THE STORY 
 
 OF 
 
 GOVERNMENT 
 
 AUSTIN 
 
 4 
 
 1
 
 ^
 
 STORY 
 
 OF 
 
 GOVERNMENT 
 
 From Savagery to Civilization. 
 
 RUDIMENTS AMONG ANIMALS. - TRACES AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND 
 
 THIEVES. EMPIRES AND OLIGARCHIES. MONARCHIES, FEUDAL AND 
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL. THEOCRACY OR PRIESTLY RULE. WOMAN IN 
 
 GOVERNMENT.-nASONRY AND SECRET ORDERS. REPUBLICS. 
 
 Henry Austin, Editor. 
 
 Illustrated with over 250 engravings and many double-page plates by 
 the best American and European Artists. 
 
 1893: 
 A. M. THAYER & CO., Publishers, 
 
 BOSTON AND LONDON.
 
 Copyright, 1893. 
 BY A. M. THAYER & Co. 
 
 A II rights reserved. 
 
 SOLD ONLY BY SUBSCRIPTION. 
 
 Typography and Presswork by 
 THB BARTA PRESS, BOSTON.
 
 WHO reads a preface ? Not the public as a rule, and yet 
 this preface is written in the hope of being the excep- 
 tion that proves the rule an exception made in favor 
 of this book by a majority of thinking people. For this cause : 
 it has no excuse to offer for its existence, but a reason and a right. 
 
 Last winter, the publishing firm, A. M. Thayer & Co., of 
 Boston and London, realizing that the people were beginning to 
 show a deep and deepening interest in questions of government, 
 and that they were studying how to improve the American republic 
 in spite of the politicians, conceived the idea of having a book 
 that should show as picturesquely as possible all the forms of 
 government under which mankind has lived, so that the people 
 could study governmental problems by the light of comparison. 
 
 Chosen to compose this work, I have been embarrassed from the 
 start by the riches of the mines from which my material was to be 
 drawn, and I am conscious that many other journalists might have 
 done this selection, connection and addition of thoughts and pic- 
 tures much better than I. Yet, as one of the Titans of this age 
 has said : " What is writ is writ. Would it were worthier ! " 
 
 If it were, I would like to have paid my friend, Hezekiah But- 
 terworth, of The Youth's Companion, that deservedly popular 
 paper, the slight compliment of inscribing his honored name 
 on a dedicatory page. As it is, I make no dedication of my 
 labor, except to those men and women who find attraction in 
 these pages.
 
 6 PREFACE. 
 
 Well aware how much more might have been put between 
 the covers, I still hope and believe that this book will not merely 
 feed the temporary curiosity of the average mind, but will stim- 
 ulate the toiling men and women of America to desire, to demand, 
 and to obtain better conditions of environment if not for them- 
 selves, at least for their children. 
 
 As to the help I have had in composing this book let me 
 say a few words. Several chapters, perhaps the weightiest, were 
 written by the veteran Irish journalist, O'Neil Larkin, and one, 
 the Sixteenth, by Frederick Haynes, with only slight additions 
 from my pen, and in some other chapters I have used so freely 
 the work of other writers, English, French, and German, that I 
 feel myself rather an editor than an author in this case. 
 
 Nevertheless, I dare to hope that some critics who are familiar with 
 former work of mine may find some original and suggestive obser- 
 vations scattered through this book. In that hope I rest, 
 
 Very sincerely, 
 
 HENRY AUSTIN.
 
 During the composition of this book, Mr. Austin, at our su- 
 estion, for the sake of ensuring accuracy, cheerfully submitted 
 most of the chapters to various authors who are authorities on 
 certain subjects. "We reproduce of the letters received by him 
 just a few, one from Gen. Douglas Frazar, the well-known 
 traveller and author of "Perseverance Island," "The Lo of the 
 Maryland," " Practical Boat-sailing," etc., etc.; and one from 
 Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, the famous author and lecturer, and 
 one from the true philanthropist and world-renowned author 
 of "The Man Without a Country," etc., etc., the Rev. Edward 
 Everett Hale. These letters indicate to the public, better than 
 any amount of advertising could, the character-value of this 
 book. 
 
 A. M. THAYER & CO., 
 
 Publishers.
 
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 EDWARD B. HALE. 
 
 39 HIGHLAND SJT 
 
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 Contents* 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Great Antiquity of Man Periods of development classified as Savagery, 
 Barbarism, and Civilization How pottery came to be made The 
 invention of an alphabet An approximate Table of Centuries showing 
 the great, slow steps of the race Definition of the word Government 
 The family as the germ Different forms, such as the Consanguine, 
 the Punaluan, Syndyasmian, the Patriarchal, and the Monogamic 
 Development of the single family into the Gens Growth of the Gens 
 into the Phratry Development as shown by a tribe of American In- 
 dians The American Indian's true character Incident in the life of 
 Wamsutta Division of the Seneca-Iroquois into Gentes, Phratries, and 
 Tribes Political rights of the Gens Duties of the Sachem, or peace- 
 governor Installing a Sachem Horns as an emblem of office and 
 authority The election and confirmation of the War Chief Safe- 
 guards to prevent usurpations Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity the 
 cardinal principles of Iroquois government A council of Indian chiefs 
 the germ of a modern congress The first stage of tribal government a 
 one-power government The second stage a double government 
 Creation of a three-power government The Iroquois' further step 
 Striking resemblance in sentiment between the American Indians and 
 Homeric Greeks 35 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 RUDIMENTS AMONG ANIMALS. 
 
 Instinct," as a mysterious line of separation between man and other 
 animals, wiped out Opinions of Descartes and Bonjeant on dogs 
 The brain of the ant as a wonderful atom Political and Industrial 
 equality a feature of the ant republic Slavery among ants far gentler 
 than that among men Only larvae and pupse stolen by Ant-kidnap- 
 pers to bring up as regular slaves Government among the Termites 
 Their architectural talent Buildings from ten to twenty feet high 
 A Termite town an example of cooperation Possession of a standing 
 army The Bee state a communistic monarchy The Queen the nec- 
 essary centre and bond of the hive Labor among bees offering the 
 highest ideal of Communism, free, voluntary, and uncompulsory 
 Many work themselves to death, thus disproving "instinct" again 
 
 15
 
 16 'THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Qualifications for office among animal leaders The donkey as a leader 
 of a caravan of camels Mares as leaders of mules in Central America 
 The principle of appointment among animal leaders Ample evidence 
 of self-appointment to leadership among social animals Street-dog 
 republics of Constantinople Division of labor and duty among ani- 
 mals Strength in Union a recognized principle Cooperation clearly 
 evidenced in animal conventions, conferences, etc. Trials by jury 
 witnessed among rooks and storks Public punishment among spar- 
 rows and apes 61 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 TRACES AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 
 
 A people opposed to order or authority from outside Physiognomy and 
 habits of the Gypsy Their beauty Known to Europeans for eight 
 centuries and still conundrums Disputed origin "Dukes of Little 
 Egypt" Halcyon times followed by persecutions The passion for 
 wandering A study of their language Extremely unwilling to unfold 
 themselves to strangers A warm family affection Superstitions and 
 customs Odd reasons for swearing off from liquor or tobacco 
 Curious burial rites Seven hundred thousand pure blooded gypsies 
 Ineffectual attempts to civilize them The Abbe Liszt and a Gypsy 
 boy ' ' Five florins for hanging a man ' ' The real home of the 
 continental gypsy Odd specimen of Gypsy poetry The Camorra 
 History as remarkable as a fable The Camorristic treasury supplied 
 from every quarter Violence, robbery, and murder their weapons 
 Many names in different places The Mafia or Mania Suppressed in 
 Italy it plants itself in America Mysterious murders Singular 
 stories from New Orleans Its suppression in March, 1891 The beam 
 in our own eye in the shape of Pinkerton's band -A certain tendency 
 to order among thieves in London and Paris Rank The common 
 pickpocket not recognized publicly by the "swell mobsmen," or by 
 house-breakers Fascinating interview with a retired pickpocket and 
 brief sketch of his life in his own words " Thieves' Latin " " Sus- 
 picion always haunts the guilty mind" painfully illustrated in the 
 thieves' quarter Pathetic remarks of a professional thief Difficulty 
 of a discharged prisoner in escaping from old habits The boy thief 
 gets a fourth of the value of what he steals Infinitely worse in their con- 
 sequences than petty larceny or burglary are some of the ways of 
 commerce The adulteration of food The Juggernaut of Avarice 
 and Ignorance 89 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FEUDALISTIC MONARCHY. 
 
 A Government of Chiefs with a loose or elastic allegiance to a Head Chief or 
 King The " Rundo " Affectation of political modesty among the 
 Banyai A curious Wahuman law Treatment of women in Central 
 Africa Killing a wife a mere trifle A hundred wives buried alive 
 with one king in the bed of a river Captives reserved for slaves 
 The immortality of the soul generally believed Curious custom of 
 cementing friendship by mixing blood and butter The African idea of a 
 Fetish The Priest of the Nile Horrible devices of magicians 
 Human sacrifice The rain-maker a popular figure Baker's amusing 
 interview The "Gold Coast" Fanti women Innocence tested by 
 means of "ordeals" Morals European influence corrupting Belief 
 in a mysterious child " who has existed from the beginning of the 
 world" The women the more intellectual and energetic sex on the 
 Gold Coast The man who buries another succeeds to his property, 
 also his debts Statesman-like ability and military skill in the Ashanti
 
 CONTENTS. 17 
 
 kingdom Women a regular article of merchandise reckoned by cows 
 The powers of the " Kotoko," or council An Ashanti king Gold 
 mining "Three hundred ounces of gold taken in a single day" 
 Industries apart from mining The Ashanti army In battle the women 
 stand behind their husbands The " Encouragers " Police regulations 
 in Coomassie The King as head of the Fire Department The skull 
 of Governor Sir Charles Macarthy, killed in the first war, kept in the 
 Bantama, the mausoleum of the kings, as a drinking cup "By Wednes- 
 day and Macarthy " a sacred Ashanti oath The "Customs'' in Ashanti 
 and Dahomey Decapitation as a fine art The Yam and the Adai 
 customs "Kra," the soul of man The kingdom of Dahomey Odd 
 origin of the "bush-king," or double of the real monarch The " Nin- 
 gan," or prime minister The "Meu," the second minister The 
 soldiers divided into several corps; each soldier equipped at the expense 
 of the government The corps of Amazons, or female warriors Origin 
 of these Amazons Their number at present four thousand; divided 
 into three brigades The Dahoman eminently religious The worship 
 of Danh-gbwe The Danh-hweh, or fetish snake-house The Dauhsi, 
 or snake priests " Atinbodun " The Dahoman "Neptune " Khevy- 
 osoh, the Thunder-god Missionary failure in Africa The reasons 
 A better field for effort suggested 141 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 ABSOLUTISM. 
 
 Persia a perfect type of despotism Character of the courtier Many 
 public functionaries selected by the Persian monarchs from the order of 
 Mirzas, or " men of business " The Collector of the public revenue 
 Small salaries of government officials Precarious life of a courtier 
 The pardoned rebel of one province appointed to the supreme command 
 in another No official, however high, sure of his life The Gholams, 
 or king's guards The mooshtehecls, the highest order of priests, the 
 supreme pontiffs of the kingdom The Sheik al Islam The character 
 of the mollahs or priests " To cheat like a mollah" a frequent saying 
 in the mouth of a Persian Persian women believed not to have souls 
 by some Moslem priests An Eastern seraglio a "gilded cage" De- 
 scription of harem life The gala dress of a lady of high rank Mar- 
 riage ceremonies Ungovernable temper of Persian women Persia 
 no longer the granary of the world The population of Persia less than 
 8,000,000 No navigable rivers, and railways a thing of the future 
 The whole revenue of the empire considerably less than $10,000,000 
 The Koran as the basis of civil and criminal law The urf, or " common 
 law " The governing principle in Mohammedan law, an eye for an eye, 
 and a tooth for a tooth Ancient religion of the Persians The Par- 
 sees, like the Jews, a persecuted race Learning of Persia The stone 
 and seal cutters of Shiraz and Ispahan famous for their skill Literature 
 Adoption of European habits 197 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE RULE OP CASTE. 
 
 A marvel and a mystery to Western minds Religious despotism still flour- 
 ishing throughout India The Vedas, or Hindoo Scriptures The 
 foundation of Brahminism Compared with the Greek mythology, that 
 of India infinitely deeper, more mysterious, and vastly more sublime 
 Water-worship Self-drowning in the Ganges Brahmins propitiated 
 with divine honors Siva and Vishnoo Vishnooism a sort of reformed 
 Sivaism In addition to the Hindoo Trinity many inferior gods 
 Animals also venerated The two aspects of Brahminism Caste every- 
 where an essential part of religion In the "Institutes of Menu" four
 
 18 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 castes defined as composing the nation For three thousand years by 
 means of caste the Brahmins have preserved their ascendency No other 
 example of such a lease of power The life of a Brahmin divided into 
 four periods The high caste man defiled by the low caste man The 
 Brahmin "can cook for every man, whilst no one can cook for him" 
 The home of human horrors The Hindoo Fakir preeminent among 
 cranks Strange self-martyrdoms Remarkable municipal institutions 
 of Hindostau The famous " village system" Thieving and burglary 
 raised to the rank of science The riches of India Anecdote of Mah- 
 moud, the idol-breakr Temples and shrines The sacred rivers 
 The idol of Juggernaut and its procession Pinkerton Thugs; the 
 word and comparison taken from India Origin of the religious crime. 
 Thuggee Early training of Thugs Secrecy one of the essentials of 
 their work Manner of strangling and burying their victims Account 
 of the founder of Buddhism Buddhism now closely studied by Eu- 
 ropean scholars Marriage customs Qualifications for a Brahmin's 
 bride Elaborate festival rites and ceremonies Celibacy a, disgrace 
 both to men and women The Hindoo women's taste for ill-ti-eatment 
 
 The women of Northern India treated with respect and devotion 
 The "Festival of the Bracelet" A whole province often accompanies 
 the return of the pledge r The temple-women The Suttee Laws of 
 inheritance Education Architecture and the manufacture of jewelry 
 
 Snake-charming The moral character of the Hindoo The Indian 
 not the same all over India A Bengalee the most despicable Macau- 
 lay on the character of the Bengalee Political future 225 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 A SCHOLASTIC OLIGARCHY. 
 
 Oldest and oddest of nations and governments An eclipse calculated 2155 
 years before our era Topography of China Division into eighteen 
 provinces; each province into poos, counties, and prefectures The 
 great wall The gate of honor Chinese streets The umbrellaed side- 
 walks The sewerage system High-sounding titles of streets Shops 
 
 Monumental arches Hoo Chow Foo Governmental precaution 
 against fires The Emperor of China assisted in the management of his 
 government by a cabinet of four ministers; in addition to this, six 
 supreme tribunals Duties of each tribunal The Empress, or head 
 wife, is the representative of Mother Earth The choice of an empress 
 and of sub-wives A formidable array of officials in each province All 
 supposed to be appointed by the Emperor on recommendation of the 
 Board of Ceremonies Nine marks of distinction by which the rank of 
 a Chinese officer may be recognized Dress Custom of an officer 
 approaching the Imperial presence The army made up of the lowest 
 class Government residences for all officials A curious sort of lot- 
 tery adds a certain spice to the life of convicted criminals Justice in 
 China a ''Serial Story of Torture" The process in civil cases 
 Another peculiarity of Chinese government Imperial clemency extends 
 to all offenders who are crippled Religion of China interfuses with its 
 laws The original religion No hereditary nobility Rank graded by 
 literary examinations Every office except that of the Emperor deter- 
 mined by these Severity of the examinations Fifteen candidates suc- 
 cessful out of five hundred considered remarkable The degree of 
 Han-lin; the few who attain it become members of theHan-lin College and 
 receive fixed salaries The greatest care taken that these examinations 
 shall be fair Daring devices of the candidates to elude the lynx-eyed 
 examiners Ancestral worship The penalty of striking or cursing 
 parents -Ideas of beauty Deformed feet of the women and ravings of 
 Chinese poets thereon The Kow-tow Modesty of the ladies 
 Chinese handmaids Seven different reasons for divorce Amusing
 
 CONTENTS. 19 
 
 contrariety of Chinese customs Curious census anecdote History of 
 Confucius and his doctrines. The five canonical books The writings 
 which rank next Chinese literature All classes read Proverbs . 281 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 PATERNAL SOCIALISM. 
 
 A system of government especially worthy of study Difference in the mean- 
 ing or value of the word Socialism twenty years ago and to-day The 
 electric shock of a new idea The chief moral argument of modern 
 Socialism Men to-day in the mass becoming too much like the 
 machines they tend The ultimate economic proposition of Socialism 
 The Post-office a shining example The best illustration on a na- 
 tional scale A miraculous land in which the sum of human happiness 
 was large and increasing Vast extent and singular shape of Peru 
 The naturally barren coast fertilized by a system of canals and under- 
 ground aqueducts The Maguey suspension bridges Cuzco the chief 
 capital A miniature of the empire The decimal system used by the 
 Incas of Peru with remarkable results The whole empire arranged in 
 departments of ten thousand with a special governor appointed from the 
 Inca nobility Officialism prevented from being an evil by being all- 
 pervasive Few laws and crime a rarity Worship of the Sun Fable 
 of the founding of the City of the Sun by the children of the Sun-God 
 Personal pomp of an Inca Magnificence of his palaces The Baths of 
 Yucay Burial customs Remarkable skill in embalming Fiscal 
 regulations and the laws of property The cultivation of the king's 
 lands a holiday performance The llamas Idleness a crime and indus- 
 try a matter of public honor and reward The Peruvians had a chance 
 to cultivate the graces and dignities of life Two orders of nobility 
 Superior method of taking the census The artisan provided by the 
 government with his materials, and only required to give a certain por- 
 tion of his time to public service Peruvian literature Method of 
 preserving thought Description of the quipus Anecdote of Atah- 
 ualpa 325 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THEOCRACY Oli PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Basic principle of theocracy The Pythoness or Priestess of Delphi, how 
 inspired Pagan priests the first librarians The crystallization of the 
 Hebrew nation Singularity of the Mosaic laws Striking anecdote of 
 Solomon The Sanhedrim The functions of the Levite The syna- 
 gogues as schools Catphas the head of the theocracy Crucifixion of 
 Jesus Jerusalem battered down by Titus thirty-seven years later 
 Dispersion of the Jewish nation Meeting of the Apostles and framing 
 of the Apostles' Creed St. Paul before the Sanhedrim Condition of 
 the world at this period " Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we 
 die," the motto of the Roman Empire Frightful persecution of the 
 Christians by Nero The infant church driven to underground refuges 
 Christian theocracy assuming shape The Cross adopted by Constantino 
 as the imperial standard The combat practically closed by the imperial 
 decree, A. D. 313 Two sovereignties recognized and proclaimed, that 
 of Pope and Emperor The heresy of Arius of Alexandria Ecumeni- 
 cal council summoned at Nice by Constantine Summary of the Apos- 
 tolic Canons Endeavors of Julian, the apostate, to restore the worship 
 of the Pagan gods Decline of the Roman Empire Attila, "the 
 Scourge of God" Meeting between Saint Leo I. and Attila Roman 
 empire of the West extinguished A universal Papal protectorate 
 Simoniacal bishops "The poisonous viper of the Church" Extent 
 of Simony Struggle between Henry IV. and Hildebrand opened by the 
 election of Pope Alexander II. The election of Alexander II. declared
 
 20 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 null by Henry, who nominates Honorius II. as an anti-pope Death of 
 Alexander II. and election of Hildebrand Decree issued against im- 
 moral priests Attempt of Henry to imprison and depose the Pope 
 Gregory pronounces the famous sentence of excommunication and depo- 
 sition against Henry Decisive battle of spiritual service reform begun 
 
 Gregory VII. deposed by the simoniacal bishops, and Gilbert of 
 Ravenna elected as Pope Clement III. Conflict between Pope Innocent 
 III. and Philip Augustus on the marriage question Ferdinand and Isa- 
 bella establish the " Spanish Inquisition" Cause of the Great Schism 
 
 Luther The Peasants' War Cause of the Reformation in England 
 
 The " Society of Jesus " founded by Ignatius of Loyola Summary of 
 the constitution of the Jesuits The order dissolved by Pope Clement 
 XIV. under pressure of Catholic Governments Emperor Napoleon 
 crowned in Paris by Pope Pius VII. Reestablishment of the order of 
 the Jesuits by Pius VII. Explanation of the administration of the 
 Catholic Church Religious feeling expressed in architecture Macau- 
 lay on the Church Future of the Church in America 357 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SIMPLE REPUBLICANISM. 
 
 Switzerland, the democracy most near to perfection Her history a polit- 
 ical romance of intense interest The First Federal Constitution 
 " Each for all and all for each " The growth of the national germ 
 Gradual union of the different cantons Battle of Sempach The last 
 attempt of Austria to subdue the confederation Capture of the town 
 of Grandson by Charles the Bold A new treaty signed The federal 
 sovereignty much strengthened The Helvetic Republic established in 
 Switzerland by the French directory A new constitution called the Act 
 of Mediation drawn up by Bonaparte A federal declaration lasting 
 until 1848 takes the place of the Act of Mediation Two legislative 
 chambers created by the new constitution Government ownership and 
 management of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic systems No stand- 
 ing army Rules of the Federal Assembly Democratic character of 
 the executive The Council of States The National Council The 
 Federal census the basis of representation to the National Council 
 Method of voting The right of initiative The famous Swiss Referen- 
 dum Meaning of the referendum If the initiative and referendum 
 systems prevailed in the United States, what then ? Professor Ely's 
 illustration The ancient Landsgemeinden, or open-air assemblies A 
 lively interest taken in national and communal affairs by Swiss voters 
 Socialistic undertakings of the Communes The local self-government 
 of the commune the cradle and the schoolhouse which evolved the 
 present Swiss Confederation Swiss traditions Industries Switzer- 
 land too small for the support of its population The " playground of 
 Europe " Peasant proprietors numerous A passion for borrowing 
 on mortgage The Vaudois peasant Poverty in Canton Vaud almost 
 unknown Education free of cost 435 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 
 
 England The growth of constitutional monarchy a story full of the most 
 startling contrasts Military despotism of William the Norman 
 The reign of Henry II. the first in which the people came into promi- 
 nence One of the greatest and saddest of regal histories A true step 
 toward the equalization of all men before the law Henry's character 
 King John as the most expensive dentist on record The signing of 
 the Great Charter at Runymede One of the most curious reigns in 
 England Great gains made for the people in the development of con-
 
 CONTENTS. 21 
 
 stitutional government Magna Charta revised, and Lord Pembroke 
 made Protector Amusing episode of the Sicilian throne Simon de 
 Montfort's check upon the regal power the germ of the present British 
 Ministry The first parliament in which the people had any real share 
 summoned by De Montfort in 1265 " Sir Simon the Righteous " 
 Prince Edward's return from a successful crusade and public ovation 
 Royal schemes for raising money Germ of the phrase " Taxation 
 without representation is tyranny" King Edward's attempt to unite 
 Scotland, Wales, and England in one country, and lay the foundation of 
 English unity The Welsh insurrection Origin of the title " Prince 
 of Wales " The rising of the popular tide and the eating away of 
 the stubborn rocks of royal privilege and prerogative Lawless career 
 of Edward II. Appointment of a Committee of Government to correct 
 abuses in the State Gaveston beheaded by order of the nobles A 
 new encroachment on royal power Deposition of Edward Institu- 
 tion of the poll tax Insurrection of Ihe peasants under Wat, the Tiler 
 
 Attempt of Wat, the Tiler, to abolish the cruel forest laws Defeat 
 of the insurgents; The beginning of the custom of hanging in chains 
 Quarrel between Parliament and King Richard Richard impeached 
 and deposed by Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford The reign of Boling- 
 broke distinguished for its brilliancy and for an extension of the power 
 of law Insurrection of the people under Jack Cade during the reign 
 of Henry VI. Beginning of the Wars of the Roses Edward IV. ex- 
 torts money from the citizens of London in the form of loans, or "benevo- 
 lences" Quickening of popular intelligence in the reign of Henry VII. 
 
 The power of the baronage broken The reign of Henry VIII. that 
 in which the monarchy reached its worst pitch of cruel absolutism 
 The religious agitation of this time productive of immense intel- 
 lectual results Publication of Store's Utopia The society of his 
 time denned by Sir Thomas as "Nothing but a conspiracy of the 
 rich against the poor" The obsequious Parliament simply a tool of 
 regal power" Beginning of the English Reign of Terror Thomas 
 Cromwell beheaded, the first victim of his own law The dogma of 
 divine right originated by Henry VIII. A slavish devotion to a man 
 replacing the old loyalty to the law The reign of Elizabeth and epoch 
 of Shakespeare and Bacon Defeat of the Spanish Armada and rise of 
 England to the position of a first-class power The feeling of nation- 
 ality intensified The impetus given to the minds of men by the revival 
 of learning produces an intellectual harvest Puritanism the first polit- 
 ical system which recognized the grandeur of the people as a whole 
 General conception of kingship modified by the events of the sixteenth 
 century Charles raises his revenue by unjust taxation in all direc- 
 tionsThe trial of Hampden the first declaration of independence on 
 the part of an English gentleman John Pym, the first and finest of 
 parliamentary leaders Charles' minister, Strafford, impeached by the 
 Commons for high treason Execution of Strafford, a faithful servant 
 to a bad king The battle of Edge Hill the beginning of the grandest 
 era of English history Oliver Cromwell comes into prominence as a 
 leader at the battle of Marston Moor A man of surpassing greatness 
 
 Modern England as a political entity beginning with the triumph of 
 Cromwell at the battle of Naseby For the first time a conscious 
 struggle between political tradition and political progress Execution 
 of King Charles The monarchy formally abolished and the govern- 
 ment provided for by the creation of a Council of State selected from the 
 Commons Dissolution of Parliament by Cromwell Cromwell's pro- 
 tectorate a simple tyranny " A time of great peace and prosperity" 
 
 Cromwell refuses the crown and is formally inaugurated Protector 
 His sway over the minds of men mighty even in death Eager royal- 
 ists greatly disappointed with the reign of Charles II. Charles II. the 
 cleverest of the Stuarts A crisis between King and Parliament pre- 
 cipitated by the impeachment of Danby Consent of Charles to the 
 Habeas Corpus Act The two years' struggle between King, Parlia-
 
 22 THE STOKY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 ment, and Commons resulting in the rise of a new party called the Whig 
 The rise of organized parties in Parliament the most important event 
 since the restoration Political acts of Charles II. during the last three 
 years of his life The story of the mistakes of James II. Flight of 
 King James, and transference of the crown to William of Orange 
 Declarations of the Bill of Rights The Triennial Act of William III.'s 
 parliament James I. a learned but weak king Parliament occupied 
 only with the reassertion of its former rights Illegal monopoly insti- 
 tuted by Charles I. the germ of present trusts and syndicates First 
 effects of parliamentary freedom Change in the character of the 
 Ministry The government acquiring a corporate character " Repre- 
 sentatives of the people " The Whig nobles the most powerful class 
 in the kingdom The reign of the nobility a beneficent despotism 
 Haphazard method of the House of Commons in the days of George 
 III. The society of the " Friends of the People " Apparently hope- 
 less entanglement of the legislative, executive and judicial functions 
 Determination of Victoria to know the doings of her ministers System 
 of the British Cabinet Points of difference between the American and 
 English systems of government Qualities needful to a minister in 
 England Summary of the development of English government . . . 475 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 A GOVERNMENT OF MYSTERY AND FRATERNITY. 
 
 An odd incident connected with one of the secret signs of Masonry 
 Legendary Masonry of profound ethical interest The legend of the 
 Temple a fascinating myth Curious claim set up by Freemasonry 
 The aim of all secret societies of the past Freemasonry the com- 
 pendium of all primitive accumulated human knowledge The history 
 of the order divided into two periods Records of a lodge of 1(548 
 The name "masonic" adopted by the society in the last century 
 Freemasonry a tree whose roots are spread through many soils The 
 masonic alphabet Description of a Lodge A relic of astrology 
 Initiation of a novice into the first or Apprentice degree The second 
 degree of symbolic Freemasony, the Fellow-Craft Supposed significance 
 of the letter G seen in the lodge The degree of Master Mason 
 Another version of the legend of Osiris The degree of the Holy Royal 
 Arch The Omnific Word The emblem of emblems Masonry at its 
 height in France during the revolutionary period Napoleon and 
 Masonry Masonic titles bestowed upon Cambaceres The Grand 
 Orient Lodge Its half yearly words of command were Napoleonic for- 
 mulae The fall of Napoleon attributed to Masonry History of 
 Joseph Balsamo, alias Count Cagliostro The Egyptian rite invented 
 by Cagliostro Adoptive Masonry First lodge of adoption Anec- 
 dote of the Jew and the Parsee Speculative or Philosophical Masonry 
 not derived from Operative Historic uncertainty of Masonry First 
 appearance of the name "Freemason" "Masons made here for 12 
 shillings" A complete change and rebirth in the year 1717 The true 
 character of Freemasonry in the history of the operative sodalities and 
 successive ages of architects The " New Constitution" the Freemasonry 
 of the present day The touch of Masonry penetrating all the scenes 
 of the Revolution Repeated attempts to make Freemasonry a union of 
 States and a union of Grand Lodges A Grand Lodge territory sacred 
 from invasion Washington as a Mason Temporary setback to Ma- 
 sonry The golden era of Freemasonry The corner-stone of Bunker 
 Hill monument laid by the Grand Lodge Anti-masonic excitement 
 The famous "Declaration" The "Masonic Education and Charity 
 Trust" Boston Masonic Temple The Masonic Temple, Philadelphia, 
 the finest and largest in the world Plan of the Chicago building 
 Masonry developed from a simple secret society into a great interna- 
 tional bond, a government within government The purest of democra-
 
 CONTENTS. 23 
 
 cies in theory and practice One of the most binding oaths and obliga- 
 tions Review of history in the United States A Grand Lodge of 
 Masons in every State of the Union Templar Masonry a semi-military 
 organization Degrees and rites of the order The true essence of 
 Freemasonry 567 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 EXPERIMENTAL REPUBLICANISM. 
 
 The Republic of France the offspring of revolution Condition of the 
 people prior to the Revolution of 1793 The peasantry merely beasts of 
 burden Liberty of speech and of the press non-existent Three gen- 
 eral classes Inequality even in the family The taxes all paid by the 
 peasantry and artisans Misery of the common people Immorality 
 the fashion View of marriage Tremendous political influence of 
 Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau, or dramatist, lawyer and novelist 
 
 Louis XVI. attempts reform Turgot's plans for financial retrench- 
 ment Turgotand Malesherbes forced to resign The famous "Account 
 Rendered" Neckar deposed Calonne exiled Neckar recalled to office 
 Convocation of the States-General Platform of principles adopted 
 by the Third Estate First difficulty arising in the assemblage leads to 
 a five weeks' contest " National Constituent Assembly " First for- 
 mal session of the Assembly The inviolability of its members solemnly 
 proclaimed Committees for business organized Dismissal and exile 
 of Neckar Storming of the Bastile Curious anecdotes prophetic of the 
 flood Cagliostro, the Wizard The Revolution baptized in blood 
 Feudalism abolished, and the first plank in the platform of the Third 
 Estate, the equality of man, a reality Many beneficent laws passed by 
 the National Assembly Dissolution of the Assembly after two years' 
 term of office New and formidable difficulties before the Legislative 
 Assembly Twenty-three years' war Lafayette proscribed Sacking 
 of the Tuilleries The Assembly powerless France invaded by the 
 Duke of Brunswick Louis XVI. guillotined A huge political blunder 
 
 The Reign of Terror legalized Strange anecdote of the institution 
 by Carrier of Republican marriage Conflict with the Kings The 
 Republic definitively established The Revolution succeeded by the 
 military dictatorship of Napoleon Charles X. a true type of the 
 Bourbon prince Louis Philippe chosen king by the Chamber of 
 Deputies Universal suffrage decreed by the National Assembly 
 Napoleon III. deposed by the Chamber of Deputies and the Republic 
 proclaimed The Constitution of France The present Republic the 
 offspring of 1793 631 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 GOVERNMENT AMONG SECRET ORDERS. 
 
 Every secret society with a political aim an act of collective conscience 
 A legitimate hatred of evil the salvation of nations Order of the 
 Chauffeurs, or Burners Rites of initiation Marriage customs of the 
 order Their detection by the cunning of one of their victims and their 
 extinction The Society of the Carbonari Ceremonies of the Lodge 
 A mixture of Masonry and Catholic mysticism Initiation into the 
 different degrees Real object of the association The Carbonari 
 played no small part in general European politics Ambition of the 
 Carbonari to obtain a constitutional government for their country 
 Influence of the order Carbonarism introduced into France Why 
 of special historic interest Combination with young Italy, a society 
 with identical aims Society of " American Hunters " Lord Byron 
 said to have been its head The society an ethical as well as practical 
 one Object of the revolutionary society of Nihilists Articles of their
 
 24 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 belief "From the United to the Isolated" Sentences on early 
 prisoners mild in comparison to those of recent date The Fenians one 
 of the most active of political secret societies Indications that the 
 association is not extinct Founding of Fenianism in America Con- 
 ventions at Chicago and Cincinnati Traitors within the organization 
 Report of the Investigating Committee Origin of the word Fenian 
 Extracts from the Patriotic Litany of Saint Lawrence O'Toole The 
 term Tammany first applied to the Columbian order Evolution of the 
 title A striking characteristic Record of the organization Early 
 history Part played in national affairs Intricate relations with New 
 Yoi'k politics A survivor of several defeats The Tammany legend, 
 a very amusing and instructive tradition The supreme trait of Tam- 
 many's character Symbols of the thirteen tribes Statistics of 
 Tammany Hall The leader of the Tammany forces The General 
 Committee Salaries Outline of the plan of organization The work 
 of the committee Assembly district organizations Qualifications 
 necessary for a district leader Strict discipline 665 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 WOMAN IN GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Equal citizenship of sexes first recognized during the French Revolution 
 Partial citizenship in early American colonies Wyoming the first real 
 political democracy of large area England moving faster than America 
 towards full female suffrage Proofs of the interest taken in it by intelli- 
 gent women Stain on the history of the State of Washington How 
 women have voted and are likely to vote Woman's political status all 
 over the world The next step from a political must be an industrial 
 democracy The general stream of human happiness The world's 
 debt to women of simple lives Sudden possession of excessive power 
 Depraved women not so much the cause as the result of the corruption of 
 the middle ages Sex equality among primitive races Respect shown to 
 women by New England Indians Feminine leadership in modern Africa 
 Number of Behangin's female warriors Peculiarities of Polyandrous 
 tribes An odd incident illustrative of the working of an Eastern mind 
 Condition of woman in the age of Homer Degradation of woman in the 
 palmy days of Athens Sparta alone the cradle of great women The 
 Hetairaj Aspasia and the government of Athens Orientalized Athens 
 corrupts her conqueror, the Roman The character of Cleopatra Zeno- 
 bia Rome overrun by Germans Effect of feudalism and the Catholic 
 church on women The age of chivalry Joan D' Arc and Agnes Sorel 
 
 Decency in eclipse for three centuries Isabella of Castile Mary A. 
 Livermore's opinion about her John Knox and his Trumpet Blast 
 Elizabeth, the greatest of England' r> queens Madame de Maintenon 
 Madame de Pompadour and her deluge The crowned women of Russia 
 
 Striking feminine figures of the present century The real queens of 
 to-day, where found 721 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 SEMI-MILITARY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 
 
 Reflections arising from wandering through the galleries of Versailles 
 The most dramatic of recent historical events Proclamation of Em- 
 peror William Legislative functions of the empire The executive 
 power in the hands of the Emperor The Bundesrath and its com- 
 mittees The Reichstag Officers of State Historical growth of 
 the German empire Earliest, recorded Teutonic invasion Ger- 
 mans in the Roman armies Chai-acteristics of the different tribes 
 
 Assemblies of the freemen Important victory of the German 
 tribes under Herman Migratory instincts of the Germanic tribes
 
 CONTENTS. 25 
 
 again showing itself History of the Franks in Gaul The treaty 
 of Verdun The Huns conquered by King Henry Beginning of 
 town life among the Germans Alliance of Church and State sovereign- 
 ties Origin of Germany's claim to Italy Revival of learning Di- 
 vision of large duchies into small principalities the beginning of 
 individualism Quarrel of Guelph and Ghibeline Conflict between 
 Emperor and Pope Effect on Germany Power of the Emperors 
 shattered Extinction of the house of Hohenstaufen The Interregnum 
 -The robber castles of the Rhine Growth of cathedral towns 
 Election of Rudolf, founder of the house of Habsburg Charles IV. 
 issues the Golden Bull Invention of gunpowder Revolution in the 
 art of war Invention of printing Attempt of the rulers to check 
 the intellectual awakening -The edict of Perpetual Peace The 
 House of Habsburg at the culmination of its power The Diet at Worms 
 
 Martin Luther placed under the ban of the empire His translation 
 of the Bible Spirit of the times Beginning of the " Thirty Years' 
 War" Military tactics of Gustavus Adolphus The Peace of West- 
 phalia The question of the Rhine provinces made a permanent issue 
 Change in the character of the German Louis XIV. of France signs 
 the Peace of Utrecht The Great Elector the first to keep a standing 
 army in time of peace Accession of Frederick the Great The 
 "Seven Years' War" Frederick in the front rank of great com- 
 manders Wisdom and energy of Frederick's government Im- 
 portant changes in the internal affairs of Germany Separation of the 
 spiritual and secular power Wars with Napoleon War of Liberation 
 followed by a season of peace Constitutions granted by the kings 
 to their subjects Unification of Italy under Victor Emanuel Otto 
 Von Bismarck made Prime Minister by King William of Prussia 
 Beginning of the end of the small principalities War between Prussia 
 and Austria Formation of the North German Confederation Defeat 
 
 of the French Political unification of Germany 753 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 COMPLEX REPUBLICANISM. 
 
 First movement toward Home Rule by the Colonists Complex Republi- 
 canism still an experiment Congress of the United States and Parlia- 
 ment of Great Britain the models of government for other countries 
 The Congress of the republics of Central and South America Form of 
 government in Germany, Denmark, and other countries Three coordi- 
 nate branches in the government of the United States The first coor- 
 dinate branch: the legislative General powers of Congress Article 
 L, Section 2 of the Constitution Number of population required to 
 constitute a congressional district Election of members The great 
 power which the House of Representatives exclusively possesses An- 
 other power exclusively exercised by the House Trials of impeachment 
 
 Power of the Speaker of the House Importance of the position 
 Committees of the House Duties of the different committees A 
 member prohibited from holding any other governmental office Pro- 
 hibited also from voting on measures in which their private interests are 
 affected The Senate of the United States Officers of the Senate 
 Exclusive power of "consent" possessed by the Senate Notable ex- 
 ception to the general rule of the Senate during the administration of 
 President Cleveland An executive session " The billionnaire club " 
 Movement agitated for the election of senators by a direct vote of the 
 people Reasons in favor The second coordinate branch of govern- 
 ment: the executive The Electoral College Election of the President 
 
 Chief duty of the President Power to pardon Right of veto 
 Reason for so much legislative power in the hands of the Executive 
 The Cabinet Duties of the Secretary of State Assistant Secretaries
 
 26 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Duties of the Secretary of the Treasury and his assistants The 
 Commissioner of Customs The Treasurer of the United States The 
 Register of the Treasury Comptroller of the Currency Director 
 of the Mint Commissioner of Internal Revenue Solicitor of the 
 Treasury Superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey 
 Other officials of the Treasury Department Publications of the 
 Bureau of Statistics Bureau of Printing and Engraving Secretary 
 of War Secretary of the Navy Secretary of the Interior Im- 
 portant officials of this department Office of Postmaster-General 
 Attorney-General and assistants Secretary of Agriculture Commis- 
 sioner of labor Interstate Commerce law The form of State gov- 
 ernment similar to that of the national government Duty of a State 
 legislature State elections The annual political campaign a great 
 educator of the masses Necessity for the people to keep the closest 
 supervision over the doings of their representatives The Constitution 
 the organic law of each commonwealth Government in the sparsely 
 settled districts of the country The power of Congress over the Terri- 
 tories Good reasons for popular discontent, and remedies suggested . 823
 
 I. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Origin of Government with Man 35 
 
 Making Fire by Friction 37 
 
 A Savage of the Second Period 39 
 
 Two Mothers in the Days Before the Flood 41 
 
 The Bow and Arrow or Second Stage of Savagery 43 
 
 The First Potter 45 
 
 The First Weaver 47 
 
 Early Agriculture in Europe 49 
 
 Meeting of Massasoit and the Pilgrims 51 
 
 One of King Philip's Hunting Lodges 53 
 
 Philip, the Last New England King 55 
 
 A Human Heart Offered up to the Sun-God (4 p. folder) . . . 56a 
 
 "Wigwam Building Among the Iroquois 57 
 
 A Sachem Rendering Judgment 59 
 
 II. 
 
 From a Picture by Sir Edwin Landseer 63 
 
 The Police of the Alps 65 
 
 A Village of Beavers 67 
 
 Natives of South Africa Fighting Termites 69 
 
 Hiving a Bee-Cloud 71 
 
 A King of Beasts Who Has No Regular Subjects 73 
 
 A City of Sea Birds 77 
 
 Kangaroos Led by an Axis Deer 79 
 
 27
 
 28 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 A Mutiny in the Cage (4 p folder) 80a 
 
 A Prairie Dog Town 81 
 
 A Royal Bengal Tiger 83 
 
 The Wild Horse 85 
 
 A Convention of Seals 87 
 
 III. 
 
 A Gypsy Queen 90 
 
 Roumanian Gypsies Begging 91 
 
 A Gypsy Camp 95 
 
 In Prison 97 
 
 A Group of Turkish Gypsies 99 
 
 A French Gypsy Selling Baskets 103 
 
 Pleading for Freedom 107 
 
 Zigani Pleading before Philip III. of Spain Ill 
 
 A Camorristic Tramp 114 
 
 Mob of Gentlemen Storming the Parish Prison at New Orleans . 117 
 
 A Gypsy Circus (4 p. folder) 123 
 
 Thieves' Den 131 
 
 A Young London Thief 139 
 
 IV. 
 
 Punishing a Wife Beater 143 
 
 Dragging a King's Wives to His Funeral 149 
 
 Making a Fetish of a Foeman's Head 151 
 
 King M'Teza, a Friend of Stanley 153 
 
 Taking a Prisoner for Slavery 158 
 
 Two Fanti Ladies 159 
 
 A Criminal Decapitated 161 
 
 Ashanti Girls Producing Fetish 165 
 
 A Fetish Temple i 173 
 
 An Expert at the " Customs " Asking Applause 175 
 
 A Town in Dahomey 181 
 
 A Boy's Head, part African part Arab of the Lower Nile . . 183 
 
 Stanley 185 
 
 The Hill of the Holy Monkeys 189 
 
 Banyai Huts 193 
 
 V. 
 
 Absolutism 197 
 
 The Shah 199
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 29 
 
 Barracks of the Gholams 203 
 
 A Market Scene in Meshed 205 
 
 An Elocutionist in the Harem / 207 
 
 A Persian Village Belle 210 
 
 Musicians in Ispahan Saluting the Sunrise 213 
 
 A Marriage Procession 215 
 
 A Persian Caravansary or Hotel 219 
 
 A Parsee Burial in Northern India 221 
 
 A Guebre Making Himself Known by a Secret Sign .... 223 
 
 VI. 
 
 Benares from the Ganges 227 
 
 The Banyan or Sacred Tree 231 
 
 High Caste Brahmins 235 
 
 A Rich Fakir 237 
 
 A Low Class Fakir 239 
 
 A Village Sutar 241 
 
 Punishment of a Thief in Village India 243 
 
 The Temple of Soma 247 
 
 The Car of Juggernaut 249 
 
 o~ 
 
 Rushing to Juggernaut . . 251 
 
 Thuggery 253 
 
 Thugs Burying a Victim Alive 255 
 
 A Siesta in the Jungle . . 257 
 
 A Jeweller in the Shadow of the Temple 259 
 
 The Water Carrier 261 
 
 Rapid Transit in Northern India 263 
 
 The Egg Dancer at a Marriage Celebration 265 
 
 A Travelling Barber 267 
 
 Husbandry in Northern India 269 
 
 Sowing the Seed 271 
 
 Two Peasant Women 273 
 
 A Snake Charmer 275 
 
 Mountain Travel 277 
 
 VII. 
 
 A Scholastic Oligarchy 281 
 
 A Glimpse of the Great Wall 282 
 
 Opium Smokers 283 
 
 A Street of Hongs in Canton 285 
 
 Canton on the River Side . 287
 
 30 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Ancient Chinese Soldier 289 
 
 The Fruit Girl Who Became an Empress 293 
 
 An Officer 294 
 
 A Culprit in the Cangue Fed by His Wife 295 
 
 Executing a Parricide 297 
 
 Hearing a Civil Case 299 
 
 Crushing a Rebel 301 
 
 A Public Whipping 302 
 
 Escorting a Pirate to Execution 303 
 
 The Chinese Judgment Day 305 
 
 A Great Scholar 307 
 
 A Schoolmaster of Pekin 309 
 
 On a Fashionable Footing . . 313 
 
 A Sail Wagon 315 
 
 A Rat Peddler 319 
 
 A Buddhist Temple 321 
 
 VIII. 
 
 A Castle in Spain 327 
 
 A Chimuan Palace About the Time of Pizarro 329 
 
 Pizarro Drawing the Line 331 
 
 A Maguey Suspension Bridge 333 
 
 Front View of a Maguey Bridge 335 
 
 Modern Cuzco 337 
 
 Early Peruvians Worshipping the Sun 339 
 
 Lighting the Sacred Fire 340 
 
 An Early Inca and His Queen 341 
 
 An Inca Travelling 343 
 
 A Governmental Hotel 344 
 
 A Temple of the Sun 345 
 
 Peruvian Boys Guarding a Grain Field 347 
 
 Modern Llamas as Beasts of Burden 349 
 
 A Chimuan Princess 351 
 
 Peruvian Viceroy Receiving Reports by Quipus 353 
 
 The Quipu 355 
 
 IX. 
 
 Theocracy or Priestly Government 357 
 
 Priestess or Pythoness of Delphi (4 p. folder) 359 
 
 Moses and the Tables of the Law 367 
 
 King Solomon Deciding a Case 370
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 81 
 
 The Crucifixion 375 
 
 The Holy Family 377 
 
 Paul Pleading His Case at Rome 379 
 
 Lions Fed with Christians 381 
 
 The Stoning of St. Stephen 383 
 
 Constantine after His Conversion 385 
 
 The Scourge of God 387 
 
 St. Austin Converting the English to Christianity 391 
 
 A Marriage among Ancient Jews (4 p. folder) 395 
 
 Charlemagne Crowned by the Pope 401 
 
 Priests in Prayer at the Deathbed of Columbus 403 
 
 An Officer- of the Papal Household 406 
 
 The Queen of Philip Augustus Appealing to Rome 410 
 
 The Trial of a Dead Pope 413 
 
 Burial of a Monk 417 
 
 Elevation of Pope Pius VII 419 
 
 A Jesuit Missionary 421 
 
 Pope Leo XIII 425 
 
 St. Peter's, Rome 429 
 
 Oldest Church in United States . 431. 
 
 James Cardinal Gibbons 433 
 
 X. 
 
 Simple Republicanism 435 
 
 A Switzer of Ancient Days 437 
 
 A Swiss Village . . 439 
 
 Napoleonic Cavalry Crossing the Alps 443 
 
 Crystal Seekers on Mont Blanc 445 
 
 Election of a President (4 p. folder) 449 
 
 The President Delivering His Inaugural Address 455 
 
 The Government Buildings at Berne 457 
 
 The Great St. Bernard 463 
 
 Tell Escaping in the Storm 465 
 
 A Girl of Berne 469 
 
 The Peasant's Friend 471 
 
 The Swiss Senate Chamber 473 
 
 XI. 
 
