kan.

ALBERT GRIFFIN.

England and the Opium War To the Editors of The Outlook:

Having read the very interesting article on China by Henry Loomis Nelson in

a recent number of your magazine, I beg you will make room for the following view of the so-called "opium war," from the "North American Review" for June, 1896, whereby we learn that England's course was justified by that grand champion of liberty, John Quincy Adams.

M. L.

A very common feature of any discussion in the United States of the trade or commercial policy of England in respect to other nations is the preference of a charge against her of having, more than half a century ago, instituted a war" in order to force poor China to take the opium that England was trying to compel her to import, no matter what the great evils resulting." For this charge, which has been popularly regarded as irrefutable, there is no good or sufficient warrant further than that complete evidence to the contrary has only within a recent period become popularly accessible through the publication of English state papers, although the would-be American authorities on this subject might, in at least a degree, have become cognizant of the exact truth (as will be presently shown) had they taken the trouble to acquaint themselves with the published results of an investigation of this subject by one of their own and greatest statesmen. A summary of the indisputable facts in the case are as follows:

Previous to the inception of the so-called "opium war" between England and China (i. e., in 1840), opium was cultivated in no less than ten of the provinces of China, and its importation was permitted and regularly taxed, the same as any other imports. Opium, the product of India, was imported into China by the East India Company under such circumstances and without inhibition, but to an estimated extent of not more than two per cent. of what would be necessary to meet the demand of the whole Chinese population. The charge that England first introduced opium into China has, therefore, not the slightest foundation in facts.

Some time previous to 1840 the Chinese Government prohibited not merely its importation but its use for any purpose, and any violation of these enactments was made a capital offense. As the appetite for opium on the part of the Chinese was not thereby extin guished, the business of smuggling and illicit dealing became very great, and is now known to have been largely participated in by the very Chinese officials whose business it was to enforce the law. The Chinese Government, furthermore, was not successful in enforcing its law against opium. What was then also the policy of the British Government toward China is demonstrated by the fact that Lord Palmerston, then Premier, sent a despatch to one British resident agent in China, to the effect that, if any British subject chose to contravene the laws of China in respect to the trade in opium," he must do it at his own risk." On the other hand, the Chinese Government, from the very outset of the opium trouble, re

fused to enter into any negotiations with the British Government, not in the interest of the opium trade, nor in the interests of trade, but in order to put the relations of the two Governments on a footing that would be tolerable and induce the Chinese to no longer assume that all foreigners were barbarians and that barbarians must be kept under control. When Lord Napier was sent as Minister to China in 1834, its Government declined to have anything to do with him, and went out of its way to belittle him by using offensive characters for his name and in other ways insulted him. When Lord Napier, fairly driven out of China, was replaced by Sir Charles Elliot, the Chinese authorities at Canton, for the purpose of deliberate insult to foreigners in general, proposed to make the area in front of the so-called "factories," where British merchants and the citizens of other countries were virtually compelled to reside, a place for the public execution of criminals.

As might have been expected, war followed such a condition of things. It was virtually commenced by the Chinese, who sent a fleet of fire-ships to burn the English shipping in the harbor of Canton. It resulted in obtaining from the Chinese Government a promise, that was not, however, kept, that the person's and property of the merchants of all nations trading with China should be protected in the future from insult and injury, and that their trade and commerce should be maintained upon a footing common to all civilized nations. And if England had not undertaken the task of teaching the Chinese this initiatory lesson, the Government of the United States would, sooner or later, have had to do it, if they were to maintain peaceful commercial relations and trade with China.

The so-called "opium war" of 1840, thus brought about, attracted much attention in the United States, as the interests of its merchants prospectively involved were at that time very considerable; and among those of its citizens who especially considered the subject was exPresident John Quincy Adams, who gave to the American public, in December, 1841, the results of his investigations, in the form of a lecture before the Massachusetts Historical Society, which was subsequently reprinted in the "Chinese Repository," an American missionary paper published in Canton. After tracing historically what had occurred up to the year 1841, Mr. Adams said: "Do I hear you inquire what is all this to the opium question or the taking of Canton? These, I answer, are but the movements of mind on this globe of earth, of which the war between Great Britain and China is now the leading star. The justice of the cause between the two parties-which has the righteous cause? I answer, Britain has the righteous cause. The opium question is not the cause of the war, but the arrogant and insupportable pretensions of China that she will hold commercial intercourse with the rest of mankind, not upon terms of equal reciprocity, but upon the insulting and degrading forms of the relation between lord and vassal."

DAVID A. Wells,

Vol. 66

The State Elections

The elections in Vermont in Presidential

were

years have so long served as a thermometer for the political temperature of the Nation that the results in that State last week were watched with almost as much interest in other States as in Vermont itself. Speakers for both parties from outside the State had entered into the campaign in order to bring out the largest possible vote, and on election day large sums spent in bringing the infirm and the indifferent to the polls. No one seemed to have the slightest fear that gains for his party could foster overconfidence and thus deepen the much-bemoaned "apathy." The result of all this work was an astonishing vote. In 1898 fifty-four thousand voters came to the polls; last week the number was increased to sixty-six thousand-a gain of over twenty per cent. The results as compared with previous State elections in Presidential years were as follows:

Republican Republican. Democratic. plurality.

