them. If the qualities of the parents are transmitted to offspring, what a stock is this to breed from to improve the race, and invest a progressive civilization with its sublimest virtues !

The greater the fortunes of the few, the greater the hardships of the many. Gorgeous palaces are associated in the world's history with squalid hovels. One must be the accompaniment of the other. The sensitive, sympathetic, and thoughtful poor, those of nice sensibilities and organizations, see and comprehend the difficulties in the way of raising a family, and crush the noblest affections of the human heart; and thus it is left to the bloated and the heedless and indifferent to stock the world and furnish greatness and humanity for the progression of the ages.

We have said that great convulsions afford grand opportunities for the doubling and quadrupling of capital. Wars are the harvest-times for the rich and the speculative. Capital at such times is sensitive. Money is so tightly griped that its value is increased, and governments, like men, are compelled to come to more favorable terms with the lender. Besides, contracts for army supplies are numerous, and only those who can show responsibility can compete for jobs in which millions are involved. The capitalist takes advantage of the power his money commands, and increases his wealth with astonishing rapidity. The late war made a thousand millionaires, and many thousand fortunes; while he who went to the front lost his time, if not his limbs or life, and came back to the struggle for existence, finding his lot harder than it was before his country called him to the field. Drawing a million of the ablest-bodied men from the shops and the farms increased the value of the labor left at home, while the supplies necessary to maintain the waste of war stimulated industry in every channel. Those who

escaped the perils of the field and camp reaped the golden harvest which activity and demand produced, while the soldier took his life in his hand and received from the nation not much more than enough to give him the luxuries denied in the service. In other words, the demands of patriotism made the patriot poor and deprived him of the chances of accumulation, while the stay-at-homes were given an opportunity to wax fat and be independent.

It must be evident that just compensation is not attained under any system yet devised for cases such as these. The man who makes sacrifices for the general good, is he not entitled to the care of the people he defends and salvage upon the property he contributes to save? Unless we are deceived, something more is due to him who devotes himself to the public good, in any sphere, than has been accorded him under any laws yet enacted.

But what more ought to be given, and in what shape is the reform to come? Exact justice in everything can hardly be expected in this world, but great inequalities are within the sphere of civilized government to amend. Suppose, on going to war, the life, limbs, and health of the common soldier were insured by the nation in some respectable sum, as well as a pension granted of an amount sufficient to equalize for the loss of time and the opportunities of gain while in the service? It will be objected that the sum to be raised would be enormous. What of that? Ten per cent. upon the gains of five thousand men, accumulated in consequence of the war, would pay it all; and, if need be, let a tax be levied upon too plethoric fortunes alone to pay the scot. Shall the patriot soldier, the useful member of society, and his family suffer or struggle for life, while sordid greed is dying of surfeit? There is too much tenderness for property and too little for man.

The accidents of the man are regarded more than manhood itself. It should not, it must not be so. The history of mankind is not without its agrarian wars, undertaken as a last resort to throw off the tyranny of wealth and equalize more nearly the condition of men.

Another principle is demanded in law, and that is the property safeguard to families. A certain amount of property to every family, and it may extend to every mature member of society, should be inalienable. No tax or debt should touch it. Our homestead law, in a limited way, recognizes the principle. The late income-tax assured a certain amount for the support of the family, and assessed the balance of the annual gains of the individual. It went farther in the right direction, and taxed a limited income at a certain per cent., and a larger one at a larger per cent. It was based upon the truth that taxation should be graduated according to ability to pay that more of that above one's needs belongs to the public than that below.

The exemption of a certain sum to each family or mature individual is selfprotection in the larger and better sense. It encourages accumulation, and is a guarantee that the individual will aim at thrift and respectability. In all countries where, as in Mexico, the people are robbed of the little they have repeatedly by insurrectionary mobs, there is no incentive to industry or accumulation. The effect is the same, whether the earnings of a people are taken by armed force or by creditors and tax-gatherers. Discouragement and depression dampen the energies. We see this throughout our entire mining region, and much of it in our cities. The country is full of men of blighted hopes who have capacity for great enterprises, and, if encouraged until confidence in themselves and their "luck," as they call it, were restored, would show them

selves not inferior to the men who have already, under more fortunate auspices, achieved success. Grant was but a tanner, and Sherman not a success, until circumstances, when past the middle of their lives, put them in the front rank of the chieftains of the age.