 Constitutional Monarchy 475 
 
 Harold the Saxon Taking the Oath of Office 477
 
 32 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Hubert, an early English judge, killed at the Horns of the Altar 
 
 (4 p. folder) 479 
 
 Magna Charta Island 483 
 
 King John in Anger 485 
 
 A Crusader 487 
 
 Edward I. the Successful Crusader , . . . 489 
 
 Coronation Chair of Edward III. with the Stone of Scone . . . 497 
 
 Windsor Castle, the Queen's Favorite Residence 501 
 
 Interior of the House of Commons ... 507 
 
 Block, Ax, and Mask of Headsman in Days of Sir Thomas More 511 
 
 Execution of Lady Jane Grey 513 
 
 Shakespeare's Birthplace before Restoration 515 
 
 Shakespeare Reading before Queen Elizabeth 517 
 
 " My Lord, we've time to finish the game and beat the Spaniards 
 
 too" 519 
 
 Death of Queen Elizabeth 521 
 
 Charles I 525 
 
 The Trial of Hampden 529 
 
 Cromwell Refusing the Crown 539 
 
 William Ewart Gladstone 543 
 
 Westminster in 1647 545 
 
 An American Bible Presented to the Queen. (4 p. folder) . . . 553 
 
 The Great Seal of England 561 
 
 The Cabinet Room in Downing St 563 
 
 Queen Victoria 565 
 
 XII. 
 
 Albert Pike 571 
 
 Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, in Masonic Dress 575 
 
 The Cathedral, Baptistry, and Leaning Tower of Pisa .... 579 
 
 A French Lodge for the Reception of an Apprentice, 1745 . . 583 
 
 A French Lodge for the Reception of a Master . . ... 587 
 
 The Cathedral at Rheims 591 
 
 Old Tun Tavern at Philadelphia, where the first American Lodge 
 
 was organized 595 
 
 Napoleon's Retreat from Leipsic (4 p. folder) 599 
 
 Green Dragon Tavern, Boston, where the first Boston Lodge was 
 
 organized 607 
 
 Brother George Washington's Masonic Apron 615 
 
 George Washington 625 
 
 A Female Crusader Saving a Knight Templar 627
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 33 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Napoleon Crossing the Alps . , 633 
 
 Assassination of Gustavus III. (4 p. folder) . 639 
 
 Turgot Pavilion of the Louvre 647 
 
 Hotel des Invalides 651 
 
 A French Monastery During the Revolution 657 
 
 Assassination of Julius Caesar 659 
 
 A Woodman's Hut at Ardennes, on the Way to Waterloo, 1815, 661 
 
 XIV. 
 
 An Initiation Among the Chauffeurs 667 
 
 Chauffeurs Disguised as Musicians and Flower Peddlers (4 p. 
 
 folder) 671 
 
 A Travelling Cai'dinal Apprehensive of Carbonari, Italy in 1800 . 679 
 
 Russian Political Exiles in Siberia (4 p. folder) 685 
 
 John Boyle O'Reilly 693 
 
 Richard Croker G99 
 
 Meeting of Tammany and Manco Capac 705 
 
 Carbonari Making Merry in a Monastery Cellar (4 p. folder) . . 711 
 
 A Head Dance by Squaws 723 
 
 The Female Soldiers of Dahomey Fighting the French . . . 727 
 
 Hetairse of Ancient Athens 729 
 
 The Present Empress of Russia 735 
 
 Isabella Receiving Columbus 739 
 
 Women Watching the Outbreak of Vesuvius 743 
 
 Wilhelmine, the Child Queen of the Netherlands 745 
 
 Mary A. Livermore 751 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Colossal Statues of the Genii or War and Peace at Munich (4 p. 
 
 folder) 757 
 
 Brunhild Beholding her Rival, Guthrun, at the Side of Siegfried 
 
 (4 p. folder) 765 
 
 An Early German Warrior 769 
 
 Two Games A German Scene in the 17th Century (4 p. folder) 773 
 Wittikind the Saxon Received into Baptism with Charlemagne 
 
 for Sponsor 779 
 
 Modern German Artillerymen 781
 
 34 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The Makers of Modern Germany 783 
 
 Robber Knights Stealing on a Hamlet 785 
 
 The Crowning of a Poet with Laurel 787 
 
 German Monks Copying Manuscript Before the Invention of Type 789 
 
 The Return of Herman After Beaming the Romans 793 
 
 John of Gutenberg 795 
 
 German Soldiers of Modern Days 797 
 
 Beethoven 799 
 
 German Children of To-day .801 
 
 Frederick the Great Returning from the Battle of Prague . . . 805 
 
 Frederick the Great Holding a War Council 807 
 
 The Nun and the Flowers 811 
 
 Louise of Prussia and Her Two Sons, Afterwards Frederick 
 
 William IV. and Kaiser William 813 
 
 The Surrender of Paris 815 
 
 The Makers of Modern Italy 819 
 
 XVII 
 
 Complex Republicanism 823 
 
 The Discoverer of America 825 
 
 The Pilgrims' First Sunday in America 827 
 
 The White House 833 
 
 Thomas Jefferson , 835 
 
 Ben Franklin 837 
 
 Faneuil Hall, Boston 839 
 
 Bunker Hill Monument at Charlestown, Mass 841 
 
 Custom House, New Orleans . 845 
 
 Naval Heroes of the Late War 847 
 
 Military Heroes of the Late War 849 
 
 Wall Street, New York 853 
 
 Grand Army Parade at Washington at Close of War (4 p. folder) 855 
 
 New York Post-Office 861 
 
 The Capitol at Washington 863 
 
 Lincoln 865 
 
 Grant 869 
 
 A Daughter of the Republic . 873 
 
 The Spirit of Home (4 p. folder) 877
 
 1. 
 
 To come as near as possible to an 
 understanding of the origin of govern- 
 ment we need the wings of imagination 
 added to the nimble feet of science, as we 
 move along the strange, the marvellous track 
 that goes back to the very dawn of human life on this planet. 
 
 The great antiquity of man is a fact on which scientists are 
 agreed, though only in the last forty years has it been estab- 
 lished beyond a doubt, but the exact amount of time man has 
 been on earth will probably never be settled. It is tolerably 
 certain, however, that man existed before the glacial period, 
 and that the age of the human race dates back for over one 
 hundred thousand and possibly three hundred thousand years. 
 The different periods of human development have been styled 
 by men of science, Savagery, Barbarism, and Civilization, and 
 the first two have been divided into three grades. 
 
 The first or lower period of savagery dates from the infancy of 
 the race to the time when man began to catch fish for a living 
 and discovered the making of fire by simple friction, as depicted 
 in our first illustration. " More light ! " was the dying exclama- 
 tion and aspiration of Goethe, the greatest of German thinkers. 
 
 35
 
 36 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 How strange that the material element, fire, which is the source 
 of light, which is the sign or symbol of progress, should mark 
 scientifically the practical beginning of the enlightenment of man- 
 kind ! This first period lasted many thousand years, and during 
 that space, man's only weapons were clubs and stones rubbed into 
 a rude resemblance to ax-heads, and tied to sticks by thongs of 
 tough grass. The second picture represents a man of this period 
 at the door of his cave-home in the wilds of ancient Switzerland. 
 And the third picture, " Two mothers in ih'e days before the 
 flood," shows how the cave-home of primitive man in Europe was 
 often invaded by the cave-bear, against whose attacks our savage 
 ancestors were practically powerless, unless they happened to hit 
 with an early blow a certain part of the animal's head. Next came 
 the middle period of savagery, which is scientifically dated from the 
 invention of the bow and arrow, that by its use in hunting gave 
 man a new kind of food and a new means of defence against 
 enemies. 
 
 The second stage of savagery, which is indicated by the fourth 
 illustration, lasted an almost equal space until the discovery of 
 the art of making pottery which marked a new step in human 
 development and introduced the first stage of barbarism. This 
 period stretched a weary, dreary length of many centuries until 
 man began, on the Eastern Hemisphere, to domesticate cattle and 
 live by flocks and herds ; or, on the Western Hemisphere, as among 
 the Pueblo and Zuni tribes of this continent, to plant maize, to 
 build an excellent system of irrigation (from which our govern- 
 ment might take a hint to-day) and to make houses of adobe 
 brick. 
 
 Goquet, in the last century, first propounded the notion that 
 the way pottery came to be made was that some wooden vessel, or 
 some basket woven of bark, was daubed with damp clay to protect 
 it from the fire and then the people, finding the clay harden into 
 a durable state, conceived the idea of making vessels of clay 
 instead of wood. Goquet says that Captain Gonneville, who 
 visited the natives of southeastern South America in 1502, found 
 their household utensils plastered with a kind of clay to the 
 thickness of a finger which prevented the fire from burning them. 
 
 This second stage of barbarism extends also for ages till, on
 
 THE OKIGIN OF GOVERNMENT WITH MAN. 
 
 37 
 
 the slow upward journey of the race, we reach the third station 
 of barbarism which is marked by the discovery of the process of 
 smelting iron and the use of iron tools and weapons. This, like- 
 wise, endures with slightly increasing degrees of refinement for 
 ages and ages until what is called the first period of civilization, 
 characterized by the invention of an alphabet to express to the 
 eye the sounds of the tongue or, in fine, the art of writing. 
 
 MAKING FIRE BY FRICTION. 
 
 If we stop to consider how many thousand years elapsed from 
 the invention of the art of writing to the invention of the print- 
 ing-press, during which many separate so-called civilizations flour- 
 ished and faded, we shall be more able to understand that many 
 thousands of years must have intervened between the invention of 
 the bow and arrow by some early savage of the third period to 
 the invention of a jar of pottery. The following approximate 
 table may help to fix in the memory the great, slow steps of the race.
 
 38 
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 TABLE OF HUMAN PROGRESS. 
 
 FIRST STAGE OF SAVAGERY. 
 
 42,700 years. 
 
 From the infancy of the race and a diet of 
 Nuts, Roots, and Fruits to catching Fisli and 
 learning the use of Fire. 
 
 SECOND STAGE OF SAVAGERY. 
 
 42,070 years. 
 
 From Fish and Fire to the invention of the 
 Bow and Arrow. 
 
 THIRD STAGE OF SAVAGERY. 
 
 42,tX)7 years. 
 
 From the Bow and Arrow to the invention of 
 an Earthen Pot for cooking. 
 
 FIRST STAGE OF BARBARISM. 
 
 35,000 years. 
 
 From the Art of Pottery to the Herding or 
 Domestication of Cattle, etc. 
 
 SECOND STAGE OF BARBARISM. 
 
 21,000 years. 
 
 From Herding Cattle, Planting Maize, Build- 
 ing of Irrigating Canals and Houses of Smm: 
 and Adobe Brick, to the discovery of a process 
 of Smelting Iron Ore. 
 
 THIRD STAGE OF BARBARISM. 
 
 7,000 years. 
 
 From the Smelting of Iron and Making of 
 Iron Tools and Weapons to the invention of an 
 Alphabet. 
 
 FIRST STAGE OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 From the Invention of Written Signs to ex- 
 press the sounds of the human tongue and the 
 consciousness of thinking, as a thing of value 
 in itself, to be treasured up or recorded, to 
 some time in the future, when government of, 
 for, and by the people shall be an established 
 fact all over the world, and when poverty and 
 material misery shall be merely a dim memory 
 of the past, possibly the year 2,100 of our 
 present reckoning. 
 
 1 Ernest George Ravenstein, F. R. G. 8., of London, figuring the fertile regions of the 
 earth at 28,269,000 square miles, and figuring the world's population at 1,467,600,000, 
 or 31 to a square mile, and taking as a basis for estimate the standard of living, as 
 existing to-day in various climates, reckons that the world, if brought to its maximum 
 of cultivation, can supply 5,994,000,000 persons with food. The increase of population 
 might be materially affected by many unforeseen new conditions, social or meteorological ; 
 but weighing all the data, and considering all the causes likely to hasten or retard 
 growth of population in various quarters, Mr. R. assumes that the increase each decade will 
 be ten per cent. Accepting these figures as correct, in 1900 the present population will have 
 increased to 1,587,000,000. In 1950, there will be 2,332.000.000; in 2000, 3,426,000,000; and in the 
 year 2072, there would be 5,977,000,000, or within a few millions of what the earth can support. 
 Consequently in the next 182 years Civilization must have learned myriad new lessons, or 
 else a cataclysm must occur, destroying the present human race to a great extent, and per- 
 haps starting man on the second stage of Civilization.
 
 A SAVAGE OF THE SKOOTTD PERIOD.
 
 40 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The marked decrease in years indicated by the preceding table 
 from the third stage of savagery to the invention of pottery, and 
 the still greater decrease to the second stage of barbarism, are 
 estimated on the principle that every additional invention has 
 a power of stimulation on the inventive faculty. But while 
 studying such a table as this, though we cannot help feeling how 
 slow the evolution has been, it must not dishearten us, nor need 
 it fill us with a profound sadness for the vanished millions, since 
 the progress, though slow, has. been sure, and with a promise of 
 evei higher certainties in the future. The history of the race, as 
 revealed to us by the most recent researches of science, points 
 conclusively to the fact that man in the mass, as well as man the 
 unit, is destined to develop the animal, and probably to become 
 something more. 
 
 The final findings of science are growing to coincide with the 
 fundamental sense of all intelligent religions ; that man's life is 
 not merely summed up in the verbs, to eat, drink, sleep, think, 
 propagate, and die. For it is now beyond dispute that in the slow 
 process of this development from the naked savage of few words 
 and equally few ideas, who toiled in caves and fished with his 
 paws in streams, to the average man of to-day, who uses a vocabu- 
 lary of ten thousand words to express his ideas, or to the scholar 
 who uses twenty thousand, many races of animals that were on the 
 earth with the early man have entirely disappeared. Does not this 
 seem to imply that man is not merely a cooking animal, an inventing 
 and aspiring one, but that he is pre-eminently a surviving animal ? 
 
 There is also another reflection that naturally arises from a study 
 of the ascending struggle of humanity, which is, indeed, that we 
 are what we are to-day, not merely on account of our individual 
 struggles a,nd difficult development amid adverse circumstances, 
 or our fortunate location and easy development in pleasant circum- 
 stances, but largely in either case, because many millions, through 
 the countless ages of savagery, barbarism, and early civilization, 
 have toiled and suffered to make possible our present average of 
 collective comfort (still, alas ! a pitifully small one) as well as 
 our individual approximations towards a wise, kindly, dignified 
 existence ; in short, towards the happiness of refinement and the 
 refinement of happiness.
 
 TWO MOTHERS IN THE DAYS BEFORE THE FLOOD.
 
 42 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Having thus briefly outlined the large steps of the race during 
 which government has had its slow evolution, suppose we try for 
 a definition of our own for this word. Suppose we say " Govern- 
 ment is the condition resulting from an attempt to live together 
 under some rule or order." 
 
 As to its origin, some scholars consider the family as the germ 
 of it, though some find it rather difficult, when considering how 
 promiscuous were the relations of the sexes in the early days of 
 the race, to say with certainty that government developed from 
 the family. Indeed, the opposite has been ably maintained, that 
 family, as we understand it now, developed from government and 
 the sense of property. 1 The weight of likelihood, however, seems 
 to be on the side of those who regard the family as the germ, 
 and this being so it becomes necessary to consider how many kinds 
 of family relations have been invented or accepted by the human 
 race. 
 
 First is the Consanguine family, in which brothers and sisters 
 freely intermarried. This form to-day seems to us a most horrible 
 thing and is punished by the laws of every civilized State. 
 Nevertheless it lingered so long in the minds of men that the 
 great empire of Egypt, which was in the dawn of civilization and 
 not in the scientific period of barbarism, not only countenanced it, 
 but made it conspicuous by the example of the royal family. 
 
 The Second form of the family, or of the married relation, has 
 been called the Punaluan, and was extant until recently in the 
 Hawaiian Islands. The missionaries, in 1820, found it prevalent, 
 and not being scientists or philosophers were disproportionately 
 shocked by it. This consists in all the brothers of a family being 
 the husbands of each other's wives, or in the sisters being the 
 wives of each sister's husband; and brothers was a term, with 
 them, of wide significance, comprehending cousins to the third or 
 fourth degree. 
 
 Caesar, the maker of so much history, and the historian of his 
 own creations, the profound observer as well as the practical 
 statesman, makes a note of finding Punaluan marriage among 
 the ancient Britons in groups of ten or twelve. 
 
 1 Some scholars hold that Government, modelled after the exercise of authority in the 
 family unit, is made necessary by the existence of property.
 
 THE ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT WITH MAN. 
 
 43 
 
 Among the Crow 
 Indians, also, a relic 
 of this Punaluart 
 marriage still lin- 
 gers, a man who 
 marries the eldest 
 daughter having a right to 
 all her sisters, if he wishes 
 to support them. But it is 
 hardly necessary to add that such 
 exhibitions of amorous industry 
 are exceedingly rare among the Crows. 
 
 THE BOW AND ARROW OR SECOND STACK OF SAVAGERY.
 
 44 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 In South America, likewise, among certain tribes where women 
 are not regarded as mere beasts of burden traces of a similar 
 practice still exist. 
 
 The Third form of family which has been called the Syndyas- 
 mian, still extant among some of the Indian tribes on this conti- 
 nent, is a step upward in morals as we regard them. It consists 
 in the pairing of one woman and one man, not, however, with the 
 intent or with the absolute promise of continuity, because divorce 
 at will was a right felt to be inherent in both parties. This 
 form of family has almost entirely vanished from the world as 
 a national or tribal characteristic, though it crops up quite 
 frequently in individual cases. 
 
 The Fourth kind of family has been styled the Patriarchal. 
 This is the marriage of one man to several women, or polygamy, 
 and still flourishes among some Asiatic nations, yet by no means 
 to the extent that it once did ; and the attempt to revive it in our 
 occidental civilization has proved a priestly failure, although the 
 Mormon colony of Utah, perhaps because of its co-operative 
 features, has been conspicuous as a commercial success. 
 
 The converse of Polygamy, or Polygyny as it should be called 
 that is Polyandry, or the marriage of one woman to several 
 men, though existent to-day in Ceylon, Australasia and Tibet, 
 appears to be rather an exceptional sidegrowth than a regular 
 grade of development. 
 
 The Fifth form of family, or the Monogamic, is that which 
 flourishes to-day among all civilized races, and that seems to be 
 the ultimate, the last word of advice which nature has to give 
 concerning human happiness ; for nearly all the higher animals, 
 as well as man, develop to the having of only one mate. 
 
 Does it not seem, on the whole, rather a reasonable inference 
 that the moment when absolute promiscuity in the fundamentally 
 necessary and fundamentally righteous relations of the sexes 
 ceased to prevail, and the idea ensued of limiting marriage to 
 certain members of a clan or aggregation of human individuals, 
 the idea of rule and order arose from such instinctive limitation 
 and then the idea of authority, to enforce rule or order, dawned 
 on the dull brain of the primeval savage ? 
 
 We thus grasp the ideas of order and of authority, as twin
 
 THE ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT WITH MAN. 
 
 45 
 
 elements of a concrete concept of government : order desired by 
 the general mind, and authority devised and then lodged some- 
 where to maintain and increase it. 
 
 Starting, then, with the single family, we arrive at the Gens 1 or 
 
 'Cw, Latin ; 7 eW, Greek ; punas, Sanscrit; our word kin being the same root
 
 46 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 kindred, a small body of blood-relations living together, bearing 
 the same name. This gens, as it throws out branches that settle 
 in adjacent places, keeps itself connected with these branches by 
 certain customs. 
 
 The inter-associations which practise these customs are scien- 
 tifically called Phratries, from a word of Greek origin, signifying 
 brotherhood, and indicating their relationship to the nucleus-gens. 
 As others at a distance come into the same relationship, either 
 by extension of the original family or by juncture with other fam- 
 ilies, the tribe is formed ; and after the tribe, the confederacy, 
 which was the nearest approach the barbaric mind made to our 
 present idea of a nation. 
 
 The phratry is a brotherhood and an organic growth from the 
 gens, and among the Greeks and Romans, as among the Iroquois, 
 it was generally an association for certain religious or social 
 objects of two or more gentes of the same tribe. The Roman 
 curia, or cury, was the analogue of the Indian and Grecian 
 phratry. There were ten gentes in each curia, and ten curise 
 in each of the three Roman tribes, making three hundred gentes 
 among the Romans. The governmental functions of the Roman 
 curia became much more complex and political than those of the 
 Greek or Indian, but the primary principle of association for social 
 or religious purposes was identical. And this tendency to asso- 
 ciate in phratries or lodges appears to be as strong in the masculine 
 mind of to-day as it ever was ; of which statement abundant 
 testimony offers itself in the shape of our numerous fraternities, 
 such as Masonry, Pythian, and other societies. 
 
 All these phratries and tribes and confederacies are evolutions 
 of the family, and their status is founded on a social rather than 
 a territorial and property relation. A separate and sharply-marked 
 domain, and the possession of property, were ideas that only took 
 root in the minds of men in the very latest days of barbarism, 
 and to enter upon the second plan of government it was necessary 
 to supersede the gentes and phratries by townships and city 
 wards. 
 
 The decline of the gens and the rising of the organized town 
 make the dividing line between barbarism and civilization, between 
 ancient and modern society.
 
 THE FIKST WEAVER.
 
 48 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 It is well established, though but recently, that Man all over 
 the world lias a common scientific evolution ; the story of one race 
 is the story of all. Humanity is a unit in source, in experi- 
 ence, in progress ; and, in the faith of science we may add, 
 one also in the certainty of an immortal and imperial destiny. 
 So, if we take the condition of development shown by a tribe 
 of American Indians, we shall have a fairly approximate picture 
 of just how the beautiful civilization of Greece, or the majestic 
 empire of Rome under Augustus, developed through the gens, 
 phratry, and tribe. 
 
 Too many of us derive our idea of an Indian from Buffalo Bill's 
 Wild West Show, or from the straggling specimens that sell 
 baskets and beadwork in the summer. But these bear no more 
 real resemblance to the Indian as he is historically than do the 
 fawning, nattering, fortune-telling gypsies to the ancient Egyptian 
 courtiers who exchanged elegant compliments amid the roseate 
 shadows of the perfumed audience chamber of Cleopatra. 
 
 Nationally, we have done great material wrong to the original 
 possessors of this country. Is it not becoming then that we 
 should at least make some attempt to do justice to them histori- 
 cally, since we have never, or rarely, done it to the living 
 individuals ? 
 
 Moreover, our ideas of the Indian have always been colored by 
 conflict. We have inherited a distrust of him, and it is only of 
 late that scholars generally have begun to appreciate his virtues. 
 Even large-hearted travellers like Dickens have been misled into 
 regarding him as merely a dirty and drunken ruffian, glad to live 
 in laziness and be supported by the government. The trouble is 
 we are looking upon the Indian, not as God made him, not as 
 he developed under the kindly eye of nature, but as we white 
 men have unmade him by the almost off-setting brutality that 
 accompanies our present civilization. The American Indian, 
 sitting in council near the banks of some winding water, under 
 the mellow harvest moon, was a very different being from those 
 we see to-day, who have exchanged the virtues of barbarism for 
 the vices of civilization; those to whom we have given of our 
 worst instead of our best. 
 
 Metacom and Wamsutta, the last Indian kings of prominence
 
 THE ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT WITH MAN. 49 
 
 in New England, were types, it is true, of the third stage of 
 barbarism. They were barbarians, but they were gentlemen. In 
 fineness of feeling, in regard for the rights of others, in statesman- 
 
 like qualities, and needless to say in daring, they would compare 
 with any of the early Saxon chiefs except possibly Alfred the
 
 50 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Great. For instance, what could be finer than the feeling shown 
 in the following incident ? 
 
 Wamsutta was the chief king of Eastern New England during 
 the early colonial days. His father, Massasoit, had heaped kind- 
 nesses on the Pilgrims, fed them when starving, saved them from 
 the assaults of other tribes. After his death, Wamsutta was one 
 day at breakfast in one of his many hunting lodges, with several 
 of his nobles and their wives. A party of Pilgrims surprised 
 them, seized their weapons that had been stacked outside, and told 
 the king that he was under arrest and must come to Plymouth 
 to answer certain charges. The leader of this party offered the 
 outraged monarch a horse to ride on, but the king refused with 
 these words : " I could not ride and let these women walk." 
 
 This is but one of the many incidents which a certain un- 
 conscious or subconscious candor has forced unfriendly historians 
 to record. Wamsutta died from the effect on his proud nature of 
 the indignity done him by this arrest, and his brother, Metacom, 
 or Philip, as he was called by the Pilgrims, for years nursed plans 
 pf vengeance against the race who had been the cause of his 
 brother's early death, who had spoiled him of his lands, wantonly 
 burned many of his hunting-lodges, and tried even in his own 
 tome to curtail his powers. 
 
 Philip made war on our English ancestors during the fall of 
 1675 and the following winter and spring; and though like 
 Napoleon, a personal failure finally, the results of his well-planned 
 war on our ancestors were felt for fifty years after his death, or, as 
 their writers agreed, he retarded the development of New England 
 for that space. 
 
 Yet he, too, with every reason to detest our race, was not only kind 
 in many instances to the prisoners he captured, but was uniformly 
 courteous. Mrs. Richardson, who lived as his prisoner for many 
 months before she was finally restored to her husband, tells us that 
 this great soldier (even his enemies admitted his military genius) 
 was a most kindly captor. He asked her one day to make a shirt 
 for his little son, and when she had made it, expressing his 
 pleasure, he not only thanked her, but paid her an English shilling 
 for it. 
 
 Our tardy scholarship is beginning to see that such conduct
 
 THE ORIGIN OP GOVERNMENT WITH MAN. 
 
 51 
 
 more fairly represents the Indian character as it was at the best 
 period of development than the ravages occasionally committed by 
 
 the degenerate tribes of to-day, too often goaded to fury by dis- 
 honest government agents. 
 
 It is a pity that we have not sufficient data concerning the
 
 52 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 political condition of the New England Indians to show how they 
 developed to the production of such men as those just named, but 
 by examining another Indian tribe, the Seneca-Iroquois, we shall 
 see the evolution of government among barbarians up to hereditary 
 monarchy as clearly as if we went through a long course of Greek 
 or Roman history. 
 
 The Seneca-Iroquois were divided into gentes, phratries, and 
 tribes. The chiefs in each gens were usually proportioned to the 
 members. Among the Iroquois there is one to about every fifty 
 persons. The Iroquois in New York now number three thousand, 
 and have eight sachems and about sixty chiefs. 
 
 The first question, then, that suggests itself is, what were the politi- 
 cal rights of the gens. First of all, with the basic right of having 
 a council of its own, the right of electing and deposing its sachem 
 and its chiefs. Here we have at once a fact that contradicts the 
 old historical assumption that the democratical form of govern- 
 ment is a late invention, and that the monarchical was the one 
 most natural and most adapted to the evolution of human society. 
 For the right of electing and deposing the head of the gens 
 shows that man started in a rude way to have what we are trying 
 to-day to have in a complete, though perhaps too complex, way ; 
 namely, a government of the people. 
 
 Another right of the gens was the inheritance of property. If 
 a man died his property would not descend to his son or his 
 daughter, but to the gens in common. The feeling here seems to 
 be identical with that which our most republican millionnaire, 
 Andrew Carnegie, has recently expressed, that a man's material 
 acquisitions, being largely the result of the co-operation of others, 
 should at his death revert to whence they came. Mr. Carnegie's 
 mind, however, has expanded since his first declaration, for he now 
 maintains that a rich man in his life-time should restore to the 
 people, in the shape of libraries, parks, and hospitals, the money 
 he has made out of them. 
 
 Of course, another right of the gens was that of bestowing 
 names on its members, and of adopting strangers by naming them. 
 There were obligations, likewise, of help and defence and redress 
 of injuries, and, in time, an obligation among most not to marry 
 in the gens. Common religious rites, a common burial place and,
 
 THE ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT WITH MAN. 
 
 53 
 
 as a necessary basis for the election of a sachem, the right to call 
 a council, were distinctive marks of the Iroquois gens. 
 
 As to the election of sachems and chiefs, it is probably a new 
 fact to most readers that nearly all the American Indian tribes, as 
 well as the Seneca-Iroquois, had two grades of chieftainship; in 
 other words, they had a peace governor and a war chief. 
 
 us/ 
 
 ONE OF KING PHILIP'S HUNTING LODGES. 
 
 The sachem, or wise-man, was elected in each gens from among 
 its members. A son could not be chosen to succeed his father if 
 descent was in the female line, which made the son belong to a 
 different gens. 
 
 The duties of a sachem were confined to the affairs of peace. 
 He settled disputes, advised the time of planting corn, or the 
 location of the camp, or any matter that demanded personal 
 advice or sympathy. It was analogous in some respects to the
 
 54 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 post of father confessor, though among many of the tribes this 
 function was rudimentary in spite of the semi-religious character 
 with which the sachem was invested. The relation of the sachem 
 was primarily to the gens of which he was the official head, while 
 that of the chief, who was chosen for personal bravery or for 
 eloquence, was primarily to the tribe or large organization of the 
 council of which he as well as the sachem were members. The 
 sachem was so much an officer of peace that he could not go to 
 war as a sachem, but simply as a private individual in the ranks 
 under the leaderships of the chiefs, whose functions were purely 
 military or advisory in military matters in the general council of 
 the tribe. 
 
 The office of sachem was hereditary in the sense that it was 
 filled from the same gens as often as a vacancy happened, but it 
 was filled by election from different relatives of the deceased or 
 deposed chieftain. Though the office was nominally for life, it 
 was practically for good behavior, because of the power to depose. 
 The ceremony of installing a sachem \vas very picturesque. It 
 was accompanied by song and dance and the final act was 
 symbolized by the putting on a headdress of buffalo horns, as his 
 deposition was symbolized by taking off the horns. 
 
 It is one of the little facts that cumulate to show the substan- 
 tial relativity of mankind that, even among tribes widely separated, 
 horns have been made emblems of office and authority from time 
 immemorial, and even of sanctity, as in the Catholic church we 
 have the horns of the altar, which were invested with a peculiar 
 .sacredness. The killing of Thomas a Becket, for instance, in the age 
 of Henry II. of England, when assassination was a common crime, 
 was accounted especially heinous because the victim was not only 
 a priest, but was killed while holding one of the horns of the altar. 
 
 Horns, also, by the imagination of the middle ages, are assigned 
 to his Satanic Majesty, probably as a token of his power, and the 
 horn as a sign of plenty is another emblem, derived possibly from 
 the Scandinavian drinking-horn, though it is also credited with a 
 Roman and Greek derivation. Tylor intimates that the command- 
 ing appearance of buffalos and such animals as wear horns may 
 have suggested to the general mind this thing as a token of 
 dignity and authority.
 
 56 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Among the Iroquois Indians, whose attempt at government we 
 are considering, the nomination of a sachem by a gens was not 
 complete until it had received the assent of the seven remaining 
 gentes. If these gentes, who met for this purpose by phratries, 
 refused to confirm it, the original gens had to make another 
 choice ; and even when they had confirmed it, it was still neces- 
 sary that the new sachem, to use their own peculiar phrase, should 
 be " raised up" that is, should be inducted into his office by a 
 council of the confederacy before he could enter upon his duties. 
 The same method of election and confirmation applied to chiefs, 
 yet a general council never convened to " raise up " chiefs below 
 the rank of a sachem, but waited for some time when a sachem 
 was to be confirmed. 
 
 The principle of democracy manifested itself here in the reten- 
 tion by the gent-i-les, 1 or members of each gens, of the right of 
 electing their most immediate rulers, and also proved itself in 
 the safeguards thrown around the offices to prevent usurpations 
 by the check on the election which the other gentes held in their 
 hands and by the additional check held by the whole tribe. We 
 can see in this ceremonial of " raising up " by the tribe an 
 analogue of the administration to our . President of the oath of 
 office by some one else, as we can see also in the checks devised 
 by the Indian mind against the seizure of power by unscrupulous 
 ambition the same working principle that led the founders of this 
 republic to put various checks on the power of individuals, and 
 even of popular assemblies, such as the check of the Senate on the 
 House of Representatives. 
 
 It is worthy of note that in this democratic assembly, or coun- 
 cil of the gens, which elected a sachem, not merely every man, 
 but every married woman, had a voice upon great questions, 
 probably in many cases very much of a voice on little ones, like- 
 wise. Thus it is evident that the great ideas, Liberty, Equality, 
 and Fraternity, which were the torch-words of the French Revolu- 
 tion, though never formulated into sounding phrase by Indian 
 orators, were cardinal principles of their system of government. 
 
 Looked at carelessly, a council of Indian chiefs, scantily clad, 
 
 ^ent-i-les the members of a gens or family group. A word to be distinguished from 
 Gentiles as used in the Bible.
 
 THE ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT WITH MAN. 
 
 57 
 
 with paint-daubed faces, armed with rude weapons and smoking 
 clumsy pipes, is of little importance except as a picturesqueness 
 of the past. Studied by the light of science, it is seen to be the 
 germ of the modern congress, and thus to have a bearing of great 
 importance on the history of mankind. 
 
 The first stage of tribal government was a council of chiefs 
 elected by the gentes and may be styled a one-power government; 
 not a one-man power, for that was to come later. 
 
 WIGWAM BUILDING AMONG THE IIJOQUOIS. 
 
 The second stage was a government divided, or balanced, be- 
 tween a council of chiefs, or sachems, and a general ; one repre- 
 senting the civil, and the other the military necessities of the 
 people. 
 
 The general, called War Chief among the Iroquois, Rex among 
 the Romans, and Basileus among the Greeks, was the germ, or 
 suggestion, of a chief executive magistrate, King, Emperor, or 
 President. This office was elective and not hereditary among the 
 Iroquois and other Indians, as likewise among the Romans, and 
 later light seems to show that the Spaniards, and the great 
 historian Prescott following their lead, were mistaken in thinking
 
 58 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 that among the Aztecs the office was hereditary. It is also 
 extremely doubtful whether among the Greeks of the traditionary 
 period, that is, those who figure as heroes in the world's 
 greatest poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, the office of king was 
 not elective, instead of hereditary, as most scholars have hitherto 
 assumed. 
 
 This double government of an elective council and elective 
 general, or two-power government, naturally unfolded into a third 
 stage : a tribal government, with a council of chiefs, a general 
 commander, and an assembly of the people, since the establishment 
 of tribes in walled cities, and the creation of wealth in lands, 
 flocks and herds and in private property necessitated a popular 
 assembly. 
 
 The council of chiefs, to retain their power, found it needful to 
 submit the most important measures to this popular assembly for 
 approval or the reverse. It does not appear that this assembly 
 originated measures, but was content to let the chiefs do their 
 thinking for them, retaining only the right of rejection or final 
 action. This was a creation then of a three-power government, 
 namely the preconsidering council, the popular assembly to sanc- 
 tion or reject the plans of their accepted thinkers, and the general 
 to carry them out, if called upon. 
 
 The Iroquois went one step further in the development of gov- 
 ernment than most of the Indians, for one of their wise men, 
 Ha-yo-went-ha, whom our poet Longfellow has celebrated as 
 Hiawatha, conceived the idea of uniting their different tribes and 
 some others into a confederacy with marked limitations of territory 
 which was almost an arrival at the conception of a nation. The 
 Iroquois tradition tells us that the council for this purpose met on 
 the north shore of the beautiful Onondaga Lake near the present 
 site of Syracuse, and that the organization was perfected. 
 
 The great Edinburgh scholar, Prof. John Stuart Blackie, 
 remarks that the American Indians and the Greeks of the Homeric 
 poems bear to each other in sentiment a wonderfully striking 
 resemblance. This is especially true as to the basis of government 
 indicated by their political or official titles. The Iroquois name 
 for a sachem (Ho-yar-na-go-war), which signifies " a counsellor of 
 the people," has its duplicate in many Greek names for military
 
 THE ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT WITH MAN. 
 
 59 
 
 leaders, which betokens that both barbaric governments were based 
 on the people (as is not the case to-day with the barbaric govern- 
 ments of Russia and of China) and were, indeed, a rude kind of 
 free democracy. 
 
 Since scientists are agreed that all men have developed in very 
 nearly similar ways, there is contained in this particular picture a 
 general one also of the way in which all races probably began, 
 by the slow adding of new features to the machinery of their 
 social system, to evolve the idea of government from the family. 
 What is averagely true of the American Indian applies roundly, 
 
 A SACHEM KENDEKINO JUDGMENT. 
 
 and the different kinds of government which we shall be led to 
 study further on, by means of brief historical illustrations, will be 
 seen to be growths upon this primal stock of democratical govern- 
 ment, excrescences caused either by the cleverness of priests, or 
 the ambition of individual chiefs, who, temporarily clothed with 
 power by the people, managed to perpetuate their power in them- 
 selves and their descendants. But these excrescences 1 on the fair 
 growth of the original democratic idea are gradually losing their 
 vitality and must before long drop away. 
 
 1 It is believed by some students of history that the people have sincerely developed the 
 monarchical form as preferable to the uncertainty, the fluctuant character, of an oligarchic or 
 democratic form. Possibly monarchy is part of a natural order, just as a disorder in child- 
 hood may be a safeguard against a more dangerous disease later a sort of unconscious 
 self-vaccination on the part of a people developing.
 
 60 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 We have now had a brief outline of the simplest form of tribal 
 government, a form adapted to meet only the needs of barbarians. 
 We shall see in a later chapter how perfect in its mechanism, 
 and how marvellous in its power has been, and still is, the theo- 
 cratic, or priestly government, which the great French scholar, 
 Fustel de Coulanges, seems to think was more strong in the begin- 
 ning of ancient society than to-day. For de Coulanges maintains 
 that among ancient races every family had a separate religion ; 
 that every hearth was the altar of a personal god, and that con- 
 sequently every attempt at closer association between different 
 families for the purpose, or towards the end, of establishing a 
 joint government was not merely colored, but controlled, by the 
 theocratic or priestly idea ; was dominated always by the shadow 
 of the unseen world. 
 
 It sometimes happens, however, that great scholars who adopt 
 certain ideas as general explanations of any problem are tempted 
 to twist even the simplest fact into an apparent substantiation of 
 their theories. For example, this great Frenchman just mentioned, 
 whose last book had the extraordinary honor of being crowned 
 three times by the French Academy, takes a very simple passage 
 from Homer's beautiful poem, " The Odyssey." Ulysses, when 
 offered countless treasures and immortality likewise, wishes instead 
 to see once more the flame of his own hearth-fire. The scholar, 
 often too eager to prove his case and so tempted into becoming 
 a special pleader, seems to see in this a proof of the worship of 
 home and the household fire-god rather than a simple, though 
 profound, idea put by the greatest of poets into the mouth of his 
 wisest character. 
 
 For should not the wise man's words really be taken as 
 merely an outburst of the charmingly simple and profoundly true 
 feeling that human affection outshines all treasures, and that to 
 see once again, after long separation, one's beloved wife and child 
 would be more to a man than immortality away from them ?
 
 II. 
 
 Sfe^fe 9$SEK 
 
 THE beginnings of human government, as of the human 
 family, if we accept the doctrine of Darwin, are 
 unquestionably found among the lower animals. But 
 whether we believe the Darwinian theory or not, which 
 the most eminent pathologist Virchow has recently declared to be 
 still far from final, we cannot reasonably refuse to admit that 
 " instinct," as a mysterious line of separation between man and 
 other animals, has been wiped out. The word, instinct, comes 
 from the Latin verb, instinguere, to excite or urge on, and by 
 logical necessity implies a conscious exciter behind the excitement 
 exhibited. Hence, very justly from this point of view, Csesalpinus, 
 an ancient author, remarks : " Deus est anima brutorum." " God 
 is the mind (or moving principle) of animals." 
 
 Most of the early philosophers, and especially the Christian 
 fathers (who were almost unanimous in regarding all animal 
 life as something necessarily coarse, gross and contemptible), 
 assumed that animals were mere automata. In the middle ages 
 those who sought an explanation for the manifold manifestations 
 of reason among the brutes were, however, slightly at variance in 
 their opinions, for some attributed such tokens to the all-powerful 
 and ever-ready devil ; while others referred them to the agency of 
 God, through the medium of instinct which was defined as a
 
 62 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 guiding, inborn, unchangeable and irresistible propensity, inde- 
 pendent of experience or training or heredity, and acting appro- 
 priately without consciousness of the object aimed at. 
 
 According to Descartes, the great French philosopher, the 
 feelings and emotions of animals are an empty show a welcome 
 bit of philosophy for animal tormentors. This extreme opinion, 
 coming from a man so famous, had a great vogue in its time, but 
 some voices here and there were lifted against it, and even the 
 Jesuit father, Bonjeant, who found so much intelligence in ani- 
 mals that he thought most of it must be due to the help of the 
 devil or devils, turned against Descartes with the words : " All 
 the Cartesians in the world will never persuade me that a dog is 
 a mere machine. Imagine a man who should love his clock as 
 he loves his dog, and who should pet it because he believed it 
 loved him and was of opinion that it struck the hours con- 
 sciously and out of friendship for him. Yet, if Descartes be right, 
 that is exactly the absurdity committed by all those who believe 
 that their dog is faithful to them and loves them. I see how my 
 dog runs to me when I call him, caresses me when I coax him, 
 trembles and runs away when I threaten him, obeys when I order 
 him, and how he exhibits all the outward signs of the distinct 
 emotions of joy, grief, pain, fear, desire, love and hate. And if 
 all the philosophers in the world should try to convince me, I 
 should never be able to persuade myself that an animal is a 
 machine." 
 
 But, in contradiction of the doctrine that animals are automatic, 
 it has long been recognized that the power and practice of organi- 
 zation among the lower animals include a series of phenomena 
 of the highest interest phenomena that involve the possession 
 and application of high mental and even moral faculties. For 
 instance, there are forms of government and respect for consti- 
 tuted authority. " If men," wrote the pagan Celsus in the second 
 century after Christ, " think themselves differentiated from ani- 
 mals, because they inhabit towns, make laws and set up govern- 
 ments, they prove themselves in error, for bees and ants do the 
 same." Celsus also noted that ants talk with each other when 
 they meet, and offered an opinion, which recent investigation has 
 confirmed, that they had regular burying-grounds.
 
 RUDIMENTS AMONG ANIMALS. 
 
 63 
 
 When an animal is very minute, people are apt to think its 
 organization must be very simple and its intelligence very small, 
 for the influence of the prejudice of mere size over the majority is 
 very great. The gigantic dimensions of a whale, or a reptile of 
 the fossil age, attract general attention, while equal attention is 
 not easily aroused by the most wonderful phenomena exhibited in 
 
 FROM A PICTURE BY SIR EDWIN LANDSEER. 
 
 the life of a flea or an ant. Yet the extraordinary capabilities of 
 an apparently lowly creature may yield to a philosopher the most 
 valuable results. 
 
 The cerebral ganglia of the ant which ganglia in invertebrate 
 animals take the place of the brain proper to the vertebrate are 
 no larger than a quarter of a pin's head. " Under this point of 
 view," as Darwin says, "the brain of the ant is one of the most 
 wonderful atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more so than 
 the brain of a man." And this fact shows that there may be
 
 64 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 marvellously great mentality in a marvellously small mass of 
 nervous matter. 
 
 Ants live in a republic, in the fullest sense of the word, that 
 is, in a state on the widest democratic foundations ; and is it not 
 significant that the most intelligent family among socially living 
 insects has made for itself a polity which is regarded among men 
 as the relatively best and most ideal, while a step lower, among 
 bees, there is a distinct inclination to the form of so-called consti- 
 tutional monarchy ? Among men, even among many college-bred 
 Americans, it is frequently said that while the republican form of 
 government, from a theoretical standpoint, best represents the 
 ideal of the state and the principles of justice, nevertheless, on 
 account of the ineradicable weakness of human nature, and the con- 
 sequent impossibility of self-government, it is not practically 
 realizable. 
 
 Were this true, ought we not to look up to and regard 
 with profound admiration the little ant-nation that lives at 
 our feet, since every tribe of those apparently petty creatures 
 finds itself intelligent and civilized enough to live easily and 
 happily under the principles of universal equality and liberty? 
 Shall we not have to revise Solomon's saying, " Go to the ant, 
 thou sluggard ! " somewhat after this fashion, " Go to the ant, 
 thou political economist, or college professor who inculcatest 
 monarchism " ? 
 
 But the ant republic has not merely political equality ; it has 
 gone a step further than that and evolved industrial equality. 
 It has developed from the social the socialistic republic, and 
 is indeed in all its industrial, though not in all its social features, 
 what our most idealistic politico-social reformers are wont to put 
 forward as the last and mightiest aim of human efforts after 
 governmental perfection ; the ideal of Plato, and Sir Thomas More, 
 of Edward Bellamy and a growing host of thinkers and 
 workers now in every place. The ant state is a " Proletariat 
 State " in the truest sense of the word, since only the wingless, 
 sexless worker-ants, which have no families of their own to look 
 after, take part in directing the business, while the winged males 
 and fertile females are kept as prisoners in the nest, and are fed 
 and nurtured for the sake of their progeny.
 
 THE POLICE OF THE ALPS.
 
 66 THK STO11Y OF GOVKi; X.M KNT. 
 
 The expression " sexless " is really not appropriate to the men, 
 or rather women-workers, for these are really undeveloped females, 
 so that the state is truly under a rule completely feminine. 
 Huber remarks that these are women whose moral qualities 
 have been developed at the cost of their physical, a thing which 
 ought not to happen among mankind, for the most perfect devel- 
 opment of a human being is that which is symmetrical. As Alcott 
 said, Friendship is globular, Love is spherical, and the loss or de- 
 pression of any element of God's creation is not a superior purity 
 but an imperfection. 
 
 The individual ant does not possess a family, for the principle 
 of public and state training of children such as the philosopher 
 Plato is known to have desired in his republic, and which would 
 be necessary in a fully organized " Proletariat State " is thor- 
 .oughly carried out in the ant republic. 
 
 There is one singular contradiction to the equality regnant 
 among ants and this is, that for an unknown length of time they 
 have had a politico-social institution which has played and still 
 plays a great part in the history of human nations and civilizations. 
 This institution, indeed, seems at first sight not to harmonize with 
 the otherwise social-democratic arrangements of the ant republic ; 
 but when we remember that slavery existed in the republics of 
 antiquity, and not only well agreed with the rest of the polity, 
 but was even an essential support of the same, we can scarcely 
 deny to the ant republic its democratic character on account of 
 slavery. And this the rather since slavery among ants is as mild, 
 if not milder, than it was in Greece, where freed slaves were often 
 known to rise to the highest offices and dignities of the State, 
 or even than in Rome, where Greek slaves were the tutors of the 
 young, and slavery, odious as it may be in and for itself, neverthe- 
 less apparently contributed to the general advance of civilization. 
 
 Besides, slavery among ants, in a very important point, is 
 far superior to that among men, and it may be said without 
 question that in this respect ants think and act more humanely 
 than men themselves. For instance, they never allow grown-up 
 members of their race, who have come to their full antly 
 consciousness, to be enslaved, whereas human slave-makers are 
 known never to have the smallest scruple on this head. For the
 
 KUDIMEXTS AMONG ANIMALS. 
 
 67 
 
 ant-kidnappers only steal larvte and pupte, which tliey bring up as 
 regular slaves within their dwellings, so that these last have never 
 tasted the sweetness of freedom. Only young ants, one or two 
 days old, recognizable by their clear color, which are not yet out 
 of their long clothes and do not yet know what is " manly or 
 womanly pride before the throne of a king," are seized and made 
 into slaves, and these accustom themselves quickly and easily to 
 their new position. 
 
