fice, and to whom a virtuous life seems more important than mere selfish success.

11. To be a good man is your first duty as an American; but you ought also, if possible, to be a wise citizen, and to that end you should understand what are the proper powers and the proper limitations of government; what can not as well as what can be done by law. For some of the most foolish and injurious laws on our statute-books have been enacted by good men with a sincere desire to increase the happiness of their fellow-beings. We come then, next, to the consideration of Liberty and the Province of Law.

II.

OF LIBERTY, AND THE PROVINCE OF LAW.

12. You enjoy liberty when you may say and do whatever pleases you and does not injure other persons. If every human being were endowed with infallible judgment as to the effect of his acts on others, and strength of purpose to avoid every thing that could injure his fellow-men, laws would be needless.

13. But as the judgment of men is fallible and their strength varies, and as all men do not think alike, it has been found necessary in almost all societies, however rudely organized, to declare what shall be held injurious; and not only this, but to declare penalties for such injurious acts. Bear in mind, however, that political laws can cover only a part and not the whole duty of man; and that there is no lower or meaner rogue than he who studies the law merely to keep out of its clutches.

14. The Congress which sat from December, 1873, to June 23, 1874, enacted five hundred and fifty new laws, of which two hundred and thirty-six were general laws, and three hundred and fourteen private laws. Many of our state legislatures are quite as industrious as Congress; and the multiplication of laws has become a curse to the country, and has a

tendency to bring into contempt, not only the laws, but those who make them.

15. Considering the propensity of men to multiply laws, and, often with good intentions, to legislate upon subjects which do not come properly within the limits of law, it is proper to tell you that: Laws should be few in number and simple in structure; they should rigidly avoid granting special privileges or immunities to individuals, but should be general in their application; and they ought never to interfere with the liberty of men to move about peaceably from place to place; to discuss freely public affairs and questions; to engage in whatever honest occupation pleases them; to produce whatever seems to them most suitable; and to exchange what they have produced where they please, and for what they most desire. These limitations of the law-making power no doubt seem to you so simple and so evidently just that you will wonder they need to be specified; but in fact there is in every legislative body a constant propensity to overstep these limits a tendency which the united efforts of all the wisest men in any state or in the whole country can not entirely resist. It was noticed by an eminent English writer that almost all modern reforms in Europe have been made, not by enacting new laws, but by repealing a great mass of old ones.

III.

OF GOVERNMENTS.

16. Governments may be said to be necessary evils, their necessity arising out of the selfishness and stupidity of mankind.

17. They are of different kinds: Despotisms, where the will of one man is the law; oligarchies, where a few make the laws for those subordinate to them; and free or popular governments, where the laws are made by the people, or rather by persons they select for that purpose.

18. In reading history, you will discover that the less intelligent and more selfish a nation was, the more despotic was its government, and the more arbitrary and vexatious its laws; and that as the general average of virtue and intelligence in a nation increased, in the same degree its government and laws became milder and more just. It is equally true that a nation which has enjoyed an excellent government may, by the corruption of its morals, and the consequent increase of selfishness and ignorance, lose this, and have imposed on it a worse, and even the worst form of government. Thus I wish you to believe that it is only by maintaining, and even elevating, the standard of virtue and intelligence among our people that we can preserve our free institutions.

19. Hence the importance that you should be a good citizen, in the largest sense; for the example of each tells upon all who surround him. If, when you become a man, you should be dishonest, unscrupulous, regardless of others' rights, covetous of wealth or distinction to the injury of others, envious, in any way base, your course would help to demoralize and debauch the unthinking and weak, which means the larger part of those who surround you. This is the reason why the course of life of the notorious James Fisk was peculiarly hateful to good citizens; his own life they would have troubled themselves little about, but the influence of his career was pernicious and degrading upon the whole country. This is the reason, too, why Napoleon III. drew on himself in an especial manner the bitter dislike of thoughtful men and women; why we abhor a political demagogue, a swindler in office, or a merely ostentatious rich man: because their bad example is contagious, infects the weaker part of those who see the spectacle, degrades public opinion, and makes vice less odious, and virtue and self-restraint less important in the general mind. On the other hand, the example of probity, of faithfulness to duty and to principle, in the lowest citizen, is valuable and important because it wins general respect, not merely for the man, but for those virtues of which his life is an example.

IV.

OF THE PRIMARY AND NECESSARY FUNCTIONS

OF GOVERNMENT.

20. The primary and necessary functions of any government are to maintain the peace and to administer justice, which means to protect the orderly and law-abiding part of the people in the enjoyment of life and property and against the attacks of the disorderly and law-breaking. Necessarily it has also to collect from the people, in the manner most equal and least oppressive, the money needed to pay the officers charged with these duties.

21. Where the average of virtue, intelligence, and self-restraint is high among a people, their government needs to interfere but little in their affairs. Where this average is low, government always interferes more, by means of police, armies, and vexatious regulations. This arises from the fact that peace, order, and the security of life and property are regarded as the most precious and necessary possessions by every people, and to secure these, men and nations are generally ready to give up a large measure of political liberty, and to suffer many other and minor evils, such as high taxation. On this plea the French people were induced to accept Napoleon as the "savior of society," and the common excuse for a despotism is that it is necessary to maintain order; which nevertheless it does not maintain, except temporarily, and at the monstrous cost of increasing the ignorance and helplessness and diminishing the virtue and public spirit of the nation, and thus in the end increasing tremendously the causes of disorder. Napoleon III. held France by the throat for eighteen years, and all the meaner sort of mankind glorified him as the wisest of rulers; but eighteen years of liberty, even with the greatest presumable amount of disorder, would

not have left France as poor, debt-ridden, humiliated, and demoralized as it is to-day.

22. In our own country, since the late war, the Federal Government has been allowed to interfere in the local affairs of some of the states, whose citizens had not sufficient public virtue and self-restraint to maintain order among themselves. I wish you to believe that such forcible interference of the Federal Government, except for special, temporary, and extraordinary occasions, as to quell a sudden riot, is unwise and dangerous because it debases public spirit, and enervates the orderly part of society, whose highest duty it is to rule and to punish wrong-doers. It would be far wiser to let a state, or even half-a-dozen states, suffer from misgovernment until the orderly part of their communities learned the necessity of forming and maintaining a good administration. California would to-day be in a chaotic condition had its early settlers been taught to depend upon the Federal Government for protection in their local concerns. But these, having borne violence and lawlessness as long as they could, and finding no outside power at hand to help them, at last took affairs into their own hands- where such affairs properly belonged-hanged the worst criminals, banished others, and formed a stable and very highly public-spirited community, which, while largely composed of the rudest elements, yet developed, as the direct result of this experience, in a singularly great degree the spirit of obedience to and respect for law, which is the essence of what we call public spirit.

23. In like manner the city of New York was for many years ruled at Albany, on the plea that it was unsafe to allow the citizens to take charge of their local affairs. But under the Albany rule corruption and disorder constantly increased; and it was left in the end for the people of the city to release themselves by their own effort from the control of the Ring; and they were actually able to do this, even after the corruptionists had for years debauched public sentiment, and when the Ring were at the height of their power, and believed themselves secure in its possession.