As compared with 1896, therefore, there was a Republican loss of nine per cent. and a Democratic gain of fourteen per cent., but as compared with 1892 there was a Republican gain of nearly twenty-five per cent. and a Democratic loss of over ten per cent. Both parties are professing undue elation over the results-the Democrats figuring on similar gains over 1896 through out the United States, and the Republicans counting on the extraordinary plurality as compared with any year except 1896. In Maine the Republicans this year feared. serious losses, because of the well-known

No. 3

opposition of Mr. Reed, Senator Hale, and one or two other party leaders to the colonial policy of the Administration. A vigorous effort was made to get out a full vote. The vote polled was one-third larger than in 1898, but from one-tenth to one-quarter smaller than in the three preceding Presidential years. dential years. The Republican plurality was about 32,000, as compared with 24,000 in '98, 48,000 in '96, 38,000 in '94, and 12,000 in '92. In Arkansas the Democratic plurality was less than in 1896.

The letter in which President McKinley's President McKinley

Letter of Acceptance

formally accepts the nomination of the Republican party was given to the public on Monday of this week. It is an extremely long document, and includes an elaborate, careful, and detailed account of the principal events connected with the history of the last four years' administration. As has been said, it might, with few modifications, serve very well as a President's Message, if one were to be issued at this time. Not far from four-fifths of the entire letter is occupied with a discussion of the events growing out of the war with Spain and our relations with Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines. In this discussion President McKinley reviews, step by step, the action of the United States Government in framing the treaty with Spain, in claiming sovereignty over Porto Rico and the Philippines, in establishing a form of Government for Porto Rico, and in carrying on war to establish its authority in the Philippines. As to Cuba, the President says:

We have restored order and established domestic tranquillity. We have fed the starving, clothed the naked, and ministered to the sick. We have improved the sanitary condition of the island. We have stimulated in

dustry, introduced public education, and taken a full and comprehensive enumeration of the inhabitants. The qualification of electors has been settled, and under it officers have been chosen for all the municipalities of Cuba. These local governments are now in operation, administered by the people. Our military establishment has been reduced from 43,000 soldiers to less than 6,000. An election has been ordered to be held on the 15th of September, under a fair election law already tried in the municipal elections, to choose members of a constitutional convention, and the convention, by the same order, is to assemble on the first Monday in November to frame a constitution upon which an independent government for the island will rest. All this is a long step in the fulfillment of our sacred guarantees to the people of Cuba. The Government established in Porto Rico is described as one in which the

inhabitants elect their own legislature, provide their own system of taxation, and in these respects have "the same power and privileges enjoyed by other Territories belonging to the United States, and a much larger measure of self-government than was given to the inhabitants of Louisiana under Jefferson." The history of the fight for American supremacy in the Philippines is told very largely by extracts from the instructions to the two Commissions, the proclamations issued by the Government, and the reports of the Commissions and of General Otis. The President sums up the problem, as he views it, in the following paragraphs:

There has been no time since the destruction of the enemy's fleet when we could or should have left the Philippine Archipelago. After the treaty of peace was ratified, no power but Congress could surrender our sovereignty or alienate a foot of the territory thus acquired. The Congress has not seen fit to do the one or the other, and the President had no authority to do either if he had been so inclined, which he was not. So long as the sovereignty remains in us, it is the duty of the Executive, whoever he may be, to uphold that sovereignty, and if it be attacked to suppress its assailants. Would our political adversaries do less?

The American people are asked by our opponents to yield the sovereignty of the United States in the Philippines to a small fraction of the population, a single tribe out of eighty or more inhabiting the archipelago, a faction which wantonly attacked the American troops in Manila while in rightful possession under the protocol with Spain, awaiting the ratification of the treaty of peace by the Senate, and which has since been in active, open rebellion against the United States. We are asked to transfer our sovereignty to a small minority in the islands without consulting the majority, and to abandon the largest portion of the population, which had been loyal to us, to

the cruelties of the guerrilla insurgent bands. More than this, we are asked to protect this minority in establishing a government, and to this end repress all opposition of the majority. We are required to set up a stable government in the interest of those who have assailed our sovereignty and fired upon our soldiers, and then maintain it at any cost or sacrifice against its enemies within and against those having ambitious designs from without. The President meets Mr. Bryan's challenge with a very able and lucid survey of events in the Philippines since the battle of Manila, and makes it clear that this Government has simply accepted the responsibility for law and order in the islands forced upon it by events, and has consistently kept to its duty and work; that it has sought only to give the islands peace and security; that it has largely succeeded in restoring order, and for the first time has given the natives the rights and privileges of freemen;

that its title to the islands has been

ratified by treaty, by the action of both parties at home and by unanimous sentiment abroad; that sovereignty over the islands is the only form of authority which makes the work of reorganization there possible; that there has never been a time when we could honorably withdraw from our responsibilities; that the hope awakened in the minds of one tribe out of more than eighty by the attitude of those who oppose the Administration's policy alone keeps up the fitful opposition to our authority. The President's presentation of the facts is so clear and convincing that he hardly needs to discuss so-called imperialism; but he puts the whole question in a phrase when he says that "if

we withdrew we should leave the islands to anarchy or imperialism." The letter is has been grossly misrepresented; it is a more than a vindication of a policy which convincing exposition of American principles in all foreign affairs.