 The slaves of the ants, moreover, do not seem to be conscious 
 of the loss, or rather of the absence of freedom, and, as a rule, 
 work willingly and uncompelled, in common with their masters 
 at all the tasks necessary for the maintenance of the colony, such 
 
 A VILLAGE OP BEAVERS. 
 
 as building the dwellings, searching for plant-lice, tendance and 
 feeding of larvae and pupse, and so on, and even fight against 
 members of their own species in company with their robber-lords. 
 They are regarded more as friends, brothers, or helpers than as 
 real slaves. They never think of escaping from slavery by flight, 
 although the naturalist, Forel, once observed a revolt among them. 
 This rule applies at least to the Swiss species observed by Huber, 
 while in the south of England colonies have been seen in which 
 the slaves never leave or venture to leave the nest, and are thus, 
 in the true sense of the word, domestic slaves. 
 
 Ants also show a strong resemblance to men in the development 
 of their character. Their great attachment and self-sacrifice for 
 the commonwealth and for each member of it are accompanied
 
 68 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 generally by a hasty temperament, a proneness to furious anger, 
 and an unquenchable hatred against all foreign or hostile colonies. 
 Therewith are blended industry, perseverance, and too often 
 cruelty. Gluttony also is one of their characteristics, and their 
 love for a good meal is so great that it is thus possible to restrain 
 their otherwise unconquerable desire to fight. Nothing is more 
 interesting than to watch this struggle of two passions. If honey, 
 of which ants are inordinately fond, and for which they will 
 generally leave all other food, be placed on a battlefield between 
 two contending parties, as for instance red and turf ants, some of 
 the warriors will be seen approaching and tasting it. They never 
 stay by it long, but quickly return to the fight. Sometimes these 
 same ants will turn back longingly twice or thrice. 
 
 Government among the Termites, who are wrongly named 
 ants, has some highly interesting points.- They belong to an 
 entirely different order of the Insecta, the Orthoptera, are related 
 most nearly to our Blattse or cockroaches, and are three or four 
 times as large as our black ants. Their polity seems to be almost 
 more developed than that of the ants, and their architectural talent 
 is also superior. They raise, in Africa at least, fine buildings of 
 from ten to twenty feet high, out of the earth, clay, pieces of 
 plants, stones, etc., fastening together these materials by a kind 
 of gummy saliva. 
 
 So firm does this make their towns, built in the shape of a cone 
 or of a large haycock, that several men can stand on their surface. 
 Antelopes and buffaloes are wont to use these giant ant-hills for 
 sentries or watchtovvers to look over the wide plains and guard 
 against the approach of enemies. They do not break through 
 even under the tread of an elephant or the weight of a heavily 
 laden wagon. In Senegal their size and number are often so large 
 that at a distance they frequently resemble human dwellings, the 
 similarly conical huts of the negro villagers, and travellers ;uv 
 sometimes thereby led in a wrong direction. Jobson, in his 
 " History of Gambia," says that many of these towns are twenty 
 feet high, and that he and his companions often hid behind them 
 when out hunting. 
 
 At first the buildings are only small, and resemble pyramids 
 scarcely a foot high. Gradually, as the population increases, new
 
 RUDIMENTS AMONG ANIMALS. 
 
 69 
 
 and similar hills rise up all around. The partition walls are then 
 broken through, the new dwellings are united to the old, a dome 
 is added, and a symmetrical roof is built over all. Thus a perfect 
 objectrlesson of mankind's greatest principle, co-operation, is con- 
 tinually repeated, until the mound of twelve or twenty feet high 
 is made. The outer covering consists of a firm-domed vaulted 
 layer of clay, which is exceedingly strong, so as to withstand in- 
 juries from weather, attacks of enemies, and other accidents. 
 
 NATIVES OF SOUTH AFRICA FIGHTING TERMITES. 
 
 The astonishment felt at the capabilities of these creatures who 
 are sometimes a scourge to the human inhabitants of the countries 
 where they live becomes even greater when we investigate the 
 interior of the hills that serve as their dwellings. These internal 
 arrangements are so various and so complicated that pages of des- 
 cription might be written about them. There are myriads of 
 rooms, cells, nurseries, provision chambers, guard-rooms, passages, 
 corridors, vaults, bridges, subterranean streets and canals, tunnels, 
 arched ways, steps, smooth inclines, domes, etc., etc., all arranged 
 on a definite, coherent, and well-considered plan. In the middle 
 of the building, sheltered as far as possible from outside dangers, 
 lies the stately royal dwelling, resembling an arched oven, in which
 
 70 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the royal pair reside, or rather are imprisoned, for the entrances 
 and outlets are so small that although the workers on service can 
 pass easily in and out, the queen cannot, for during the egg-laying 
 her body swells out to an enormous size, two or three thousand 
 times the size and weight of an ordinary worker. 
 
 The queen, therefore, never leaves her dwelling, and dies therein. 
 Round the palace, which is at first small, but is later enlarged in 
 proportion as the queen increases in size, until it is at last a yard 
 long and half a yard high, lie the nurseries or cells for the eggs 
 and larvie ; next these the servants' rooms or cells for the workers 
 who wait on the queen ; then special chambers for the soldiers on 
 guard, and be 1 1 ween these are numerous store-rooms, filled with 
 gums, resins, dried plant-juices, meal, seeds, fruits, worked-up wood, 
 etc. According to Bettziech-Beta, there is always in the midst 
 of the town a large common room, which is used either for 
 popular assemblies or as the meeting and starting point of the 
 countless passages a:id chambers of the town. Other naturalists 
 believe that this space serves for purposes of ventilation. 
 
 It is by no means easy to investigate accurately the interior 
 of a Termite town, owing to the interdependence of the several 
 parts the destruction of one room, arch, or passage causing tin- 
 breaking down of many, and in addition to this the energetic resist- 
 ance of the Termite soldiers, armed with very sharp and strong 
 mandibles, puts great obstacles in the way of the observer. " They 
 fight," says the English traveller Smeathman, to whom we owe the 
 fullest information about these creatures, " they fight to the last 
 man, and they defend so energetically every inch of their property 
 that they often drive away the unshod negroes, while the blood of 
 the European runs through his stockings. We were never able to 
 study the interior of a nest in peace; for while the soldiers 
 attacked us, the workers stopped up as quickly as possible the 
 rooms and passages laid open." They do this especially in the 
 neighborhood of the royal dwelling, for \vhich they show the great- 
 est care, and that so cleverly that from the outside it only looks 
 like a formless heap of clay and cannot be distinguished from its 
 surroundings. Nevertheless, it is not hard to find, partly from its 
 situation in the midst of the building, and partly because it is sur- 
 rounded by great crowds of workers and soldiers, willing to risk
 
 KUDIMENTS AMONG ANIMALS. 
 
 71 
 
 their lives in its defence. The interior also, besides containing the 
 
 O 
 
 royal pair, is found filled with hundreds' of the workers serving the 
 latter. These faithful servants do not desert their sovereigns even 
 in utmost need and peril. " For when I," says Smeathman, " took 
 out such a royal dwelling and kept it in a large glass vessel, all of 
 the servants busied themselves with the greatest care about their 
 sovereigns, and I saw some of them engaged about the head of 
 the queen, as though they were giving her something. Then they 
 
 HIVING A UEK-CLOUI). 
 
 took away from her abdomen the eggs laid by her, and carried them 
 carefully into some unbroken parts of the building, or hid them 
 between scraps of clay as well as they could." 
 
 The Termites shun the light of day ; " having light, they prefer 
 darkness rather." This is also shown to some extent in their state 
 polity, which, as already said, otherwise ranch resembles the Ant 
 Republic, except that it favors the monarchical idea by possessing
 
 72 THE STORY OF GOVKKNMKNT. 
 
 a standing army and having generally only one queen. By this 
 possession of a standing army the Termites' state is rendered 
 more monarchical even than the famous Bee polity, so often re- 
 garded as the prototype of a monarchy, or the rule of one indi- 
 vidual. The Bee government, indeed, generally has only one 
 queen, but instead of a standing army it carries out to the fullest 
 extent the purely republican or democratic principle of universal 
 national arm-bearing in a fashion that leaves far behind it all 
 human arrangements. 
 
 Yet not in this alone, but in all its affairs, the Bee state must be 
 characterized as a monarchy with very democratic institutions. It 
 may, indeed, be called a communistic or social-democratical mon- 
 archy such as Napoleon III. for a time;, while coquetting 
 with the working-classes, appears to have had the notion of intro- 
 ducing in France. It may also be called an elective monarchy, for 
 no direct hereditary line is followed, but the queen is in each case 
 chosen by the workers, and selected or rejected as they please. 
 The queen in return relies wholly upon the workers, or the neuter 
 working bees, who, by the possession of their terrible poisoned sting, 
 unite in their own persons the functions of workers and soldiers. 
 The privileged condition of the non-working, pleasure-loving males, 
 or drones, is only suffered by the workers just so long as their 
 services are thought necessary. 
 
 On the other hand, the monarchical principle is very plainly 
 manifested in the fact that the whole life of the hive revolves 
 more or less round the queen ; where she is wanting, dies, or is 
 not succeeded by another, the hive falls into disorder, and in a 
 longer or shorter time infallibly perishes. Single members of the 
 hive, if they scatter, either die or become useless, lazy vagabonds 
 and mischievous highwaymen. The monarchical principle of the 
 Bee nation is still more strikingly manifested in comparison with 
 the other social insects, in that only one ruler or queen is permit- 
 ted, and that where several accidentally come together the super- 
 fluous ones are either killed or are compelled to go out and found 
 new colonies. 
 
 Nevertheless an old and abdicated queen, no longer able to lay 
 any fertilized eggs, is out of mercy sometimes suffered to remain 
 for a while in the hive near her successor, and receive some
 
 74 THK STORY OF (JOVEKNMKNT. 
 
 measure of the bread of charity. Pfarrer Calminius observed a 
 case in which two queens lived peaceably and well tended near 
 each other on t\v<> tables hanging side by side. Bnt these are rare 
 exceptions. The workers generally sting the old useless queens 
 unmercifully to death, or suffocate them by surrounding them 
 closely on all sides. Sometimes they are merely driven out of the 
 hive and left to perish. 
 
 The wonderful observation has been made that a queen who, 
 through age or some other weakening circumstances, becomes con- 
 scious of her exhaustion, and has communicated this consciousness 
 to her people, provides in common with them for the safe succession 
 to the throne, and soon as this is done gives back the throne and 
 sceptre into the hands of the people, that is, either voluntarily 
 leaves the hive in order to die outside, or is killed by the bees and 
 thrown out. 
 
 As a matter of fact there is no small resemblance between the 
 bee system and that of constitutional monarchy in so far as the 
 bees appear to lay no stress on the person of their queen, and are 
 perfectly contented so long as they have one, that is, some one 
 capable of discharging the royal or rather maternal duties. They 
 change the sovereignty as a rule easily and quickly, and thoroughly 
 practise the well-known maxim of constitutional royalty : " Le roi 
 est mart vive le roi" (The king is dead long live the king!) 
 A hive robbed of its queen either does homage to a fresh queen 
 introduced into it just as her predecessor, or brings up a sovereign 
 by its own efforts ; while a hive long left queenless falls into sloth 
 and riot, and sooner or later perishes. 
 
 The queen, since all revolves round her, is the necessary centre 
 and bond of the hive, but without herself taking any personal part 
 in the business and proceedings. She therefore, in reality, exactly 
 answers to the foundation-stone of constitutionalism, and is what 
 Napoleon I. declared he would not be, in reply to the famous 
 constitutional reproach of Sieyes : " The prize-pig of the nation." 
 She is indeed widely and honorably different from her human 
 antitype in that she is not simply "representative," giving to high 
 and low merely an empty show, but really discharges actual and 
 essential duties, without which nothing could exist. 
 
 Apart from this, the queen in the simplicity and uniformity of
 
 KUDIMENTS AMONG ANIMALS. 75 
 
 her work, and in the half, though respectful, imprisonment in 
 which she is kept, is a complete contrast to her intellectually and 
 physically developed and active subjects, so that here, as so often 
 among men, it might seem fair to say that stupidity or narrowness, 
 or perhaps only mediocrity, rules over reason. 
 
 In any case this sovereignty is much restricted by the subjects 
 who, indeed, seem to indemnify themselves for the compulsory 
 endurance of a monarchical head by observing otherwise the 
 maxims of the most extreme democracy, of the widest Socialism 
 and Communism. For among bees one is as good as another and 
 the beautiful principle is unconditionally obeyed : "Each for all 
 all for each." They have no private property, no family, no 
 private dwelling, but hang in thick clumps within the common 
 room in the narrow space between the combs, taking turns for 
 brief nightly repose. The building, cleansing, and working are 
 also carried on partially through the night. All stores are com- 
 mon ; there is only the state magazine, and all are fed from this 
 Avithout distinction of person. If want and hunger enter, all die 
 alike. The queen here is an exception and has the privilege of 
 dying last. The bees are, however, egotists in such times of need, 
 and in threatening famine from continued bad weather, throw the 
 larv;e, the drone larvee first, out of the cells. This also happens 
 likeAvise, Avhen lack of place for storing provisions occurs, OAving 
 to very successful foraging. The larva are then throAvn out, or 
 the nursing narrowed down to the uttermost. 
 
 In the matter of labor the bees have realized the highest ideal 
 of Communism, for it is perfectly free, voluntary, and uncompul- 
 sory. Eacli does as much or as little as seems to it good; but 
 there; are no sluggards among them, for the universal example acts 
 as an incitement ; and in a society wherein all Avork, idleness is 
 really an unthinkable and impossible thing. Whereas, on the 
 contrary, in the much-praised opposite condition of human society 
 the idleness of the few is not only favored but seems to be abso- 
 lutely unavoidable. 
 
 Truly, in a communistic form of society the individual must 
 have the consciousness, as among the bees, that, in so far as he is a 
 member of the whole, he is not Avorking for others but for the 
 common good and therewith for himself. This consciousness
 
 76 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 makes the bees such busy and eager workers that many of them 
 work themselves to death in a few weeks during the foraging 
 season, whereas working bees usually reach an age of nine or ten 
 months, so that the great Roman poet, Virgil, whose genius threw 
 light on the commonest human labors, wrote truly : 
 
 " Ofttimes in a mistaken flight they tear 
 Their wings, and even generously die 
 Before they drop the precious load, so high 
 The fame of getting honey, and so strong 
 The love they feel for flowers." 
 
 The " instinct " philosophers will probably say that this work- 
 ing themselves to death in behalf of the community is only the 
 result of an inborn, irresistible, heaven-implanted tendency in the 
 little bee mind from which the insect cannot voluntarily free 
 itself, and that we therefore cannot here speak either of merit or 
 design. But in the first place is it believable that " instinct " 
 should impel an animal to do that which will finally lead to its 
 destruction ? Secondly that opinion does not agree with, the 
 already often mentioned experience that the inhabitants of a 
 queenless hive, which in losing their queen have lost the object of 
 their society, cease to work and fall into idleness and riot. 
 
 Now the same form of government which by one naturalist is 
 termed a monarchy, with a king or queen at its head, is by another 
 described as a republic, with a male or female president. But the 
 essential feature one of importance in many ways is the 
 government of a community or society, of a band or troop, 
 flock or herd, family or other group of individuals, species or 
 genera, large or small, by a leader or chief. 
 
 The consideration of this embraces the following features of 
 interest : 1. The principle of selection and election or appoint- 
 ment. 2. Competition and ambition for rule and their results. 
 3. The subjection of the weak to the strong in body, mind and 
 will. 4. The use and abuse of authority, including the poAver 
 of command. 5. The appreciation of insignia of office or status. 
 6. The value attached to the possession of power and place. 
 
 In various forms leaders, governors, chiefs, commanders, pa- 
 triarchs, masters, rulers, or heads, are to be found in many social 
 animals, directing and defending the groups into which they are
 
 A CITY OP SEA-BIRDS.
 
 78 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 divided. They occur, for instance, among wild, militaiy, and 
 pack horses, Eskimo dog teams, or dogs in Turkish towns, 
 beavers who build villages, camels, deer, oxen, mules, seals who 
 hold conventions, buffaloes, kangaroos, goats, among certain sea- 
 birds which appear to live in regular cities and certain of the 
 quadrumana (such as the siamang gorilla, spider, howling, araguata, 
 guereza, and other monkeys), cranes, swallows, wild geese, cocks 
 and hens. 
 
 These leaders are, as a general rule, males of middle age, some- 
 times elderly or old, and possessing as qualifications for ofh'ce : - 
 
 1. Physical superiority ; being frequently above the average in 
 size and strength, or at least so robust and active that they have 
 proved themselves successful in combat and otherwise. 
 
 2. Mental superiority. They are distinguished, moreover, for 
 their courage, cautiousness, sagacity, power of command, ability 
 to act in emergency, so as to protect, defend, or direct their fol- 
 lowers ; for their experience ; special knowledge of enemies or 
 of ground ; power of self-control, especially control of temper ; 
 interest in the common weal ; enterprise ; ingenuity and perse- 
 verance in the overcoming of difficulties in other words, adapt- 
 iveness. Their superiority must be twofold, physical and mental; 
 for a merely huge, strong animal, without the requisite intelligence 
 to adapt its strength to circumstances, would be useless as a leader. 
 
 Generally speaking, leaders are of the same species as the ani- 
 mals they command; belong, perhaps, to the same small family or 
 group, as in the case of certain patriarchs or mere heads of fam- 
 ilies or tribes. But in other cases the chief belongs to a different 
 species or genus. Tims the axis deer, as depicted on the opposite 
 page, sometimes leads "mobs" of kangaroos in Australia. The 
 donkey in the district of Smyrna, in Broussa, and the Asiatic 
 Olympus in Anatolia, and other parts of Asia Minor, is frequently 
 employed as leader of a caravan of camels ; for contrary to the 
 prejudices of the West, in Oriental lands " Long Ears " enjoys the 
 reputation of being. the most intelligent of hoofed beasts. Mares 
 are employed as leaders of droves of mules in Central America, 
 the latter animals having a high respect for and pride in the 
 horse as a " distinguished relative," and thus willingly accepting 
 a mare as their queen.
 
 KANGAROOS I>ED BY AN AXIS UEER.
 
 80 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Man himself frequently becomes the leader of his flocks or his 
 herds, as in the case of shepherds of the East, who literally 
 " lead," do not drive, as ours do, their flocks. Man is recognized 
 literally and figuratively as its " governor " by the dog ; his right 
 to command is freely acknowledged, and the propriety of his 
 orders or actions, as a rule, not disputed. Here it should be 
 noted that in this case it sometimes, at least, happens that man 
 gains and wields his wonderful power over other animals by the 
 exercise of kindness, not of terrorism ; by the supremacy of love, 
 not of fear; by the greatest of all forces, a patient gentleness. 
 Thus the command of the shepherd over his sheep in primitive 
 countries, where the use of the sheep-dog is unknown for 
 instance, in Palestine is acquired by his constant association 
 with his sheep, by his habitual kindly usage, whereby confidence 
 in, and attachment to, his person or personality are produced. 
 King Theodore of Abyssinia with his pet lions was an excellent 
 example of what a King can accomplish by gentleness instead 
 of cruelty. 
 
 The principle of appointment in the case of all kinds of animal 
 leaders is that the strongest, boldest, best in every way, should be 
 called to the front and invested with supreme power ; and this 
 principle actuates man equally with other animals in the selection 
 of an animal chief for his flocks or herds. Man chooses and 
 installs a leading mule, horse, dog, or ram on the very same prin- 
 ciple that makes a flock or herd acquiesce in the self-appointment 
 of some victorious young male. In human emergency of a serious 
 kind, and on a large and public scale, how frequently it happens 
 that some man of marked individuality, but previously unknown, 
 comes to the front as a volunteer leader, no one knows how, and 
 his supremacy is at once, by tacit consent, acknowledged. Average 
 people feel that he is the ' right man for the right place." He 
 has the requisite force of character and the ability to command 
 universal confidence. Universal confidence is forthwith accorded 
 for the time. 
 
 The man of the time, however, is as liable to be discarded by a 
 fickle populace as the proud and splendid stallion, when he begins 
 to lose that most indefinable of all qualities, popularity. So in 
 animal panics, for instance, some previously unobserved or undis-
 
 
 s ' ' * 
 
 THE CAGE. 
 
 80a
 
 RUDIMENTS AMONG ANIMALS. 
 
 81 
 
 tinguished individual starts, literally, in this case, to the front, and 
 is followed, for weal or woe, by the rest of a troop, herd or flock. 
 There is ample evidence to show that self-appointment to the 
 leadership is common among social animals ; that the ambition of 
 
 A PRAIRIE DOG TOWN. 
 
 some young, energetic, vigorous male urges it to challenge and 
 defeat the reigning chief, a defeat that is equivalent to the com- 
 pulsory deposition of the one and the self-instalment of the other. 
 This new appointment, however, is, under the circumstances,
 
 82 THE STOltV OF COVKI; N M KNT. 
 
 ratified by the general assent, so that, in one sense, it may be 
 deemed a unanimous election. There is a practical and tacit 
 acknowledgment of the fitness of things, the excitement being 
 confined mainly to the combatants themselves, though the specta- 
 tors, no doubt, look on with a varying degree of interest. 
 
 There is, however, a strong probability, although no direct 
 evidence, that, in eases where no such candidate presents himself 
 and takes the law of competition and succession into his own hands, 
 selection is made by universal suffrage by pushing into a posi- 
 tion of command that individual among them best qualified to 
 exercise the supreme power. There is very distinct appointment, 
 certainly, and by a kind of universal suffrage, in the street-dog 
 republics of Constantinople, for they sometimes select as their 
 leader some animal belonging to a different quarter of the town 
 -from among their natural enemies, therefore the motive of 
 such choice being signal bravery displayed by the favored individ- 
 ual, either in attack or defence. 
 
 The usual function of animal leaders seems to be that of a pro- 
 tector, to direct measures of defence in assault, of extrication 
 or escape in danger. But there are other cases in which their 
 duties are rather those of regulators of the civil, social, or domes- 
 tic economy of the communities over which they preside. Thus 
 Houzeau describes mayors of towns or villages among prairie dogs 
 mayors who grant audiences, receive visits as to administrative 
 affairs, in short, discharge and regulate public business and he 
 tells us, moreover, that these governors or presidents of commu- 
 nities, occasionally, at least, excel their fellows in size and strength, 
 as well a-i in force of character. In the case of animal leaders of 
 all kinds there is a distinct specialization of duty, work, or busi- 
 ness, a very decided division of labor. But this division of labor 
 occurs among the lower animals in a great many other even more 
 familiar forms. Thus it is illustrated in the appointment from 
 among members of a community of 
 
 1. Sentinels, sentries, videttes, outposts, patrols, guards, or 
 watchmen of all kinds. 
 
 2. Soldiers, laborers, artisans, nurses, or foragers. 
 
 3. Different ranks of officers among their soldiers, including 
 generals, aides-de-camp and adjutants.
 
 84 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 4. Delegates, ambassadors, or other forms of representatives 
 or reporters, spies, scouts, commissioners, pioneers. 
 
 5. Officers of justice including executioners, advocates, 
 judges, and jury. 
 
 6. Royal personages, with their officers or courtiers, body-guard, 
 and other attendants. 
 
 7. As well as in the relative duties or occupations of male and 
 female parents, and 
 
 8. In the appropriate and harmonious playing of its part by 
 each individual of the group. 
 
 Such appointments imply, in certain cases, at least, the assigna- 
 tion of a special duty to each of a group of animals, there being 
 evidence further that there is frequently an adaptation of the 
 special work to be performed to the special ability of a given indi- 
 vidual to perform it. 
 
 Sentinels or guards are regularly posted at appropriate times 
 and places by a large number of animals, such as the prairie dog, 
 wild horse, swan, cockatoo of Australia, rooks, and many other birds, 
 zebra, moufflon, and other sheep, Alpine marmot, certain monkeys, 
 Greenland and other seals, wild African cattle, chamois and other 
 antelopes, Texan and other ants, and certain wasps. 
 
 These guardians of the public safety are appointed usually for 
 some of the following reasons, or under some of the following 
 circumstances : 
 
 At night, or during the sleep of the flock or herd, to guard 
 against surprise. During feeding, rest on a march, or pastimes. 
 In war, on the march or halt, in camp or bivouac here also to 
 prevent surprise. 
 
 In connection with the appointment of sentinels the following 
 points have to be noticed: that, as in the case of leaders, the 
 animals selected are almost invariably males : that every advan- 
 tage is taken of elevated ground commanding a view on all sides : 
 that the animal appointed is implicitly trusted by the rest, has 
 a specific duty to discharge, and performs it conscientiously. 
 Must there not, therefore, be an appreciation of the different 
 kinds of danger, as well as an idea of duty in relation to that danger? 
 
 Certain African antelopes place sentries generally bulls - 
 while they are grazing, and these sentries take up their posts on
 
 KUDIMENTS AMONG ANIMALS. 
 
 85 
 
 the summits of the huge ant-hills which we mentioned before and 
 which form the only heights in certain parts of the plains of the 
 Nile. The occupancy of such watch-towers is, however, unfor- 
 tunate for themselves in presence of the sportsman to whom they 
 thus readily become a shining mark. 
 
 Thus, in a great variety of ways many of the lower animals rec- 
 ognize and act upon the principle that union is strength. They 
 
 THE WILD IIORSK. 
 
 form combinations, associations, or alliances, temporary or per- 
 manent, for a great number of very specific purposes. They co- 
 operate willingly, intelligently and successfully, not only with 
 each other, but with man. One of the most obvious effects of 
 such union, indeed even of the simplest form of union, that of 
 marriage, is the inspiration of courage and confidence, the ability 
 to dare and do, in behalf of themselves or their young, things that 
 they would never attempt in their individual capacities. Even
 
 86 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 timid sheep, in combination under a leader, do boldly what they 
 would never do, individually face a dog, for instance, or have even 
 been known to chase it ignominiously from a pasture. The meek cow 
 and many gentle peace-loving birds are capable of similar feats 
 of courage under similar circumstances. 
 
 Various baboons and other apes, spider and other monkeys 
 apply the principle of co-operation very actively and picturesquely 
 by making chains, suspension bridges, and ladders of their o\\n 
 bodies, joining hands or clinging to each other by various concat- 
 enations of paws and tails, and use such living bridges to cross 
 rivers. Virtually the same thing mechanically, and a greater thing 
 morally, is done by ants, for on bridges composed of the bodies of 
 the latter, voluntarily sacrificed for the purpose, whole armies of 
 their fellows sometimes cross rivers or streams. 
 
 Co-operation on a large scale on the part of large numbers of 
 individuals, whether of the same or of different species and 
 genera, includes the convention, at special times and places, of 
 convocations, conferences, congregations, or assemblies for the fol- 
 lowing or other specific ends : 1. Judicial - for the trial and 
 punishment of the offenders. 2. Military for the holding of 
 councils of war. 3. Recreational for the celebration of 
 pastimes, sports, or games of various times. 4. Migrations! 
 for conference as to the time and manner of migration. 5. Defen- 
 sive for mutual protection, security, or safety. 6. Industrial 
 
 for the repair of damage to public property. 7. Marauding 
 
 for the acquisition of plunder or booty. 8. Food-seeking or 
 foraging. 9. Emigration and colonization. 10. Nuptial - 
 for courtship and marriage. 11. Hibernation. 12. The rescue 
 of their fellows from captivity or danger. 
 
 One of the evidences commonly adduced of the reign of law 
 among the lower animals, as in man, is the fact that certain birds. 
 have what are, or what appear to be, regular judicial proceedings, 
 regular trials by judge and before jury of culprits against law. 
 
 A trial among rooks in England has been thus described by an 
 eyewitness. In the middle of the assemblage in one case " was 
 one bird looking very downcast and wretched. Two more rooks 
 took their place at its side, and then a vast amount of chattering 
 went on. Ultimately, the unfortunate central bird was pecked
 
 88 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 nearly to pieces and left mangled and helpless on the ground." 
 In such a case, we are led to infer, though our conclusions may be 
 erroneous, that the spectacle was that of an accused, convicted, 
 condemned criminal, official accusers, and the summary execu- 
 tion of a judicial sentence. 
 
 The stork, too, is represented by the naturalist Watson as 
 having, or holding, trial by jury, public conventions at which 
 harangues or speeches are delivered, accusations made, defences 
 offered, by public orators and other officials, while the mass of the 
 audience takes a lively interest in the proceedings. Consulta- 
 tions are held, sentence is pronounced, and capital punishment 
 inflicted for such supposed crimes, for instance, as the hatching 
 of a gosling instead of a stork, which, of course, would be a 
 shock to public sentiment in storkdom. The sparrow is another 
 bird that administers public punishment to offenders, after holding 
 general councils the proceedings of which are marked by much 
 agitation, tumult and clamor ; and the public trial of a prisoner 
 before a court by the aid of advocates has also been mentioned as 
 occurring among Barbary apes. 
 
 From all of which evidences of law and order, of family and 
 government among the lower animals, is it not clear that the 
 higher animal might take a few lessons, if the humility and 
 docility of Science could become attributes of the mass or could be 
 the guiding principles of politicians or statesmen ? For, indeed, 
 
 " If earnest lives in search of truth are noble, 
 If sacrifice of self to swell the sum 
 Of human knowledge and cooperant good 
 Are very noble, Science can compare 
 Her warriors, workers, martyrs, with Religion's. 
 Yet Science has no pride, becaxise no fear. 
 She stoops to learn as woman yields to love, 
 Instinctive that the action of surrender 
 Will crown her empress of a nobler realm."
 
 III. 
 
 Traces Vn?or>g Qypsies, 
 
 Brigands ar)d Thieves. 
 
 IN singular contrast with the order!}' animals described in 
 the preceding chapter are the people usually called Gypsies, 
 who appear to be not only opposed to any idea of order 
 or authority from outside, but to have among themselves 
 at the present day very little government discoverable by students 
 of their habits. We need not go far in search of these Asiatic 
 wanderers. They are found in almost every European coun- 
 try, and of late are frequently seen in the United States and 
 Australia. 
 
 Wherever sighted, they are never to be mistaken. The most 
 untravelled rustic instinctively knows that the dark-skinned, 
 black-haired, snaky-eyed, lithe vagabond whom he sees in front 
 of a ragged tent on a common, or who camps by the roadside 
 to boil a kettle, which it is probable contains no poultry of his 
 own raising, is not a child of the land in which he seems so 
 much at home. 
 
 Once seen, a typical wandering gypsy is as marked a person- 
 ality in the memory as a Jew of the purer caste, or a member of 
 any other nationality which has preserved itself as a distinct 
 element in the surrounding population. His brown skin stamps 
 him as none of us, while his dark, glittering, serpent-like eye 
 instinctively recalls some of the faces one meets on the London 
 Docks, when a steamer from India has arrived. The small hands
 
 90 
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 and feet seem out of keeping with the finely proportioned, sinewy 
 figures to which they are attached, while the aquiline nose, 
 pearly, regular teeth, high cheek-bones, strongly marked brow, 
 often knit as if in thought, and general air of secretiveness, 
 are features of gypsy physiognomy that strike the least observant. 
 As a rule, the gypsies are not a tall race, though men and women 
 of uncommon stature are sometimes met. The young female 
 gypsy has quite often the distinction of a beauty singularly fine. 
 
 But the beauty is short- 
 lived. Like all Orien- 
 tals, they soon fade ; and 
 grow old, so far as the 
 face is concerned, when a 
 Northern woman is in 
 her prime. The hard 
 work, the squalor of 
 their habits, their expos- 
 ure to all weathers, and 
 their unsettled, precari- 
 ous in brief, " gypsy " 
 - life, help to age them 
 before years ought to tell 
 OIL a healthy person. A 
 remarkable revenge which 
 Nature takes for her lav- 
 ishness at the outset is 
 the supernatural hideous- 
 ness which she often 
 
 bestows on the withered gypsy crone at a period when her civilized 
 sister is mellowing into the comeliness of ripe matronhood, or 
 even near the fated threescore and ten. Still, after all to the 
 contrary, the gypsy mast indubitably bear the palm for a species 
 of wild beauty, which is admirably set off by his often romantic 
 surroundings his Tartar-like encampment, his stick fire and 
 ragged tent which looks so well at a distance, and the showy 
 colors in which, like his kindred on the other side of the Hima- 
 layas, he takes so inordinate a delight. 
 
 Here, then, is a people known to Europeans for at least 
 
 A GYPSY
 
 KOI MAMA.V (iVI'SlKS 1JKGG1NO. 
 
 Ill
 
 92 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 eight centuries, yet who have managed to conceal many of 
 their ways and modes of life from the inquisitive scrutiny of the 
 hundreds who have made these aspects of their cult a part of their 
 life's study 1 , who are to this day the pariahs they were in their 
 earliest homes, who have in their roamings picked up scraps of 
 tin- language, religion, and civilization of the countries they 
 have passed through, but yet speak a tongue unintelligible to the 
 "whites " around them, who with a few exceptions are vagabonds 
 on the face of the earth, despising a fixed life, a rooftree, or any 
 of the ordinary restraints of well-ordered society. 
 
 When they first came under the notice of civilized people they 
 were for some careless cause decided to be Egyptians, and as 
 such were described by the earliest writers, and this name, under 
 various forms, exists in our word, gypsy, and in the designations 
 attached to them by many other nations. As for themselves, they 
 either knew nothing about their origin, or were sharp enough to 
 chime in with the current fancy by styling themselves " Dukes of 
 Little Egypt," as did a horde who appeared in 1418 at Zurich, 
 assuming the rank of knights, and, among other "marks of 
 nobility," carrying with them sporting dogs and a good supply 
 of money. 
 
 The first notice of them which we possess, written about the 
 year 1122, characterizes them as " Ishmaelites 2 who go peddling 
 through the wide world, having neither house nor home, cheating 
 the people with their tricks," a description which might be fairly 
 enough applied to their descendants who are at present squatted 
 under many a hedge. 
 
 At first these wanderers were received with great hospitality, 
 their supposed origin and misfortunes obtaining for them an 
 amount of sympathy of which their own roguery, rather than any 
 knowledge of the actual state of matters, very soon deprived 
 
 1 More than three hundred separate works have heen written on the gypsies. Some of 
 this literature is of little importance; but anyone who imagines that the gypsies can be 
 exhausted in a few pages had better consult Potts' stupendous " Die Zigeuner in Europa 
 und Asien," or Liebich's " Die Zigeuner in ihreiu Wesen und inner Sprache." 
 
 2 The Gitani or Zincali of Spain, the Jevk of Albania, the Zingani of Italy, the Pharo 
 nepek (Pharaoh's people) of Hungary, the Tartare of Scandinavia, the Bolu>miens of France, 
 the Zigeuner of Germany, the Tinkler (or Tinker) of Scotland, the Fiiriiwni (Phoraoites) of 
 Turkey, the Cingan of Slavonia, the Cigany of Roumania, the Guphtor of Greece, the Hey- 
 dens (Heathens) of Holland, and so forth. They call themselves Horn, that is, Men, people, 
 and their language, Rommm The plural of Horn is Ronui, the feminine Romni.
 
 TRACES AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 93 
 
 them. They were so they said, or some one having said it for 
 them, they echoed the agreeable fiction Egyptians, four thou- 
 sand of whom, in passing through Hungary, had been compelled 
 by the sovereign of that country to be baptized, and were con- 
 demned to seven years' wanderings, while the remainder of the 
 travellers had been slain. Another story was that they were 
 Egyptians, who, having been subdued by the Saracens, Avere 
 forced to renounce Christianity; but having been reconquered 
 by the Christians, they were doomed by Pope Martin V. to a 
 penance, which consisted of wandering for the space of seven 
 years, by which time their renunciation of the faith having been 
 atoned, they would be sent into a fine and fertile land. 
 
 A third version of the cause of this vagabondage was, that 
 they had been sentenced to roam the world for their want of 
 hospitality to Joseph and Mary, when to save the young child, who 
 was to save the world, this pair fled into Egypt. If we are to credit 
 the historians of the period, these "Egyptians" travelled in great 
 state, headed by " Counts " splendidly dressed, and under the com- 
 mand of a "Duke," who bore letters of safe conduct from the 
 Emperor Sigismund. The men were on foot, and the women and 
 children brought up the rear in wagons, while the "nobles" rode 
 on horses with dogs which apparently were trained to trespass on 
 game preserves. They camped outside the walls of towns during 
 the night and thieved during the day, the consequence being that 
 several were taken and slain. It would appear that then, as now, 
 they were fond of tickling the fancy of their dupes by assuming- 
 grandiose titles king, duke, earl, and count. But, except that 
 some powerful or wealthy individual managed to gain temporary 
 or permanent control over the band with which he travelled, it is 
 more than doubtful whether the gypsies have, or ever had, any 
 official in the remotest way deserving these distinctions. 
 
 In the newspapers J we occasionally hear of the death of a gypsy 
 "King" or "Queen," and of his or her burial with pompous 
 obsequies. The people themselves very naturally like to mystify the 
 public by keeping up the belief in such dignitaries, and possibly 
 
 1 Fur instance, this recent despatch to the Boston Herald: 
 
 KI.I/.AHETH. X. J., April 14, 1892. The body of Annie Lovell, the Gypsy Queen, who died 
 in St. Louis on Monday, will l>e buried in the same grave in Mr. Olivet cemetery, in this city, 
 in which her grandmother, a former queen, was buried. The Gypsies have a plot and unpoi- 
 i rig monument.
 
 94 TIIK STORY' OK COVKKNMKNT. 
 
 having 1 so often lu-unl them designated by royal titles, adopt 
 the 'name and idea. Except, however, in the limited sense men- 
 tioned, there is no ground for the popular belief, though certain 
 families, like the Faas and Blyths in Scotland, and the Stanleys 
 and Hernes in England, having always been regarded as aristo- 
 crats among them, have sometimes been elected to a position of 
 authority, and have even received a kind of hereditarv respect, 
 due to some traditional story that certain sovereigns had recog- 
 nized one of their ancestors as a brother monarch. James IV. 
 of Scotland gave, in 1550, "Anthonius Gagino, Count of Little 
 Egypt," a letter of recommendation to Christian III. of Den- 
 mark, while James V. granted a writ giving "oure louit Johnne 
 Faw, lord and erle of Litill Egipt" authority to hang and other- 
 wise discipline "all Egyptians" within the realm. 1 This, how- 
 ever, simply means that the Scottish king, like so many other 
 people, had been deceived regarding the origin and status of the 
 vagabonds whom he thus recognized, though it is by no means 
 proved that any corresponding dignities were known before he 
 thus conferred on the leading men these sweeping powers. 
 
 At first, "the Egyptians " were well received, as the facts men- 
 tioned clearly show; but their popularity was naturally brief. 
 Within a year of James V. making "Johnne Faw" and his son 
 and successor reges in regno, an act of the Scottish Parliament 
 was passed, commanding him and his tribesmen to pass "furth 
 the realm," under pain of death. Already, indeed, Germany, 
 Spain, France, England, Denmark and Moravia, had found it 
 necessary to take similarly drastic measures, and before long a 
 perfect hue and cry was raised all over Europe against the " un- 
 baptized heathens," who had so recently been gulling the simple- 
 minded Westerns with the fables about Joseph and Mary and the 
 Saracens. 
 
 The glitter of the romance with which they had been early 
 invested was rapidly rubbed off, after the lords and counts of 
 Little Egypt had been convicted of harrying a succession of hen- 
 roosts, and it was hard to preserve confidence in the penitence of 
 a people who had no external symbols of any religion, and lived 
 
 i In Malinesbury Abbey side by side with Athelstan lies the body of a Gypsy, "King 
 John Buclle," said to nave been laid there i;i 1G"<7.
 
 96 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 a life about as bereft of morality as it was deficient in that virtue 
 Avhich then, perhaps, less than now, was rated next to godliness. 
 Worst of all, " the Egyptians " were discovered to have none of 
 the wealth which at first they were supposed to own, and were there- 
 fore a people who could neither be "squeezed" nor cozened. 
 
 After this, we hear little about their persecution in Egypt, or 
 of their "kings" carrying any letters, except the summary notices 
 which were duly served on them by the constables of every dis- 
 trict. 
 
 Edicts out of number \vere framed for their discomfort, and no 
 more humiliating reading exists than the different acts, decrees 
 and writs, which were hurled at these brown-faced wanderers, 
 ostensibly because in addition to being " diviners and wicked 
 heathens " they plundered farm-yards and had occult "trafh'eke 
 with the deville." 
 
 Our illustration of Zigani pleading to Philip III. of Spain, 
 early in the year 160C, shows how the church, having ceased its 
 futile efforts to convert them, strove to have them banished. The 
 general Spanish heart, however, has always had a kindly corner 
 for this joyous race, and into many a Spanish song and story the 
 gypsy enters with a charm of pathos and mystery that always 
 touches a responsive popular chord. Our great romancer, Walter 
 Scott, was attracted by this race, and into three of his most 
 powerful novels, Guy Mannering, Quentin Durward, and Peveril 
 of the Peak, he introduced a strikingly vivid gypsy character. 
 
 In the middle of the last century there appears to have been a 
 tendency to treat the gypsies a trifle more mildly, though in 1748 
 Frederick the Great renewed the law that every gypsy beyond the 
 age of eighteen, found within the Prussian bounds, should be 
 hanged forthwith, and to this day it is in Germany ipso facto an 
 indictable offence to be one of the prescribed "zigeuner" unless 
 specially licensed as such. 
 
 Even in Roumania where they swarm the condition of 
 serfdom to which they were reduced was not completely abro- 
 gated until 1856, though both Maria Theresa and Joseph II. 
 tried with very partial success to settle them as "New 
 Peasants " on lands specially set aside for the purpose. 
 
 But the passion for wandering is so innate, that just as
 
 TRACES AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 
 
 wild ducks hatched by a tame foster-mother will take to the 
 lakes as soon as they can fly, so a young gypsy, even when reared 
 away from the influence of the tents of its tribe, is apt sooner or 
 later to "kick the traces" of culture, and escape to the squalor, 
 the liberty, and the endless skirmish with society which is the 
 normal life of its ancestral nomads. 
 
 A study of their language soon confirms their Eastern origin, 
 for though mixed with words from almost every country through 
 which they have passed or in which they reside, and often sadly 
 corrupted, it is an East 
 Indian dialect so 
 marked that, as one of 
 the most celebrated of 
 its students says, it is 
 pleasant to be able to 
 study a Hindoo tongue 
 without stirring out of 
 Europe. A gypsy talks, 
 as does an Oriental, of 
 his "kismet" (fate), 
 and when he uses the 
 word " quran " ( koran) 
 he refers to no book 
 sacred or otherwise, but 
 to the act of taking an 
 oath. "Shall giv" is 
 in Romany " small 
 grain-corn "; in Hindo- 
 stani " shali " m e a n s 
 rice. The English gypsies call the Bible "shaster," which is simply 
 the Hindoo "shaster," the word they use to describe their religious 
 
 hooks. 
 
 Ill India many sects regard a cup with singular regard. In 
 Germany the gypsies will never touch a cup which lias once 
 fallen to the ground; ever after it is sacred; and in England 
 many of them can never be induced to use a white bowl. The 
 same antipathy to horse flesh is exhibited among the gypsies that 
 several Indian tribes display, and, in brief, there can be no hesi- 
 
 IN PEISON.
 
 98 THE STOKV OF (JOVKI! XMKNT. 
 
 tation in accepting the now generally received opinion of their com- 
 paratively recent Indian origin. The gypsies are a singularly 
 secretive race, and keep their language, as far as they can, con- 
 cealed from those in whom they have little trust; Imt in course 
 of time, partly through intermarriage Avith vagabond whites, 
 or through the association of "travellers" with the real gypsies 
 a host of Romany words have gotten mixed up with English 
 slang. For example, "jockey is derived from chuckni (a whip), 
 jockeyi sm really meaning the scientific use of a Avhip in speed- 
 ing a horse; "cove" is from cova (a thing), though the term 
 is almost indefinite in its applicability; "shindy" is probably 
 from cldngaree, which means the same; "chivy" is from chiv, one 
 of the meanings of which is to scold; "shavers," as applied to 
 little children, is from shavies (children); a "rum'un" is from 
 Rum or Rom (a gypsy), or a man literally. 
 
 In regard to the disposition and traits, good and bad, of the 
 gypsies, there is always, of course, a wide difference of opinion, 
 according to the prejudices of the critics, the kind of gypsies 
 with whom they have come in contact, or the capability of the 
 judges for arriving at an opinion on the subject. Gypsies are 
 extremely unwilling to betray themselves to strangers, though 
 when they have confidence in anyone they are ready enough 
 to answer questions, and as far as lies in their power to shun 
 the ever-present temptation of "humbugging" the questioner. 
 Among them, as among ever}^ other body of people, there are 
 good and bad, though, as always happens when a pure or almost 
 pure-blooded race is concerned, it is easier to arrive at some 
 general conclusions regarding their disposition and abilities than 
 those of a mixed people. 
 
 Light-hearted and wonderfully courteous in their conduct 
 towards strangers, and even towards each other, they are capable 
 of violent passions and cruel vindictiveness. At the same 
 time, they are ready to forgive, their childish vanity being easily 
 tickled by a show of affability or an approach to renewed friend- 
 ship on the part of those by whom they have been offended. The 
 war which the gypsy has for ages waged against society, and 
 society against him, has left indelible traces on his character. To 
 protect himself from the vengeance of the law he has recourse to
 
 A GUOUP OF TURKISH GYPSIES.
 
 100 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 that profound cunning which lias grown to he with him a second 
 nature, while the indolence that strikes one Avho sees him asleep 
 under a hedgerow, more than any other characteristic, is the out- 
 come of a life without ambition, a career without a goal. 
 
 It is an article of almost universal agreement with students of 
 " gypsyology" that if once a gypsy gives his word he will keep it, 
 and that they have preserved through many centuries the old 
 Oriental, or rather the general vagabond idea of inviolable honor 
 towards the wayfarer within their tents. The children receive 
 scarcely any training; yet no people are kinder to their old parents 
 and relatives than the gypsies. Jetsam and flotsam of society, 
 they find that unless they tie very tightly the bonds which unite 
 them, they would be powerless to hold their own. Hence, perhaps, 
 the warm family affection which distinguishes these nomads. A 
 parent never chastises a young child, yet it is quite common for 
 a grown-up son to accept meekly a thrashing from his aged 
 father. 
 
 A gypsy entertains no scruples regarding the method in which 
 he supplies his larder, or, indeed, as to how he acquires property; 
 but he will just as readily part with what he has to a friend in 
 worse case than himself. " I have found them," says one writer, 
 "more cheerful, polite and grateful than the lower orders of 
 other races in Europe or America, and I believe that when their 
 respect and sympathy are secured they are quite as upright. Like 
 all people who are regarded as outcasts, they are very proud of 
 being trusted, and under this influence will commit the most 
 daring acts of honesty." There is no more independent epicure 
 than the gypsy. He eats everything that is edible, except horse- 
 flesh, and sleeps wherever he lights on a spot well sheltered 
 from the wind, and tolerably safe from the only appanage of 
 society which he dreads the policeman. He has, moreover, 
 a tact and delicacy which many in far loftier stations might well 
 imitate, and a love of nature which makes mere life a joy. 
 
 Of religion they have little. "The gypsies' church," they aiv 
 in the habit of saying, "was made of pork, and the dogs stole it." 
 Where the absolute non-observance of the forms of any creed 
 entails no difficulty, the gypsies are usually untroubled by a 
 regard for the faith of the country in which they live. If, on the
 
 TRACES AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 101 
 
 other hand, they find it to their profit to profess a belief in some 
 religion, they never hesitate to pick up as much of it as suits 
 their convenience, their wonderful art of conforming themselves 
 to the ways of the particular community into which they are 
 thrown serving them here in good stead. Here and there may be 
 detected, mixed up with endless superstitions and crude bits of 
 Christianity, fragments of nature-worship and very early pagan- 
 ism, though how far serpent-worship and the adoration of a moon- 
 god, which Sundt fancied he found among the gypsies of Norway, 
 exist in reality, or in the too easy conclusions of a student bent 
 on finding something new is scarcely Avorth discussing here. 
 