The exemption we advocate is no hardship to any. It bears on all alike. As all must pass the youthful stage of accumulation, it is absolute equality, and injures no one. It stimulates to exertion, and gives tone and manhood, satisfaction and content, to individuals. It takes away the discouragement and horrors of the future, insures a healthy feeling, invests the many with a motive to be industrious and patriotic, and destroys the tendency that inequality and consequent discontent carries toward vice, agrarianism, and revolution.

We do not propose that this exemption shall extend only to the clothes on one's back, or to a few hundred dollars in household goods, tools, teams, and the like, but to property in any shape, valued at five thousand or even ten thousand dollars. We propose to make the principle of the homestead law more general as well as more liberal. No evil has come of that law; no one proposes to repeal it. Is there a reason why the individual who desires and is fitted to rear a family should not be encouraged to undertake the support of one? Exact justice indicates that all should be alike before the law. There is no chance for a just complaint on the part of anyone who is put on the same footing with his fellow-men so far as exemption from taxation is concerned. It is nothing but equality. It is a more certain guarantee than any yet devised against expensive and crowded almshouses and prisons. Pride of character that comes of thrift and a consciousness of protection while in a feeble state, and the buoyant hope that is the greatest stimulus to exertion springing

In conclusion, therefore, we assert that, mankind depending for existence upon the products of the soil, self protection or preservation-which is the first law of nature, understood in the liberal and most rational sense-demands that the fertility of the earth should be preserved and protected; that this is an obligation which, if not observed by the individual, rests upon society in an organized state; that to secure this end the use of land must be controlled within rational limits in order to prevent abuse; that absolute ownership, unrestricted by any consideration of the well-being and rights of the present and coming generations, is not sanctioned by right reason or by any analogies in law or nature, and it has been shown by more than one thinker that the laws of society should be analogous to the laws of nature. We assert as firmly that immense fortunes are inimical to republican institutions, productive of envy, jealousy, poverty, and discontent on the one hand, and aggression, selfishness, tyranny, and political corruption on the other. We claim that, if civilization is to distribute more equally the things and joys of the world, its wisdom should be expended in such a way as by equalization to prevent the shocks that the antagonisms of great inequality are bound, as all history has proved, to produce; and we confidently declare that the minds of intelligent men have not been brought generally to bear upon the subject we have in hand, or the truth and the danger would be seen and rem

large quantities of land by Gerritt Smith and immense sums by George Peabody has made their names famous in the annals of mankind. The world applauds such acts. What is this but an acknowledgment of the principle that men should part with wealth for which they can have no rational use, for the amelioration of the condition of others less fortunate? Why should not an act, recognized as just and commendable when performed by a liberalized intelligence, be enforced upon the miser who, by his meanness, both cheats society and himself? We do recognize this principle in some respects. To love one's country, to fight and die for it, or in defense of the right, are counted among the cardinal virtues of the race. When the trial of war comes, the laws assert the principle that the selfish shall not shirk their share of the responsibility in the fight and its expense. But the principle is not thoroughly enforced. We merely propose that the law shall be more general, enforce more what is commendable, and more thoroughly what is recognized already as right. We suggest that the homestead and exemption laws should be vastly more extended and liberal, as a matter of protection both to individuals and to society, elevating the hopes and inspiring exertion on one hand, and protecting society from dependence resulting from depression and discouragements on the other. And, finally, we propose graduated taxation based upon a principle directly the reverse of that in vogue, which is but a practical enforcement of the saying, "To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath."

But all of this we have, perforce, to leave to the society of the future, contenting ourselves with the warnings of history, and suggesting means to avoid the conflicts of unequal castes.

SHE

HE was a real countess. We Americans called her "The Pink Countess," because she always dressed in pink- and then she had such a pinkand-pearl complexion. Her little dimpled hand and her sweet child - face — these, too, had the soft rich pure tint of a shell of the sea.

He loved her. But he, the artist, Murietta, feared her. Who and what was this woman of such enormous wealth, who was forever driving her splendid carriage, filled with foreigners from the four parts of the earth?

Murietta's loyalty lay in another direction. He was engaged to another;

therefore, with a lover's consistency, he loved the countess. He had tried hard to rally and escape her allurements, and but the day before had bidden her an eternal farewell.

This morning saw the carriage of the Pink Countess nearly filled with a singular party of people from the far Pacific, and making its way up the Corso. The countess was sad beyond utterance. Perhaps this is the reason for one can not well conceive of any other—that she had chosen the honest merry-hearted Mollie Wopsus and her odd old parents as the companions of her drive this morning. At last she seemed to take