 The three great gypsy clans of Germany, according to Liebich, 
 worship the fir, the birch and the hawthorn, and the Welsh 
 Romany, certain fasciated growths in trees. The "Pharaoh peo- 
 ple " of Turkey keep a fire continually burning, and on the first 
 < >f May they all go to the seacoast or the banks of a river, where 
 they thrice throw water on their temples, invoking the invisible 
 spirits of the place to grant their wishes. Another custom 
 observed with equal consistency is that of annually drinking some 
 potion, the secret of whose preparation is known only to the wisest 
 and oldest of the tribe. This drink is said to render them invul- 
 nerable to snake-bites, and certainly according to trustworthy 
 travellers the "Chinguins," as they are also called, catch serpents 
 and handle them with an impunity which is not vouchsafed to any 
 persons not of the gypsy race. 
 
 They have scarcely any idea of a future state, the only trace of 
 such a belief which Liebich ever detected being in a gyps} r crone, 
 who dreamed that she was in heaven, which to her appeared to be 
 a very large garden full of fine fat hedgehogs, the dainty which 
 Romany gourmands or gluttons most esteem. In Scandinavia, 
 according to Sundt, who spent years in studying the vagabonds of 
 the North, the. gypsies assemble once a year, and always at night, 
 for the purpose of unbaptizing all of their children who during the 
 year have been baptized by the Gorgios, or whites. On this 
 occasion the parents, whose acquiescence in the Christian rite has 
 been obtained by the persuasive power of gifts, worship a small 
 idol, which is preserved until the next meeting with the greatest 
 care and secrecy. This is a good stoiy, but, like many others
 
 102 THE STORY OF GOVKHNMKNT. 
 
 in circulation, had better be accepted with considerable caution. 
 It would argue for the gypsy the possession of a keen moral sense 
 the terror that the baptism was dreadfully wrong. Now this 
 is just what the Indian nomad does not possess. He is indif- 
 ferent. His moral sense is formed by custom, and morality seems 
 to be at times a question of latitude and longitude. A fearful 
 crime in one section of human society is a virtue in another a few 
 degrees farther north or south. 
 
 For instance, in the island of Borneo, a Dyak is, or was, in- 
 eligible for the humble position of a prospective husband until 
 he had decapitated a fellow-man; we should have hanged him. 
 The civilized father is overwhelmed with sorrow when his boy 
 is detected pilfering other men's property, but an Apache parent 
 thanks all the heaven he knows of that the lad who has man- 
 aged to steal a horse before he was ready to take a wife promises 
 to prove a comfort to his old age. 
 
 So with the gypsy. Ever poor, often hungry, always hated, it 
 seems to him the most natural thing in the world that he should 
 .temporarily enrich himself and satisfy his appetite at the expense 
 of those who, in his eyes, are burdened with superfluities. He 
 knows it is against the law, for there are legends ever present to 
 his memory and experience which tell of the policeman's illiberal 
 ways ; but, as for any moral crime, that is an aspect of the matter 
 on which the gypsy has never been taught to reflect. 
 
 Yet there is hardly a race or tribe no matter what ill-informed 
 travellers may say to the contrary which is entirely without 
 religion, and the gypsy is no exception to this rule. His feelings 
 of reverence find vent in an inordinate respect for the dead, 
 an outcome, it may be, of the intense love he bears his kindred 
 when alive. The corpse is waked and the effects of the deceased 
 person are burned. " The Annual Register " for 1773 records that 
 "the clothes of the late Diana Boswell, queen of the gypsifs, 
 value .50, were burnt in the Mint, South wark, by her principal 
 courtiers, according to ancient custom," and to this day the same 
 rite is observed on the death of any of the tribe, though most 
 probably this is one of the ancient rites which are on the wane. 
 Certain tribes of North American Indians adopt the same plan, 
 probably for the same reason, to put out of sight anything which
 
 TRACES AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 103 
 
 might recall the memory of the dead, or tempt them to pronounce 
 his or her name. 
 
 In England a gypsy will, with wondrous self-denial, often 
 abstain from spirits for years, because a dead brother was 
 fond of liquor, or will abandon some favorite pursuit because the 
 
 A FRENCH GYPSY SELLING BASKETS. 
 
 deceased when last in his company was engaged in this business 
 or pastime. Again, a wife or child will often renounce the deli- 
 cacy most liked by the dead husband or father. They will never 
 mention the dead one's name, and if any of the survivors happen
 
 104 THE STORY OF GOVKKNMKXT. 
 
 to bear one of the names they will change it for another less apt 
 to recall the loved one. A gypsy declined a cigar offered to him 
 by Mr. Leland, the famous American student of their habits, 
 because in the pockets of his nephew some cigars were found after 
 his death. The same man ceased using snuff after his wife's 
 death. "Some men," said a gypsy once, "won't eat meat 
 because the brother or sister that died was fond of it; some 
 won't drink ale for five or six years; some won't eat the favorite 
 fish that the child ate; some won't eat potatoes, or drink milk, or 
 eat apples, and all for the dead. Some won't play cards or the 
 fiddle 'that's my poor boy's tune' and some won't dance. 
 *No, I can't dance; the last time I danced was with poor wife 
 that's been dead this four years.' 'Come, brother, let's go and 
 have a drop of ale.' 'No, brother, I never drank a drop of ale 
 since my aunt went.' 'Well, take some tdbacco, brother ? ' 'Xo, 
 no; I have not smoked since my wife fell in the water, and never 
 came out again alive.' ' 
 
 This is Oriental entirely, and in Germany, where the gypsies 
 are even nearer akin to the primitive conditions of the race than 
 in England, the respect for the dead is even more profound. " By 
 my father's head ! " is a very binding oath, but to swear by " the 
 dead" is even more so. Even in England a gypsy who declares 
 that he will do anything "mullo juvo " that is, by his dead 
 wife, is pretty sure to keep his word, though he never reads the 
 Bible, and regards the founder of our faith only in the light of some- 
 thing to lend strength to an affirmation. In Germany it is said that 
 when a maiden called Forella died, her entire tribe ceased calling 
 the trout by its old name of Forelle. In England this rule is 
 very generally observed, though it is not universal. At one time 
 they put new shoes and even money in the coffin with the corpse, 
 or decked the body with gay clothes and ornaments of value. 
 
 In the course of their wanderings the gypsies have, as might 
 have been expected, picked up a good many snatches of the Chris- 
 tian religion. For instance, some of them burn an ash fire on 
 Christmas Day in honor of Christ, "because He was born and 
 lived like a gypsy." Among other of their superstitious scruples 
 is a dislike to wash a table-cloth with other clothes. A German 
 gypsy Avoman must not cook for four months after the birth of a
 
 TRACES AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 105 
 
 child, and any vessel touched by a woman's skirt is defiled, while 
 one of their most widespread and most Indian practices is to leave 
 at a road-corner a handful of leaves or grass, or a heap of stones 
 or sticks, to guide any of the band who may follow. 
 
 Though until lately almost entirely without school learning 
 the civilized gypsies of Yetholm are of course excepted they 
 are far from being a dull or unreceptive race. Many of them are 
 persons of great natural shrewdness, though, except as musicians, 
 few of the race have ever attained much celebrity. The Hun- 
 garians owe their national music to the Zigani. . Many of them 
 display considerable skill as metal workers, and one or two have 
 developed talents of a certain kind as Methodist preachers. The 
 late Rev. Dr. Gordon, a clergyman of the Church of Scotland, 
 was always understood to be of pure gypsy stock. Lord Jeffrey 
 and Christopher North (Professor John Wilson) were also said to 
 be of the wandering folk, and it has long been affirmed, though 
 the assertion has been stoutly disputed, that John Bunyan, 
 author of "Pilgrim's Progress," belonged to the gypsy stock. 
 Half of the tramps, the "travellers," as they are called, of 
 England, are tinctured with Romany blood. These "half- 
 scrags " are an ever-increasing class. They are tramps and beg- 
 gars, proprietors of travelling shows, horse-dealers, tinkers, cheap 
 Jacks, "Punches," fiddlers, pottery dealers, sellers of skewers 
 and clothespegs. 
 
 In England the number of house-dwelling gypsies is on the 
 increase, but it is rare to find any who have for two generations 
 ceased to find shelter under tents, or who do not at intervals take 
 to their old kind of life. The gypsy has nowhere nowadays a 
 distinctive dress, but he or she can generally be picked out in 
 a crowd by reason of the gay colors so loved by the race, and the 
 heavy rings on the women's fingers. In some parts of the con- 
 tinent the women wear a peculiar pattern of earrings, and in Hun- 
 <_;;! rv the male gypsy is fond of decking his coat with silver 
 buttons bearing a serpent for a crest. 
 
 In the country the gypsy follows nearly all callings, from those 
 of chimney-sweeps and factory hands, to those of actors and quack 
 doctors, but as tinkers, or workers in metal, horse-dealers, 
 makers of baskets, brooms, clothes-pegs, and pottery sellers,
 
 106 THK STOKY OF COVKIINMKNT. 
 
 they are pre-eminent. The Caldeiari, or copper-smiths of Hun- 
 gary, travel all over Europe, and sometimes reach as far as 
 Algeria. In Transylvania they are well known as gold workers, 
 and no tourist who has ever visited the Alhambra but must 
 remember the gypsy smiths whose anvils Avere placed in the caves 
 of Granada. 
 
 Altogether, according to Mr. Simson, there cannot be much 
 fewer than 4,000,000 gypsies in existence, but if pure bloods are 
 meant, this estimate is probably far over the mark, since Von 
 Miklosich reckons that number at somewhere in the vicinity of 
 700,000. In Hungary there are, according to a rough estimate, 
 about 150,000 gypsies vagabonds who wander over the .country 
 with their carts and horses, accompanied by their women and chil- 
 dren, and though at one time persecuted as unbelievers, and 
 hunted to death as sorcerers and poisoners, the cruel edicts which 
 enjoined such treatment were never approved by the Hun- 
 garian people. The result is, that the gypsies have increased, 
 and, in their own thriftless, squalid fashion, prospered, despite 
 the hard usage they have experienced at the hands of their rulers. 
 
 Indeed, as we have seen, the Hungarian kings have more than 
 mice protected them as a " poor wandering people without a coun- 
 try, and whom all the world rejected," and granted them safe 
 conducts to go wherever seemed good to them, with their troops 
 of donkeys and horses. Joseph II. of Austria tried to settle them 
 as agriculturists, and had huts built for them, but instead of 
 occupying the comfortable dwellings themselves they stabled their 
 cattle in them, and pitched their tents outside. 
 
 Then to prevent their corn from sprouting they boiled it before 
 sowing, and though their children were taken from them and 
 trained up into habits of work under Magyar and German peas- 
 ants, these wildlings soon escaped and joined their parents, with- 
 out having learned anything from their forcible apprenticeship to 
 civilization. It is affirmed that a gypsy, who had actually risen 
 to the rank of an officer in the Austrian army, disappeared one 
 day, and was found six months afterwards with a band of Zigani 
 encamped on the heath. A young Slovack peasant fell in love 
 with and married a gypsy girl, but in his absence she escaped to 
 the woods, and when discovered was living under a tree and
 
 TRACKS AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 107 
 
 feasting on hedgehog after the fashion of the race from whom she 
 had been taken. 
 
 The Abb Liszt, charmed with the talent for music displayed 
 
 ty r a gypsy boy, took him to Paris and tried to train the little 
 lad. But all in vain. The moment he saw his own people in 
 Vienna his delight was indescribable ; there was no longer any 
 hope of keeping him under the velvet bonds of polite life.
 
 108 TIIK ST.I;Y OK <;<>VKI;N.MKXT. 
 
 I, ike all their kindred, the Hungarian gypsy has a horror of 
 restraint and of continuous labor. His vocabulary contains no 
 word signifying "to dwell;" hence he follows any trade which 
 admits of his wandering about the country farriers, nail-makers, 
 horse-dealers (and horse-stealers), bear-tamers, and beggars. In 
 the last capacity the Zigani are irrepressible. Time to them is no 
 object. They will follow the traveller for half an hour, pouring 
 forth their whine in fluent Magyar or gypsy until a piece of 
 money is thrown to them, and then they will whine again to the 
 next likely passer-by. Indeed, so deeply rooted is this love of 
 mendicity and its twin, mendacity, that it is nothing uncommon 
 for gypsies wearing gold chains and rings, carrying gold-headed 
 canes, and leading race-horses, to hold out their hands for alms, 
 to all whom they meet. 
 
 No people are more skilful as horse-dealers; a Vermont Yankee 
 is miles behind them. In truth, so skilful are they, that Joseph 
 II., who occupied a good deal of his time in devising means for 
 the reformation of this section of his subjects, absolutely foibade 
 them to trade in a species of merchandise which gave them an 
 undue advantage over their neighbors, and put temptation in the 
 gypsy's way of which he was not at all backward to avail him- 
 self. The women, like their sisters everywhere, tell fortunes, 
 sell charms, ply the trade of jugglers and dancers, and, it is said, 
 not without truth, act as go-betweens and supply poisons. 
 
 .Many rustics in lands besides Hungary have still a firm 
 belief in their power in these respects, and will tell how by magic 
 formulae they have extinguished fires, preserved horses from the 
 flames, discovered hidden treasures or springs of water hitherto 
 unsuspected, and cured diseases which have defied the regular 
 faculty. It may be added, though the contrary has been asserted,. 
 that the morals of the women are, if possible, worse than 
 those of the men. Among the gypsies, however, as among the 
 people of every other race, exceptions are occasionally found 
 which prove the rule, the rule being that they are vagabonds. The 
 exceptions are the few who in Transylvania carry on the trades of 
 wood-carvers, brush-makers, tile-makers, rope-makers, ropers, 
 chimney-sweeps, gold-workers, dentists, and musicians as they 
 all are more or less not to mention the Zigani who are always
 
 TRACES AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 109 
 
 ready to perform the hideous function of the public executioner. 
 "Five florins for hanging a man!" a gypsy is said to have 
 exclaimed when offered this fee for his services. "Why, I would 
 hang all those gentlemen," pointing with an affable grin tc the 
 judges, "for that sum of money! " One or two Zigani have tried 
 their hand at play-writing and acting, and now and then may be 
 met a gypsy marionette manager, or even a comedian of the race. 
 In Hungary they can hardly be said to profess any regular 
 religion. They are not even pagans, for they worship nothing, 
 though everywhere they show great respect for the dead, never 
 passing a grave of their relatives without pouring on it a few 
 drops of beer, wine, or brandy. 
 
 They adopt any religion which promises most profit or the 
 greatest immunity from discomfort. Hence it will sometimes 
 happen that the children of a wandering gypsy will be baptized 
 four or five times, and be quite, ready, so far as their parents are 
 concerned, to be baptized a fifth if the nomad happen to come into 
 <i region where religious fervor runs high. How far they acknowl- 
 edge any head nowadays is an open question. At one time they 
 were governed by four "vo'ivodes," or chiefs, who were elected by 
 universal suffrage, and proclaimed amid music and applause. A 
 three-cornered braided hat was placed on the chief's head, and a 
 pitcher of wine on a plate covered with flowers presented to him. 
 
 This he drained at a draught, then broke the flask in pieces, 
 after which he harangued the assembly, and shook hands with each 
 of his subjects in turn. Every seven years the people gathered 
 round the supreme chief to receive his orders, and those washing 
 the auriferous sands of the Transylvanian rivers, whatever might 
 have been the habit of the others, paid a florin per annum to the 
 voivode under whom they worked. But in these days the chief 
 exercises little, if any, visible authority. In Hungary, as in 
 England and America, the policeman has long since replaced this 
 gypsy sovereign. 
 
 More than any people, save the poor artisans confined to the 
 vile tenements of our great civilized cities, the gypsies exemplify 
 the doctrine of the "survival of the fittest." A weakling soon 
 perishes during the life of hardship which he must endure, but the 
 strong survive to become the fine specimens of humanity which are
 
 110 THK STOKY OF GOVKRNM KXT. 
 
 among them. Epidemics pass over them scatheless. Gout and 
 rheumatism are to them unknown maladies. Their wounds heal 
 with wonderful rapidity and, if perchance disease does attack 
 them, brandy, onions and saffron are the only medicines which 
 they tolerate. In short, their life is an animal one. A gypsy 
 condemned to be hanged will always ask as a last favor to In- 
 allowed a smoke, and a pipe is, perhaps, the first thing which is 
 put into a child's mouth after it is weaned. 
 
 Roumania is, however, the real home of the continental gypsy, 
 for there he numbers, according to different estimates, from 130,- 
 000 to 300,000 in spite of the fact that until recently he was a 
 mere serf, bought and sold with the land on which he squatted. 
 They were nominally free in 1848, though it was not till eight 
 years after this that the Zigani could be said to be absolutely 
 beyond the power of their former owners, and as late as 1845 the 
 following advertisement appeared in a Bucharest newspaper: 
 
 " The sons and heirs of the late Sirdar Xicka of Bucharest will 
 expose for sale two hundred gypsy families. The men exercise the 
 trades of locksmiths, goldsmiths, shoemakers, musicians, and farm 
 laborers. Not less than four families will be sold in one lot. As a 
 set-off, the price asked is a ducat cheaper than the ordinary (inure. 
 Facilities for payment." 
 
 In 1825, according to Walsh, if a gypsy belonging to a Boyard, 
 or noble, was killed by his master, no notice was taken of the 
 circumstance, but if the murder was committed by a stranger a 
 fine of eighty florins was exacted. Slight faults were punished 
 by the bastinado applied to the soles of the feet, or by the appli- 
 cation of an iron mask, in which, the head was shut up for a 
 longer or shorter period, preventing the offender from eating or 
 drinking. Those who had committed theft were fastened by the 
 neck and arms to a plank, which they carried on their shoulders 
 in the fashion of the Chinese cangue, which we illustrate in our 
 Chinese chapter. They are still in Roumania the hewers of wood 
 and the drawers of water. All rough, unpleasant work is 
 allotted to them. There the men, women, and children are the 
 drudges who carry bricks and mortar to the masons, meantime 
 cooking and sleeping in the building on which they are at work,
 
 111
 
 112 
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 their main food being mamaliga, or maize-meal, boiled and 
 seasoned with salt. Or, as in other countries, they mend pots and 
 kettles, shoe horses, or play the medola. But though the tawny 
 face of the Frenchified Roumanian bears distinct evidence that 
 Ms forefathers were not so callous to the charms of the lithe young 
 gypsy, the so-called whites affect an unutterable scorn for the 
 Zigani, ranking them as little better than the lower animals. 
 The philosophy of gypsy life is summed up in the following little 
 poem composed by a gypsy of Spain in which country these mystic 
 strollers are regarded with a sort of tender tolerance like naughty 
 but amusing children. 
 
 " Poraquel luchipen abajo 
 Abillela uri balichoro 
 Abillela 11 goli goli, 
 Ustilame Caloro." 
 
 " There runs a pig down yonder hill 
 
 As fast as e'er he can, 
 And as he runs he crieth still : 
 ' Come steal me,' gypsy man!" 
 
 But the gypsies are injured innocents compared with the extraor- 
 dinary clandestine clan of robbers and assassins called the 
 Camorristi, whose original home and habitat were the two 
 Sicilies and lower Italy, but who have followed the Italian race 
 in its emigrations and whose dark tracks can be discovered in 
 every city of magnitude in this country. The Camorra, as this 
 brotherhood of brigands is termed, affords a remarkable insight 
 into the subtlety of the Italian character, its wonderful capacity 
 for devising extraordinary means for the accomplishment of 
 ordinary ends, and that less amiable aptitude for playing the 
 conspirator or spy which has given the Italian nation an evil odor 
 in the nostrils of other races which as a whole it does not deserve. 
 
 The recent trouble in New Orleans is traceable to the Camorra, 
 for the Mafia is only a branch of that tremendous tree, like the 
 banyan in its tendency to burrow back into the earth, and like the 
 upas in its pestilent powers. The history of the Camorra is as 
 remarkable as any fable, for the Camorristi during the misrule of 
 the Bourbons were not only tolerated, but were actually permitted 
 to ply their infamous trade, in the hope that this permission to 
 plunder the people might influence them in favor of the govern- 
 ment. The result was what might have been expected, for when 
 Francis II., terrified at the measureless assurance of the society 
 he had favored and fostered, attempted its suppression, the mem-
 
 TRACES AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 113 
 
 bers who escaped the wholesale capture and transportation decreed 
 against them entered into alliance with the Garibaldians, and 
 materially aided in the expulsion of King Bomba. 
 
 Meantime, and for many years, they had a festival time of it. 
 Knowing that their exactions were winked at, they boldly pre- 
 sented themselves in the markets, at places of public amusement, 
 and at the street spectacles by which the Neapolitan rulers tried 
 to make their subjects forget the manner in which they were mis- 
 governed. If a cab were engaged, the Camorra expected its 
 share; if the fare were disputed, a hangdog-looking individual 
 would step up and say with sinister quietness how much the 
 signer ought to pay, and the coachman then knew that the 
 Camorra had intervened, and would in due time render its 
 account. Differences between men and masters were referred to 
 the Camorristi or taken to another tribunal at the risk of the 
 recalcitrants regretting their rashness. The Camorristi extracted 
 their percentage of whatever money passed from hand to hand in 
 buying property or in making any open or even private purchase, 
 for the Camorra w r as everywhere, and showed itself in the most 
 unlikely quarters. Rents, wages, prizes in lotteries, winnings of 
 gamblers everything which could be taxed had, willy nilly, to 
 contribute to the Camorrist treasury. There was nothing which 
 the society could not accomplish, from the ruin of a minister to 
 the dismissal of a laborer. For a consideration they undertook to 
 convey smuggled goods to their destination, and if a bravo were 
 required, the Camorra for a consideration would provide the 
 stiletto. 
 
 Violence, robbery and murder were their machinery. Terrorism 
 kept the members together, and so dreaded was their vengeance, 
 that when thrown into gaol they would often succeed in 
 exacting money from their fellow-prisoners, and even from the 
 turnkeys, who dreaded the company committed to their charge. 
 The "Camorra" has been repressed in Naples, but in Sicily it 
 flourishes still, not so open and insolent as of yore, but yet potent. 
 
 Protean in form, it had many names or aliases also. In Ravenna 
 and Bologna it was called the " Squadraccia, " in Turin the 
 "Cocca;" and those who have studied this strange cancer in the 
 social life of Italy say that the Roman "Sicorii," the "Accoltella-
 
 114 
 
 Till': STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 tori" of the. Romagna district, and the Parmesan " Pugnalatori," 
 were only the Neapolitan Camorristi under other names. It was 
 a State within a State, and at the time when the government 
 flattered itself that the organization was actually exterminated, 
 there were upwards of 200,000 persons belonging to it, and 
 addressing each other in ,1 language unintelligible to more honest, 
 or at least to less lawless, people. Recent revelations prove that 
 if they are no longer able to weaken the power of the authorities, 
 and to modify the operations of economic laws by exacting that 
 
 share of the national wealth of which 
 they were deprived either by idleness 
 or the badness of their rulers, they 
 are not less a terror in certain strata 
 of society, and a means of paralyzing 
 confidence in the capability of the 
 law to protect all classes equally. 
 
 As the branches of the banyan 
 tree, hiding themselves in the earth, 
 re-rooting, burrowing back into si- 
 lence and shadow, are more remark- 
 able than the original trunk or stem, 
 so the Mafia, or Mama, is more sin- 
 gular than the Camorra because more 
 secretive and subtle. 
 
 This society still flourishes in 
 Sicily, and has branches in nearly 
 every large city on this continent, 
 Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, 
 New York, for example. But New 
 Orleans especially, by reason of her 
 
 attractive Italian climate, has proved a magnet to Mafian emi- 
 grants. 
 
 \e\v Orleans for many years has had a large Sicilian popula- 
 tion, and for many years the police of the Crescent City have 
 noticed odd coincidences of crime. If a Palermo man was found 
 dead or dying with a stiletto stab near his heart or in his 
 stomach, a favorite stabbing-place, a Messina man soon followed. 
 Sometimes the murder was committed in broad dav, but when 
 
 . 
 A. CAMORRIST1C TRAMP.
 
 T1IACES AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 115 
 
 the case came up for trial, the witnesses from the Sicilian quarter, 
 where such things generally happened, seemed to experience an 
 epidemic of stupidity, for the most searching questions failed to 
 strike from their stony silence a scintilla of evidence that could 
 light the way to a conviction for tli3 crime. Out of the court the 
 murderer strolled with a smile, rolling a brown paper cigarette. 
 
 In 1873 a characteristic case occurred. Two young Sicilians 
 quarrelled in the French market ; out flashed a knife, and one was 
 completely disembowelled in a moment. His wife saw the hor- 
 rible deed, and ran round and round shrieking, and pointing at 
 the murderer whom the police, coming up, apprehended. 
 
 But two days later the woman swore in court that she could 
 not tell who stabbed her husband. La Mafia had whispered in her 
 ear, and she knew better than to know. A case occurred when 
 the present writer lived in New Orleans more striking still. 
 
 A Sicilian lay in wait for another and fired at him an old blun- 
 derbuss loaded to the muzzle with nails, small stones, and buck- 
 shot. The murderer was seized by the quick police with the 
 weapon in his hand, and brought before the victim for still more 
 certain identification. 
 
 The dying man darted one glance of hatred at the captive, 
 then shook his head and said, " It is not the man, but another. 
 This fool must have picked up the empty gun." Then he died, 
 knowing he would be avenged by his branch of the Mafia, or by 
 his family clan, as, indeed, was done not many months after. 
 But the Mafia did not confine its operations to quarrels and 
 personal vengeance. Blood was its drink, but money was its 
 meat. 
 
 Rich Italians who, by reason of their national knowledge of 
 Mafian or Camorran methods, could be more easily intimidated 
 than citizens of other races living in that charming cosmopolitan 
 city, very often received notices that they must make La Mafia a 
 little present, the amount of which, with time and place for 
 delivery, was obligingly specified. 
 
 That for many years these merchants complied is not singular. 
 They could not give up business and go away to escape the tax. 
 To whatever city they might fly, the dark feet of the Mafia could 
 follow them.
 
 116 THE STOIIY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Unlike its parent, the Camorra, the Mafia appears to have no 
 central head, but to have a dozen or more gangs, sometimes at 
 variance with each other, but all agreed as against general society 
 o" government, and never willing to bear witness against Mafia ns. 
 These bands are governed by councils of three which meet in 
 secret places, not twice successively in the same spot, plan out 
 the murders or intimidations and give instructions to the members 
 what they are to do. 
 
 Poison is sometimes used, the shotgun is a frequent means, 
 but the stiletto is considered the most creditable and stylish 
 instrument for the removal of an enemy or a man who has 
 neglected to pay tribute. 
 
 The world knows how Police Inspector Henessy, having made 
 a close study of the Mafia, intended to expose it completely and 
 bring it to an end, and how he was murdered by Mafians in front 
 of his own house. 
 
 The world knows also how the men, by bribery of the jury, 
 were acquitted, and how a mob of the most respectable citizens 
 of New Orleans, headed by W. S. Parkerson, John C. Wickliffe, 
 and Col. W. P. Curtis, three of the most brilliant and popular 
 men of that city, met around the Clay statue, went to the old 
 Parish Prison, seized the eleven acquitted men, of whose guilt 
 there was no shadow of a doubt, and executed them as a warn- 
 ing to the Mafia. But the Mafia was untamed. A few days 
 after Mr. Parkerson received the following paper: 
 
 MAFIA WARNING. 
 
 " You a domed man and God Amity can't save you. We have it 
 sworn. Our comrades you murdered and we kill you and you family. 
 You will be poison. The styleto will do for the wrest." 
 
 Other gentlemen, prominent in this respectable and perhaps 
 justifiable mob, received similar sentences, but up to the present 
 writing they have remained scathless, and it is likely that the 
 Mafia will choose hereafter some safer place than New Orleans, 
 since if any of these men or others connected with that uprising 
 were to meet with violent or suspiciously sudden deaths, such is 
 the spirit of New Orleans that probably within twenty-four hours 
 every Italian would be requested to leave the city forever.
 
 118 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The initiation ceremonies of the Mafia, according to the con- 
 tusions of Caruso, are very simple. Caruso said that the chief 
 who presided was dressed in a black domino, that he held up a 
 skull in his left hand, and a dirk in his right, speaking solemnly, 
 hut briefly, of the dread power of the Mafia. The candidate for 
 crime then swore, with uplifted hands, to abide by the orders of 
 the order. 
 
 The letters of demand for money or of intimidation which they 
 send are generally written in blood, and sealed with a peculiar 
 rude seal consisting of an owl perched on a skull above cross-bones. 
 
 This is a sort of grim, unconscious parody on Poe's raven sit- 
 ting on the bust of Pallas, and, indeed, a rather more classic 
 combination, since according to ancient Italian mythology, the 
 owl was the favorite bird of Pallas, goddess of wisdom, who, 
 still following the antique, perhaps subtly antic, fable was not 
 born of any feminine creature, but sprang full grown and armed 
 from the brain of Jove, king of the gods. 
 
 It seems clear that the Mafia exists no longer in its birthplace, 
 Sicily, for Guido Pantatori, now superintendent of the Missouri 
 Electric Light Co. at St. Louis, who was formerly an officer in the 
 Italian army, makes the following statement : 
 
 In 1860, the Italian government took the first steps looking to the 
 suppression of this band of cut-throats, and so effectual were its efforts 
 in this direction, that within one year the Mafia as an organization was 
 exterminated, and it does not exist in Italy or Sicily to-day. There 
 was no silly or sickly sentiment about the measures taken there. Ex- 
 tirpation was the object. We began by arresting every man carrying 
 concealed weapons, and every suspicious character. These were sent 
 to prison for six months, even if no other evidence could be found 
 against them. 
 
 If any further evidence could be found, the prisoners were sentenced 
 to be executed. The culprits were taken out, stood in a line and shot 
 down by the score. Several thousand of the members of the Mah'a 
 were thus executed and the result was peace in Sicily." 
 
 And yet while we may perhaps be amazed at and disgusted 
 with a government like that of Italy, which was so slow in ex- 
 terminating siu-h a society, root and branch, we must not forget 
 the beam in our own eye; we must remember that, although
 
 TRACES AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 119 
 
 there are certain more civilized States of this Union which do 
 not permit Mr. Pinkerton's choice collection of assassins to cross 
 their borders, the great State of New York a few years ago 
 allowed a railroad corporation whose oppression of its employees 
 had led to a strike, to employ the Pinkerton desperadoes, not 
 merely as guards to its property, but as intimidators of the strikers. 
 
 Some of the newspapers protested against this wrong; but 
 the next day their protest was hushed how and why anyone who 
 stops to reason well knows. But these things will not last for- 
 ever, for the American people are beginning to wake up and break 
 off their former party ties, and shake off the chains of that abom- 
 inable old custom of letting the politicians do their thinking for 
 them. 
 
 Just as traces of government are discernible among the Camor- 
 risti and Mafians, so among thieves in huge cities like London and 
 Paris, promoters of disorder and profiters by it though they be, a 
 certain tendency to order crops out. That rank among thieves is 
 recognized has been proved beyond question. The common pick- 
 pocket would not dare, in a tavern, to force his acquaintance or 
 even his uninvited presence on a jovial gathering of "swell mobs- 
 men " or of house-breakers. The crimes in which one's life is risked 
 are accounted of more aristocratic quality, and their perpetrators 
 exercise an autocratic rule over the smaller fry of the republic of 
 thievery. But the average condition of professional thieves in 
 a city like London is really riot quite so good as that of our 
 honest working classes. 
 
 There are forty thousand professional thieves in London. 
 Roughly estimating the population of the world's metropolis as 
 numbering six millions, this statistic means that amongst Lon- 
 doners one person in every hundred and fifty is a forger, a house- 
 breaker, a pickpocket, a shoplifter, a receiver of stolen goods, or 
 in short, a human bird of prey. 
 
 Almost eveiy member of this formidable host is known to the 
 "police," but unfortunately this advantage is almost counter- 
 balanced by the fact that the police are as well known to the 
 majority of the twenty thousand. To their experienced eyes it is 
 not the helmet and the blue coat that make the policeman. In- 
 deed, they appear to depend not so much on visual evidence as on
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 some subtle power of scent, such as the fox possesses, in discover- 
 ing the approach of their natural enemy. They can divine the 
 detective in his innocent-looking smock-frock or bricklayer jacket, 
 while he is yet distant the length of a street. They know him by 
 his step, or by his clumsy affectation of unofficial loutishness. 
 They recognize the stiff neck in the loose neckerchief. They 
 smell "trap," and are superior to it. 
 
 The following brief life of an adroit London pickpocket, who 
 had reformed and become a street singer, shows how thieves are 
 trained, and how they are organized in bands. This pickpocket 
 was about the average height, of sallow complexion, with a rich, 
 dark, penetrating eye, a moustacjie and beard. He was a man of 
 tolerably good education, and had a mind well furnished. 
 
 Had he not started so young as a pickpocket, he might have 
 ripened into a banker a Napoleon of finance, but at the time he 
 told his life history, he was rather melancholy and crushed in spirit, 
 which he stated was the result of repeated imprisonments. Yet, 
 while narrating some of the exciting passages, his countenance 
 lighted up with intense interest and adventurous expression. 
 
 I was born in a little hamlet, five miles from Shrewsbury, in the 
 county of Shropshire. My father was a Wesleyan minister. We 
 had a very happy home, though strict in the way of religion. I 
 believe my father would on no account have tolerated such a thing as 
 any of us children stopping out after nine o'clock at night, and I have 
 heard my mother often say that all the time she was wedded to him, 
 she never had known him the worse for liquor. My father had family 
 worship every night between eight and nine o'clock, when the curtains 
 were drawn over the windows, the candle was lighted, and each of the 
 children was taught to kneel and pray out loud. 
 
 We often had ministers to dinner and supper at our house, and always 
 after feasting the conversation turned into discussions on different 
 points of doctrine. I can recollect as well now as though it were yes- 
 terday the texts used on the various sides of the questions, and the stress 
 that was laid on different passages to uphold their arguments. 
 
 At this time I greedily drank in every word that was uttered, and 
 soon as they were gone I would fly to the Bible and examine the differ- 
 ent texts they had quoted. This practice produced a feeling in my 
 mind that any religious opinions could be plausibly supported out of 
 the Bible by citing detached passages, and not regarding it as a whole.
 
 TRACES AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 121 
 
 These continual discussions finally seemed to steel my heart com- 
 pletely against religion, and led to my falling out Avith my grandfather, 
 who had a good deal of property that was expected to come to our 
 family. For my grandsire found out that I looked on our family relig- 
 ion with doubt, and he bitterly resented it, and when he died, it was 
 found, on opening his will, that I was not mentioned in it. The whole 
 of his property Avas left to my father, with the exception of four houses, 
 which he had an interest in till my brothers and sister arrived at the 
 age of twenty-one. Moreover, the property that was left to rny father 
 for his life, he had no power to will away at his death, but it was to go 
 to a distant relative of my grandfather. 
 
 This was the first cause of my leaving home, for the singularity of 
 my grandfather's will was attributed to my conduct, and, after a while, so 
 harsh were the family comments, it began to rankle in my boyish mind 
 that I was a black sheep, something different from my brothers and sis- 
 ter. After being several times chided by my father for quarreling with 
 my brothers, I threatened, in a fit of passion, to burn the house doAvn 
 the first opportunity I got. This threat, though not uttered in my 
 father's hearing, came to his ear, and he gave me a severe whipping for 
 it. This was the first and last. 
 
 I determined to leave home, and took nothing away but what be- 
 longed to me. I had four sovereigns of pocket money, the suit of clothes 
 I had on, and a shirt. I walked to Shrewsbury and took the coach to 
 London. When I got to London I had neither friend nor acquaintance. 
 I first put up in a coffee shop in the Mile End Road, and lodged there 
 for seven weeks, till my money Avas nearly all spent. 
 
 During this time my clothes had been getting shabby and dirty, as I 
 had no one to look after me. Then I Avent to a meaner lodging house at 
 Field Lane, Holborn, Avhere I met with such characters as I had never 
 seen before, and heard language that I had not formerly heard. 
 
 The landlady here, however, took pity on me as a poor country boy 
 Avho had been well brought up, and kept me for some days longer after 
 my money Avas gone. During these few days, I had very little to eat, 
 cxi-ept Avhat Avas given me by some of the lodgers when they got their 
 OAvn meals. Finally, the landlady's husband objecting to my continued 
 presence, I was turned out of doors, a little boy in the great world of 
 London, with no friend to assist me, and perfectly ignorant of the 
 ways and means of getting a living. 
 
 After wandering about for several days half starved, I Avas taken by 
 several poor ragged boys Avhom I met, to sleep in the dark arches of the 
 Adelphi. I think I lived with them, sharing all they had, for over a
 
 122 TIIK STORY OF CJOVKRNMKNT. 
 
 month, and during ihis time I often saw the boys follow the male pas- 
 sengers, when the half-penny boats came to the Adelphi stairs, i. e., the 
 part of the river almost opposite the Adelphi Theatre. 
 
 I could not at, first, make out the meaning of this, but I soon found 
 they generally had one or two handkerchiefs "when the passengers left. 
 At this time there was an old prison van in the Adelphi arches, without 
 wheels, in which we used to sleep, and there we used to meet a man 
 my companions called " Larry," who gave the bo}'s almost what price 
 he liked for the handkerchiefs. 
 
 My companions, all this time, had been very kind, sharing what they 
 got with me, but often asking why I did not try my hand at the trade, 
 till at last I was ashamed to live any longer upon the food they gave me 
 without earning my share. So, when I gave expression to this rather 
 natural, and as it seems to me, somewhat commendable feeling, one of 
 the boys, Joe Muckraw, said to me, that when the next boat came in, if 
 any man came out likely to carry a good handkerchief, he would let me 
 have a chance at it. 
 
 Next day I saw an elderly gentleman step ashore, and a lady with 
 him. They had a little dog, with a string attached to it, that they led 
 along. Before Joe reminded me of my determination, he stole up and 
 " fanned " the gentleman's pocket, i. e., felt it to be sure there was a 
 handkerchief inside. Then he whispered " Now, Dick, have a try." 
 
 I went to the old gentleman's side, trembling all over, and Joe 
 keeping close to me in the dark, encouraging me all the time, while the 
 old gentleman was engaged with the little dog. Lifting up the tail of 
 the coat, not the dog, I mean I took out a green " kingsrnan " ( hand- 
 kerchief ), next in value to a black silk handkerchief. 
 
 I did it so quietly, quickly, and naturally, I might say, that the gen- 
 tleman did not perceive his loss. We immediately went to the arches 
 and entered the van where Larry was, and Joe said to him, " This is 
 Dick's first trial, and you must give him a 'ray' for it," i. e., one shilling 
 and sixpence. After a deal of pressing, Larry gave us a shilling. 
 
 After that I gained confidence, and in the course of a few weeks I 
 was considered the cleverest of the little band, never missing one boat 
 coming in, and getting one or two handkerchiefs each time. When we 
 knew there were no boats coming we used to waste our money on 
 sweets and fruits, and went often in the evenings to the Victoria The- 
 atre and Bower Saloon, and other places. When we came out at 
 twelve or half-past twelve at night, we went to the arches again and 
 slept in the prison van. I led this life and a jolly one it seemed to 
 me then for a year.
 
 A Gil

 
 TRACES AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 127 
 
 One day several men came to visit us, and they came again, telling 
 us pleasant stories of high life and fine ladies whom they knew. I 
 afterwards learned they were brought by " Larry " to study me, as he 
 had been speaking of my cleverness at the "tail," i. e., stealing from the 
 tails of gentlemen's coats. They used to make me presents and speak 
 very kindly to me, but at that time they were not quite satisfied as to 
 my abilities or capacity for taking higher rank in the order. 
 
 One day, having grown a little careless in my methods, I was seized 
 by a gentleman who caught me with his handkerchief in my hand? 
 and I was sentenced to Bridewell for two months. The day of my re- 
 lease I felt touched and honored to find at the gate a cab waiting for 
 me, and two of the men standing by who had often made me presents 
 and spoken to me in the arches. They took me to their own home. One 
 of them had the first floor of a house, the other had the second, 
 and both had wives, women exceedingly pretty, very kind-hearted, and, 
 though you may not believe me, very refined. 
 
 I found out shortly afterwards that these men had lately had a boy 
 with them, but he had been caught, sentenced, and transported to Aus- 
 tralia about that time, though I did not know this then. They gave 
 me plenty to eat, and one of the women, by name "Emily," washed and 
 cleansed me I was wonderfully dirty and gave me new clothes 
 to put on. For three days I was not asked to do anything, but in 
 the meantime they had been talking to me of going with them and 
 having no more to do with the boys at the Adelphi or with the 
 " tail," but instead to try the finer, more difficult and aristocratic work 
 of picking ladies' pockets. 
 
 I thought it more difficult at first, but found afterwards that it was 
 more satisfactory to work on a woman's pocket than upon a man's, for 
 this reason ; more persons work together, and the boy is well sur- 
 rounded by companions older than himself, and is shielded from the 
 eyes of the passers-by. Besides, it pays better. 
 
 As this was my first essay in having anything to do in stealing from 
 a woman, I believe they were nervous themselves, but they had well 
 tutored me during the two or three days I had been out of prison. 
 They had stood against me in the room while Emily walked to and fro, 
 and I had practised on her by taking out sometimes a lady's clasp 
 purse, termed a " portemonnaie," and other articles out of her pocket, 
 and thus I was not quite ignorant of what was expected of me. 
 
 On the day of my first attempt one walked in front of me, one on 
 my right hand, and the other in the rear, and I had the lady on my 
 left hand. I immediately "fanned" her (felt her pocket), as she
 
 128 THE STORY OF <;<>V KIINMKNT. 
 
 stopped to look in at a hosier's window, then I took her purse and gave 
 it to one of them, and we immediately went to a house in Giltspur 
 Street. We there examined the purse and found about two sovereigns 
 in it. The purse was thrown away, as is the general rule, and that 
 afternoon I found four more purses and then we went home to a good 
 supper, after which we laid aside entirely the cares of business and went 
 to the theatre. I recollect how they praised me that night for my 
 cleverness, and how my cheek glowed with pride at their praise. 
 
 The following day we reaped a still better harvest. It amounted to 
 about 19. (nearly $100) each. These organized gangs always take 
 care to allow the boy to see what is in the purse, and to give him his 
 proper share, equal with the others, because he is their sole support. 
 If they should lose him they would be unable to do anything until they 
 got another. Out of my share, I bought a silver watch and a gold 
 chain, and about this time I also bought an elegant little overcoat and 
 carried it on my left arm to cover my movements. 
 
 But men devoted to monetary pursuits even the most adroit and 
 careful financiers, for instance, think of Baring Brothers just lately 
 sometimes have their turns of ill-luck and get caught on the wrong 
 side of an investment. My day came. I saw a gentleman stuff a roll 
 of bank notes in his waistcoat pocket and, brushing up against him, I 
 attempted to relieve him. It landed me in prison for three months. 
 During that time, however, I did not grow thin on prison diet, but 
 was kept on good rations supplied to me through the kindness of my 
 comrades out of doors bribing the turnkeys. 
 
 When I came out we began to attend the theatres professionally, 
 and I have often taken as many as six or seven ladies' purses during 
 the crowding, while they were coming out. We also used to go to 
 the great races on business, and one day I was induced by my comrades, 
 much against my will, for I thought it was too risky, to turn my hand 
 upon two ladies as they were stepping into a carriage. I was detected 
 by the ladies and there was immediately a tremendous outcry and 
 rush for me, but I was got clear by two of my comrades, the other 
 throwing himself in the way, and keeping the pursuers back; for which 
 he was taken up on suspicion, committed for trial, and not being able 
 to explain satisfactorily who he was and why he stumbled in the way 
 of persons trying to seize a young pickpocket, my pal got four months 
 imprisonment. 
 
 We got another man in his place and when his time expired, 
 went down to meet him, and he did not go out hunting with us for 
 r.ome time afterwards nearly a fortnight. After awhile one of the
 
 TKACES AMONG (JVl'SIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 129 
 
 men was seized with a decline, and died at Brompton, in the hospital. 
 Like the other stalls, as men are called who help in a quiet way as the 
 support while one thief plays the star part, he usually went well- 
 dressed and had a good appearance. His chief work was to guard me 
 and to get me out of difficulty when I was detected, as I was the 
 mainstay of the band. 
 
 One time when I was caught, however, my imprisonment was so 
 long that the band had to get another boy in my place, and when I 
 came out I decided to go into business by myself. I went to live 
 in Charles Street, Drury Lane, and I stopped there, working all 
 alone for five or six months, till I got acquainted with a young 
 woman, who has ever since been devoted to me. She was not a 
 thief then, but soon after she got acquainted with me, she divined that 
 I was. At first it troubled her terribly, but after awhile she accepted 
 it as destiny and became one herself, even more expert than I, although 
 she had not been regularly educated in stealing as I was when young. 
 We married after the usual fashion of thieves that is, for as long as 
 we should agree. Then we took a couple of rooms and went to house- 
 keeping. I soon got acquainted with some of the swell mob at the 
 Seven Dials, and began working along with three of them upon the 
 ladies' purses again. 
 
 We were frequently watched by the police and detectives, who 
 followed our track, and were often in the same places of amusement 
 with us. But we knew them as well as they knew us and often 
 eluded them. Still their following us was sometimes the cause of out- 
 doing nothing on many of these occasions, as we knew their eye was 
 upon us. 
 
 But whether I became too well known to the police, or whether in 
 the course of time my hand lost some of its cunning, the fact stared 
 me in the face that I got caught more frequently, and also the addi- 
 tional fact that my imprisonments broke down my health, so I decided 
 to quit stealing and earn what I could as a street ballad singer. Sally, 
 however, kept on stealing, which troubled me. So after trying to be 
 honest for several months, I told her if she was not satisfied with 
 what I was earning as a singer I would resume my former emplo} 7 - 
 ment. I did this for a year, but was arrested three times. Each time 
 the prosecutor did not appear and I was acquitted. 
 
 Such luck, I felt certain, could not happen a fourth time running, 
 and I took it as a sign of my last chance to lead an honest life. I 
 came home and told Sally I would never engage in stealing again, and 
 I have kept my word. Had I been tried at this time, as there were so
 
 130 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 many former convictions against me, I should very likely have been 
 transported. I have since then got my living by singing in the streets. 
 I earn my 2s. or 2s. 6d. in an hour or an hour and a half in the even- 
 ing, and can make a shift. It's a poor calling, but it's honester than 
 most vocations, isn't it, since I take only what people choose to give 
 me? 
 
 For six or seven years, when engaged in business, I earned perhaps 
 a larger amount of money than most of the pocket-picking profession. 
 Our house expenses many weeks would average from 4 to 5, for we 
 lived on the best fare, and besides we went to theatres, dressed well, 
 and bought the best editions of the best authors. I was always very 
 much interested in the attempts of writers to depict thieves. Very 
 few of the popular novelists come anywhere near a knowledge of the 
 natures of thieves, or can even give a fair description of the incidents 
 of their lives. The truth is, a pickpocket, till he rises to the rank of a 
 burglar, differs very little in his moral and mental make-up from your 
 average merchant in any large city like London. Why so ? 
 
 Well, I maintain that unless you give a man a full equivalent for 
 what he gives you, you pick his pocket. To make a profit to get 
 something for nothing or to get more than you give is it not 
 stealing ? When a pickpocket graduates into burglary, another element 
 comes in, the risk of life and limb is added and the possibility, the 
 probability of becoming a murderer, completes the criminal nature, 
 and makes the man a man-wolf. Consider a moment. In my life, I 
 have picked about four thousand pockets, mostly from people who 
 could afford once in their lives to be thus taxed. Will you not admit 
 that nearly every very great manufacturer or commercial speculator 
 takes, under cover of law, more out of the pockets of the honest, hard- 
 working, producing class in the course of his life than all the pick- 
 pockets of London put together could amass? 
 
 Or even take a burglar for the sake of argument. I don't aspire to 
 be one, for I am timid and shrink at the thought of risking or of 
 taking human life. But say that an industrious burglar in his business 
 life kills two or three men. What does that amount to, compared with 
 the thousands which my dear native country, England, has killed in 
 Africa during this century just for the sake of extending her com- 
 merce ? Indeed, I think I'd rather be the worst of London burglars 
 than Napoleon the Great, if quantity as well as quality counts in a 
 consideration of murder. Yes, pickpockets generally the world over 
 know each other, for there's a kind of free masonry among thieves. I 
 can pick out a thief as quick as a pocket, whenever I see him.
 
 TRACES AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 131 
 
 Pickpockets in any large city are generally well acquainted with 
 each other, go visiting like ordinary people, and have their parties at 
 which times they generally "sink the shop," and except for an 
 occasional phrase you might not know their occupation. They help 
 their comrades in difficulty. They frequently meet with the burglars 
 but do not associate with them, unless they join them formally and 
 give up pockets. Most of the women of pickpockets and burglars are 
 shoplifters, as they often have to support themselves when their hus- 
 bands are in prison. Then, too, a woman would not be considered a 
 helpmeet or fair, square mate for a man, unless she were able to 
 
 THIEVES' DEN. 
 
 procure legal counsel for him when caught, and to keep him in clover 
 for a few days after he gets out of prison, which she does by shop- 
 lifting or picking pockets. I have associated a good deal with the 
 pick-pockets over London in different districts. You cannot easily cal- 
 culate their weekly income, as it is so precarious, perhaps one day get- 
 ting 20 or 30, and another day being totally unsuccessful. They are 
 in general very superstitious, and if anything cross them, they will do 
 nothing. If they see a person they have formerly robbed, they expect 
 bad luck, and will not attempt anything that day.
 
 132 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 They are very generous in helping each other, when they get into 
 difficulty or trouble, but have no societies, as they could not be kept 
 up. Many of them may be in prison five or six months of the year ; 
 some may get a long penal servitude, or transportation ; or they may 
 have the steel taken out of them, and give up this restless criminal life. 
 
 Thev do not generally find stealing gentlemen's watches so profita- 
 ble as picking ladies' pockets, for this reason, that the purse can be 
 thrown away, some of the coins changed, and they may set to work 
 again immediately ; whereas, when they take a watch, they must go 
 immediately to the fence 1 with it; it is not safe to keep it on their per- 
 son. A good silver watch will now bring little more than 25s., or 
 30s., even it the watch has cost 6. A good gold watch will not fetch 
 above 4. I have worked for two or three hours, and have got, per- 
 haps, six different purses during that time, throwing the purses away 
 at once, so that the robbery might not be traced. Suppose you take a 
 watch, and you place it in your pocket, while you have also your own 
 watch. If you happen to be detected you are searched, and there 
 being a second watch found on you, the evidence is complete. 
 
 The trousers-pockets are seldom picked, except in a crowd. It is 
 almost impossible to do this on any other occasion, such as when walk- 
 ing in the street. The cleverest of the native London thieves, in 
 general, are the Irish cockneys, that is, London children of Irish 
 parentage. 
 
 I never learned any business or trade, and never did a hard day's 
 work in my life except in prison. When men in my position take to an 
 honest employment, they are sometimes pointed out by some of the 
 police as having been formerly convicted thieves, and are often dis- 
 missed from service, and are driven back into criminal courses. 
 
 There is to some natures among us thieves, for we are not all alike, 
 a certain zest in our criminal life, an intense pleasure in liberty because 
 we do not know how long we may enjoy it. This cruel uncertainty 
 strengthens very often the attachment between pickpockets and their 
 women, who, I believe, have a stronger liking to each other, in many 
 cases, than married people engaged in safer businesses. 
 
 Would I rather be honest than pick pockets ? Yes, I think I would, 
 though occasionally, when I see a fine silk handkerchief gently bulging 
 out a gentleman's coat-tail-pocket, my fingers have a momentary twitch 
 and itch that carries me back on memory's express train to the days of 
 my boyhood when I slept in the dark arches of the Adelphi and was 
 the cleverest of my gang at " the tail." 
 
 Their term for :i receiver of stolen p.uiU.
 
 TRACES AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 133 
 
 There is a language current amongst them that is to be met 
 with in no popular dictionary. Probably not even the "slang dic- 
 tionary" contains more than a few of the following instances that 
 may be accepted as genuine. It will lie seen that the prime essen- 
 tial of "Thieves' Latin" is brevity. By its use, much in one or 
 two words may be conveyed to a comrade while rapidly passing 
 him in the street, or, should opportunity serve, during a visit to 
 him while in prison. 
 
 For instance, to erase the original name or number from a stolen 
 watch and substitute one that is fictitious is called christening 
 Jack. To take the works from one watch and case them in 
 another, churching Jack. Poultry stealing is styled beak hunting. 
 One who niches from a shopkeeper while pretending to effect an 
 honest purchase is a bouncer. 
 
 One who entices another to play a game at which cheating 
 rules, such as card or skittle sharping, is a buttoner. The treadmill 
 of a prison is named a shin scraper, possibly on account of the 
 operator's liability, if he is not careful, to get his shins scraped 
 by the ever-revolving wheel. 
 
 To commit burglary is to crack a case or break a drum. The 
 van that conveys prisoners to jail is a Slack Maria. A thief 
 who robs cabs or carriages by climbing up behind, and cutting the 
 straps that secure the luggage on the roof is a dragsman, while 
 he who trains young thieves, like Fagiii in "Oliver Twist," is a 
 kidfman. 
 
 Breaking a square of glass is called starring the glaze. To be 
 transported or sent to penal servitude is being lagged. Three 
 years' imprisonment is a stretch, while by some defect in thieves' 
 arithmetic a half stretch is only six months. A confederate in the 
 practice of thimble-rigging is a nobler. To rob a till is to pinch 
 a bob. 
 
 One who assists at a sham street row for the purpose of creat- 
 ing a mob and promoting robbery from the person is a jolly. A 
 thief who secures goods in a shop while a confederate distracts 
 the attention of the shopkeeper is entitled a palmer. A person or 
 place marked for plunder is denominated a plant. Going out to 
 steal linen that is drying in gardens is picturesquely phrased 
 as going snowing. Stolen property generally is swag. To go
 
 134 THE STOBY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 about half naked to excite compassion is to be on the shallow. 
 Stealing lead from the roofs of houses is technically termed flying 
 the blue pigeon. Coiners of bad money are bit fakers, while mid- 
 night prowlers who rob drunken men are facetiously nicknamed 
 buff hunters. Entering a dwelling-house while the family have 
 gone to church is a dead lark. When a man is convicted of 
 thieving he is in for a vamp. A city missionary or Scripture 
 reader is a gospel grinder. When hidden from the police a thief is 
 said to be laid up in lavender. Forged banknotes are queer screens. 
 To receive a whipping while in prison is called having scroby or 
 claws for breakfast. Long-fingered thieves, expert in emptying 
 ladies' pockets, are fine wirers. The condemned cell is the salt 
 box. The prison chaplain is rather aptly styled Lady G-reen. A 
 boy thief, lithe and thin and daring, such a one as house-breakers 
 hire for the purpose of entering a small window at the rear of 
 a dwelling-house, is a little snakesman. 
 
 So pertinaciously do the inhabitants of criminal colonies stick 
 to their "Latin," that a well-known writer suggests that special 
 religious tracts, suiting their condition, should be printed in this 
 language, as an almost certain method of securing their attention. 
 But if an acquaintance with the thieves' quarters reveals to one 
 the amazing subtlety and cleverness of the pilfering fraternity, it 
 also teaches the guilty fear, the wretchedness, the moral guilt, and 
 the fearful hardships that fall to the lot of the professional thief. 
 
 They are never safe for a moment, and this unceasing jeopardy 
 produces a constant nervousness. Sometimes when visiting the 
 sick, a minister who spent his life among them would gently lay 
 his hand on the shoulder of one, who happened to be standing in 
 the street. The man would "start like a guilty thing upon a 
 fearful summons," and it would take him two or three minutes 
 to recover his self-possession. The adage, "Suspicion always 
 haunts the guilty mind," is painfully illustrated in the thieves' 
 quarter by the faces of gray-haired criminals, whose hearts have 
 been worn into hardness by the dishonoring chains of transpor- 
 tation. When, in the dusk, one speaks to a London thief in a 
 low tone, the guilty start as the man bends forward, anxiously 
 peering into the speaker's face, is a thing frightful to behold. 
 
 He is never at rest, the wretched professional thief. He goes
 
 TRACES AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 135 
 
 about with the tools of war perpetually in his hands, and with 
 enemies in the front and the rear, to the right and the left of 
 him. "Anybody, to hear 'em talk," a thief once remarked (he 
 was a thief at that time in possession of liberty ; not an incar- 
 cerated rogue plying ""gammon" as the incarcerated rogue loves 
 to ply it, for the sake of securing sympathy as a stepping-stone to 
 something else), "anybody would think to hear 'em talk, that it 
 was all sugar with us while we were free, and that our sufferin's 
 did not begin until we were caught and 'put awa T- Them that 
 think so know nothin' about it. Take a case, n of a man who 
 is in for gettin' his livin' 'on the cross,' and" .o has got a 'kid' 
 or two, and their mother, at home. I don't ay it is my case, but 
 you can take it so if you like. She isn't a thief. Ask her what 
 she knows about me and she'll tell you that, wuss luck, I've got 
 in co. with some bad uns, and she wishes that I hadn't. She 
 wishes that I hadn't, p'r'aps, not out of any Goody-two shoes 
 feelin', but because she loves me. That's the name of it; we 
 haint got any other word for the feelin' ; and she can't bear to 
 think that I may, any hour, be dragged off for six months, or a 
 year, p'r'aps. And them's my feelin's too, and no mistake, day 
 after day, and Sundays as well as week days. She isn't fonder of 
 me than I am of her, I'll go bail for that; and as for the kids, 
 the girl especially, why, I'd skid a wagon wheel with my body 
 rather than her precious skin should be grazed. Well, take my 
 word for it, I never go out in the mornin', and the young un sez 
 'good-by,' but what I think 'good-by, yes! p'r'aps it's good-by 
 for a longer spell than you're dreamin' about, you poor little 
 shaver ! ' And when I get out into the street, how long am I 
 safe ? Why, only for the straight length of that street, as far as 
 I can see the coast clear. I may find a stopper at any turnin', or 
 at any corner. And when you do feel the hand on your collar! 
 I've often wondered what must be a chap's feelin's when the 
 white cap is pulled over his peepers, and old Calcraft is pawin' 
 about his throat to get the rope right. It must be a sight worse 
 than the ofher feelin', you'll say. Well, if it is, I wonder how 
 long the chap manages to hold up till he's let gol " 
 
 Many a thief is kept in reluctant bondage to crime from the 
 difficulties he finds in obtaining honest employment and earning
 
 136 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 honest bread, yet some thieves are fond of their criminal calling. 
 They will tell you plainly that they do not intend to work hard 
 for five dollars a week when they can easily earn five times as 
 much by thieving, in less time, and live like gentlemen. But 
 some are utterly weary of the hazard and disgrace. They were 
 once pure, honest and industrious, and when sick, or in jail, they 
 are frequently filled with bitter remorse, and make the strongest 
 vows to have done with a guilty life. 
 
 Suppose a man of this sort in prison. His eyes are opened, 
 and he sees before him the gulf of utter ruin into which he will 
 soon be plunged. He knows well enough that the money earned 
 by thieving goes as fast as it comes, and that there is no prospect 
 of his ever being able to retire on his ill-gotten gains. He comes 
 out of prison determined to reform. But where is he to go? 
 What is he to do? How is he to live? Whatever may have 
 been done for him in prison is of little or no avail, if as soon as 
 he leaves the jail he must go into the world branded with crime, 
 unprotected and unhelped. 
 
 The discharged prisoner must be friendly with some one, and 
 he must live. His criminal friends will entertain him on the 
 understood condition that they are to be repaid from the booty of 
 his next depredation. Thus the first food he eats, and the first 
 friendly chat he has, become the half-necessitating initiative of 
 future crime. Frequently the newly discharged prisoner passes 
 through a round of riot and drunkenness immediately on his 
 release from a long incarceration, as any other man might do in 
 similar circumstances who has no fixed principles to sustain him. 
 And so by reason of the rebound of newly acquired liberty, and 
 the influence of the old set, the man is again demoralized. 
 The discharged prisoner may leave jail with good resolves but 
 the moment he enters the world there arises before him the dark 
 and spectral danger of being hunted down by the police, of 
 being recognized and insulted, of being shunned and despised 
 by his fellow-workmen, of being everywhere contemned and 
 forsaken.' 
 
 One cannot live amongst the thieves many months and study 
 them closely, without discovering the fatal fact that they ha vi- 
 no faith in the sincerity, honesty, or goodness of human nature ;
 
 TEACES AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 137 
 
 and that this last and saddest scepticism of the human heart 
 is one of the most powerful influences at work in the continua- 
 tion of crime. They believe people in general to be no better 
 than themselves, and that most people will do a wrong thing if 
 it serves their purpose. They consider themselves better than 
 many "square" people who practise commercial frauds, and in 
 this point, perhaps, they are nearly right. 
 
 Not having a spark of faith in human nature, their case is all 
 but hopeless, and only those who have tried the experiment can 
 tell how difficult it is to make a thief believe that you are really 
 disinterested and mean him well. But thieves, the worst of 
 them, speak gloomily of the prospects of the fraternity, just as a 
 red Indian might complain of the dwindling of his tribe before 
 the strong march of advancing civilization. 
 
 Although, as most people are aware, the great thief tribe 
 reckons amongst its number an upper, a middle and a lower 
 class, pretty much as corresponding grades of station are recog- 
 nized amongst the honest community, it is doubtful, in the former 
 case, if promotion from one stage to another may be gained by 
 individual enterprise, talent and industry. The literature of 
 the country is from time to time enriched by bragging autobiogra- 
 phies of confessed villains, as well as by the penitent revelations 
 of reclaimed rogues, but it does not appear that perseverance in 
 the humbler walks of crime leads to the highway of infamous 
 prosperity. 
 
 This, indeed, seems to be an idea too preposterous even for 
 the pages of Newgate romance, daring in their flights of fancy as 
 are the authors affecting that delectable line. There is no sinister 
 antithesis of the well-known honest boy Whittington, who tramped 
 from Bristol to London with twopence -half penny, or five cents, in 
 his pocket, and afterwards became lord mayor. No low-browed 
 ragged little thief, who began his career by purloining a turnip 
 from a costermonger's barrow, is immortalized in the pages of the 
 Newgate Calendar as having finally arrived at the high distinc- 
 tion of wearing fine clothes and ranking as the first of swell 
 mobsmen, or as a brilliant and fashionable burglar. 
 
 On the contrary it is a fatal fact, and should have weight with 
 aspirants for the convict's mask and badge, that the poor, shabby,
 
 138 THE STORY OF < ;< >V KK NM KNT. 
 
 hard-working tliief so remains till the end of his days. There is 
 no more chance of his carrying his shameful ligure and miserable 
 hangdog visage into the tip-top society of his order, than there is 
 of a camel threading his way through the eye of a needle or a Jay 
 Gould repenting and restoring his legalized plunder to the people. 
 
 Shocking enough is it to contemplate the white-haired tottering 
 criminal holding on to the front of the dock because he dares not 
 trust entirely his quaking legs, and with no more to urge in his 
 defence than Kagin had when it came to the last, "an old man, 
 my lord, a very old man"; and we give him our pity ungrudg- 
 ingly, because we are no longer troubled with fears of his hos- 
 tility as regards the present or the future. It is all over with 
 him or very nearly. The grave yawns for him, and we cannot 
 help feeling that after all he has hurt himself much more than us. 
 
 No, it is not those who have run the length of their tether 
 of crime that society has to fear, but those who by reason of their 
 tender age are as yet but feeble toddlers on the road that leads 
 to the hulks. It would be instructive as well as of great ser- 
 vice to humanity, if reliable information could be obtained as 
 to the beginning <:f the down-hill journey by our juvenile 
 criminals. Without doubt it would be found that in a lament- 
 ably large number of cases the beginning did not arise in the 
 present transgressors at all, but that they Mere bred and nurtured 
 in it. inheriting it from their parents as certain forms of phys- 
 ical disease are inherited. 
 
 One thing, at least, is certain ; it would come much cheaj / to 
 every country if these budding burglars and pickpockets were 
 caught up, l>efore their natures became too thoroughly pickled in 
 the brine of rascality, and caged away from the community at 
 large. Boy thieves are the most mischievous and wasteful. 
 They will mount a house roof, and for the sake of appropriating 
 the thirty cents' worth of lead that forms its gutter, cause such 
 damage as only a builder's bill of a hundred dollars or so will s,-t 
 right. 
 
 The other day a boy stole a family Bible valued at twelve dol- 
 lars, and after wrenching off the gilt clasps, threw the book into 
 
 SWerj the clasps he sold to a marine store dealer for five cent>. 
 It maybe fairly assumed in the case of bov thieves, who are so
 
 TRACES AMONG GYPSIES, BRIGANDS AND THIEVES. 139 
 
 completely in the hands of others that, before they can "make" 
 for themselves five dollars in cash, they must, as a rule, steal 
 goods to the value of at least forty dollars, and sometimes double 
 as much. But let us put the loss by exchange at its lowest, and 
 say that the boy thief gets a fourth of the value of what he steals ; 
 before ho can i'<irn ?>// thierhi*/ as much as fifty cents a day, he must 
 rob to the amount of twelve dollars a week, allowing him his 
 Sundays off or, in short, to live as decently as our common 
 laborers, the boy must steal to the value of $624 per annum. 
 Now, whatever less sum than this it would cost the State to edu- 
 cate, clothe and teach him, the people 
 at large would be in pocket. 
 
 Yet infinitely worse in its conse- 
 quences than the petty larceny or the 
 burglary that are the precarious profes- 
 sions of outlawed unfortunates in our 
 great cities is the theft which goes on 
 right under the noses of nearly every 
 community in the way of commerce; 
 the theft, and sometimes slow murder, 
 which is called adulteration of food. 
 Possibly this commercial robbery is not 
 so common in this country as in Eng- 
 land, but there is good ground for 
 believing that in many places adulter- 
 ation is systematic and increasing, and 
 recently a bill has been introduced in Congress for an extension 
 of the Bureau of Agriculture by the appointment of food in- 
 spectors, whose duties should be the buying of food in different 
 shops, and the having such specimens chemically analyzed. 
 
 In addition to the fact that bad bread made by private enter- 
 prise saps the national health, clothing made in tenement houses 
 spreads fevers, and the poorly built, imperfectly ventilated houses 
 in which the poor and the lower middle class live cause diseases 
 from which occasionally the rich die as well as the poor victims 
 of plutocratic greed or stupidity. We shall read in a later chapter 
 about the Juggernaut of India, but it is merely a toy monster com- 
 paiv<! io the Juggernaut of Avarice and Ignorance, under whose 
 
 A YOUNG LONDON TH1KK
 
 140 THE STOKY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 wheels the masses are being crushed in many nations that have 
 the amazing effrontery to call themselves civilized. Even in free 
 and supposedly prosperous America between the years 1850 and 
 1880, the percentage of criminals more than trebled, and the 
 percentage of lunatics more than quadrupled. Does not this fact 
 seem to imply that there is something wrong somewhere in our 
 j >resent industrial system? Why, in a land so blessed by nature, 
 should such curses as these be on the increase? Will the reader 
 study for a few moments these figures and facts from the last 
 census, and then draw a just conclusion? Our population is 
 about 64,000,000. Our national wealth is about -$65,000,000,000 
 sixty-five billions. 
 This wealth is divided among three classes as follo'vs: 
 
 182,000 rich families own $43,000,000,000 
 
 1,200,000 middle-class families own . . 7,500,000,000 
 11,620,000 working-class families own . . 11,200,000,000 
 
 Allowing five persons to a family, the usual method among 
 statisticians, each rich person averages a having of $47,253, each 
 middle class man or woman owns on an average $1,250, and each 
 member of the toiling legion which composes the bulk of the 
 population and 'produces the bulk of the wealth, possesses $193. 
 
 These figures and calculations are not those of any wild-eyed, 
 \vi de-mouthed demagogue, but are put forth by Mr. Thomas G. 
 Shearman, a New York millionnaire. What do they mean? Do 
 they not suggest a reasonable cause for the spread of pauperism, 
 the rise of crime and the possibly near fall of our civilization, as 
 many a splendid but unbalanced society has fallen witness 
 Babylon, Athens, and Rome ! into corruption and chaos ? 
 
 Whatever politicians of any party may say, national wealth is 
 not national health, unless it is well distributed. Let the reader 
 ask himself not once, in reading these lines, but often in the 
 future, two questions: Is there not something wrong somewhere, 
 no matter how personally prosperous or successful I, just this 
 moment, may be; and is not "this wrong something" our present 
 industrial system which enriches the few at the expense of the 
 many ?
 
 IV. 
 
 Feudahstic JVIorjarc 
 
 THE kind of government of which the chief idea is em- 
 bodied in. the word feudalism, and Avhich was once 
 the prevalent form in Europe, as we see it to-day in 
 Central and Western Africa, presents many features of 
 intense interest. Roughly speaking, it is a government of chiefs 
 with a sort of loose or elastic allegiance to a head chief or king. 
 
 European feudalism grew to be a much more elaborate system 
 than that which Africa now exhibits, and an explanation of it will 
 be found in a note to the chapter on constitutional monarchy ; but 
 the essential marks are the same, the degree of allegiance to the 
 central chief, that is, the power possessed by the king, varying 
 considerably among the different tribes, probably according to the 
 length of time of their divergence from the simple democracy of 
 original tribal government as outlined in chapter first. 
 
 All the Central African governments, for instance, though 
 feudal, are more or less despotic. Among the Manganja the 
 country is divided up into a number of districts, each of which 
 has under its control some villages; but each of these districts, or 
 " Rundos," as they are called, is independent of the other, not 
 even acknowledging a common chief. Each village pays tribute 
 to the Rundo, which in its turn protects and assists it in time of 
 trouble. In fact, the system is not unlike that of the Swiss can- 
 Mi
 
 142 THE STOUY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 tons, or the American states; "state rights," however, being rather 
 further advanced in the Black-kingly Republic than in the 
 European or Transatlantic democratic one. A woman may also 
 be chief of a Ruiulo, and they are said to exercise their authority 
 veiy judiciousl}'. 
 
 The Banyai, a tribe on the southern bank of the Zambesi, elect 
 their chiefs, but always out of one family, though they never select 
 the immediate descendants ot the late monarch, but always some 
 relative, such as a nephew or brother. It is accounted etiquette 
 for the newly elected chief to affect an air of modesty, and a seem- 
 ing desire to decline the proffered honors as too great for a man 
 of his rank, ability and ambition. In fact, he expects to be 
 "thrice," or a greater number of times, offered the "kingly 
 crown"; but, unlike his Roman prototype, there is no case on 
 record in which the honor was eventually refused. 
 
 The new chief not only inherits the property, but also the 
 wives and children of his predecessors, though often one of the 
 sons of the former chief considers, quite naturally, that he is not 
 to be kept in subservience to the new monarch, and attempts to 
 set up as a petty chief for himself, an attempt which generally 
 results in his having his village burnt about his ears, as a gentle 
 hint that he had better receive his superior in a proper man- 
 ner viz., by clapping of hands, the common method of saluta- 
 tion among most of these African tribes. 
 
 Among the Banyai it is the custom for wealthy men to send 
 their sons to be educated, under some man of eminence, in all 
 the duties and accomplishments of Banyai gentlemen, just as in 
 former times in Europe the sons of gentlemen were sent as pages 
 and esquires to be trained in the laws of chivalry under some 
 puissant knight. 
 
 Among the "Wahumas a curious law prevails. If anyone 
 becomes a slave which it is unnecessary to say is always an 
 involuntary act he or she is put to death when caught again by 
 their own people, because by so doing they have broken one of the 
 laws of their country. Speke witnessed an instance in which 
 some women were actually put to death by their own husbands. 
 
 Theft is generally severely punished in Africa, if it is committed 
 on any of their own tribe. The Karagues punish this crime with
 
 144 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 imprisonment in the stocks, often for months at a time. Let a 
 man strike another with a stick, and he can expiate the offence 
 by paying ten goats ; but if a spear, or any other deadly weapon 
 is used, then he is deprived of all his property one half of the 
 forfeit going to the crown, the other to the person assaulted. 
 
 In case of murder, the entire goods of the murderer are for- 
 feited to the relatives of the slain. The laws against adultery 
 are curiously at once both lax and severe. If a wife offend, she 
 only loses an ear ; if a slave, or the daughter of the chief, is the 
 guilty party, both she and her paramour are executed. 
 
 Among some tribes a man is very severely punished for hurting 
 his wife, as our striking illustration shows, where two wife-beaters 
 are dealt with in no ordinary way, but are whipped till the blood 
 runs. The old crone is telling the culprit who is bound ana 
 waiting his turn what an artistic flagellation he is going to 
 receive. 
 
 Indeed, women in Central Africa are better treated than gen- 
 erally among barbarians. Among the Banyai the wife is tin- 
 husband's equal. The husband not only regards her with pro- 
 found respect, but is expected to consult her before concluding 
 any bargain, and to let her know his most private business 
 transactions. The women even do business on their own account, 
 and visit distant towns to effect commercial transactions for their 
 husbands. 
 
 Unlike many women who attempt business, they can see that 
 there are two sides to a bargain. The Banyai system of marriage 
 is quite in keeping with this region of the strong-minded woman. 
 Among them there is none of the barter of cows for wives as else- 
 where. 
 
 The bridegroom goes humbly to live at the house of his 
 father-in-law and meekly submits to be bullied and ordered about 
 by his mother-in-law, not a more amiable lady than usual, proba- 
 bly. He has to carry water, cut wood, and altogether demean 
 himself as becomes his position in life. If he objects to this 
 arrangement he may leave, but his wife and children must remain, 
 unless he can pay as much as will compensate the wife's parents 
 for the loss of her services. 
 
 In unpleasant contrast with this supremacy of \voman, let us
 
 FEUDALISTIC MONARCHY. 145 
 
 look at Uganda, where she is taught her place with the sharp 
 logic of the rod. A special kind of whip made of plaited strips 
 of hippopotamus hide, with hard, sharp, horny edges, which cut 
 into the flesh at every stroke, is reserved for the administration 
 of wifely chastisement. Killing a wife, or a few wives at a time, 
 is a mere trifle in Uganda. Polygamy is the universal custom. 
 
 The King of Uganda has seven thousand women in his palace. 1 
 Often thirty or forty girls will be offered him in a single morning 
 as brides. If he orders them to fall upon their knees, and 
 embraces them, then the ceremony of marriage is complete, 
 the fortunate damsels are received into the number of his wives, 
 and the parents prostrate themselves before their sovereign, 
 ejaculating the word "N'yanz" (thanks) repeatedly, in such 
 a manner that the ceremony of thanking the sovereign for any 
 favor is described by those travellers who have visited the Uganda 
 court as "n'yanzigging." Koffee, the late King of Ashanti, is 
 said to have had 3,333 wives. 
 
 The Mangan ja looks upon the burial places of his race as sacred, 
 and keeps the graves neatly. They are arranged north and south, 
 and on the surface are laid the implements which the sleeper 
 beneath used during life. 
 
 As amongst the North American Indians these tools are broken 
 perhaps to prevent their being stolen by irreverent marauders of 
 their own or other tribes. By the nature of the implements the 
 passerby can thus tell the occupation, sex, or rank of the dead. 
 
 As mourning, the relatives wear strips of palm tied round their 
 heads, necks, breasts, arms, and legs, and allow them to remain 
 until decay, and the wear and tear to which they are subject, cause 
 them to drop off. 
 
 In other tribes among the Karague people, for example 
 the place and mode of a man's burial are regulated by his rank. 
 If low, his body is sunk in the lake near which they live; 
 but if of noble caste (or as he is styled, a " Wahuma "), then a 
 sacred island is the place of its deposit, and the vicinity of the 
 place of sepulture marked by the symbol of two sticks, tied to a 
 
 iThis is probably a gross exaggeration, due partly to the desire of the King to impress 
 strangers with his great power and pomp as a husband and paitly to the savage inability to 
 figure correctly beyond a certain number.
 
 146 THK STOKV OK ( i( >YKUN.M KNT. 
 
 stone, lying across the pathway. No one seeing this mark would 
 dare to go along the holy path; ;it any inconvenience he would 
 turn aside to reach his destination. 
 
 The kings are buried like the nobles, but with this addition, 
 that their bodies are first roasted for a month, until they are like 
 sun-dried meat, when the lower jaw is cut off, preserved, and 
 covered with beads. The royal tombs are put under the charge 
 of special officers who occupy huts erected over them. 
 
 On the death of any of the great officers of state, the finger- 
 bones and hair are also preserved; or, if they died shaven, as 
 sometimes occurs, a bit of their "mbugu" dress will be preserved 
 in place of the hair. Their families guard their tombs. Among the 
 Wanyoro the dead are buried the men on the left, the women 
 on the right of the door. 
 
 The Bari bury their dead within the enclosure of their kraal or 
 homestead, the grave being marked with poles, on which are hung 
 skulls and horns of cattle, and the top decorated with a tuft of 
 cocks' feathers, the national "crest" or distinction of a member 
 of that tribe, and which they wear on their heads during life. 
 The Musgu, one of the rather more civilized African races, are 
 singular in this respect, that they erect mounds with urns over 
 their dead, a custom which obtained extensive popularity among 
 the primitive races of Europe and other countries. 
 
 Among the Bongo, soon as life is extinct, the corpses are 
 placed in a crouching posture, with the knees forced up to 
 the chin, and are firmly bound round the head and legs. Then, 
 after the body has been thus compressed into the smallest 
 possible compass, it is sewn into a sack made of skins, and placed 
 in a deep grave. A shaft is then sunk perpendicularly about four 
 feet, and a niche hollowed in the side, so that the bag containing 
 the corpse should not have to sustain any vertical pressure from 
 the earth which is thrown in to fill up the grave. 
 
 The Bongo have the striking custom of burying men with the 
 face turned to the north and women to the south. After the 
 grave is filled in, a heap of stones is piled over the spot in a short 
 cylindrical form, and this is supported by strong stakes, which are 
 driven into the soil all round. A pitcher or urn is placed on the 
 middle of the pile, and the graves are always close to the huts,
 
 FEUDALISTIC MONARCHY. 147 
 
 their site being marked l>y a number of long forked branches, 
 carved, by way of ornament, with numerous notches and incisions, 
 and having their points sharpened like horns. 
 
 The typical meaning of these stakes is unknown even to the 
 natives, the assertion made by the traders, that each notch denotes 
 an enemy killed in battle by the deceased, being denied by the 
 Bongo themselves. The neighboring Mittoo and Madi adopt a 
 similar style of sepulture, and the memorial urns erected over the 
 graves of the Musgu remind the traveller of the pitchers on those 
 of the Bongo. 
 
 When a funeral takes place, all the neighbors attend, and after 
 being freely entertained with native beer, help to form the grave, 
 rear the memorial urn, and erect the votive stakes. When the 
 ceremony is finished, they shoot at the stakes with arrows, which 
 they leave sticking in the wood. 
 
 The DQrs, or Dyoors, of the White Nile arrange their graves 
 close to their houses, and mark them by a circular mound three or 
 four feet high, which in a few years is obliterated by the tropical 
 rains, and is not renewed. 
 
 Among the cannibal Niam-Niam grief, as is frequent among the 
 African and other tribes, is denoted by shaving the head. The 
 corpse is ordinarily dyed with red wood and adorned with fine 
 skins and feathers. Men of rank, after being attired with their 
 common aprons, are interred either sitting on their benches or are 
 enclosed in a kind of coffin made from a hollow tree. 
 
 Like the Bongo, the Niam-Niam bury their dead with a scrupu- 
 lous regard to the points of the compass ; but commonly enough 
 they reverse the rule of the former tribe, the men being deposited 
 with their faces towards the east, the women towards the west. 
 After the grave has been well stamped down, a hut is erected 
 over it, though, owing to its fragile character, it rarely long 
 survives the weather or the annual burning of the steppe 
 pasture. 
 
 A Wagogo chief, on dying, is washed, and his corpse placed in 
 an upright position in a hollow tree, to which the people come 
 daily to mourn and pour beer and ashes on the corpse, indulging 
 themselves meanwhile in a kind of wake. This ritual goes on 
 until the body is thoroughly decomposed, when it is placed on
 
 148 THE STOKY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 a platform and exposed to the effects of the weather, that speedily 
 reduces it to a heap of bones which are then duly buried. 
 
 At one time slaves were sacrificed to heighten, the dignity of such 
 occasions; but in marked contrast with the elaborate rites attend- 
 ing a great man's sepulture, the bodies of commoners are thrown 
 into the nearest jungle to be devoured by beasts of the field and 
 fowls of the air. 
 
 Among- some tribes the first step taken when a king expires is 
 to divert the course of a stream, and to dig an enormous pit in its 
 bed. This cavern is then lined with living women. At one end 
 a woman is placed on her hands and knees, and upon her back the 
 corpse of the dead king, covered with beads and other ornaments, 
 is seated, supported on each side by one of his wives, while his 
 second wife sits at his feet. 
 
 The earth is then shovelled in over living and dead alike, all 
 the women being buried alive except the second wife, who is 
 graciously permitted the privilege of being slaughtered, instead, 
 before the huge grave is filled in. Finally, forty or fifty slaves 
 are killed, and their blood poured over the sepulchre, after which 
 the river is allowed to resume its course. 
 
 A pitiable sight is the dragging of a king's wives to his 
 funeral. They are generally stolid as cattle driven to the 
 shambles, but in our illustration one can be noticed making an 
 eloquent, though vain, appeal to a former sweetheart in the crowd 
 to attempt her rescue. The man would like to, but he does not 
 dare : the superstition of royalty is too strong. 
 
 It is said that as many as a hundred women have been buried 
 with one great chief or king, though smaller men have to be sent 
 to their long home with only two or three, and their graves 
 drenched with the blood of as many slaves, while the vulgar herd 
 have to be content with solitary sepulture, the corpse being placed 
 in a sitting posture, with the right forefinger pointing heaven- 
 wards, just level with the top of the mound over his grave. 
 
 Eating, smoking, sleeping, fighting, dancing, gambling a little, 
 and wrestling, may be said to form in outline the list of a Cen- 
 tral African's amusements. Wrestling is about the only manly 
 sport they care for, as hunting and fishing are their daily occupa- 
 tions, and therefore cannot be looked upon as amusements.
 
 150 THE STORY OF (JOVKltNMKNT. 
 
 Wrestling, however, is only practised among the more civil i/ed 
 races, such as the Birghami. So keenly do they contest in this, 
 that it is not an unfrequent occurrence for one of the contestants 
 to be left dead on the ground. Great men among this people will 
 keep in their pay, or as slaves, powerful wrestlers, on whose 
 prowess they highly pride themselves. A wrestler once beaten is 
 looked upon as no good, and, if a slave, would be sold for a mere 
 fraction of the price he was valued at be- fore meeting with this 
 reverse of fortune. 
 
 In addition, all the Birghami, particularly the women, are good 
 dancers, being active and yet graceful in all their movements. 
 Their dancing is a sort of acting in dumb show, and all the while 
 they keep up a low plaintive song, which adds wondrously to the 
 pleasant impression the scene makes on the onlooker. Music and 
 dancing are passions throughout Africa. 
 
 Fighting, in a more or less disciplined manner, either to avenge 
 some old feud, some recent wrong, or simply for the sake of plun- 
 dering the cattle and other property of the weaker tribes, or to 
 capture them for slaves, is to a great extent the normal state of 
 most Central African kingdoms. 
 
 In dress and general appearance, the chief object of the African 
 warriors seems to be to strike terror into the beholders. Want of 
 courage is not a failing that can usually be ascribed to a savage, 
 though a display of bravery, unless attended with a corresponding- 
 success, does not seem to be valued ; nor, on the other hand, is a 
 coward so despised as among civilized nations. 
 
 A monarch who "showed the white feather" in Europe, or even 
 among the semi-civilized people of Asia, would forever incur the 
 contempt of the meanest of his subjects. Not so in Africa, 
 apparently. The kingdom of Unyoro, ruled by Kamrasi, was 
 threatened with invasion. Instead of the king preparing to defend 
 his kingdom as well as he could, his own brother counselled him 
 to take refuge in flight. 
 
 Though fond of display and practical braggadocio in this 
 respect being not unlike the Chinese yet, on occasion, the Cen- 
 tral Africans have shown themselves, even in warfare against the 
 
 O 
 
 Arab slave-robbers, a far from unworthy enemy desperation giving 
 them the courage and force which they might not naturally possess.
 
 FEUDALISTIC MONARCHY. 
 
 151 
 
 Of war as a science they know nothing. Indeed, they resort 
 to most unstrategic methods of going about it such, for 
 instance, as the ridiculous habit of the Latookas in sounding a 
 drum or nogara before attacking a village, which can but 
 give the enemy warning of the intended onslaught. 
 
 Captives in war are usually reserved for slaves. Among the 
 Dor tribes of the White Nile, the bleached skulls of slain foemen 
 
 MAKING A FETISH OF A FOEAIAN'S HEAD. 
 
 are suspended to the branches of a great tree in the open space of 
 the village, under which the huge nogaras, or war-drums, are 
 placed to be ready for sounding as occasion may require. The 
 conclusion of a successful fight is celebrated with a wild war-dance, 
 differing but little in general character from those so common 
 among other savages after their murderous forays, except that as 
 in our illustration of a double rain-storm they sometimes make a
 
 152 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 fetish of a foeman's head when he has displayed unusual bravery, 
 by blowing water at it from their mouths. 
 
 With all the African tribes religion is superstition and super- 
 stition religion. Both are equally dark and gross, though in 
 justice to the Central Africans it must be said that, so far as we 
 have yet learned, neither their religious nor their superstitious 
 deeds are disfigured by the abominations that abound in similar 
 rites among the West Coast tribes. 
 
 Few of the Central African tribes believe that, psychologically, 
 the black man and the white have anything in common. Chris- 
 tianity, they say, for instance, is good enough for the whites, but 
 won't do for the blacks. Most of them believe in the immortality 
 of the soul, as is proved by the fact that nearly all of the tribes 
 very strongly the Mangan jas hold that their relatives come 
 and speak to them in their dreams. 
 
 The spirits of the dead, they believe, can aid and protect them. 
 Under this belief the Banyai people will, when hunting, pom- 
 out the contents of their snuff-boxes as an offering, which may 
 have the effect of so far propitiating their dead friends as to 
 induce them to render the hunting prosperous. 
 
 Unlike more irreverent people savage and civilized the 
 Banyai relies quite as much upon his prayers and snuff, as limit- 
 ing appliances, as upon his more physical weapons. A belief 
 in a superintending Providence, or in other words in the gods 
 ("Barima"), interfering in the affairs of mortals, is thus dis- 
 played. 
 
 Of the great wisdom of hysenas and other wild animals they 
 possess the usual savage high estimate. A hysena, for instance, 
 heard "laughing" in the woods at night after an elephant is 
 killed, is chuckling at the idea that the hunters will not be able 
 to eat all the flesh, but must perforce leave some to them. 
 
 An idea, not widely different from the Polynesian custom of 
 taboo, prevails among the Banyai. To guard property left in the 
 woods, or some such unprotected place, a strip of palm leaf, 
 smeared with some sticky substance, and decorated with roots, 
 twigs, leaves, etc., is attached to the property, under the belief 
 that no one could attempt to pilfer it without being seized with 
 sickness resulting in speedy death.
 
 FEUDALISTIC MONARCHY. 
 
 153 
 
 Many of the tribes have no idols, and found their religious 
 belief on a fear of evil spirits, which are, however, under the 
 control of wizards, whose powers of exorcising them can be pur- 
 
 KINO M'TEZA, A FRIEND OF STANLEY. 
 
 chased by a few goats, generally. If a person falls sick it is 
 believed that he must have been bewitched. The punishment 
 for this is death, and if the hysenas refuse to touch the body after 
 execution, then it is believed that the sentence must have been
 
 154 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 superlatively just. About nearly every animal they have the 
 most extraordinary superstitions. The antelope bears the reputa- 
 tion of causing ulcers if its saliva but touches the skin, while the 
 fingers and toes will fall off if its flesh is eaten. 
 
 Lynx and lion skins are a monopoly of the king ; accordingly, 
 no one but he can decorate his person or his dwelling with these 
 royal peltries. The fat which is skimmed off the water in which 
 a lion's flesh is boiled is looked upon as a valuable medicine, but 
 no one must walk around the dead body of a lion, otherwise the 
 spell which prevents these ferocious animals from entering villages 
 would be broken. 
 
 Two men cement their friendship by making an incision in 
 each other's body and mixing the blood which flows from the 
 wound on a leaf with butter. The mixture is then rubbed into 
 the wound, and the mixed blood and butter is supposed to make 
 them brothers for life. 
 
 A fetish is, in African idea, almost anything to which super- 
 natural qualities attach, or which is considered to bring good 
 fortune or prevent evil. King M'tesa (who Avas a friend of 
 Stanley) and his mother used to set apart certain days for con- 
 sulting their fetishes, in order to see that nothing was amiss in 
 the kingdom of Uganda. 
 
 It was something like an inquiry into the ecclesiastical con- 
 dition of the country, and being a religious ceremony is appro- 
 priately gone into on the first day after the new moon appears. 
 On the third moon by account the king and all the court shaved 
 their heads, the king, however, retaining his "cock's comb," and 
 the pages their double cockades, these being marks of their 
 official ranks. 
 
 There are certain priests who preside over and direct the rites 
 of religion at least, in some cases. Such a one is the priest of 
 the Nile, who lives in a hut decorated with many mystic sym- 
 bols amongst others a paddle, the badge of his high office 
 on an island in the lake which forms one of the Nile sources 
 (Victoria Nyanza). 
 
 This ecclesiastic is only the deputy or familiar of M'gussa, the 
 spirit who presides over the water, and his office is to interpret 
 the secrets the spirit has to tell to the king. There is even a
 
 FEUDALISTIC MONARCHY. 155 
 
 tract of land dedicated in some mysterious manner to the gods, or 
 to one of them. 
 
 It is a kind of '"church estate," for although the king exercises 
 authority over some of the people who live on it, others seem to 
 be viewed in a sacred light, and to be exempt from the control of 
 the civil power; neither has the king any right to dispose of the 
 land. In this sacred territory there are villages only every fifth 
 mile, and no roads run through it. 
 
 These priestly magicians (M'ganga) are a sad curse to African 
 explorers, for so thorough is their hold on the minds of the people, 
 that if they wish to hamper the movements of the traveller, all 
 they need do is to prophesy' all sorts of calamities drought, 
 famine, wars as the consequence of his being allowed to pro- 
 ceed, and the credulously superstitious people will believe them, 
 and do their best to avert such dire misfortunes by preventing 
 the white man from ever setting his eyes on the soil likely to be 
 so cursed by his presence. 
 
 Their implement of divination, simple as it may appear, is a 
 cow's or antelope's horn (Uganga), which they stuff with magic 
 powder, also called Uganga. Stuck into the ground in front of 
 the village, it is supposed to ward off the attacks of an enemy. 
 
 By simply holding it in the hand the magician pretends he can 
 discover anything that has been stolen or lost, and instances have 
 been told of its dragging four men after it with irresistible 
 impetus up to a thief, when it belabored the culprit and drove 
 him out of his senses. 
 
 So imbued are the natives' minds with belief in the power of 
 <-harmers, that they pay the magician for sticks, stones, or mud 
 which he has doctored or fetished for them. They believe certain 
 flowers held in the hand will conduct them to anything lost, as 
 also the voices of certain wild animals, birds, or beasts, will ensure 
 them good luck or warn them of danger. 
 
 They have many other and horrible devices. For instance, in 
 times of tribulation, the magician, if he ascertains a war is pro- 
 jected by inspecting the blood and bones of a fowl which he has 
 flayed for that purpose, flays a young child, and having laid it 
 lengthwise on a path, directs all the warriors on proceeding to 
 battle to step over his sacrifice and ensure themselves victory.
 
 156 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 These extremes, however, are not often resorted to, for the 
 natives are usually content with simpler means, such as flaying a 
 goat, instead of a child; while, to prevent any evil approaching 
 their dwellings, a squashed frog, or any such absurdity, when 
 placed on the track, is considered a specific. 
 
 Human sacrifice, disgustingly common among the West Coast 
 tribes, is, with the exceptions mentioned, rather a rare feature in 
 the religious rites of the interior tribes. The Waganda, when 
 they go to war, in addition to the sacrifice of a child for the pur- 
 pose of the warriors stepping over its dead body, use also another 
 and still more inhuman method of divination in which a child 
 and a fowl bound together are smothered in the steam of pots, one 
 inverted over the other. 
 
 The rain-maker is also another popular figure in Africa, but the 
 office is rather a perilous one, for, if the rain-make)- fail in his 
 methods, his life is in danger. Baker's description of one of these 
 rain-makers is very amusing. The hero was half chief, half magi- 
 cian, at Obbo, and, at the time the incident happened, old Katchiba, 
 the individual in question, called on the famous explorer and 
 remarked that there had been a dreadful drouth for a fortnight. 
 
 " Well," I replied, " you are the rain-maker, why don't you give 
 your people rain ? " 
 
 " Give my people rain ! " said Katchiba ; " I give them rain if they 
 don't give me goats? You don't know my people ; if I am fool enough 
 to give them rain before they give me goats they would let me starve ! 
 No, no ! let them wait ; if they don't bring me supplies of corn, goats, 
 fowls, yams, and all that I require, not one drop of rain shall ever fall 
 again in Obbo. Impudent brutes are my people ! Do you know they 
 have positively threatened to kill me unless I bring the rain. They 
 sha'n't have a drop ; I will wither the crops, and bring a plague upon 
 their flocks. I'll teach these rascals to insult me ! " 
 
 With all this bluster I saw that Old Katchiba was in a great 
 dilemma, and that he would give anything for a shower, but that he 
 did not know how to get out of the scrape. 
 
 Suddenly altering his tone, he asked, " Have you any rain in your 
 country?" I replied that we had every now and then. "How do you 
 bring it? Are you a rain -maker ? " 
 
 I told him no one believed in rain-makers in our country, but that we 
 understood how to bottle lightning (meaning electricity).
 
 FETJDALISTIC MONARCHY. 157 
 
 " I don't keep mine in bottles ; I have a houseful of thunder 
 and lightning," he most coolly replied ; " but if you can bottle 
 lightning you must understand rain-making. What do you think of 
 the weather to-day ?" 
 
 I immediately saw the drift of the cunning Old Katchiba ; he 
 wanted professional advice. I replied that he must know all about it, 
 as he was a regular rain-maker. 
 
 " Of course I do," he answered, "but I want to know what you think 
 of it." 
 
 " Well," I said, " I don't think we shall have any steady rain, but I 
 think we may have a heavy shower in about four days." (I said this 
 as I had observed fleecy clouds gathering daily in the afternoon.) 
 
 " Just my opinion," said Katchiba, delighted, " in four, or perhaps 
 in five days, I intend to give them one shower, just one shower ; yes, 
 I'll just step down to them now, and tell the rascals that if they will 
 bring me some goats by this evening, and some corn to-morrow morn- 
 ing, I will give them, in four or five days, just one shower." 
 
 To give effect to this declaration he gave three toots on his magic 
 whistle, inquiring : " Do you use whistles in your country ? " 
 
 I only replied by giving so shrill and deafening a whistle on my 
 fingers that Katchiba stopped his ears and, relapsing into a smile of 
 admiration, took a glance at the sky from the doorway to see if any 
 sudden effect had been produced. 
 
 " Whistle again," lie said ; and once more I performed like the whistle 
 of a locomotive. " That will do ; we shall have it," said the cunning 
 old rain-maker, and proud of having so knowingly obtained " counsel's 
 opinion " on his case, he toddled off to his impatient subjects. 
 
 In a few days a sudden storm of rain and violent thunder added to 
 Katchiba's renown, and after the shower horns were blowing and 
 nogaras, or drums, were beating in honor of their chief. Entre nous, 
 my whistle he considered infallible. 
 
 Along the feverish coast of West Africa stretches a range of 
 country about three hundred miles in length, from the Assinie 
 River to the River Volta, or a little beyond, to the frontier of 
 Dahomey. This is the "Gold Coast," low and sandy, bounded 
 on the east by the dense malarious tropical jungle which rises 
 gradually from the shore to the height of about fifteen hundred 
 feet, the whole territory which goes by this attractive name being 
 about two hundred miles in breadth. 
 
 Visited as early as 1364 by French adventurers from Rouen
 
 158 
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 and Dieppe, it is now ruled as a crown colony by Great Britain. 
 The chief establishments for trade are at Cape Coast Castle, 
 Elmina, and a few other places, Cape Coast being at present the 
 seat of government. In the interior, and on both sides of the 
 River Prah, which flows through it, are several tribes or nations 
 of kindred race, speaking the same language, or dialect, and gov- 
 erned by native "kings" of a moral complexion scarcely less 
 dusky than their skins. 
 
 TAKING A PRISONER FOR SLAVERY. 
 
 These are the Wassaws, Denkeras, Assin, Akem, Aquapims, 
 Aquamo, Adangme, Krobo, and many other "nations," subdivided 
 into different tribes. All of them are very familiar with Euro- 
 peans, though they have gained little by this intercourse, except 
 the vices of their visitors. 
 
 This coast was long, in common with that lying north and 
 south of it, the active scene of the infamous slave trade. Under 
 the stimulus of the riches or influence acquired through it, some 
 of these petty kingdoms rose into importance, formed new com- 
 binations, or fell, as rapidly as they had risen, into obscurity, 
 after the decay of the traffic in human flesh.
 
 FEUDALISTIC MONARCHY. 
 
 159 
 
 But by far the most 
 important of all these 
 kingdoms are those of 
 the Fantis and Ashantis, 
 separate d from each 
 other by the River Prah ; 
 the one, Fanti, lying 
 on the coast, while the 
 other is in the interior. 
 Apparently one people, 
 and speaking almost ex- 
 actly the same language, 
 they have, since the 
 Europeans made their 
 acquaintance, been po- 
 litically separated, mor- 
 tal enemies and rivals, 
 and mainly owing to 
 continued disputes in 
 regard to a claim on the 
 part of the Ashantis for 
 free access to the coast, 
 periodically at war with 
 each other. 
 
 On two of these oc- 
 casions the British gov- 
 ernment has been forced 
 to protect the Fantis 
 from their more warlike 
 enemies, and at the 
 same time to guard their 
 own commercial inter- 
 ests, and thus the names 
 of the Fantis and 
 Ashantis have become Two FANTI LADIES. 
 
 familiar to us. 
 
 The Fantis are a lazy, good-for-nothing set at present, what- 
 ever they may have been before British influence. They live
 
 160 THE STORY OP GOVERNMENT. 
 
 along the coast, and chiefly at Cape Coast Castle. They are well 
 made, muscular, and are chocolate colored rather than black. 
 Their dress is a cloth round the waist and another over their 
 shoulders when outside their houses, the upper garment being 
 taken off when a superior passes them. 
 
 The women are not good looking, but have fine figures, spoilt, 
 however, by the "dress improver" or "cankey" (a name also 
 applied to a loaf of bread), which they wear behind, and which is 
 used as a sort of saddle for carrying their children. The cloth 
 round her waist a woman allows to hang down in the form of a 
 petticoat ; and, if she is married, there is an end, or another 
 piece, to cover her bosom. 
 
 She is mentally much superior to the man, being lively and 
 keen with eyes, hands, and tongue. In the last Ashanti war the 
 women did most of the porter work, or carrying of the baggage. 
 Both sexes prefer as their " cloths " the gaudiest blue, yellow, 
 or red striped calico. A girdle or string of beads, made of glass, 
 clay, or gold, according to the \vealth of the wearer, is always 
 worn around the waist. 
 
 Their head dress is peculiar. The woolly hair, combed out with 
 great patience until it may attain a maximum length of nine to ten 
 inches, is then trained up in the form of a ridge, supported by 
 means of a comb, and saturated with grease. Their skin is dry 
 and rough, lips very thick, ears large, chin protruding, but the 
 nose scarcely so flat as that of the typical negro. 
 
 The head is round, but the face long, and ornamented with a 
 very scanty beard, while the limbs are large-jointed, bony and 
 muscular, and (if possible) the women are uglier than the men, 
 that is, when they get old; and age among this people means 
 some period near or very little over thirty. 
 
 When young, the girls are bright-eyed, lithe of limb and, after 
 custom has familiarized the stranger with the blackness of their 
 skin, are not absolutely displeasing. But when age comes, the 
 face assumes a monkey look, the breasts become pendent, and the 
 whole person extremely repulsive. 
 
 The Fanti territory is divided into four districts, stretching 
 about thirty miles inland, and each of these districts is governed 
 hy a king, or sometimes by two joint kings. Succession to the
 
 FEUDALISTIC MONARCHY. 
 
 161 
 
 headship of the tribes is hereditary and has been in some cases held 
 by women. The king, however, of the confederation of tribes is 
 
 elected by the tribal chiefs. 
 Their laws are despotic, each 
 chief ruler having power over 
 the life and death of his sub- 
 jects. 
 
 Criminals are punished by 
 decapitation, slavery, forfeit- 
 ure of goods, or by being ex- 
 pelled and exposed to slow 
 death by famine in the wil- 
 derness. Innocence or guilt 
 is tested, as in many other 
 portions of Africa, by means 
 of "ordeals." 
 
 A CKIMINAL DECAPITATED. 
 
 For instance, a suspect is ordered to drink a decoction of some 
 poisonous plant, or to chew a handful of dry rice, when his inno- 
 cence or guilt is tested by the effect of the "ordeal" on his
 
 162 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 stomach or his saliva. When the " ordeal " is a poison, he is con- 
 sidered innocent if his stomach rejects it, but guilty if it does 
 not, and death, of course, happening in such cases, the man is 
 considered properly punished. They have, however, one redeem- 
 ing quality, they provide for their aged parents. 
 
 As to morals among the Fanti, they have long mingled with 
 Europeans, and European influence on the Gold Coast, as in other 
 portions of black Africa, has been invariably corrupting. The 
 slave trade was at one time almost the only branch of commerce ; 
 at best its influence on the native character was pernicious. 
 
 Tt has disappeared now, but has not been succeeded by any other 
 branch of legitimate traffic that suffices to stimulate the possible 
 latent industry of the people. Rum and other articles which tend 
 to corrupt the morals of the people are almost the only articles of 
 import. 
 
 In return for the moral loss sustained by the presence of the 
 English, attempts have been made to administer an antidote to the 
 vices introduced among them by traders, in the shape of large 
 doses of missionary instruction. Probably no set of savages have 
 ever been more vigorously plied with good advice at certain places, 
 or entirely neglected at others, than have the Fantis. Certainly 
 none have ever profited less by it. 
 
 But what they lack in religion, they make up in the quantity 
 and quality of their superstitions, not the least astounding of 
 which is their belief in a child "who has existed from the begin- 
 ning of the world," and yet has neither eaten nor drunken during 
 all this time, and of course cannot be expected to grow. 
 
 To represent this child they borrow a baby, when anyone is 
 found rich enough to pay for the gratification of his curiosity, and 
 the guardian of the sacred babe paints it with colored clays in such 
 a style that it cannot be recognized as belonging to this world. 
 This guardian is generally a hideous old woman, who must be 
 quite cognizant of the swindle she is perpetrating, though, 
 strange to say, Fantis of fair education have been known to 
 believe in this ridiculous imposture. 
 
 Cannibalism does not now exist among the Fantis or Ashantis, 
 though, when General Sir Charles Macarthy was killed in the 
 first Ashanti war, his heart was eaten by the latter people in order
 
 FEUDALISTIC MONARCHY. 163 
 
 to give them a share of his courage. Human sacrifices, though 
 very common among the Ashantis, have now fallen into disuse 
 among those tribes living along the seaboard; there is, however, 
 little doubt but that at one time they were as common among the 
 Fantis as they are now among their ferocious neighbors, the 
 Dahomans or Ashantis. 
 
 Polygamy is permitted, though, for financial reasons, is not 
 often practised. The women, as the more intellectual and ener- 
 getic sex of the Gold Coast, maintain the right of divorcing a 
 husband if he shows cowardice in battle. 
 
 A Fanti lives to a good old age ; white hair is nothing uncom- 
 mon amongst them ; but die he must in due course by rum, or the 
 natural order of events. Great pomp is the rule on such occasions- 
 Professional mourners negro mutes are hired for the cere- 
 mony ; a sheep is killed for the funeral feast, and the shoulder blade 
 laid on the grave, where it is permitted to remain for some time. 
 
 The man who buries another succeeds to his property, but 
 he also succeeds to his debts. In the first case the heirs take very 
 good care to put their deceased relative under ground, but with 
 the defaulting debtor there is not the same stimulus on the part 
 of his relatives to perform the funeral obsequies. Accordingly, 
 in the vicinity of every Fanti village, corpses will be found lying 
 exposed on a platform, merely covered with a cloth, nobody hav- 
 ing been found financially courageous enough to bury them. 
 
 As on every other occasion of Fanti mirth, grief, or piety, 
 insufferable noise accompanies the funeral rites. If the deceased 
 has been a man of any note, all his friends and the great man, 
 as all the world over, has in Fanti land an infinitude of friends, 
 even after he is dead squat in front of the house and celebrate 
 the inauspicious event by drinking, yelling, singing, smoking, 
 and firing muskets. 
 
 A dog is sacrificed before the hut, after which the corpse is 
 buried along with considerable sums of money, gold, and jewels 
 of some value. The first thing an enemy does on entering the 
 Fanti country is, accordingly, to rifle the graves, though, indeed, 
 this is occasionally done by the relatives themselves, in spite of 
 all the terrors of fetish and demon, for avarice is at times stronger 
 than superstition.
 
 164 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The amusements of the Fantis are few. Yelling and dancing- 
 seem to be the only exertion. Laziness is the salient minor vice 
 of the Fantis. In this they excel, nor can anything better be 
 expected of them. They live under a tropical sun ; they have an 
 example of lassitude in the European community, and, above all, 
 exertion can scarcely be expected of people whose only ambition 
 is to provide for their daily wants. 
 
 Now on the Gold Coast a native can live luxuriously on two 
 cents a day, and the exertion of a few hours per week will supply 
 him with all he requires in the way of rum, gaudy Manchester 
 goods, and tobacco. Even then, so runs Fanti logic, what 
 necessity is there for his exerting himself to procure even that? 
 His wife can do so. Accordingly in Fanti land there is an equit- 
 able division of labor, the wife earns the living and the husband 
 consumes it. 
 
 Whatever the Fantis may have been, the Ashantis are now, at 
 all events, a much superior people, intellectually, and, if cour- 
 age is a virtue, morally also. Barbarous no doubt they are, but 
 it is almost an abuse of the term to call them savage. In their gov- 
 ernment they display no little force and order, and a well-estab- 
 lished system of political institutions, the history of which can be 
 traced for at least two centuries. 
 
 Statesman-like ability and military skill are distinguishing 
 marks of the aristocracy of the kingdom, and the common people 
 display so much courage in battle there is little doubt but that 
 within the Ashanti kingdom lies the element of a great African 
 military empire, provided the people were efficiently trained and 
 supplied with the appliances of modern warfare. 
 
 And among such strong-minded men there is hope that under 
 moral influences, stronger than those they have yet come in con- 
 tact with, the very superstitions black and cruel though they 
 be which at present give them a pre-eminence over their 
 neighbors, might be transmuted to something noble, pure, and 
 sweet. 
 
 Though not so powerfully made as the Fanti, the Ashanti war- 
 Hoi's are infinitely more courageous ; and the women are much 
 better looking than their Fanti sisters. But women are looked 
 upon as a regular article of merchandise, and nothing astonished
 
 FEUDALIST! C MONARCHY. 
 
 165 
 
 the Ashanti warriors more than that, when the English captured 
 in the late war a couple of women, they let them go free. 
 
 "What a curious people these white men are to send the 
 women away ! Why, this is money ! " was their commentary. A 
 woman among them is always worth at least twenty or thirty- 
 dollars, and a very attractive damsel may fetch as much as thirty- 
 five in the matrimonial market. 
 
 Government among the Ashantis is more absolute or less feu- 
 dalistic than among 1 other tribes. The succession does not run 
 
 ASHANTI GIRLS PRODUCING FETISH. 
 
 in a direct line but to a brother or nephew, in which latter case 
 the nephew is not the son of the king's brother, but of his sister, 
 who (and this is a strange commentary on savage morals) need not 
 be married, the only requisite being that the probable father be 
 st.mng, good looking, and of reputable origin. 
 
 The reason they give for this departure from the direct line in 
 the succession to the Ashanti crown is that one can never be sure 
 that the king is the father of the queen's son, and that as, more- 
 over, the queens are almost invariably of humble origin, making 
 the son of the "princess royal " the heir secures that at least there 
 should be some kingly blood in the occupant of the throne.
 
 166 TIIU STOllY OF GOVERNMENT, 
 
 Failing the brother or the nephew, the son can occupy the 
 throne; failing all three, the chief slave of the dead king. But 
 the unwritten constitution of Ashanti, though allowing very 
 summary powers to the sovereign, controls him in many ways. 
 
 The powers of the "Kotoko, " or council, curb the tyranny 
 of the king, for he is bound to consult them in all questions of 
 foreign policy, and war or peace. He also voluntarily, in times 
 of trouble, summons to his aid a few chosen councillors, whose 
 advice he takes or rejects, as seems good to him. 
 
 His civil list is great: tribute is paid by the vassal princes, 
 taxes are levied on all the villages, or "crooms," while tolls and 
 custom dues make up the rest of the revenue. He has also in his 
 own hands various gold mines, and levies a handsome percentage 
 on all the gold found in his country, to which, indeed, he makes 
 a formal claim, not, however, except in rare cases, enforced. 
 All nuggets, however, strictly escheat to the king as his special 
 property. 
 
 But where every man is a soldier, and the king is dependent on 
 the good-will of his subjects warlike though they be before 
 he can carry out any of his ambitious schemes, he is not very 
 apt to unnecessarily irritate them. 
 
 From this point of view there is much to be said in favor 
 of a feudal monarchy, such as that of Ashanti. Yet between the 
 highest nobles and the king there is a wide gulf; as in Dahomey 
 the prime minister, or even greatest general, will humble himself 
 in the dust when entering the dread presence of royalty. A des- 
 cription of an Ashanti king, by a great African traveller, gives 
 an excellent example of the richness of the kingdom as well 
 as the bai baric pomp of a feudal sovereign : 
 
 His manners, says Bowdich, were majestic, yet courteous, and 
 he did not allow his surprise to beguile him for a moment of the com- 
 posure of a monarch. He appeared about thirty-eight, inclined to 
 corpulence, and of a benevolent countenance ; he wore a fillet of aggry 
 beads round his temple, a necklace of gold cockspur shells strung by 
 their largest ends, and over his right shoulder a red silk cord suspend- 
 ing three sapphires cased in gold. His bracelets were the richest mixture 
 of beads and gold, and his fingers were covered with rings; his cloth 
 was a dark green silk ; a pointed diadem was elegantly painted in white
 
 FEUDALISTIC MONARCHY. 167 
 
 on his forehead, also a pattern resembling an epaulet on each shoulder, 
 and an ornament like a full-blown rose, one leaf rising above another 
 until it covered his whole breast; his knee-bands were of aggry beads, 
 and his ankle-strings of gold ornaments of the most delicate workman- 
 ship, small drums, swords, guns, and birds clustered together. His san- 
 dals, of a soft white leather, were embossed across the instep-band with 
 small gold and silver cases of sapphires; he was seated in a low chair, 
 richly ornamented with gold ; and he had a pair of gold castanets on his 
 finger and thumb, which he clapped to enforce silence. The belts of 
 the guards behind his chair were cased in gold, and covered with small 
 jaw-bones of the same metal. 
 
 The elephants' tails, waving like a small cloud before him, were 
 spangled with gold, and large plumes of feathers were flourished amid 
 them. His eunuch presided over these attendants, wearing only one 
 massive piece of gold about his neck ; the royal stool, entirely cased in 
 gold, was displayed under a splendid umbrella, with drums, horns, 
 and various musical instruments, cased in gold, about the thickness of 
 cartridge paper. 
 
 Large circles of gold hung by scarlet cloth from the swords of state, 
 the sheaths as well as the handles of which were also cased ; hatchets 
 of the same were inter-mixed with them ; the breasts of the Ochras 
 and various attendants were adorned with large stars, crescents, and 
 gossamer-wings of solid gold. 
 
 The profusion of gold in this picture brings us to a considera- 
 tion of the principal Ashanti industry, namely, the gold mines 
 with which they allow no white man to interfere. When the 
 Creator first made the world, according to their philosophy, He 
 created a black man and a white man. 
 
 To the black man He offered a calabash of gold, rich soil, a 
 mud hut, and all the fruits of the earth in abundance ; but the 
 white man preferred a quantity of paper, pens, and ink, and 
 having got knowledge, prospered over the black man, who in his 
 ignorance preferred the apparent natural riches. Yet having 
 made their choice, they say, they intend sticking to it; let the 
 white man keep to his ink and paper. 
 
 A license is exacted from every one in the kingdom of Ashanti 
 wearing gold ornaments. Strictly speaking, all the gold found 
 belongs to the king; and when a nobleman or rich man dies the 
 gold he may leave behind him becomes his majesty's property.
 
 168 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Moreover, it is forbidden for anyone but the king's servants 
 to sweep the market place at Coomassie, for among the sweep- 
 ings may be found some particles of dust which have been 
 dropped in the course of barter, gold dust being the ordinary com- 
 merce of the country. 
 
 When the king dies, his treasures are buried with him in the 
 Bantama, or sepulchre of the Ashanti monarchs; and no doubt, 
 had Sir Garnet Wolseley, as was originally his intention, de- 
 stroyed this sacred enclosure, much of the treasure, the absence 
 of which so disappointed the English soldiers, would have been 
 found. 
 
 "Aggry beads" are ornaments highly prized by the Ashantis. 
 Their origin is rather obscure, and though the artists of Birming- 
 ham have attempted to imitate them, they have hitherto failed to 
 produce a sham which will impose upon the art connoisseurs of 
 the Gold Coast. 
 
 It is probable that they are glass mosaics, and of Egyptian or 
 Phoenician manufacture. The Egyptians or Plujenicians might 
 have sold their goods to the Berbers, and by them the aggry beads, 
 among other manufactures of these ingenious dwellers in Tyre 
 or on the Nile banks, might have been passed from tribe to tribe 
 until they reached far away Ashanti. 
 
 By Ashanti law if an aggry bead is broken in a scuffle, seven 
 slaves must be paid to the owner, or in other words, upwards of 
 $225. They are usually found at some distance from the sea, and 
 though only picked up now and then by accident, are yet plenti- 
 ful, proving that during the times these beads reached the 
 Ashantis, in far away ages, the trade of the Gold Coast must 
 have been flourishing. 
 
 The Ashanti method of extracting the gold from the soil is very 
 primitive. A quantity of the earth, sand, and gravel through 
 which the scales and little bits of gold are scattered, is dug up by 
 means of a hoe, and washed in a calabash by a sharp rotary move- 
 ment, which gradually tosses off the earth and sand, and allows 
 the heavier gold to remain at the bottom of the vessel. 
 
 It is, in fact, exactly the same method of washing gold as that 
 known in California as "panning out," a plan only adopted in 
 that country for the purpose of testing the richness of a "placer "
 
 FEUDALISTIC MONARCHY. 169 
 
 or gold deposit. The gold saved by this method of washing is 
 then put into quills for safe keeping. 
 
 So thickly impregnated is the soil with gold that even by this 
 rude mode of extraction great quantities are obtained. After 
 every shower of rain the streams carry down sand laden with the 
 precious metal, which on their subsiding is found mixed up 
 with the alluvium left behind on the banks. 
 
 With the improved appliances now used in gold washing- 
 immense quantities might, no doubt, be obtained ; an experienced 
 Ashanti gold washer calculates that in the course of a year he 
 will obtain about twenty "minkali," in value two slaves, or 
 about $80.00. 
 
 Gold-buying on the west coast of Africa is not a trade that an 
 inexperienced hand need take up. The weights are black seeds 
 called "telekessi," and each buyer has his own weights and 
 scales, so it is a pitched battle between seller and purchaser as to 
 who can cheat the other. 
 
 " Bogus dust " is manufactured by preparing nuggets of copper 
 and silver mixed, and the fine dust gold is simulated by copper 
 filings and red coral powder. The "telekessi" weights are 
 soaked in butter to make them heavier, and imitation ones of 
 pebble are even put in their place, from which it is evident that 
 some of the business devices of our modern industrial system are 
 in vogue among the savages. 
 
 Mr. Skertchly mentions that in a small factory on the Gold 
 Coast he has seen as much as three hundred ounces of gold taken 
 in a single day. At all the factories there are professed "gold- 
 takers," whose duty it is to assay all the gold before it passes 
 into the trader's hand, so as to detect and reject the "Brummagem 
 nuggets " which are continually offered them. 
 
 A half naked savage will arrive in the factory with gold dust 
 to exchange for guns, powder, or cloth. The dust is carefully 
 tied up in small pieces of paper in one corner of his waist cloth, 
 or often enough concealed in the intricate mazes of his wool. 
 The small packet is opened, and the gold-taker empties it into 
 a copper blow pan, shaped like a banker's shovel without a 
 handle, and with a dexterous movement of the wrist separates 
 the large from the small particles.
 
 170 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 With a feather-tip he then picks out all the suspicious par- 
 ticles and hits of dust, and with a wonderfully regulated puff 
 blows off the specks of mica and pyrites which would otherwise 
 have escaped unnoticed. The blown gold is then weighed and 
 handed over to the trader. 
 
 The wages of a good gold-taker are very high, and some over- 
 acute, but penny-wise-and-pound -foolish persons, who have dis- 
 pensed with the services of these gold-takers, and have relied upon 
 the efficiency of aquafortis and touchstone, have found, on con- 
 veying the gold dust to England, that they have been buying 
 silver gilt, or even gold dust made in Birmingham itself. 
 
 The dress of the Ashantis consists of a tunic of colored calico 
 or some other cloth, while for higher occasions, or for the clothes 
 of rich men, silk woven in the native looms is substituted. Orna- 
 ments of gold, silver, and "aggry beads " are worn, either as 
 decorations or as charms against illness, witchcraft, or other mis- 
 fortune. 
 
 The grandees, when in full uniform, add "jujus," or breast- 
 plates of gold, and other glittering ornaments, and cover their 
 heads with horned helmets of an extraordinary shape, and waving 
 feather plumes. They frequently decorate their faces with deli- 
 cately painted patterns in green or white paint on the cheeks and 
 forehead. They have several musical instruments, and are fond 
 of dancing, mimicry, story-telling, songs, and all sorts of fun. 
 
 Each nobleman has his own band of minstrels and heralds, 
 who used to patrol the city at stated hours of certain days, 
 playing the tunes which belong to their respective masters. 
 Feudalism is apt in all countries to have the same belongings, 
 and hence we see in Africa much which will remind the reader 
 of similar scenes in Europe during the sway of the mediaeval 
 chivalry. 
 
 The industries of the Ashantis, apart from mining, though 
 limited, are interesting. Their looms are formed on the same 
 principle as ours. Their cloths, in fineness, brilliancy, and size, 
 are, when we consider the appliances by which they have been 
 produced, and the innate laziness of the native African, admira- 
 ble. They also paint, with great ease and rapidity, white cloths, 
 and excel in pottery and goldsmith's work.
 
 FEUDALISTIC MONARCHY. 171 
 
 Their weights are very neat brass casts of almost every animal, 
 fruit, and vegetable known to them, though the original ones in 
 the shape of seeds are still occasionally used, and universally so 
 on the coast for weighing gold. They also do good work in iron, 
 tan leather, and are skilful carpenters. 
 
 The Ashanti army is recruited from all able-bodied men, and 
 is very numerous. Bowdich calculated that there were 150,000 
 ready forces, and 204,000 fit to bear arms. The number has 
 been calculated somewhat higher since his day, viz., at 300,000. 
 
 Looking at the Ashanti army, as compared with the fierce 
 rabbles which go under that name in other portions of Africa, it is 
 almost in a state of dihcipline. War is begun, if not with all 
 the forms, yet with much of the craft, diplomatic duplicity, and 
 wholesale lying prevalent in more civilized communities% 
 
 When the Aslmnti monarch proposes to invade another tribe or 
 nation, he despatches envoys, laden with rich presents, to the 
 neighboring powers, appealing with one hand to their sense of 
 justice, by pointing out how great has been the provocation, and 
 what a ""ju. t and holy war" is the systematic murder in which 
 he is about to engage ; and with the other, while assuring them 
 of his friendship and affection, he takes care to point out how 
 they can be benefited, if not by helping, at least by not impeding 
 him in his proposed operations. 
 
 He has generals, if he does not command himself, who are 
 accomplished in all the tactics of savage warfare, ambuscade, 
 flanking attacks, and feigned retreats. The craft of the diplom- 
 atists in the council is equalled by the courage of the troops in 
 the field. 
 
 Every man knows his place, and as soon as war is declared he 
 accoutres himself with musket and cartouch box, and provisioning 
 himself for a time with a few kalo nuts and a little mai^e meal, 
 joins the company to which he belongs. 
 
 The enemy will supply the rest of his commissariat, for, like 
 Stonewall Jackson, his motto is "Always forage on the enemy." 
 As soon as the army is on the march, the women, daubing them- 
 selves with white clay, and stripping themselves, march through 
 the towns, beating the drum and belaboring any wight who may 
 have remained at home.
 
 172 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Carpenters, blacksmiths, and other artisans accompany the 
 army, sutlers sell provisions and cheat like sutlers the world 
 over, while money lenders advance cash to impecunious soldiers 
 at an interest of 120 to 300 per cent. Lastly, in the van 
 follow the women hearing pots, calabashes, and other cooking 
 utensils. 
 
 In battle the women stand behind their husbands, supply them 
 with powder, and animate them with songs. When the battle 
 begins skirmishers advance ; these are slaves whose lives are of 
 little value. The secondary captains fight in the front ranks, 
 while the great nobles and the king sit behind on stools, shaded 
 by the huge umbrellas which denote their rank. 
 
 They are like the officers in some Spanish-American republics, 
 who, after the battle has commenced, take to the rear of their 
 troops, and shout valiant commands to them, inculcating in 
 sonorous language how glorious it is to fight, or even, if neces- 
 sary, to die for one's country, while they at the same time are 
 preparing to falsify their maxim by flight. 
 
 Hence they are called " encouragers " by the cynical soldiery. 
 In the same manner the Ashanti encouragers remain in the rear, 
 surrounded by young men who cut down those who attempt to 
 retreat. "It is," says the Ashanti soldier, "just as well to die 
 fighting, for if we attempt to escape we are killed anyhow." 
 
 The commander-in-chief, while the battle is raging, sits on his 
 stool playing some kind of musical instrument, as if to impress the 
 bystanders that he is so confident of victory as to be perfectly 
 easy as to the result. In case of defeat, the captains are expected 
 to commit suicide. 
 
 When the day is lost they seat themselves calmly on casks of 
 gunpowder, and blow themselves up into the air, that the Ashanti 
 proverb may be fulfilled, "It is shame which causes the chief to 
 die." If victorious, they never pursue the enemy when it is near 
 sunset. 
 
 During the active part of the campaign the army is forbidden 
 all other food except meal, a quantity of which each soldier carries 
 in the bag by his side, and mixes with the first water he finds. 
 No fires are allowed to be lit. 
 
 They eat a little bit of the heart of the first enemy slain, and
 
 FEUDALISTIC MONARCHY. 
 
 173 
 
 wear ornaments of his teeth and bones. The whole feudal system 
 of Ashanti is favorable to military discipline, and at the same 
 time conducive to fostering the war spirit and the greed of mili- 
 tary glory and gain. 
 
 The people are a nation of soldiers as well disciplined as a 
 barbarous army can be. To the neighboring powers they were, 
 until their late reverse at the hands of the British, a name of 
 
 A FETISH TEMPLE. 
 
 terror. The Fantis considered it useless to oppose them; the 
 very name of "Shanti" was almost sufficient to make them run. 
 But though the Ashantis could conquer, they could not govern, 
 and one tribe after another has revolted from their rule, and 
 either asserted their pristine independence, or formed a new com- 
 bination fatal to their conquerors. Since the monarchy sustained 
 its last shock, at the hands of the British, several other tributaries, 
 have revolted from under its sway, though they are likely, before 
 long, to be reconquered.
 
 174 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Police regulations are strictly followed out in Coomassie, the 
 capital of this feudal kingdom; none, except with the sanction 
 of the king, can go out of doors at night, and policemen wild- 
 looking beings with heads half shaved, long hair falling over 
 their foreheads, and with lances in their hands patrol the 
 istreets to see that this tyrannical regulation, apparently a bit of 
 military despotism to prevent the chance of plots or revolts, is 
 carried out with relentless rigor. 
 
 Another curious regulation, which shows that the Ashanti laws 
 are not the portentous growth of mere wantonness uncontrolled by 
 the people, or undirected by some sound underlying principle, is 
 that the king must attend all fires. This is a wise provision, 
 though in a town where fires must be common, a severe tax upon 
 such a luxurious monarch, for under the eye of the royal dis- 
 penser of life and death the acting firemen will not be apt to be 
 dilatory in their duties when the fire horn is blown. 
 
 When an Ashanti dies his body is buried, and along with it a 
 quantity of the gold he may have possessed; a similar cus- 
 tom to one prevalent among the Fantis. The Bantama is the 
 mausoleum of the kings, as well as a place of human sacrifice, 
 and the great spiritual stronghold of the priests. In this sacred 
 place is kept the skull of Governor Sir Charles Macarthy, who 
 was killed in the first war. "By Wednesday and Macarthy" is 
 a sacred Ashanti oath. 
 
 This skull the Ashanti kings have converted into a drinking 
 cup, out of which, on solemn occasions, they quaff their rum. 
 Into this Bantama no stranger is allowed to set his profane foot. 
 A trusty chief and a powerful guard watch it day and night. It 
 is, according to the varying accounts, from half a mile to a mile 
 and a half from Coomassie, and is connected with the capital by 
 a broad road. 
 
 On the decease of any person of rank, numerous human lives 
 are sacrificed, the number being proportionate to the dignity of 
 the deceased. On the death of the mother of the king who ruled 
 the country in Bowdich's time, no less than three thousand 
 human beings were butchered; and on his own death, though 
 we have no certain information, most probably the number was 
 doubled.
 
 176 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The funeral rites of a great captain are often repeated regularly 
 every week for two or three months at a stretch, and on each 
 occasion about two hundred persons sacrificed. These victims are 
 usually slaves or culprits, and principally females, but it is usual 
 to "wet the grave " with the blood of a freeman of respectability. 
 
 Among the rites of the Ashanti and Dahomey nations few are 
 more familiar in name to the most cursory reader of books of 
 West African travel than the so-called murderous ceremonies 
 kno\Vn as the customs. 
 
 The word is an Anglicized or corrupted form of the French 
 coutume, a general habit the "general habit "in this case both in 
 Dahomey and Ashanti being the slaughter, in a more or less 
 cruel manner, and accompanied with immense pomp and state 
 ceremonial, of vast numbers of people, chiefly slaves and criminals, 
 at certain seasons of the year. Long habit has rendered the per- 
 formance of these ceremonies imperative. 
 
 Abominable though they are, they have even met a faint, half- 
 hearted defence or apology from white men as political necessities, 
 for they say that in Ashanti or Dahomey the abolition of human 
 sacrifice would deprive the people of one of their great annual 
 spectacles, and thereby endanger the very monarchy itself. A 
 parallel piece of political management is to be found in the bloody 
 gladiatorial shows with which the Roman despots appeased the pas- 
 sions of the populace. The ruling idea throughout seems to be 
 to send messengers to the dead or to the gods in the persons of 
 those who are killed. They believe that the body contains a 
 spirit or ghost which exists after death, and which flits about 
 the neighborhood of the grave, and even revisits its old home, and 
 holds converse with those it formerly loved, or plays pranks on 
 those it disliked ; is, in fact, an ethereal, disembodied human being, 
 subject to all the passions and whims of such a one in the flesh. 
 
 By the grave of the dead man are accordingly placed food that 
 he may eat, or rather that he may eat the " spirit " of the food, 
 and vessels that he may cook it. 
 
 For food and vessels, in fact all objects animate or inanimate, 
 have equally souls or spirits which live in an after world, and 
 which can accompany their spirit master on his journeys to and 
 from that shadowy land. They also believe in a hades, a country
 
 FEUDALISTIC MONARCHY. 177 
 
 below the ground where the "dead dwell in a life that shall have 
 no end." 
 
 In the other world only kings, princes, and nobles enjoy all 
 voluptuous delights ; the poorer people Avait on them and share 
 a little in their pleasures. Not only in this hades, or heaven 
 for what its exact character is, is somewhat dubious even in their 
 own philosophy do men come to life and revel in palm wine 
 and wives, but they also believe that all garments a man has worn 
 out will then come to life again a resurrection of old clothes. 
 
 Besides this, his relations display their affection by giving 
 him an outfit of weapons, ornaments, new cloth, crockery ware, 
 etc., so that, like the son of a modern rich man, he may go to the 
 devil like a gentleman. But who is to carry these things and look 
 after them? Evidently his wives and slaves. Therefore, a num- 
 ber of these are killed to keep him company, and often a slave is 
 killed some time after his death to take him a message, or as 
 an addition to his household. 
 
 In Dahomey this custom of sending messengers is organized 
 into a system. Thus originated human sacrifice which is, grant- 
 ing the truth of the theory on which it is based, a most rational 
 custom. Death is disagreeable to us because we do not know 
 where we are going, but to the widow of an African chieftain it 
 is merely a surgical operation and a change of existence. That 
 explains why Africans submit to death so quietly. 
 
 A woman at Akropong selected for the sacrifice was stripped 
 according to custom, but only stunned, not killed by the blows. 
 She recovered her senses and found herself lying on the ground 
 surrounded by dead bodies. She rose, went into the town where 
 the elders were seated in council, and told them she had been to 
 the "Lord of the Dead," and had been sent back, because she was 
 naked ; the elders must dress her finely and kill her over again. This 
 was accordingly done. 
 
 But there is another kind of human sacrifice, the slaying of 
 men and women as gifts to the gods. In Ashanti the first form 
 of sacrifice is practised. When one of the royal family dies, 
 slaves are killed by the hundred. Horrible as it may seem that 
 such a thing should still exist, yet it is true that human sacrifices 
 have become in Ashanti, as in Dahomey, public entertainments.
 
 178 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The sight of an executioner, in a shaggy cap of black monkey 
 skin, the same kind that is used for ladies' muffs, chopping off the 
 head of a slave, is to the Ashantis what the sports of the amphi- 
 theatre were to the Romans, or bull fights to the Spaniards of the 
 present day. 
 
 Public executions in all countries draw large crowds of specta- 
 tors, and in Ashanti this penchant of the multitude has been culti- 
 vated and developed into an artistic feeling. Decapitation has 
 become with them an art as various as music. There are two 
 movements in vogue, the allegro, in which the head is twisted away 
 by a sharp knife with a dexterous turn of the wrist and the 
 adagio, in which the head is sawn off in slow time. 
 
 So common had this spectacle become in the days prior to the 
 fall of Coomassie, that when the little son of one of the German 
 missionaries who was freed by King Coffee on the approach of 
 the English troops was angry at anyone, he would exclaim, 
 "Your head will fall to-morrow! " 
 
 Slicing off heads had been one of the most common sights that 
 the child had seen, and was in his eyes the punishment for the 
 most trifling offence. The place where the bodies are cast is a 
 swampy place near the town, and when the English troops 
 visited it the effluvia from swollen, putrefying bodies filled the 
 air with a carrion stench. 
 
 The whole of the blood-stained town had the odor of death, and 
 every breeze that Avas wafted over it bore on it the smell of decay- 
 ing humanity, while piles of skulls and human bones testified to 
 the long continuance of these horrible sacrifices. In Ashanti the 
 two great seasons of sacrifice are the Yam and the Adai customs. 
 
 The Yam custom occurs in the beginning of September, at the 
 season when the yams are ripe, and is the greatest of the two 
 customs; it consists in the sacrifice, with much ceremony and 
 many rites, of large numbers of human beings before the yams are 
 allowed to be gathered. 
 
 The Adai customs, divided into the "Great" and "Little," are 
 celebrated every three weeks, though with less expenditure of life 
 each time than during the Yam celebration. In November, 1881, 
 a report reached Europe that Mansah, King of Ashanti a brother 
 of Koffee, who was deposed by his irate subjects had slain two
 
 FEUDALISTIC MONARCHY. 179 
 
 hundred girls in order to mix their blood with the "swish," or 
 clay, for his new palace. 
 
 The story proved unfounded, though quite in accord with 
 Ashanti ideas and customs, and a widespread superstition of all 
 countries and ages. In Polynesia, for example, the foundations 
 of some of the temples were laid amid human bodies ; under the 
 gates of Mandalay "spirit watchers " were buried, and not long 
 ago a panic pervaded the native quarter of Madras out of the 
 rumor that the English government were about to ensure the 
 safety of the new harbor works by sacrificing a number of human 
 beings. 
 
 The religion of the Ashantis 1 is as rude as their rites in honor of 
 it are bloody. "Nyonmo" is their Supreme Being, and nearly 
 every heavenly or terrestrial phenomenon is one of his manifesta- 
 tions. They worship the earth and the sky as separate deities, 
 which exercise their influence over mankind; while trees and 
 rivers, which are also manifestations of their gods, can only exer- 
 cise a limited power over particular towns, districts, or men. 
 
 " Kra, " or the soul of man, existed, in their belief, before the 
 body, and is transmitted from one man to another, so that the 
 soul which left the body of an old man may have entered the body 
 of the child just born. The priest will augur in regard to the 
 destiny of the babe yet unborn, by asking its future Kra to tell 
 one as to its fortune in life. 
 
 This Kra is distinct from the body, and can give advice, either 
 good or bad, according to its sex (for there are male and female 
 Kras), to the body which it inhabits. Evil spirits and ghosts are, 
 however, what the Ashantis, like the other West Africans, mostly 
 fear; and to avert their displeasure, resort is had to charms or 
 fetishes, which may be anything, from a human sacrifice to a pot 
 of filth compounded by the fetish priest. 
 
 i Mr. Reade who lived long amongthe Asbantis says : It is a mistake to suppose that these 
 Africans are a stupid people because they have no books, and do not wear many clothes. The 
 children do not go to school, but they sit round the fire at night, or beneath the town tree in 
 the day, and listen to their elders, who discuss politics, and matters relating to government, 
 law, and religion. Every man in a tribe, and every slave belonging to a tribe, has learned at 
 an early age the constitution by which he is governed, and the policy pursued towards foreign 
 tribes. In such a land as Ashanti the kings and chiefs are profoundly skilled in the arts of 
 diplomacy. Their weapon of offence is treachery ; the weapon of defence, suspicion. They 
 have no scruples and no delusions. They never hesitate to betray, and always hesitate to 
 believe.
 
 180 THE STOUY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 At the entrance of towns, dwellings, and all places of public 
 resort, are fetishes to avert evil ; and the pathway of the English 
 army, all the way from the Prah to Cooraassie, was strewn arid 
 littered with fetishes to avert calamity to the nation, and to pre- 
 vent the sacred city being reached by them. 
 
 A fetish is indeed something which is popularly supposed to com- 
 bine in itself the god or his attributes. Fetishism is defined by 
 Lubbock as "the stage in which man supposes he can force the 
 Deity to comply with his desires," and Comte has used it to 
 express a general theory of primitive religion, in which external 
 objects are regarded "as animated by a life analogous to man's." 
 
 Fetishism thus includes the worship of "stocks and stones," 
 and thence passes by an imperceptible gradation into idolatry. 
 A bit of rag, the claw of some animal, peculiarly shaped stones or 
 roots, bones, birds' beaks, anything, constitutes a fetish, and 
 "making fetish " consists mainly in yelling or dancing. 
 
 The government of Dahome or Dahomey, as it is usually spelled, 
 presents some very singular points. The monarch)' is absolute 
 within certain limits, yet a wise king always takes care not to run 
 counter to the wishes of his subjects in any matter of national 
 importance, or when the public sentiment has been firmly and 
 unmistakably expressed. 
 
 But the curiousness lies in the fact that the monarchy is of a 
 dual character, the authority of the real sovereign being theoreti- 
 cally supposed to be shared by a "bush-king," an idea which was 
 the offspring of the brain of Gezu, the eighth king of the present 
 line. 
 
 This bush-king, though a mythical personage, has all the 
 honors, privileges, and appurtenances of a regular sovereign, and 
 the annual "customs " are prolonged to nearly double their former 
 length in order to do him honor. He has a palace where looms 
 are at work, making cloth for his household, pipes, and other 
 manufactures, a monopoly of which is granted by the king to the 
 landlord or keeper of the palace of this shadowy being. In addi- 
 tion, he has his officers of state. 
 
 In a word, he is the " double " of the real king or " akhosu " ; 
 and whatever is done for the king in public has to be thrice 
 repeated ; once for the Amazons, or female guards, then for Ad-
 
 FEUDALISTS MONARCHY. 
 
 181 
 
 dokpoii, the bush-king, and lastly for Addok- 
 pon's Amazons. The object of the institution 
 of this bush-king is amusing. 
 
 Gezu was anxious to share in the profits of 
 the palm oil, and other trades, but could not 
 consent to demean his royal hands by mingling 
 in commercial transactions. Accordingly the 
 idea of a " double " who should be 
 the trading monarch, while the real 
 sovereign should have all the pleas- 
 ure of spending the proceeds, was 
 seized upon. Gezu's double was 
 called Gahqpweh, or "Market-day 
 coming." 
 
 The king makes most of the laws, 
 after submitting them to his princi- 
 pal ministers, whose opinion is always 
 accepted ; and if they approve of the 
 
 A TOWN IN DAHOMEY
 
 182 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 "Act of Parliament," heralds are sent around and proclaim it to 
 the people. The people have, however, the privilege of pro- 
 posing an amendment on an old law, when the pros and cons are 
 discussed fully in public, without any fear of offence. So on the 
 whole, the legislative element is in rather a high state of perfec- 
 tion in the kingdom of Dahomey. Minor offences are judged 
 by the caboceers, or nobles, but all crimes involving capital 
 punishment are heard by the king, who alone has the power of 
 life or death. Many of the laws are very just and appropriate 
 to the kingdom, but others are mere caprices of a despotic and 
 whimsical monarch. 
 
 Take a few examples : No person is allowed to marry a wife 
 until he has first asked permission of the king, who can, if he 
 likes, enlist her in the Amazonian corps; no subject is allowed 
 to sit on a chair in public, to wear shoes, or to ride in a hammock ; 
 no goods landed at Whydah can be reshipped; no Dahomey 
 Avoman is permitted to leave the country, and so on. 
 
 Every man is liable to serve as a soldier, and consequently each 
 individual in the country is esteemed according to his military 
 rank, and the position which that rank entitles him to hold in 
 the different Avings of the army, these being of unequal honor in 
 public esteem. 
 
 The "Ningan" is the prime minister and commander-in-chief 
 of the kingdom, in addition to being chief magistrate, superin- 
 tendent of police, and principal executioner. No visitors, unless 
 they are created war captains, can hold any conversation with 
 him; and though prime minister, he has no dealings with civil 
 business. 
 
 All such contemptible affairs as trade palavers and diplomacy 
 are beneath the dignity of an official whose sole business in life is 
 death. He alone, of all the Dahoman subjects, can address the 
 king with the prefix " Asah," a word supposed to resemble a lion's 
 roar. Like all the high dignitaries, he performs most of his 
 duties by deputies, who are, however, men of mark. 
 
 The second minister of the realm is the "Men," whose duties 
 are onerous and multifarious. All the visitors to the court are 
 placed under his $are. He is the executioner of all the bush- 
 king's victims at the annual customs, and collector of the
 
 A BOY'S HEAD PART AFRICAN, PART ARAB OF THE LOWER NILE. 183
 
 184 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 revenue. Next to the Meu is the Avogan or Viceroy of Whydah. 
 In addition, there are several other officials whose positions do 
 not seem to be very settled and who perform various offices. 
 
 The eunuchs rank next to the ministers. They superintend 
 the Amazons' quarters, and have many privileges not accorded to 
 other subjects. The night guards of the palace, and the town 
 police, are also officials of high rank. The trade captains, or 
 "Akhisin," inspect, if at Whydah, all ships' cargoes, arid receive 
 the customs' duties. Last of all come the commanders of the 
 various towns, who form about one fifth of the whole army. 
 
 The soldiers are divided into several corps, distinguished by 
 different uniforms. Each soldier is equipped at the government 
 expense, but they receive neither pay nor rations, and on the 
 march are expected either to carry their own provisions, to pur- 
 chase them, or to forage for them upon the enemy's country. 
 Fresh elephant steaks on such marches are frequently eaten raw, 
 being supposed to impart cunning as well as courage. 
 
 Every soldier is expected to bring back a head or a prisoner ; 
 and at the conclusion of the campaign the prisoners and heads are 
 delivered over to the king, who pays each man a fixed price for 
 his human plunder. Sometimes, in war time, the king will, at 
 his own charge, ransom captives of his people taken by the enemy. 
 
 Surprise is the chief tactic practised in war, and so secret is 
 everything kept that, on the declaration of hostilities, it is rare 
 that the king tells even his first minister which town he intends 
 to attack first. The army marches in silence, not along the 
 regular coast, but by pathways cut in the bush; no fires are lit; 
 and all stragglers are taken prisoners. 
 
 In the dead of night the town is surrounded, and just before 
 daybreak, when all is quiet, the toAvn is assailed, and all the 
 inhabitants, if possible, captured, the object of all such attacks 
 being not to kill, but to take prisoners, who are either reserved 
 for the annual customs, or sent as slaves to different parts of the 
 kingdom, or enlisted in the Dahoman army, where the highest 
 offices are open to them. 
 
 The women are made servants to the Amazons, and reside 
 within the precincts of the palace. The town itself is usually 
 destroyed, with all its other living inhabitants. If resistance is
 
 186 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 attempted, then the struggle is bloody, but short, for African 
 aboriginal courage is but a spasmodic quality; once let it evap- 
 orate, it never returns in time to enable the scattered army to 
 rally. The first repulse is the last. 
 
 Disease and hardship decimate the army while on these slave- 
 hunting expeditions more than the sword. If small-pox breaks 
 out the mortality is something dreadful ; three out of the nine 
 kings of the present dynasty have fallen victims to this disease. 
 
 Perhaps the most extraordinary feature in Dahoman economy 
 is the corps of Amazons or female warriors. This word long ago 
 got incorporated from the Greek into our language as expressing 
 a masculine woman, but what these Amazons really are is not so 
 generally known. Their origin among the Africans dates from 
 1728, when the exigencies of war compelled the then king to 
 organize a regiment of women, with whom he attacked and 
 defeated the old Whydahs. Since then they have been a marked 
 feature in the military establishment of the Dahoman kingdom. 
 
 Under Ge*zu the corps attained its maximum of greatness. With 
 that acuteness which distinguished him he raised the Amazonian 
 body from being merely a subordinate establishment to an equal 
 level with the male soldiers, and created female officers, so that, 
 by surrounding himself with a band of viragos, bound to him 
 by all the ties of gratitude and interest, he could at once put a 
 check on too ambitious subjects, and nip in the bud the first signs 
 of rebellion. 
 
 On a certain day, once in three years, every subject must pre- 
 sent himself, with his daughters above a certain age, before the 
 king. The most promising of those belonging to the higher 
 classes he selects as officers, the poorer ones being chosen as sol- 
 diers, while the children of slaves become the servants of the 
 Amazons who reside within the palace. 
 
 This done, the other daughters are returned to their parents to 
 be disposed of as -they may find proper. Some of the selected 
 girls are "dashed" or presented to the most meritorious soldiers 
 as wives, and all the female children of these Amazonian wives 
 are Amazons by birth-right. The king, too, takes several Ama- 
 zons as concubines, under the name of "leopard wives," who 
 enjoy many privileges.
 
 FEUDALISTIC MONARCHY. 187 
 
 With these exceptions, every Amazon is a celibate; hut as 
 military discipline is not always equal to preventing the little 
 god Cupid from his mischievous work, a fetish called the 
 Domen is erected over one of the palace gates, which by its 
 power at once discovers any Amazon who is unfaithful to her 
 military oath in the matter of celibacy. 
 
 The informers also who in these cases are generally jealous 
 of the culprits are never backward in causing the misdemeanor 
 of the erring soldieress to reach the ears of the king, and her fears 
 being worked on, she almost invariably confesses the name of her 
 lover. The result is that both are punished, he assuredly by a 
 cruel death, and she in all likelihood by blows from the hands of 
 her comrades. 
 
 Though the flower of this corps of female soldiers perished 
 under the walls of Abeokeuta in 1864, their number may be yet 
 about four thousand. They are divided into three brigades, each 
 of which has a peculiar head dress or method of dressing the hair. 
 
 Each of these brigades is commanded by female officers and sub- 
 officers, and is again divided into Agbaraya, or Blunderbuss 
 women, the veterans of the army only called into action in case of 
 urgent need ; the Gbeto, or Elephant-huntresses, one of the most 
 celebrated corps in the army, who on hunting expeditions 
 are exposed to great danger from the infuriated animals; the 
 Nyekpleh-hentoh, or Razor women, of whom there are only a few 
 to each wing. 
 
 Their special object of attack is the king of the enemy, and the 
 huge razors which they carry are especially intended for the decapi- 
 tation of this monarch. Lastly, there are the Gulonentoh, or 
 Musketeers, and the Gohento, or Archeresses, who are all young 
 girls, and more of a show corps, their weapons being of compara- 
 tively little use in active warfare. 
 
 In addition there are troops of camp-followers, hewers of wood, 
 and drawers of water. Even they enjoy certain privileges. If 
 met with in the pathway, headed by a beldame ringing a bell, 
 every man, unless bearing the "king's stick" as insignium of 
 rank, must instantly disappear to the right or left. To look upon 
 them would be a crime. Accordingly they are exceedingly self- 
 important and arrogantly jealous of their prerogatives.
 
 188 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 All the corps of Amazons, with the exception of the Arch- 
 eresses, are armed Avith muskets or blunderbusses, kept scrupu- 
 lously clean, but though these female warriors are brave to 
 ferocity, they are poor markswomen, hitting a haystack being 
 about the sum of their rifle accomplishments. 
 
 The bush-king has also his Amazons, and every official, high 
 and low, has also his "double" among them. If an officer is 
 elevated to a higher rank, an Amazon within the palace also gets 
 a similar title. The mothers and wives of deceased kings have 
 also their representatives among the Amazons, who are called 
 Akhosusi (king's wives or Mino, mothers). 
 
 The term "mother" in Dahomey is, however, a term of re- 
 spect, and does not mean a maternal relative. Though the value 
 of the Amazonian corps has been justly celebrated as winning 
 victories for the Dahoman king, yet at the same time we must 
 remember that its existence is one of the causes of the slow de- 
 cadence of that kingdom. The proportion of celibates is too great 
 for the population, being somewhere about three to one. 
 
 Four thousand women represent twelve thousand children, 
 the greater number of whom are lost to the State, which cannot 
 afford such a drain. This, combined with the losses by disease 
 and war, is one of the fertile sources of the national loss of pres- 
 tige, which .is only too true; and ere long, unless there is a 
 change, Dahomey will be classed among the nations of the past. 
 A special decoration is reserved for Amazons who have slain 
 enemies in battle. This is a cowry, glued by the blood of the 
 slain man to the butt of the musket, one cowry for each enemy slain. 
 
 Until Burton's time we knew almost nothing of the fetishism 
 which constitutes the religion of the Dahomans. The traders in 
 charge of the "factories" on the coast could tell little. Their 
 talk was of oil, dust, and ivory, and they were more concerned 
 about how much was to be made, honestly or dishonestly, out of 
 the "black ivory," than what their religion or customs were. So 
 though for two centuries'we have had intercourse with Dahomey, 
 we are still much in the dark in regard to the nature of their 
 deities and forms of worship. This we know, however, that they 
 believe in a Supreme Being, and in a host of minor deities. 
 
 Mau, the Supreme Being, resides in a wonderful dwelling above
 
 FEUDALIST 1C MONARCHY. 
 
 189 
 
 the sky, and is of so exalted a nature as to care very little for 
 men and their trials. To obtain his aid, special invocation must 
 be directed to him. Even then he commits the care of human 
 beings to monkeys, who in one place frequent a naturally terraced 
 river- bluff to which pilgrimages are made and which is called the 
 Hill of the Holy Monkeys. Guardianship of human beings is 
 also entrusted to leopards, snakes, locusts, alligators, and inanimate 
 
 THE HILL OP THE HOLY MONKEYS. 
 
 objects stones, rags, cowries, leaves of certain trees in a 
 word, to anything and everything. 
 
 Mau's assistant keeps a record of the good and evil deeds of 
 every person by means of notches on a stick ; and when anyone 
 dies his body is judged according to the records on this moral 
 tally. If his good deeds predominate he joins his spirit in Kuto- 
 men or the " Dead-land " ; but if, on the contrary, his evil deeds 
 preponderate, then his body is entirely destroyed, and a new one 
 created for the habitation of his spirit or soul.
 
 190 THE STOKY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 In this belief the spirit has no concern with the body; it is 
 released, whether the deeds of the person have been good or evil, 
 immediately after; and whatever is the social condition of a per- 
 son when he leaves this world, the same will be his social con- 
 dition in the next. 
 
 The slave on earth is the slave in the spirit land; the 
 king is still the monarch there. The ghosts of parents or rela- 
 tions take great interest in the affairs of their kin on the 
 earth, advising them as to their conduct and affairs out of the 
 depth of knowledge which their residence in the spirit world has 
 given them. If, however, the misconduct of those on earth is 
 great, then this protection may be taken from them and given to 
 entire strangers. 
 
 The " customs " are compliments paid to these guardian spirits, 
 and to stop them would be to insult these all-powerful and useful 
 beings. When the Dahoman monarch requires special advice, he 
 applies to the Bassajeh or holy women, who consult the oracle and 
 obtain an answer. The common people in the same way apply to 
 a fetish priest, who will act as a medium between the gods and 
 men. 
 
 To every man is assigned at birth a certain number of deeds, 
 good and bad. He is not to blame for those bad deeds allotted 
 to him, but he can avoid committing them by making certain 
 offerings to the deity through the medium of the fetish priest. 
 The Dahoman is thus an eminently religious man. Every action 
 of his life is mixed up with his religious ideas, and is mingled 
 with the desire of obtaining a status in eternity. 
 
 Certain priests pretend to have seen this far away land of 
 Kutomen; and if a person is dying he will often pay a handsome 
 fee to the priest to pay a visit to Kutomen, with a view to beg 
 the spectral ancestor to excuse the sick man attending the sum- 
 mons. If the patient recovers, the priest gets the credit of per- 
 suading the ghost to prolong his residence on the earth ; but if 
 not, then he has always the excuse that the spirit will accept of 
 no subterfuge, and commands immediate presence. 
 
 Upon one occasion, says Mr. Skertchly, I saw a priest who was 
 about to depart on a visit to Hades. He received his fee beforehand, 
 cautious fellow, and went into an empty shed near the patient's
 
 FEUDALISTIC MONARCHY. 191 
 
 house. He then drew a circle on the ground, and took out of his 
 "possible sack" a number of charms, all tied up in blood-stained rags. 
 
 Squatting down in the centre of this magic circle, and bidding us on 
 no account to step within it, he covered himself with a large square of 
 grey baft, profusely and elaborately ornamented. In a few minutes he 
 commenced to mutter some unintelligible sounds in a low voice, his 
 body and limbs quivering like an aspen. Half an hour of this farce 
 ensued, when the fetisher uncovered himself and prepared to deliver 
 the message. 
 
 lie said that he had found considerable difficulty in obtaining access 
 to the ghost who had summoned the patient, as when he knew that a 
 priest was coming he hid in the bush. He said that the ghost was that 
 of Nu age (one of the sick man's dead uncles), and that he was much 
 offended by this summons not being answered in person ; but in con- 
 sideration of certain sacrifices offered to Guh, he would think over the 
 matter. Rather an ambiguous answer, but just in the prevaricating 
 manner affected by all priests, whether in Japan or on the Yellowstone. 
 
 From the statement of these priests it appears that life in the other 
 world is much the same as in this Avars, palavers, feasts, dances, and 
 other incidents going on in the same way as on earth. It appears that 
 the clothes in which the deceased is buried accompany him to Kuto- 
 men, for sometimes a priest will bring back with him a necklace, bead, 
 or other small article known to have been buried with the corpse of 
 the person who summons the sick man. 
 
 Sir Richard Burton mentions the case of a priest who, "after 
 returning with a declaration that he had left a marked coin in 
 Dead land, dropped it from his waistcloth at the feet of the payer 
 while drinking rum." A singular belief is that a spirit may be in 
 more places than one at the same time. Hence it is believed that 
 a spirit may remain in spirit land, and yet be in the person of a 
 newly born infant. 
 
 Thus all the king's children are inhabited by the transmigrated 
 spirits of former kings, their ancestors. The African cannot grasp 
 the idea of a deity omniscient and omnipresent; accordingly lie 
 has a number of media between himself and Mau, the Supreme 
 Being. 
 
 The Dahoman denies that his Supreme Being has bodily form, 
 but yet he ascribes to him human passions ; a strange medley of 
 contradictions. They are not polytheists; they worship but one
 
 192 THK STOKY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 god, who is approached, not through minor deities, but through 
 go-betweens, viz., fetishes. These are, in a word, like the saints 
 or angels of Christendom, "beings who have powerful influence 
 for good or evil with Mau." 
 
 The most powerful fetish is Danh-gbwe, the tutelary saint of 
 Whydah, which is personified by the harmless snake so named. 
 Its worship was introduced into Dahomey when the kingdom of 
 Whydah was conquered and annexed. In Whydah, hidden from 
 eyes profane by a thick grove of fig trees, is the famed Danh- 
 hweh, or fetish snake-house. 
 
 This is nothing more than a circular swish hut, the very model 
 of the Parian inkstand to be seen in every toyshop. From the 
 roof depend pieces of cotton yarn, and on the floor, which, in com- 
 mon with the walls, is whitewashed, are several pots of water. The 
 pythons, to the number of twenty-two, are coiled on the top of 
 the wall, or twined around the rafters. All these hideous reptiles 
 are sacred. 
 
 To slay one, even by accident for to do so purposely would 
 not be dreamt of used to entail instant sacrifice to the gods, 
 and confiscation of all the offender's property to the fetish priests. 
 Nowadays his punishment is not so severe, but still exemplary 
 enough. The offender, after a meeting of all the fetishers of the 
 neighborhood is convened, is seated within a hut of stick, 
 thatched with dry grass, and built in the enclosure in front of 
 the snake-house. His clothes and body are well daubed with 
 palm-oil, mixed with the fat of the murdered snake god. 
 
 At a given signal the hut is fired, and the materials being like 
 tinder, the unfortunate offender against the majesty of the snake 
 is enveloped in flames. In excruciating torture he rushes out of 
 the flames, his clothes on fire, to the nearest water, pursued by 
 the infuriated priests, who belabor him Avith sticks, stones, and 
 all sorts of rubbish. 
 
 If he reaches the water he is free, and should he survive has ex- 
 piated his crime. Few are able to run the gauntlet, and gener- 
 ally expire before reaching the cooling water, clubbed to death 
 by the fetishmen, the Danh-ybwe-no, or snake -mothers, as they 
 are called. 
 
 As the door of the snake temple is always open, the snakes fre-
 
 FETJDALISTIC MONARCHY. 
 
 193 
 
 quently wander out after nightfall. If any person meets one, he 
 must prostrate himself before it, carrying it tenderly in his arms to 
 the temple, where his humanity to the snake-god is rewarded by 
 his being fined for meeting the 
 snake ; and, if he cannot or will 
 not pay, he is imprisoned until 
 the uttermost cowry l is ex- 
 tracted from him. 
 
 Ordinary snakes may be killed 
 with impunity, but woe to him 
 who injures the Danh-gbwe! 
 The snake priests have various"!! 
 neophytes or pupils, who are 
 instructed in the mysteries per- 
 taining to ophiological theology. 
 
 These neophytes are re- 
 cruited in the following way: 
 If a child is touched by one of 
 these snakes in his nocturnal 
 excursions, it is devoted ever 
 
 after to the priesthood of the snake, and its parents are forced to 
 pay large fees for its lengthy instruction in the rites of the fetish 
 after which he is allowed to practise for himself. 
 
 Snake worship is one of the most widespread forms of animal 
 worship known, having been practised by most of the nations of 
 
 1IAXYAI HUTS. 
 
 Tl.e use of cowries, or shells, as media of exchange, or money, has been practised by 
 many savage nations. The Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth found the common " hard-shell 
 clam," or quahofj ( Venus mercenaria), in use among the neighboring Indians as an article 
 of exchange. They made wampum from the dark-colored or purple portion, while from 
 the axis of a species of 1'yrula or conch the " white wampum " was manufactured. The 
 settlers themselves used it. For instance, in 1671, John Higginson had 100 voted him " in 
 country produce," which he was glad to exchange for 120 solid cash. Solid cash included 
 beaver skins, black and white wampum, beads, and musket-balls, value one farthing. W<nn- 
 jnwi/was also made of the whelk-shell (Jiitcdmim). In New Mexico the ear-shell (HuHoH* 
 rufescens), the common Californian " Abalone," is used as money. The Indians who re- 
 sided in the vicinity of the old Russian settlement of Bodega, on the northern coast of Cali- 
 fornia, used at one time pieces of a clam-shell (Saxidomus aratiis, Gld.) as money. To 
 return to the African cowry. It is the Cyprcea monela of naturalists, a native of the 
 Indian Pacific waters. It is utilized as money by the natives of some parts of Hindostan, 
 and is exported for barter with the West African tribes. In former time it was exten- 
 sively used in Hindostan. Reeve mentions that a gentleman residing at Cuttack is said to 
 have paid for the erection of his bungalow entirely in these cowries. The building cost about 
 4,000 rupees sicca (400 sterling) ; and as sixty-four of these shells are equivalent in value to 
 one pice, he paid for it with over 16,000,000 of these shells. Tons are annually sent out from 
 Liverpool to the Coast of Africa for trading purposes, and employed in the manner described.
 
 194 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 antiquity, and at the present time by many barbarous or savage 
 tribes. 
 
 Sir John Lubbock considers that the widespread worship of 
 snakes points us to the fact of the worship having originated 
 spontaneously in many different places and at different times, and 
 that the worship of the serpent-god commenced originally as a 
 malevolent being, who was flattered, as cruel rulers ever are, but 
 that in process of time this flattery, at first only an expression of 
 fear, came to be an article of faith. 
 
 In ancient times Mr. Fergusson shows that serpent worship 
 prevailed in Egypt, India, Phoenicia, Babylonia, Greece, and, 
 to a smaller extent, in Italy. In more modern times traces have 
 been found in Persia, Cashmere, Cambodia, Thibet, India, China, 
 Ceylon, America, and among the Kalmucks. In Africa serpents 
 were adored among the Abyssinians, and in Upper Egypt. All 
 along the Gold and Slave Coasts, viz., Guinea, this snake-worship 
 prevailed at one time. 
 
 Bosnian, an old writer on Guinea, mentions that some English 
 sailors who had killed one of these serpents, which they found in 
 their house, were attacked and killed by the natives. Not to 
 enumerate other instances, even among the Mahommedan, Foulahs, 
 and Mandingoes, and among the Christianized people of Sierra 
 Leone, traces of ophiolatry are said to exist. 
 
 The given reason why the snake is so reverenced in Whydah 
 is because, during an attack 011 Ardra, it appeared to the army, 
 and so stimulated it that the victory was secured. It is still 
 looked upon with equal veneration, notwithstanding the fact that 
 it did not avail against the conquering Dahomans, into whose 
 kingdom Whydah is now incorporated. 
 
 Frequently young women who are ill are taken to the snake 
 temple to be cured and high fees are exacted for this service. In 
 Astley's "Collection of Voyages and Travels " is figured "Agoye 
 an Idol of Whiddah," the "God of Councils," in the form of a 
 human being with serpents and lizards coming out of the top of 
 its head. 
 
 Though nowadays the snake is looked upon as equally powerful 
 in obtaining favors for its worshippers, yet in Whydah, at least, it 
 has no visible representation in the shape of an image, its worship
 
 FEUDALISTIC MONARCHY. 195 
 
 being confined to an adoration of the living snakes kept in the 
 snake-houses in all the principal towns, and which, wandering 
 about at night, are a perfect nuisance to all who dwell in the 
 vicinity of the snake-temples. 
 
 The Danhsi, or snake-priests ("snake-mothers" and "snake- 
 wives " they are also called), number upwards of one thousand, 
 and are of both sexes, married and single. They generally com- 
 mence with a course of preliminary instruction at Whydah, and 
 finish off at the great fetish town of Somorne. 
 
 Another deity, almost as important, is Atin-bodun, personified 
 by various trees, but who resides in some curious specimen of 
 ceramic ware, such as an upturned pot, or red cullender. He is 
 worshipped by offerings of water poured into the little pot, and 
 is especially powerful in averting and curing diseases, especially 
 fevers. He also inhabits any tall tree, such as the Loko or 
 poison tree, a decoction of the leaves of which is used to detect 
 any hidden crime. Atin-bodun is served by almost as many 
 priests as the snakes, but they are not of such high rank. 
 
 Another deity is Hu, "the Dahoman Neptune," who has the 
 sea at Whydah in his charge. Canoe men worship and offer up 
 donations of food to him to induce him to save them from the 
 rolling surf. Formerly the king was accustomed to send a man 
 dressed as a caboceer, with umbrella, stool, beads, and other 
 insignia of his rank, to the beach, where he was placed in a 
 canoe by the Huno [priest], and, after sundry offerings and 
 prayers, carried out to sea and thrown overboard. This practice 
 is now happily discontinued. 
 
 Khevyosoh, the thunder-god, is the last of the four principal 
 Dahoman deities. He is the Slave Coast Jupiter, who presides 
 over the weather, and slays all who offend him with his thunder- 
 bolts, i. e., abi, the lightning. 
 
 In considering such governments as those of Ashanti and 
 Dahomey with their dreadful religious rites, and their curious, 
 appalling superstitions, one is tempted to wonder, when taking 
 into account the vast sums which have been subscribed in the last 
 hundred years for missionary purposes, why Christianity has made 
 so little impression on the African mind. 
 
 We see in this country that the gentle and beautiful teachings
 
 190 THE STORY OK (JOYKRNM KXT. 
 
 of Him who was born on the wood of a manger and died on the 
 wood of a cross the carpenter's son of Galilee have from the 
 earliest days of slavery been peculiarly attractive to the natures 
 of our colored brethren, and that since the abolition of slavery 
 Christianity has been a most potent factor in the gradual eleva- 
 tion of that race which politicians have been wont to regard as 
 furnishing the most perplexing problem of our American attempt 
 at civilization. 
 
 Why, then, have so much noble endeavor and so much wealth 
 been wasted in Africa? Why has the missionary business been 
 a most pathetic failure? The practical man answers these ques- 
 tions by affirming that the African aborigines must be commercially 
 transformed and held under the dominion or at least the protector- 
 ate of some European power, before any efforts to plant Chris- 
 tianity can be crowned with a satisfactory harvest. 
 
 The French are engaged at present in attempting to convert 
 Behanzin, the King of Dahomey, by force of arms, to certain com- 
 mercial views which they think he ought to hold, and this has 
 been the English method with all African tribes. As one brilliant 
 writer puts it, commercialization or extermination are the only 
 stepping-stones to civilization in interior Africa and, indeed, 
 while the Christian powers of Europe, for the sake of extending 
 commerce or acquiring territory, maintain a martial attitude 
 towards the unfortunate natives, there would seem to be slight 
 chance for the successful dissemination of the doctrines of the 
 Prince of Peace. 
 
 Is it not then probable that those ministers are quite right 
 who in the recent meetings of missionary societies have coun- 
 selled the expenditure of less money for foreign missions and more 
 for the improvement of the environment of the less picturesque 
 but equally needy heathen in our great cities? If the churches 
 all over the country would club together and cooperate in 
 abolishing the tenement-house rookeries or the sweating shops 
 of just one city every year, it would not be long before the foun- 
 dations of the Temple of Universal Brotherhood would be fairly 
 and firmly laid.
 
 V. 
 
 PERSIA represents, perhaps, more 
 perfectly than any existing nation, 
 except possibly some small kingdom among 
 barbarians, the principle of absolutism, or irre- 
 sponsible and fetterless power in the hands of one 
 man, and this has been so for many centuries, although 
 the present Persians are no more descended from the 
 famous Medes and Persians, or from the race who defeated 
 Xenophon and his ten thousand, than the present inhabitants of 
 our cosmopolitan country are from the men who sketched an 
 outline of practical socialistic government in the cabin of the 
 Mayflower. 
 
 Persia has been so often invaded, and so many races have con- 
 tributed to the empire, that it is now difficult, if not impossible, 
 to trace the original elements. Rivers flow into the sea; you may 
 trace their currents for a little way, but soon they blend with the 
 ocean and their elements defy a chemic analysis. 
 
 So with nearly all ancient realms. There has been a blending 
 of numerous nationalities; yet the philologist and ethnologist 
 may now and then detect them in certain eddies of the empire, 
 where they have kept more unmixed than elsewhere, by a turn 
 
 197
 
 198 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 of speech, or a cast of countenance. In no province of the 
 country is the population wholly Persian; everywhere there are 
 alien elements. 
 
 The ancient Persians were celebrated for their handsome per- 
 sons, rather tall stature, and the beauty of their women. The 
 modern race, or "Tadjiks," as they call themselves, have a fail- 
 share of good looks; their features are regular, their countenances 
 oval, hair glossy and luxuriant, and their eyes dark and soft. 
 Witty, cheerful, frivolous, idle, luxurious, and fond of dress and 
 display is the character which has been given them, an opinion 
 that is rather too sweeping to be true. 
 
 A people made up of such diverse elements is difficult to char- 
 acterize without making so many exceptions that the rule is not 
 proved, except to have no existence. However, in progress of 
 time, notwithstanding the original differences of the people, some 
 few general characteristics will be found to have become common. 
 
 These we may briefly sketch. There are two great classes, 
 the fixed and the wandering ; but the nomad tribes have little 
 voice in the country, and it is from the fixed inhabitants of the 
 cities and country seats that the ruling classes and those who 
 properly constitute the stronghold of the country are selected. 
 
 We may, for convenience, divide them into (1) the civil and 
 military functionaries, including those connected with the court, 
 (2) the inhabitants of the towns, such as the merchants, shop- 
 keepers, artisans, members of the religious orders, men of learn- 
 ing, and of all kinds of business ; (3) the agriculturists or 
 cultivators of the soil; and lastly (4) there may be added the wild 
 wanderers or "Eeliauts." 
 
 The Persian court is a perfect type of despotism. Every officer 
 owes his elevation to the favor or caprice of the monarch, and is 
 liable at any moment to dismissal without a chance of appeal 
 either to his superiors, to a court of law, or to that greater public 
 opinion which controls tyranny and injustice in other countries. 
 
 Treated in a capricious manner by his sovereign, he, in 
 his turn, rides roughshod over all his inferiors. Knowing that 
 he may fall as suddenly as he was raised by the whim of the 
 monarch, he endeavors, during his uncertain tenure of office, to 
 amass, by every means known in a country where justice and right
 
 -. "*& Mi I '' /3m 
 ' -\ \ ' : - l ii 
 
 THE SIIAIT.
 
 200 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 are merely high .sounding words for poets to mouth, enough 
 wealth to support the extravagance which his position necessarily 
 entails, to bribe his enemies when his evil day arrives, or to retire 
 upon to a quiet corner of the empire if ho be fortunate enough to 
 escape the bowstring in the hour of his fall. 
 
 Deceitful, treacherous, venal, arrogant, dishonest and overbear- 
 ing, the Persian courtier possesses the art of concealing his true 
 character under a polished manner, and a lively, courteous, and 
 mild countenance which rarely betrays the workings of his mind. 
 
 Add to this, he is often an acute diplomatist, well informed, 
 and skilful in business. A court so constituted cannot but be 
 hated by all the poorer classes, who are the chief sufferers by it, 
 and its pernicious example spreads the contagion of venality, petty 
 rascality, and other evils throughout the community. 
 
 But all the high officers of State are not selected from the class 
 of nobles. No doubt, as in most countries, the "' upper classes " 
 have more than their fair share of power and place ; yet many of 
 the public functionaries and ministers in Persia belong to the 
 order of Mirzas, secretaries, or "men of business." 
 
 For the policy of the monarchs is to select some of their officers 
 from the humblest class of life, under the idea that men thus 
 raised to dignity by the favor of the king alone will be, through 
 gratitude, more attached to his person than a military noble, 
 whose rank would, as much as his sovereign's favor, have obtained 
 for him power, and who, at the beck of ambition or offended pride, 
 might summon to his aid a host of warlike retainers and plunge 
 the country into civil war. 
 
 These Mirzas, though the equals of the nobles in treachery and 
 immorality, are yet in general more accomplished than they, 
 being well versed in all state-craft, mild and subdued in their 
 address, and differing from the nobles in not indulging in martial 
 or athletic exercise's, and wearing, instead of a sword or dagger, a 
 culumdaun, or ink horn, attached to their girdle. 
 
 Any person can get access to the king to lay his complaint 
 before him ; but, unless there be a desire to push the affair, the 
 complaint only is heard. However, it is treasured up to be 
 brought forth in due time when the functionary complained of 
 into disgrace, and an excuse is desired for his degradation.
 
 ABSOLUTISM. 201 
 
 The office of collector of public revenue is a poor one. The 
 people, knowing that the taxation only goes to enrich the court 
 and pays for no work of public utility, are unwilling to satisfy the 
 just demands of the collector, and frequently even threaten to take 
 his life. This unwillingness to meet their public obligations is in- 
 tensified by the fact that taxation falls chiefly on the toilers. 
 
 The great nobles, foreigners and wealthy native merchants are 
 exempt from contributions to the Shah's exchequer, though the 
 first and last named are subject to irregular extortions which are 
 sometimes even less bearable than the systematic bleeding of the 
 collector. 
 
 On the other hand, the rapacious officials at the capital do every- 
 thing in their power to extort more taxes, and frequently threaten 
 the collector with punishment on the plea that he has withheld 
 taxes, so as to induce him to " squeeze " the population still more 
 thoroughly. 
 
 Thus, between the rebellious people at large who object to being 
 bled, and the officials close to the Shah who have a thirst for the 
 silver sweat and golden blood of a people (which is commonly 
 called taxes), it is easy to see that a revenue collector in Persia 
 needs the stubbornness of a mule, the persistency of a gadfly, and 
 the nine lives of a cat. 
 
 Such, however, is the accursed thirst for gold so intense, al- 
 though it is an artificial or accidental and not an innate passion, so 
 insanely intense is the desire to acquire property that, even in 
 the most dangerous districts of the Shah's dominion, this post of 
 danger is eagerly sought. 
 
 Many anecdotes are current in Persia concerning the collector, 
 his cunning, and the ill luck that often attends him like a shadow. 
 Yet, although the Prince of Shiraz once in irony ordered a 
 notorious thief to be punished by being made manager of the 
 revenue of a district, as he could conceive of no crime for which 
 that appointment would not be an adequate punishment, there is 
 little doubt that between the people and the public treasury not a 
 little of the public cash clings to the fingers of the collector, and 
 that many of them accumulate great wealth. 
 
 Notwithstanding the power of the nobles, the people, either 
 through a naturally high spirit, not effaced by long oppression, or
 
 202 THE STOKY OF GOVEKNMENT. 
 
 more probably owing to long custom which allows them to do so 
 with impunity, loudly proclaim their wrongs at court, if they 
 consider themselves injured; yet, on account of the difficulty and 
 expense of travelling, this is denied to the residents in the more 
 distant parts of the country. The common people are frugal and 
 industrious. Few are in actual want, and many of the trading 
 class amass considerable wealth, which by cunning and deceit 
 they manage to save from the hands of the rapacious courtiers. 
 
 "Every one," says Sir John Malcolm, "complains of poverty, 
 but this complaint as often proceeds from a desire to avoid oppres- 
 sion as from its actual privations.'' The government officials are 
 paid wretchedly small salaries, and even these payments are most 
 unpunctually made. To meet his daily expenses money has to be 
 borrowed at a high rate of interest, debts accumulate, and in a 
 few years a government servant, if honest, would be ruined. 
 
 Xo position can be more ignominious than that of a Persian 
 courtier in disgrace. Should he incur his master's displeasure, 
 without the slightest warning he is deprived of his property, 
 offices, dignities and honors. His slaves are sold or handed over 
 to the favorite of the hour, his wives and children are insulted or 
 even exposed to the brutality of his grooms and guards, while he 
 himself is beaten with a stick or mutilated by the executioner's 
 knife. The new favorite is often a mere boy, as in our picture. 
 
 Yet these reverses of fortune are not final. They are philo- 
 sophically accepted as accidents which must always happen to one 
 who embraces the precarious life of a courtier, and by the Orien- 
 tal, who considers every misfortune as pre-ordained by fate and 
 impossible to be prevented, are viewed in a way not widely differ- 
 ent from that in which a European Secretary of State might regard 
 an official announcement that his sovereign had been pleased 
 to dispense with his services, or an unfavorable expression of 
 public opinion in the shape of a severe newspaper article on his 
 policy. 
 
 Indeed, though Persian sovereigns express very savagely their 
 displeasure at the policy of a minister, he may, after experiencing 
 the infelicity of being disgraced, be received again into royal favor. 
 His family in such a case is sent back to him, with as many of his 
 slaves as can be recovered ; and his property, pruned of all danger-
 
 203
 
 Jill THK Sf()l;V OF GOVKKN.M KNT. 
 
 ous exuberance, is returned. A bath mollifies his bruised feet, 
 a cap conceals bis cropped ears, and tlie white-washed culprit is 
 often reinstated in the very government he has lost, perhaps 
 carrying- with liini a sentence of disgrace to bis successor to whose 
 intrigues he owed bis temporal-}' fall. 
 
 It is indeed surprising bow carelessly the king and bis ministers 
 bestow situations of confidence on strangers, or on men who, from 
 having been the sufferers of great injustice, might be dreaded as 
 their bitterest enemies ; yet the management of a conquered state 
 is frequently intrusted to the khan or prince who before possessed 
 it in his own right. The pardoned rebel of one province is 
 appointed to the supreme command in another; and the disgraced 
 noble or governor is sent to take charge of a district where the 
 utmost fidelity and zeal are required. 
 
 No official, however high, can be sure of his life ; it lies in the 
 hands of the king as much as does the life of the meanest subject. 
 The death of an official is determined, the warrant for his execu- 
 tion is made out, and an officer is despatched to execute it. The 
 man rides as fast as horses pressed into his service can carry him 
 until he arrives at the city where the doomed man lives. He 
 exhibits his mandate to the governor or chief man of the city, and 
 commands him to assist him. As soon as the door of the victim's 
 house is opened, the executioner rushes in, and, drawing -his 
 scimitar, falls on the unfortunate man with the exclamation, "It 
 is the king's command, " cuts him down, and strikes off his head. 
 Rarely is any resistance offered. 
 
 Cases have been known in which a powerful man has attempted 
 to waylay the messenger on the road, when he knew his errand, 
 and, depriving him of the warrant, has delayed his fate until 
 another could be got, or until he has had time to obtain paidon. 
 
 But usually, such is the awe of the king's name that no attempt 
 is made by the victim to escape his fate. He calmly submits. 
 "It is the decree of Allah it is fafe Allah be praised! " As 
 for bis nearest kin, they fly from him as from a thing accursed. 
 The dependents whom an hour ago he could have made happy 
 with a smile desert him as one whose touch would defile. He is 
 like an infected creature. "All nature seems to be roused againat 
 him," are the words of an ancient writer in Persia.
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The Gholams are the king's guards, and are composed of young 
 men held in favor by him. Generally they are young Circassian 
 or Georgian captives, and accordingly their condition is that of 
 slaves, though, the position being one of honor and emolument, 
 the sons of the highest noblemen may be found there. 
 
 The Gholain Corps numbers three thousand or four thousand 
 men, and, in addition to acting as escorts to the king and guards 
 to his palaces, they are often despatched on delicate missions, 
 such as that we have described in relation to the execution of a 
 disgraced official. In the execution of these errands they often 
 amass large sums by extortion ; and the surest proof of the in- 
 vidious character which they bear is the fact that their very name 
 carries terror. The arrival of a gholam e liahee is enough to 
 throw a whole district into alarm; it has even depopulated a 
 village for a time. 
 
 The inhabitants of different districts differ considerably in 
 character, and in their reputation for courage or cowardice. 
 The inhabitants of the towns, or Sheherees, are even more mixed 
 than those of the country districts. In general, though by no 
 means to be held up as models for young men, they are of a better 
 character than the higher classes, and are, as a rule, industrious, 
 polite, sociable, good servants and indulgent masters, though 
 largely imbued with deceit and greed. 
 
 The merchants are often wealthy, and in general are intelligent 
 and cultivated. The small shopkeepers are more distinguished 
 for insincerity and cunning, both vices, though inherent in the 
 race, being fostered by their constant dread of the caprice of their 
 superiors. The merchants, on the other hand, are, as all through 
 the East, held in more consideration, being looked upon not only 
 as a source of revenue, but also as a useful medium for main- 
 taining friendly relations with foreign states. 
 
 The ecclesiastical law is administered by a numerous body of 
 priests of all grades, from the Sudder al Suddoor down to the 
 lowest of the mollahs. The mooshteheds are the highest order, 
 and are the supreme pontiffs of the kingdom, who, subject to the 
 approbation of the sovereign, nominate all the principal judges. 
 They usually number three or four, and are elected by the people 
 ou account of their acknowledged sanctity.
 
 AN ELOCUTIONIST IN THE IIAKKU.
 
 208 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The Sheik al Islam, or ruler of the faith, ranks next to the 
 mooshteheds. He is a salaried judge, his duty being to admin- 
 ister the written law. He is often a man of quite as great 
 influence as the mooshteheds, his official superiors. The other 
 ecclesiastical officials are those connected with the mosques. 
 
 Every mosque, except the very insignificant ones, has a 
 staff of three, viz., the mostwulla, who manages its temporal 
 affairs, and who may be said to be a kind of churchwarden; the 
 muezzin, or caller to prayers (the "beadle"), and the mollah, or 
 priest proper, who conducts the ceremonial of the Mohammedan 
 religion. They also preach a sort of sermon on texts from the 
 Koran the Mohammedan Bible. 
 
 Besides these, there are in every city, and connected with all 
 seminaries of learning, a crowd of mollahs, who live by their aits, 
 and have tittle of the priest but the name. They practise astrol- 
 ogy, write letters and contracts for those who are ignorant of pen- 
 manship, and thus contrive to prolong a miserable life. 
 
 Nothing can be lower than the character of these people. 
 Their hypocrisy, profligacy and want of principle, are the sub- 
 jects of stories, epigrams, and proverbs without end. "Take 
 care," says one adage, "of the face of a woman and the 
 heels of a mule; but with a mollah be on your guard at all 
 points." "To hate like a mollah," and "to cheat like a mollah '' 
 are sayings of frequency in the mouth of a Persian. 
 
 It is not the mollahs alone who are the subject of Persian 
 jocularity. All classes who are concerned in the administration 
 of the law or Mohammedan religious ceremonies are proverbial for 
 their dishonesty and trickery. Chief among these are the seyeds, 
 or descendants of the prophet, who are accounted rogues by 
 nature ; but after they have made a pilgrimage to Mecca, to the 
 birthplace of Mohammed, are considered to have graduated in all 
 dishonesty and rascality. In the repertory of Persian jests, nine 
 tenths hinge upon what a mollah or a hadji (Mecca pilgrim) did, 
 and the anecdotes are told with a grave humor peculiarly charac- 
 teristic of the East. The cultivators of the soz7, in Persia, though 
 oppressed, are hospitable, active, and intelligent, and are more 
 comfortable in their lives than the average workman in any 
 of our overgrown cities.
 
 ABSOLUTISM. 209 
 
 Persian women, like those of all other Mohammedan countries, 
 are not looked upon as the equals of the men. They are by some 
 Moslem priests even believed not to have souls, and in every case 
 are mere slaves who minister to the pleasure of their haughty 
 lords. In many cases, however, their sharp wit enables them to 
 gain an ascendency over their more lethargic husbands, and even 
 to sway the affairs of the court at their own sweet will. 
 
 An Eastern seraglio is yet a "gilded cage," tenanted by 
 uneducated women, whose only thoughts are to please their mas- 
 ter and amuse their aimless existence. Intrigue, discontent and 
 crime are the natural sequence of such a state of matters. The 
 harem life has been often described, but by none, it is said by 
 those acquainted with the subject, in more faithful colors than by 
 the French writer Chardin. 
 
 The seraglio of the king, says M. Chardin, is most commonly a 
 perpetual prison, from whence scarce one female in six or seven has 
 the good fortune to escape, for women who have become the mothers 
 of living children are provided witli a small establishment within the 
 Avails, and are never suffered to leave them. But privation of liberty 
 is by no means the worst evil that exists in these melancholy abodes. 
 
 Except to that wife so fortunate as to produce the firstborn son, 
 to become a mother is the most dreaded event that can happen to the 
 wretched favorites of the king. When this occurs, not only do the 
 mothers see their last chance of liberty and marriage cut off, but 
 they live in the dreadful anticipation of seeing their children de- 
 prived of life or sight, when the death of their lord shall call a new 
 tyrant, in the person of his son, the brother of their offspring, to the 
 throne. 
 
 Should they escape having children, by an assiduous court paid to 
 the king's mother, or to the mother of his eldest son, it sometimes 
 happens that they obtain the good fortune of being bestowed upon 
 some of the officers about the court; for the ministers and grandees, 
 who are always intriguing with these influential ladies, seldom fail of 
 soliciting a female of the royal harem either for themselves or their 
 sons. 
 
 Indeed, it is no uncommon thing for the king himself to bestow 
 one of these fair captives .upon one of his favorites, or his courtiers ; and 
 sometimes, when the harem gets crowded, this is done to a great extent 
 as a measure of economical expediency. Happy the woman thus freed 
 from her prison, for she at once exchanges the situation of a slave for
 
 210 
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT- 
 
 that of a legitimate and 
 influential wife, and the 
 head of a domestic estab- 
 lishment, where she is 
 ever treated with the at- 
 tention due to one who 
 has been the favorite of 
 a king. 
 
 In the case of the 
 women of villagers and 
 laborers the veil is en- 
 tirely dispensed with, 
 and they may be seen 
 following their occupa- 
 tions like women of 
 their class in Europe, 
 or other parts of the 
 world where the Mo- 
 hammedan faith has not 
 instilled the idea that 
 the females of the na- 
 tion are to be carefully 
 watched and excluded 
 from the gaze of all but 
 their lords. Most of 
 the harem women are of 
 Circassian, Georgian, or 
 Armenian blood, and 
 are often fair in com- 
 plexion, well formed, 
 and handsome, with 
 large black languish- 
 ing eyes, rich red lips 
 and pearly teeth. Their 
 natural charms are, 
 
 , A PERSIAN VILLAGE BELLE. 
 
 however, often de- 
 stroyed by the custom they have of painting their cheeks with 
 various colors, by constantly smoking, which spoils their teeth,
 
 ABSOLUTISM. 211 
 
 and by the habit of tattooing on their persons various fanciful 
 figures. A fine head of hair is looked upon as indispensable to 
 a harem beauty. If nature denies this adornment, it is supplied,, 
 either wholly or in part, by artificial means, a custom which is 
 not absolutely unknown in a certain civilized country, of which 
 Teheran is not the capital. 
 
 A shift and trousers of colored silk or cotton constitute the 
 dress worn within doors, supplemented, if the weather be cold, by 
 a jacket, shawl, cloak, or furs. The head is enveloped in a silk 
 handkerchief, so arranged as to form a kind of turban. When 
 the women go outside, they fold themselves in a wrapper of "blue 
 checked stuff," which covers them from head to foot, only leaving 
 a small laced opening for their eyes, through which it is impossi- 
 ble for even the lady's husband to detect the personality. 
 
 Like the Peruvian ladies, the Persians cling to their incognita 
 with the keenest relish, as one of the few fragments of personal 
 liberty which they possess. Frankish civilization is slowly pen- 
 etrating Iran, as the empire of Persia is called; but it has not 
 yet progressed so far as to induce the women to wear gowns. 
 These they call "trousers with one leg," and prefer to possess 
 this garment with the normal number of divisions. 
 
 The following description of the gala dress of a lady of high 
 rank as given by Lady Sheil, who spent much time in Persia, will 
 be read with relish by all women who take a natural, innocent and 
 commendable interest in dress : 
 
 The Shah's mother wore a pair of trousers made of gold brocade. 
 These Persian trousers are always very wide, each leg being, when the 
 means of the wearer permit it, wider than the skirt of a gown, so that 
 they have the effect of an exceedingly ample petticoat ; and, as crino- 
 lines are unknown, the elegantes wear ten or eleven pairs of trousers, 
 one over the other, in order to make up for the want of the above 
 important invention. But to return to the Shalfs mother. Her 
 trousers were edged with a border of pearls embroidered on braid ; she 
 had a thin blue crepe chemisette, also trimmed with pearls. This 
 chemisette hung down a little below the waist nearly meeting the top 
 of the trousers, which are always fastened by a running string. A 
 small jacket of velvet was over the chemisette, reaching to the waist, 
 but not made close in front, and on the head a small shawl pinned
 
 212 THK STOUV OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 under the chin. On the shawl were fastened strings of large pearls and 
 diamond sprigs. Her arms were covered with handsome bracelets, 
 and her neck with a variety of costly necklaces. Her hair was in 
 bands and hung down under the shawl in a multitude of small plaits. 
 She wore no shoes, her feet being covered with cashmere stockings. 
 The palms of her hands and the tips of her fingers were dyed red with 
 an herb called henna, and the edges of the inner part of the eyelids were 
 colored with antimony. All the Kajars [the Tartar tribe to which the 
 present dynasty belongs] have naturally large arched eyebrows, but 
 not satisfied with this, the women enlarge them with great streaks of 
 antimony. Her cheeks were well rouged, as is the invariable custom 
 among Persian women of all classes. In fact, like their contemporaries 
 in Europe, the Persian ladies 
 
 " With curious arts dim charms revive, 
 And triumph in the bloom of fifty-five. " 
 
 Ignorant, sensual, frivolous, with no intellectual resources to 
 fall back upon, except the occasional introduction of some femin- 
 ine elocutionist or story-teller, the conversation of a harem party 
 is wearisome in the extreme. 
 
 All that delicacy which we associate with a woman is absent 
 from their discourse ; scandal and gossip are the only subjects 
 of conversation, and on every topic they express themselves with 
 the most disgusting grossness. A friendly tete-d-tete is every now 
 and then broken up by a violent quarrel among the beauties, when 
 invective and abuse, the indecency of which would bar their 
 repetition almost in a police court or the pages of some of our 
 "progressive" daily papers, are said to flow from their Eastern 
 tongues with a fluency which long practice and a freedom from 
 anything like shamefacedness can only supply. 
 
 The marriage ceremonies are elaborate and peculiar. Like all 
 other Mohammedans, they are not allowed more than four legal 
 wives, but they can have as many concubines as they can purchase. 
 A girl is often betrothed to her future husband in infancy, and never 
 sees him until they stand before the priest to complete the bargain. 
 She has, however, the option of refusing to do so ; but this is a 
 privilege so hedged round with difficulties as to be practically 
 useless. Of late, however, it has become customary to allow the 
 future husband and wife to see each other, but only " under the
 
 213
 
 214 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 rose." The marriage can be witnessed by two men, or by one 
 man and two women. The certificate is carefully preserved by 
 the w.) in. in, for in case there be a divorce, the possession of it is 
 the only means by which she can recover her dowry. 
 
 Great rejoicings take place at every marriage, and in the case 
 of even the middle classes are accompanied by an expenditure so 
 profuse as to be often almost ruinous. The feasting will last, 
 from three to forty days, according to the rank of the contract- 
 ing parties; three, at least, are necessary. On the first, the com- 
 pany assembles; on the second, the bride's hands are stained with 
 henna; on the third, the rite takes place, with much ceremony 
 an:l not a little humor. This brief account of the conclusion 
 of a wedding by an eye-witness is full of curious points. The 
 bride has retired to her room. 
 
 The husband, who in this case is a middle-aged widower, makes his 
 appearance, and a looking-glass is immediately held up in such a posi- 
 tion as to reflect the face of his bride, whom he now for the first time 
 sees unveiled. It is a critical and anxious moment, for it is that in 
 which the fidelity of his agents is to be proved, and the charms of his 
 beloved to be compared with those pictured to him by his ardent 
 imagination, while the young ladies in attendance, as well as the 
 gossiping old ones, are eager to catch the first glimpse, and communi- 
 cate to all the world their opinion of her claims to beauty. 
 
 Then the bridegroom takes a bit of sugar-candy, and biting it in two 
 eats one half himself, and presents the other to his ln-ide, a custom 
 apparently traceable to the ancient raiifin-rmitio, or M eating together," 
 a portion of the marriage ceremony in an early state of society, of 
 which the modern bridecake is a remnant. On the present occasion 
 he had no teeth to bite with, and BO he broke the sugar with his 
 fingers, which offended the young woman so much that she- cast her 
 portion away. He then took her stockings, threw one over his left 
 shoulder, placed the other under his ri^ht foot, and ordered all the 
 spectators to withdraw. They retired accordingly and the happy 
 couple were left alone. 
 
 One passage in this description illustrates a feature in the IVr- 
 siau women that we have Hot yet mentioned, namely, that, though 
 little better than slaves, they exert their rights in a manner 
 sometimes far from agreeable. Of ungovernable temper, and with 
 no moral training which would teach them to restrain their pas-
 
 ABSOLUTISM. 
 
 215 
 
 sions, they exert their will in a most pronounced manner, go in 
 and out of the harem when it pleases them, (that is, the harems of 
 the middle classes), and when their desires are thwarted, will not 
 unfrequently give forcible expression to their opinion with the 
 sharp point of their slipper on their husband's body. Slaves 
 generally Circassians and Georgians, are sometimes so far admitted 
 to their master's good graces as to become inmates of the harem ; 
 but slavery in Persia is of an exceedingly mild character. In 
 all Persian families of consequence, the major domo, or person in 
 
 A MARRIAGE PBOCESSIOBT. 
 
 trust the house steward in fact will generally be found to be 
 a khanezadeh, or slave born in the house the offspring of domestic 
 slaves, bought when young, and reared and married under their 
 owner's auspices. 
 
 The third mode of union noticeable in Persia is accounted dis- 
 reputable in most Moslem countries, namely, that of a woman 
 living with a man as his wife for a specified period. This insti- 
 tution, peculiar to Persia, is not looked upon even there as com- 
 mendable in the highest degree. Only men of rank make these 
 limited marriages and, practically, such marriages are for life, 
 the contract being for ninety years, and the children of such mar- 
 riages enjoying all the privileges of those of the regular wives.
 
 216 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Divorce, however, can be at any time had by the man, yet most 
 husbands hesitate to adopt this mode of disposing of a bad matri- 
 monial bargain. The scandal, and, above all, the necessity of 
 returning her dowry, are motives which effectually restrain him. 
 
 If the wife, through ill-usage or other cause, sues for divorce 
 and obtains it, she forfeits all right to receive back any part of 
 her dowry, and cases, as might be expected, are not unknown in 
 which the baser sort have taken advantage of this law to force, by 
 continued ill-usage, the wife to demand a divorce. Bad temper, 
 extravagance, and such like, are the usual pleas brought forward 
 as grounds for a divorce. Adultery is never one of these, for if 
 this were proved to have been committed, capital punishment, 
 without recourse to legal proceedings, would be the fate of the 
 unhappy delinquent. 
 
 Harassed by repeated invasions, plunderings, and long ages of 
 misrule, Persia has fallen from the position she once occupied as 
 the granary of the world. Her irrigation works, and other means 
 by which the arid ground was made to blossom with heavy crops, 
 have been long allowed to fall into decay. 
 
 Famine is often a visitor in the land. Few manufactures 
 flourish, and a country which has great capabilities is allowed to 
 lie half waste, a few miserable cultivators, or petty artisans, 
 being the only source from which the taxes to supply the luxury 
 and extravagance of the court can be extracted. In modern 
 Persia there is no more a Darius or a Xerxes than there are the 
 hosts whom they led to victory or to spoil. No longer do the 
 Medean cohorts advance, "all gleaming in purple and gold." 
 
 There are scarcely any roads in the country fitted foi wheeled 
 carriages, and nearly all the goods are borne on the backs of 
 horses, mules, or camels ; accordingly, the drawbacks of bad 
 government put one side, it is hardly possible for a dense 
 population to subsist. From all accounts, the population of Per- 
 sia, though the wandering tribes, or Eeliauts, it is impossible to 
 give with anything like accuracy, is less than 8,000,000. In 
 Chardin's day, the population of Ispahan, the then capital, was 
 estimated to be upwards of 700,000. In 1800, Sir John Malcolm 
 considered that it could not contain more than 100,000 souls; 
 and owing to the devastation it has suffered from famine since that
 
 ABSOLUTISM. 217 
 
 date, it is probable that a census would now show a much smaller 
 number of inhabitants, perhaps 60,000. Teheran has 200,000, 
 Meshed 60,000, and Tauris is credited with 165,000 inhabitants. 
 
 Mention has been made of bad roads. Navigable rivers there 
 are none ; and, although telegraphs have been erected, railways 
 are a thing of the future. They may be built after the coal fields 
 are developed. Every imported, or even home-produced, article 
 which has to be carried any distance, is thus necessarily dear. 
 Silk, cotton, tobacco, rice, a little grain, dried fruits, sulphur, 
 horses, wax, and gall nuts, are the chief exports. Of manu- 
 factured articles, she exports a little gold and silver brocade, and 
 some silk and cotton stuffs, chiefly to Russia. 
 
 The whole revenue of the empire is considerably less than $10,- 
 000,000, and is expended by the court, the cost of which is great, 
 though, in justice, it ought to be mentioned, that during the 
 reign of the present Shah the income has increased $3,500,000 
 per annum. Notwithstanding the Mohammedan law, Persian 
 kings often marry more than four wives. The late Shah had thirty. 
 
 The military force varies, the standing army being usually 
 about 50,000 men, in addition to about 30,000 irregular cavalry, 
 who are called out in case of necessity; but, on an emergency, 
 the Persian monarch could put into the field 150,000 men, 
 exclusive of camp followers. 
 
 How well this army was equipped in former times may be 
 inferred from the story told regarding the Shah who besieged 
 the mud-walled town of a Kurdish chief. A big gun was brought 
 up against it, but it was found that only three balls could be pro- 
 cured which would fit it. After two were tired, the town was 
 summoned to surrender; but the only result was a request to his 
 Persian majesty to "fire his third ball, and be done, and leave 
 them alone in peace!" 
 
 In modern times European arms have been obtained, and the 
 whole military force is being drilled after the modern methocb, 
 by English and other officers in the service of the present Shah. 
 The system may be more satisfactory to the Persian government 
 than to the officers concerned, as they find that, beyond specious 
 promises, they have considerable difficulty in rescuing any of their 
 pay out of the hands of the officials through which it has to pass.
 
 218 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The average pay of a private is about $20 per annum, in 
 addition to a ration of three pounds of bread. A captain receives 
 about sixty tomans, and a lieutenant-colonel commanding a regi- 
 ment 500 tomans; while the colonel commanding two regiments, 
 the highest rank in the army, only enjoys pay to the extent of 
 about 1,000 tomans. A toman is at present worth about $2.15. 
 
 The monarch is known as the Shah, and has been from the 
 earliest times an absolute sovereign, having despotic authority 
 over the lives and property of all his subjects, from the highest to 
 the lowest. Though usually his eldest legitimate son succeeds 
 him, yet he has the power to put any of his male offspring the 
 son of a slave it may be on the throne ; and at one time it was 
 common for the reigning sovereign either to destroy or to put out 
 the eyes of all his other sons, so that the heir might reign in 
 peace. 
 
 If the new sovereign proves weak, some of his enemies soon 
 discover this, and the most probable result is that, after a 
 rebellion and a series of murders, a new dynasty, in the person of 
 a successful soldier, is established. It thus follows that, though 
 the Shah of Persia is absolute, yet he has to keep his power by the 
 force of circumstances, and, if a wise man, will hesitate to exercise 
 it in a manner which would excite the hatred of his subjects. 
 
 The Koran and the numerous traditional sayings of the 
 immediate successors of Mohammed form the basis of the whole 
 civil and criminal law, as administered by the priests in Persia. 
 as in other Mohammedan countries. But in Persia there is also 
 the urf, or "common law," administered by secular magistrates. 
 
 The Sheik-al-Islam is the head of the first-named court, though 
 greatly controlled by the mooshteheds, or high priests, while 
 the urf is administered by the king in person, by his lieuten- 
 ants, governors of provinces, chief magistrates of towns, col- 
 lectors of the revenue of districts, and by the officials who act 
 under them. The power of life and death rests with the king, 
 who rarely delegates it, except to princes of the blood royal, or to 
 governors of remote provinces. The governing principle in 
 Mohammedan law is what has been called the lex talionis, an eye 
 for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Murder, though a capital 
 offence, can yet be compounded with the heirs of a murdered
 
 ABSOLUTISM. 
 
 219 
 
 man. The punishment of death is often aggravated by the bar- 
 barous methods in which it is inflicted. Decapitation, strangling, 
 or stabbing is the common mode of execution; but impalement, 
 or tearing asunder by horses or by the bent boughs of trees, is not 
 unfrequently practised when, in the opinion of the judge, the 
 offence warrants this addition to the punishment. Tortures are 
 sometimes introduced with a view to the discovery of hidden 
 
 A PEKSIAN CARAVANSAUY OK HOTEL. 
 
 treasure, but rarely in any other case. The loss of the eyes is the 
 common penalty for political offences. Mutilation is the punish- 
 ment meted out to a thief , though, he may be forgiven or his sen- 
 tence lightened at the option of the injured party. The king's 
 relatives fill nearly all the chief posts, such as the governorships 
 of provinces; while the other offices of state are given, as already 
 related, to persons of lowly rank, whose influence might there- 
 after be expected through gratitude to be exercised in the king's
 
 - THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 behalf. Every province has a sum fixed for which it is taxed. 
 Accordingly, the governor and his agents use every means to 
 squeeze this sum, and whatever more they can, out of the people. 
 
 The overplus remains in the official's hands as his salary or 
 perquisite. At all events, no one troubles him so long as the 
 royal treasury in Teheran receives the quotum at which the pro- 
 vince has been rated. Extortion, therefore, as might be expected, 
 flourishes in Persia, especially if the district be far removed from 
 the capital and in a soil congenial to it. 
 
 The ancient religion of the Persians (the religion of the Magi) 
 long ago gave place to Mohammedanism and now lingers only 
 among the Guebres, a persecuted sect in Persia, and among the 
 Parsees of India an ancient colony of Persians who have almost 
 monopolized the financial business of Bombay and other cities. 
 
 It was an extremely elaborate system, the central principle 
 being the worship of fire and of light. In its main features it was 
 reformed and restored by Zoroaster who seems to have lived about 
 five or six hundred years before Christ and whose " Zendavesta " is 
 one of the most ancient books in the Persian language. 
 
 The Parsees and the Guebres never willingly throw filth into 
 fire or water. The trade of a smith is proscribed among them by 
 custom though not by law. They use no firearms as a rule, nor 
 extinguish a fire, though in cases of very destructive fires they 
 have been known to assist in putting them out. A Parsee or a 
 Guebre is rarely found as a sailor, his fear of defiling the sea 
 deterring him from following this occupation. When a person is 
 dying, they keep a dog near to drive away the evil spirits. 
 
 They neither bury nor burn their dead, but inter the body in 
 a circular tower called dock-metis^ or dokhma. In these towers 
 are inclined planes on which the corpses are deposited, and the 
 birds of the air are invited to devour them. They even augur 
 as to the happiness or misery of the deceased, according as the 
 left or right eye is first pecked, out by the vultures. Our illus- 
 tration represents the burial of a Parsee traveller on the plains of 
 Hindostan. 
 
 The Parsees, like the Jews, are a persecuted race, and both 
 have daily the mortification of seeing their sacred lands in the 
 possession of the Mohammedans. The former are, nevertheless,
 
 A PARSEE BL'KIAL IN NOKTHEKN INDIA.
 
 222 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 much fewer than the latter, for, except the colony which has found 
 an asylum in India, and the few thousands who still cling to 
 Persia, it is rare to find one in any other country. 
 
 Our picture shows a persecuted Guebre making himself known 
 to others by a secret sign. He has been wandering from village 
 to village to elude the attentions of Mohammedan priests who 
 have suspected his pockets of being as full of gold as his head 
 was of heresy. At last, on the edge of Kurdistan, he has found a 
 town where he can safely rest. In India, the Parsees would 
 be lost in the vast sea of people inhabiting that empire, were it 
 not for their distinctive dress and other peculiarities which mark 
 them out prominently from the Mussulmans or Hindoos. 
 
 Their high, brimless hats, set a little back so as to form an 
 angle with the head, at once proclaim the nationality of the wearer, 
 be it seen in any Indian city, or in the streets of London or Liver- 
 pool ; for, though not a widely scattered people, no fear of caste 
 pollution stands in their way should they desire to seek fortune 
 in countries beyond the sea, albeit, theoretically at least, they ought 
 not to pass any length of time on the surface of water. 
 
 But the Parsee, though a monotheist, is the worshipper of a 
 second god, and that is the rupee. He despises, he loathes, the 
 hideous idolatry of the Hindoos; but he bows down before the 
 silver image which Victoria, Kaisar-i-Hind, has set up in her 
 Indian dominions. 
 
 With the Mohammedan religion all the learning of which 
 Persia can boast came into the country; but that is little. Logic, 
 metaphysics, judicial astrology, astronomy, mathematics and medi- 
 cine, are about the only branches of knowledge cultivated with 
 any degree of success. Much of their astronomy, as well as their 
 logic and metaphysics, is puerile in the extreme. Geography is 
 little understood, though mathematics is taught on much better 
 principles, owing to their possessing the works of Euclid. 
 
 Alchemy is a favorite study, but chemistry is unknown. Their 
 knowledge of medicine is on a par with the state of the science as 
 left by Galen and Hippocrates, whose disciples they profess to be. 
 A few colleges have been established, but are not very prosperous, 
 and the experiment of sending promising young men to be edu- 
 cated in Europe does not meet with much approval.
 
 ABSOLUTISM. 
 
 223 
 
 Fine art is at a low ebb, it being repugnant to the Mohammedan 
 faith to make representations of any created thing. The stone 
 and seal cutters of Shiraz and Ispahan are, however, famous for 
 
 A OUEBKK MAKING HIMSELF KNOWN BY A SECRET SIGN. 
 
 their skill, as Cashan is for lacquered tiles. Herat, Meshed, and 
 Shiraz are equally celebrated for sword-blades and steel work 
 generally. Their coins were at one time struck by the hammer, 
 but in 1872 a mint was established at Sultanet-Abed, near 
 Teheran.
 
 224 THE STORY OK GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The literature of Persia consists chiefly of writings on theology 
 and polemics, and some works of history, romance, and poetry. 
 Some of their manuscripts are beautifully illuminated. Persia, 
 indeed, was once noted for her bards, and the flowery, historical 
 songs of Meerkhond and Khoudemir are sung to this day. 
 
 We have been picturing Persia as it is ; but, as elsewhere in the 
 East, European habits are creeping in. French millinery can be 
 seen in Teheran, and Krupp guns in Shiraz. 
 
 Telegraph lines worked by Europeans span the kingdom, greatly 
 to the amusement of the Shah, though with less diversion to the 
 distant officials, especially about the time that the taxes are 
 due. 
 
 How " a dog, with its tail in Teheran and its muzzle in Lon- 
 don, can bark in the one place, when it is pinched in the 
 other," is not easy to explain to the average Persian mind, though 
 regarding the fact of the case there is painfully little doubt. 
 
 In a few more decades probably the absolutism of Persia will 
 be a darkness of the past and over the markets of Meshed and 
 the gardens of Ispahan Progress will throw the radiance of elec- 
 tric light.
 
 VI. 
 
 r-v 
 
 Ess-fff. 
 
 Tl?e J^ule of Caste* 
 
 INDIA, which is regarded by biologists as the birth-place of the 
 human race, has been for centuries a marvel and a mystery 
 to western minds, and its government, before the East India 
 Company took possession of many of the provinces, was a 
 curious mixture of absolutism such as we have depicted in Persia, 
 and of a kind of religious despotism. 
 
 The absolutism lias ceased, even in those provinces which, 
 though not exactly under British rule, are yet, by their adjacency, 
 under British eye; but the religious despotism still flourishes 
 throughout the vast domain which hails Victoria as Empress. 
 
 This religious government within a government is the rule of 
 caste, and is what we shall examine in this chapter ; because, 
 although India is nominally and commercially under English dom- 
 ination the tyranny of caste is still paramount there and is liable, 
 as in the Indian mutiny, if sufficient provocation be given, to cause 
 a tremendous popular outbreak. 
 
 For, though Disraeli cleverly sought to enlist the loyalty of the 
 Oriental fancy by making Victoria Empress of India, that is, rank- 
 ing her higher in relation to her Indian than to her English subjects, 
 yet her natural distance from India cannot be overcome in the 
 popular mind by a mere juggle of words, and it must be admitted 
 that, despite their governing India the English are a mere fringe 
 
 225
 
 226 THK STORY OF GOVKKNMKNT. 
 
 on its vastness a dewdrop on a lion's mane, liable to be shaken 
 off if his dormant majesty should awake. 
 
 So with Christianit3 r , which hus made but little headway against 
 the dominant superstition of the Hindoos, whose religion is one of 
 the few Pagan faiths that have had sacred books. In these books 
 are embalmed sound maxims of morality, and sentiments of such 
 nobility that in this fact alone the Indian faith soars above those 
 of ancient Greece, Rome, or Assyria, where ideas of religion were 
 bounded by the erection of temples and statues to deities who 
 spoke to their worshippers in no higher form than what appealed 
 to the eye. 
 
 The Vedas, or Hindoo Scriptures, describe a state of society 
 widely at variance with Hindoo life and the religious tenets 
 of the present; so that if these sacred books are to be viewed 
 as the foundations of the prevailing religions of India, much of 
 Hindooism must have been invented by the Brahmins of a later 
 date. 
 
 The "Code of Menu" is another of the sacred books of Hin- 
 dooism. It is of a much more recent date than the Vedas, though 
 at the time it was written the Hindoo race had not extended 
 beyond the Vindhya Mountains. It is one of the deepest and 
 most subtle of all holy books, and though now " obsolete in many 
 respects," is really the foundation of modern Hindooism legal, 
 social and political. 
 
 The religion of the Hindoos, like nearly every other form of 
 worship, savage and civilized, has altered much since their Bible 
 was written. It was purer in former times, but it appears to have 
 adopted from time to time the deities of the black-skinned 
 aborigines whom they had conquered, and to have imbibed many of 
 their superstitions. 
 
 The foundation of Brahminism consists in a triad, or "trimurti," 
 in which Brahmd, i* the creator, Vishnoo the preserver, and Siva 
 the destroyer. Beneath these there seems to lie the idea of "an 
 Unspeakable Unity, Brahm or Brihm." These three members of 
 the Hindoo Trinity were not, however, coeval. Vishnoo worship 
 is of a much younger date than that of Siva, whose popularity 
 was near its height at the birth of Christ. 
 
 Hindoo worship is now almost entirely concentrated on Vishnoo
 
 THE RULE OF CASTE. 227 
 
 and Siva, and the female divinities associated with them, and 
 Brahma is now little regarded, having but one existing temple 
 in India. Unlike the gods of Greece and Rome, who took upon 
 themselves the form of mankind, only to gratify some passion, as 
 a rule, or at best to favor some friend, the great Hindoo deities 
 only do so for some good and beneficent purpose. They are 
 generally sculptured and worshipped in human form, more or less 
 
 BKNAKES FUOM THE GANOKS. 
 
 altered according to the idealistic tendencies of the priest or the 
 artists. 
 
 Thus Vislmoo undertakes ten "avatars," or incarnations, in 
 
 order to save the world. These incarnations form the subject of 
 
 one of the loftiest portions of Hindoo theology, and under one 
 
 of these forms that of the beautiful Krishna, or Rama the Hero 
 
 he is most frequently adored by his devotees. 
 
 When the "Rig-Veda" was written, Siva who is now a most 
 frightful and revolting deity was looked upon as something
 
 228 TIIK STORY OF < iOYKKN.M KNT. 
 
 very different, namely, as the " god of prayer and religious asceti- 
 cism, perfect, infinite ; the refuge of worlds, the succorer of mis- 
 fortune, the spring of wealth, monarch of the world, lord of 
 Brahma himself, yet giving in his own person the example of pen- 
 ance and pain." Compared with the Greek mythology, that of 
 India is infinitely deeper, more mysterious, and vastly more sub- 
 lime. 1 
 
 Much, however, of the most beautiful portions of Hindoo 
 theology dates from a period subsequent to the Christian era. 
 Accordingly, some writers of good repute Wilson in England, 
 and Lassen in Germany, for example are of the belief that 
 traces of Christian influence may be detected in it. Most of the 
 grosser forms of materialism exist among the modern Hindoos, 
 mingled with the brighter and more excusable worship of the 
 elements. 
 
 For instance, water-worship, a form of religion widely spread 
 among nations both savage and civilized, is a part of their faith. 
 To this day, the Brahmin prays to the Ganges as the Roman 
 offered up his petition to Father Tiber, and the devout children 
 of a believer consider his soul safe, if he dies by its banks, choked, 
 it may be, by the Ganges mud. The dead are thrown into the 
 stream, and mothers even offer up their children to the Holy 
 River. 
 
 No place is with the Hindoo so appropriate for prayer as the 
 banks of " the river," which to him is what the Nile is to the 
 Egyptian. Here they bathe and offer up their vows, their prayers, 
 and their offerings of fruit, flowers, rice and sweetmeats. Even 
 in places where the river is of considerable breadth, garlands of 
 flowers are suspended across it. 
 
 Though all of the sacred river is holy to the devout Hindoo, 
 yet so peculiarly sanctifying is one particular spot, near the con- 
 iluence of the Ganges with the Jumna, that all who bathe therein 
 
 1 "I cannot help saying," remarks Ludlow, " that when I compare Greek mythology with 
 Hindoo I am reminded of the saying of the old Egyptian priest, that the Greeks were 
 mere children; so immeasurably deeper does the Hindoo mind appear to go in sounding the 
 mysteries of the universe, of our own selves. The pervading yearning which manifests itself 
 for an abiding union with God, the firm hold which it has of what I take to be the truth of 
 truths for mankind that God must take flesh for the salvation of the world appear to me 
 principles whirh make the noblest of Greek myths seem but as babbling nursery rhymes 
 beside the Hindoo."
 
 THE KULE OF CASTE. 229 
 
 must of necessity their souls being punned from every sinful 
 taint go straight to the gates of Paradise. To ensure this 
 blissful end of life, every year numbers of devotees commit suicide 
 by drowning themselves in the river, and so systematically is this 
 superstition fostered that the Brahmins keep boats for the pur- 
 pose of assisting their clients to perform this last holy office. 
 
 The intending suicide rows into the stream, into which, after 
 fastening to his legs jars full of stones, he throws himself, or he 
 simply walks into the stream with jars fastened in front and 
 behind his body, and reaching the middle of the stream, he 
 leisurely fills the jars with water. The jars' have hitherto buoyed 
 him up, but as they fill the bearer sinks into the sacred stream. 
 Corpses are sunk in the same manner, the devout relatives towing 
 the body into mid-stream, after its purification by a quantity of 
 straw ignited round it. 
 
 What becomes of the body after being sunk concerns no one ; 
 the alligator may devour it, or the hungry jackal tear it to pieces 
 as it strands on the muddy shore ; but the sacred Ganges has 
 received it, and the soul has been wafted to Paradise. This method 
 of sinking bodies is, however, only practised by those too poor to 
 bear the expense of a funeral pile ; the richer classes invariably 
 burn the body and throw the ashes into the river. At Benares, 
 where self-immolation by drowning was once common, the police 
 now have orders to prevent it as far as possible. 
 
 All the Brahmins, but especially the priests, are propitiated 
 with divine honors ; and, indeed, at certain seasons of the year, 
 the Brahmin is himself worshipped by his wife. Their daughters 
 under eight years of age are worshipped as forms of the goddess 
 Bhavani, and gifts of flowers, fruit, water, garlands, and incense 
 are offered to them. 
 
 The wives of Brahmins are worshipped by other men, and it is 
 not uncommon for a hundred of these ladies to be invited to the 
 house of a rich man, who, after having repeated prayers and praise 
 before them, concludes the ceremony by offering them rich gifts. 
 These people of Brahminic caste are venerated as descendants of, 
 and endowed with some of the divine substance of, their progeni- 
 tor Brahma, who was at one time worshipped as the Creator. 
 
 On the decay of the worship of Brahmd,, Siva and Vishnoo came
 
 230 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 into vogue as deities ; the worship of Siva being supposed to be 
 the more ancient in date. Siva is represented in various ways. 
 Sometimes his images represent him as a silver-colored man with 
 five faces, in each face three eyes, of which the third is in the 
 forehead; he is seated on a lotus, and clad in a garment of tiger 
 skin. 
 
 In other images he is represented as having only one head, but 
 still a third eye, with the figure of a half moon on the forehead, 
 and is riding upon a bull, naked and covered with ashes, his eyes 
 inflamed with intoxicating drugs ; in one of his hands carrying a 
 horn, in the other a drum. 
 
 Vishnooisra may be considered as a sort of reformed Sivaism, 
 more refined and spiritual than that of the destroying and renova- 
 ting god ; its progress has, however, been slow, and its popularity 
 by no means so great as that of Sivaism. Its followers are divided 
 into several sects, each of which is distinguished by its secrets, 
 sacrifices, and particular signs. 
 
 To Vishnoo are offered no bloody sacrifices ; fruits, flowers, 
 water, clarified butter, sweetmeats, cloths, ornaments, and such 
 like, are accounted appropriate gifts to a god who is the " preserver 
 of all things." He is a household god. Little images are made 
 for sale, and worshipped whenever a person enters into a new 
 house, or to procure the removal of family misfortunes. 
 
 The heaven of Vishnoo is a region so glorious, that the vivid 
 Eastern imagination revels in devising terms glowing enough in 
 which to describe it. All destruction of life is to him abhorrent. 
 In addition to the Hindoo Trinity there are many inferior gods : 
 such as Kamadeva, the god of lives, and Krishna Kamadeva, the 
 son of Brahma, Avho is represented as a beautiful youth, holding 
 in his hand a bow and arrow made of flowers. His constant com- 
 panions are his wife, llati, the goddess of pleasure, the cuckoo, 
 the humming bird, and the gentle breezes. 
 
 He is continually wandering through the " three worlds," con- 
 versing with his mother and wife, in gardens and temples, or 
 riding by moonlight on a parrot or lory, attended by nymphs or 
 dancing girls, the foremost of whom bears his standard a fish 
 painted on a red ground. 
 
 Animals are also venerated by the Hindoos. As the ancient
 
 THE BULK OF CASTE. 
 
 231 
 
 Egyptians worshipped Atlior, the Celestial Venus, under the form 
 of a cow, so the modern Hindoos pay court to Bhavani under the 
 representation of the same animal. The religious beliefs, as well 
 as the superstitions of the lower classes, vary much in different 
 localities, and have often little in common with the Hindooism of 
 the Brahmins. 
 
 Brahminism has two aspects, separated by a vast chasm. One 
 is philosophical, the other popular ; one is for the few, the other 
 for the many. In its original or highest form it is extremely 
 
 THE BANYAN, Ol. SACKED TREE. 
 
 simple, being a kind of spiritual pantheism, in which nothing 
 really exists except Brahma ; in other words, nothing exists but 
 God, and everything existing is God. 
 
 But between this faith as found in the Vedas and the corrupt 
 polytheism of the Puranas there is an immense gulf, which, 
 however, is bridged over by the word "emanation." In the 
 philosophical creed, everything is identified with Brahma ; in the 
 popular, everything emanates from Brahma. Stones, plants, ani- 
 mals, men, gods, demons, every conceivable object, issue from this
 
 '2:\'2 THK STOHV OF (JOVKKN.MKNT. 
 
 one self-existent universal soul, as drops 1'rom the ocean, sparks 
 from the fire. 
 
 Yet, into these stones, plants, and animals, the spirit of man 
 may pass, or they may rise to be gods, and the personal gods are 
 direct emanations 1 from the Supreme Being. This leads to the 
 doctrine of incarnation. 
 
 Vishnoo, for example, as preserver and pervader, passes into 
 men to deliver the world from the power of evil demons, while 
 Rama and Krishna are among the more popular incarnations. In 
 other words, men, animals, plants, stones, pass through innumer- 
 able existences, and they can rise to be gods. But gods, men, 
 animals, plants, and every conceivable emanation from the supreme 
 soul, aim at and must end in reabsorption into their source, 
 Brahma. 
 
 Caste is everywhere an essential part of religion. Xo longer, as 
 it once was, a bond of union among large bodies of men, it now 
 splits up the social fabric into numerous communities, and thus 
 prevents all natural or patriotic combinations. In the present 
 day the family bond in India is even stronger than that of caste, 
 and as both are connected with religion, they weld those con- 
 cerned so firmly together that Hindoos, as a rule, have few sym- 
 pathies and little disposition to co-operate with others, beyond the 
 circle of their own families, and none at all beyond the limits <>f 
 their own immediate castes. 
 
 What, then, in detail is this caste, which compels six laborers 
 camped under one tree, and otherwise undistinguished from each 
 other in dress or person, to build six choolas or cooking places, 
 
 1 When the following lines from " Pope's Essay on Man " were recited to a Brahmin priest, 
 lie enthusiastically exclaimed that the poet must have been a, Brahmin priest in one of his, 
 incarnations. 
 
 " All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
 
 Whose body Nature is, and God the soul ; 
 
 That, changed through all, and yet in all the sunn-, 
 
 Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame, 
 
 Warms in the sun, refreshes on the breeze, 
 
 Glows in the stars, and blossoms on the trees ; 
 
 Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 
 
 Spreads undivided, operates unspent ; 
 
 Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part , 
 
 As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart ; 
 
 As full, as perfect, in vile man who mourns, 
 
 As the rapt seraph who adores and burns. 
 
 To Him no high, no low, 110 great, no small ; 
 
 He fills, He bounds, connects, and equals all."
 
 THE RULE OF CASTE. 233 
 
 and eat as far apart as if they were men of different races, habits 
 and antipathies, instead of being near neighbors, perhaps fellow- 
 pillagers, speaking the same tongue and worshipping the same 
 <n >ds ? 
 
 (.'itxte is the division of the people into certain classes, between 
 whom hard and fast lines are drawn, and who, theoretically at 
 least, follow from one generation to another the same pursuits, 
 do not intermarry with each other, and, so far as commingling 
 Avith each other is concerned, might almost be said to be distinct 
 races. Though much has been written on the subject of caste, 
 great misunderstanding still exists regarding its nature. 
 
 In the "Institutes of Menu," a work which lays down the 
 earliest arrangements of Hindoo society, the rules of caste are very 
 distinctly denned. In this code we find four castes defined as 
 composing the nation, though the existence of mixed castes is also 
 mentioned. These four main divisions are : 1, The Brahmin, or 
 priest ; 2, The Kshatriya, Chuttree, or soldier ; 3, The Vaisya, or 
 husbandman ; and 4, The Soodra, or servant, in which were doubt- 
 less comprised most of the converted aborigines. 
 
 In modern times the Vaisya caste has disappeared, the Kshatriya 
 mainly subsists among the warlike Rajpoots of the northwestern 
 frontier, and the Soodra chiefly, if not entirely, among the Jats 
 and Mahrattas, unless, indeed, we take the haughty Brahminical 
 view of the question, and include as Soodras all who are not 
 Brahmins. The Brahmin is the pinnacle of this social edifice, and 
 beneath him are endless castes, varying according to locality, but 
 seldom less than seventy, and sometimes reaching as high as 170 
 in number. 
 
 For three thousand years, by means of this powerful instrument 
 of caste, the Brahmins have preserved their ascendency over their 
 fellows in India, and it must be acknowledged that the men, who 
 could so long hold their sway over turbulent races, speaking many 
 languages, and obeying few laws, must have been wise, prudent, 
 and firm in their policy. 
 
 The world can show no other example of such a lease of power. 
 Had the Brahmin attempted to maintain his influence by mere 
 brute force, he would long ago have been swept from the earth. 
 But he rules without affecting sovereignty; he enjoys many of
 
 234 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the prerogatives of priesthood without separating himself from 
 human society. His original superiority was at first above all 
 moral and intellectual ; his privileges, even now hemmed round 
 with numberless disadvantages, were originally bound up with the 
 severest austerities. 
 
 The life of a Brahmin, as set forth in the holy books, is divided 
 into four periods. During the first, he must perform the most 
 menial offices for a superior, to whom he attaches himself as a 
 disciple. During the second only he mixes fully in social life, 
 marries and begets children. During the third, he devotes him- 
 self to religious practices and acts of austerity. The fourth is a 
 period of entire self-abstraction, till he leaves the body, as a bird 
 leaves the branch of a tree. 
 
 The Brahmin owes his supremacy mainly to the fact that till 
 recently he only of the Indian castes was acquainted with Sanscrit, 
 in which language are stored the treasures of Hindoo faith and 
 philosophy. Every trade, every art in India, is carried on by rules 
 laid down in these sacred books, the meaning of which is unknown 
 to the practitioners thereof ; but still they blindly obey them, for 
 the Brahmins have so ordered. 
 
 Medical secrets are hereditary in certain Brahmin families, and 
 to them the sick have to resort. Music will bo traditional in one 
 family, and geometry in another ; so that the intellectual qualities, 
 to which of all others the hereditary principle is so unfavorable. 
 are influenced by caste. 
 
 If a man of any caste becomes defiled so that he is no longer 
 capable of mingling among his fellow-men, he cannot go to those 
 of his own class for purification, but must apply to the Brahmins, 
 who alone possess the power of reinstating him in society; though 
 even " the outcasts " have their own priesthood, composed mainly 
 of devotees, whom a long life of holiness and meditation upon 
 the Godhead have raised to such a rank above ordinary mortals, 
 that they seem to become almost capable of ridding themselves of 
 " the dreary progress of transmigration from shape to shape during 
 millions of years." 
 
 Here again theory does not always agree with practice, for of 
 late years the grip of the Brahmins has been gradually slacken- 
 ing, and their character for piety and learning deteriorating. In
 
 THE KULE OF CASTE. 
 
 235 
 
 earlier days the Brahmin was treated with the reverence befitting 
 his reputed descent; he was regarded as a divine being sprung 
 from the mouth of Brahma the Creator, according to the Hindoo 
 Triad. But his traditional reputation as a sage and saint, his 
 single-minded devotion to his religious duties, his mental abstrac- 
 
 HIGH-CASTK UHAHMINS. 
 
 tioii, the purity of his character, his habitude and mode of living 
 have undergone a radical change* 
 
 He is no longer an ascetic, devoted to religious contemplation, 
 renouncing all the pleasures of the world, living to a patriarchal 
 age in some sequestered retreat, and regarded by prince and peasant 
 as the embodiment of authority, alike in law and religion.
 
 THE STORY <)K (iOYKUNMKNT. 
 
 On the contrary, the majority are extremely worldly, and not 
 a few shockingly immoral individuals, who practise few austerities, 
 and in spite of their notorious poverty engage in secular occupa- 
 tions for the purpose of gratifying their greed of gain. Even 
 their old monopoly of Sanscrit learning has been ruthlessly 
 invaded by low caste men and Western scholars, many of whom 
 are infinitely more learned than the majority of the sacerdotal 
 order. 
 
 The endless ramifications of the four original castes deprived 
 them of much of their power, and the consequence is that to 
 compensate themselves for their loss from this source they have 
 engaged in almost every calling, and their cupidity is so great that 
 every principle of law and morality is shamefully compromised in 
 their dealings with mankind. 
 
 Still, until caste vanishes, perhaps not even then, the " thrice 
 born " and his poita, or sacred cord, will be an object of awe to 
 millions of those whom the ancient law of India has ordained to 
 be his social inferiors. This fact of a low caste entailing a social 
 ban is, however, tempting many pariahs to become Mohammedans, 
 since within the pale of Islam all men are equals. 
 
 Below the Brahmin there are many castes, no caste associating 
 with that Avhich is lower than it in the social scale. So strictly 
 is this carried out that in cases where castes, widely distinct from 
 one another, live in the same district, the very low caste people 
 are excluded from the highways. This is the system ; the princi- 
 ple is something different altogether. 
 
 It is, in the eye of the Hindoo, a God-appointed system of 
 society in which every man shall have his settled place, with 
 which he must rest and be content, no matter what may be his 
 discomfort therein ; and it cannot be denied that though the 
 practice is productive of much evil, yet at the same time it has 
 kept a people, who have no higher controlling principle, from 
 sinking into a materialism so gross that the morals and the whole 
 fabric of their national and social life Avould have been shaken 
 thereby. 
 
 Perhaps it is better that the Hindoo should look upon the 
 Brahmin as his head, than that lie should have no one whom he 
 can regard as the supreme director of his faith.
 
 THE KULE OF CASTE. 
 
 237 
 
 The high caste man is defiled by the low caste man, but the low 
 caste man is not denied by contact with anyone beneath him. 
 Thus, the higher you ascend in the scale of caste, the more diffi- 
 cult does it become to keep from pollution. 
 
 Hence, the Brahmin, who is the highest of all, must cook his 
 own food, draw his own water, and, like every high caste man, 
 perform for himself every duty by the performance of which it 
 is possible for him to be pol- 
 luted. Theoretically, at least, 
 the Brahmin is polluted if the 
 shadow of a low caste man falls 
 upon him, or if he glances into 
 the high caste man's pot, let 
 alone his being touched by such 
 an unholy being. 
 
 A Brahmin will even turn 
 aside and spit if a low caste 
 man should pass him in the pub- 
 lic street or highway. Low 
 caste is not therefore, without 
 its compensating advantage. 
 The low caste man may go 
 about careless as to who touches 
 him, or whose shadow falls on 
 his vile person ; he cannot be 
 denied. He can, if wealthy 
 enough, hire a high caste man 
 for high caste by no means 
 implies wealth to do any 
 office for him, and enjoy the A KICK FAKIR. 
 
 fruits of the work of his supe- 
 rior in the Hindoo social scale, while those above him are practi- 
 cally debarred from sharing in his labors. 
 
 Hence, the high caste man finds it profitable to become the 
 servant of the low caste man who may be able to pay for his 
 menial offices. Brahmins are, therefore, greatly run after as 
 cooks, food being the medium through which pollution can be 
 most easily imparted. A Brahmin cook is greatly in demand
 
 238 THI<: STOKV OF (JOVKIJNMKNT. 
 
 in native Indian regiments, some of the men of which are often 
 of high castes. 
 
 In a word, the Brahmin " can cook for every man, whilst no 
 one can cook for him"; and the food proceeding from his hands 
 is always pure. The caste system is not, therefore, an unmitigated 
 evil. To use the words of a thoughtful student of India, there 
 is nothing in it so very oppressive, inhuman, and monstrous, and 
 on the bulk of the Hindoo people it weighs but slightly. 
 
 India is emphatically the land of human horrors, where freaks 
 of superstitious fantasy encounter the traveller in nearly every 
 village. Preeminent among cranks of all nations is the Hindoo 
 Fakir, and the amount of self-torture which these fanatics will 
 embrace and yet live, is almost incredible. 
 
 Having the tongue bored with a red-hot iron was at one time 
 a self-torture so popular, that under a clump of banyan trees, near 
 the temple of the bull god at Chinsurah, the devotees used to 
 range themselves in a long line, in order to get the operation 
 performed by a blacksmith, who bore the reputation of not only 
 doing it effectually, which was well, but also what was equally 
 important among the poverty-stricken Fakirs cheaply. 
 
 To- walk with parched peas in your shoes was, in the days of 
 severe penance in Europe, held to be a most reputable punishment 
 for sins divers and many. But the Hindoo Fakir quite outstrips 
 the European one. A case is on record, doubtless only a specimen 
 of many, of a Fakir who walked up and down in front of a mosque 
 gaily chanting a hymn, with his sandals nailed to his feet by iron 
 spikes, which projected above the instep. 
 
 Others" will make the pilgrimage to a shrine, not on foot, but 
 by rolling their bodies along the ground the whole way, by ad- 
 vancing on their backs, pushing themselves along by their heels, 
 on their hands and feet, and by various other equally inconve- 
 nient methods of progression. 
 
 Others will sit motionless in one place until the joints of their 
 limbs get so stiff that they cannot bend them, or with hands 
 clenched until the nails grow through the flesh, or by holding the 
 arm, by means of support, in such a position that in time it 
 withers. There is really no end to the ingenuity of these devotees 
 in inflicting long and lasting tortures on themselves without pre-
 
 THK IITJLE OF CASTE. 
 
 239 
 
 cipitating death, which would be a pleasure in comparison, and 
 hence not so meritorious in the eyes of the gods. 
 
 Another method of torture, which must be well known to most 
 readers by means of the illustrations of it, is that in which hooks 
 are inserted in the muscles of the devotees' backs, and then a 
 
 A LOW-CLASS FAKIR. 
 
 number of them are swung in an apparatus not unlike the 
 "merry-go-round" seen at fairs, only in this case the sole sup- 
 port by which the victim is suspended in mid-air is the hook. and 
 cord inserted in his living flesh. 
 
 One of the most curious parts of this business is that, if a per-
 
 240 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 son wishes to reap the benefits that the gods are supposed to 
 shower on the meritorious people who practise this species of 
 torture, he has no difficulty in procuring a substitute who will 
 submit to it for a small sum, though self-torture is now pro- 
 hibited by the British authorities. 
 
 As remarkable as the Fakirs, though in a far better way, are the 
 municipal institutions of Hindostan, which date from a period long 
 before the dawn of history. Their principle is the famous " village 
 system," the leading idea in which is, that the people of a partic- 
 ular community do not consist of individual units, but are a body 
 corporate, for the regulation of whose affairs certain functionaries 
 are required, and which,' as a body, enjoys certain rights over the 
 soil. These rights, and the method of administering them, vary 
 infinitely, but, nevertheless, over all Hindoo India the village sys- 
 tem in a more or less defined form exists. 
 
 The land is not the land of any individual ; it belongs in common 
 to the village, and each is only entitled to his share of the produce 
 in kind or in money of the soil, as a component member of 
 the body corporate which holds the land in common. These lands 
 are sometimes worked by the villagers, at other times by hired 
 laborers, or are let out to temporary tenants. 
 
 In most cases the former rule which seems to have been the 
 general one in early times in India prevails. The office-bearers 
 of the village, including all the artificers, form an institution which 
 has undergone no alteration from time immemorial, and they als< > 
 enter into calculations connected with the statistics of an agricul- 
 tural village. 
 
 The patel, or head of the village, has freehold land, or special 
 rights ; and the kulkarni, or accountant, also receives remuneration 
 in various ways. These two officers supply the machinery in every 
 village for collecting statistical details. The Barra Balloota con- 
 sists of twelve hereditary office-bearers, including the patel and 
 kulkarni, who receive certain fees or remuneration from the village 
 in exchange for professional services. 
 
 Thus the sutar, or carpenter, the lohar, or smith, the chamhar, 
 or shoemaker, are paid by each villager, and they mend all imple- 
 ments for agricultural purposes, the owners finding the materials. 
 Some of the office-bearers have a right to a certain number of
 
 THE RULE OF CASTE. 
 
 2-41 
 
 rows in the crops, and all the fees form items in the calculations. 
 It is a system so admirable that one can scarcely conceive any- 
 thing more suited to the peculiar conditions of Hindoo life and 
 character. By means of it, India is a collection of little, indepen- 
 dent, self-governing states, each under its potail, or head-man, 
 which can survive, and have survived revolutions out of number, 
 to which they are all-impassive ; thus the people, though slaves so 
 far as political freedom is concerned, are yet municipally in pos- 
 
 A VILLAGE SUTAIi. 
 
 session of the most perfect independence. They want nothing 
 from any higher state, so long as it wants nothing from them. 
 
 This village system must have been devised by men of long heads 
 and great, honest hearts, since, after the trial of every conceivable 
 system of administration for which experiments there were no 
 earthly reasons except vanity and that peculiar Anglo-Saxon con- 
 tempt for everything not emanating from British brains they are 
 returning to the system devised so many thousand years ago by 
 the village worthies of Hindostan.
 
 242 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Lord Metcalf says that if a district remains for a series of years 
 the scene of continued pillage and massacre, so that the village 
 cannot he inhabited, the scattered villagers, nevertheless, return 
 whenever the power of peaceful possession revives. A generation 
 may pass away, but the succeeding generation will return ; the 
 sons will take the place of their fathers, the same site for the 
 village, the same position for the houses, the same lands will 
 be occupied by the descendants of those who were driven out 
 when the village was depopulated. 
 
 The quarrels arising out of the village system are settled by 
 a Punchat/et, or jury of five or more, who decide both the fact 
 and the law ; and though the Hindoo, when before an English 
 tribunal, is often too apt an example of the duplicity and fraud 
 which alloy the characteristics of the race, yet he has little chance, 
 if bound by oaths which he respects, or which custom has led him 
 to believe sacred, of escaping from the meshes of the legal net 
 with which the Punehayet surrounds all those who come before it. 
 
 While considering the matter of native .administration of jus- 
 tice, the subject of Hindoo thieves is apt to obtrude itself. In 
 very old civilizations, and in overcrowded communities, the trade 
 of stealing advances with the other arts and sciences, until, as in 
 India and China, thieving and burglary have grown to be, not tin- 
 vulgar, clumsy handicrafts they are in America, or Europe, but 
 really capable of being ranked among the fine arts. 
 
 The Hindoo thief is an expert. For example, a burglar will 
 bore a hole through the wall, and as Indian village huts are often 
 built of mud his labors are greatly lightened. The hole being 
 big enough to allow of his body entering, he does not immediately 
 take this step, having learnt by long experience that, no matter 
 how cautious he may be, the quick-eared owner may have heard 
 his movements, and be ready the moment his head protrudes 
 through the hole his hands and crowbar have made, to descend 
 upon it with a pickaxe or a drawn sword. 
 
 The burglar, therefore, adopts the precaution of inserting a 
 stick with a bunch of grass the shape and size of a human head. 
 If a blow descend on the feeler, the burglar instantly decamps, 
 knowing that the house is on the watch and alarmed. If no such 
 result follows, he enters himself, picks up all he can, and hands
 
 THE RULE OF CASTE. 
 
 243 
 
 the plunder through the hole to his partner outside, who prepares 
 it for being carried off, and gives the alarm should the least sign 
 of danger appear. 
 
 Then there is the thief who mines under a house until he comes 
 to the women's apartment, knowing that so securely is this 
 guarded by the rooms on either side that little care is exerted to 
 protect the inmates' abundant jewelry scattered round. Having 
 arrived at the scene of his depredations he gently raises the floor 
 and admits himself 
 noiselessly into this do- 
 mestic holy of holies. 
 Silently he absorbs 
 about his person the 
 metallic treasures of the 
 Zenana, and will even 
 abstract the bangles and 
 bracelets from the limbs 
 and the rings from the 
 noses and ears of the 
 sleeping beauties with- 
 out awaking them. 
 
 There are thieves not 
 less courageous, who 
 Avill enter a camp at 
 night, pass the sentries, 
 and even step over 
 sleeping dogs, until they 
 reach the officers' tents, 
 
 these gentlemen being quite unaware of the presence of midnight 
 visitors until in the morning they find themselves clothed with 
 nothingness. A superior hand will even take the blanket from 
 around a sleeper without rousing him. 
 
 Then there are the many different kinds of pickpockets and 
 " cut-purses," who will enter the crowded bazaar armed with a 
 sharp little knife, with which they relieve the girdles of the buyers 
 and sellers of the purses concealed in the folds of that universal 
 Oriental article of dress ; or the more dangerous thief, who will 
 gain access to a house in the dark, liis naked body well oiled. 
 
 PUNISHMENT OF A TIIIKF IN VILLAGE INDIA.
 
 244 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 If seized, his supple body slips through the victim's hands, or if 
 he is likely to be caught, the sharp knife which hangs by a string 
 around the thief's neck inflicts an ugly wound on the wrists or 
 other portions of the person of the captor. 
 
 The riches of India have for ages been proverbial. " The 
 wealth of Ornus or of Ind," has been a magnet to many an advent- 
 urer, from Turkish Sultans to English lords, like Clive, and the 
 quantity of their spoils has been almost incalculable. 
 
 When Mahmoud of Ghazni plundered Muttra, the fabled birth- 
 place of Krishna, he obtained, during an orgy of rapine and mass- 
 acre lasting twenty days, an incredible amount, the gift of 
 millions of devotees. 
 
 Among the loot which lie bore to his Alpine home were 
 huge idols of pure gold, with eyes of rubies and decorations of 
 sapphires and diamonds, the spoil taking 850 elephants to trans- 
 port it. 
 
 At a later date, when he sacked Somnauth, where for forty 
 centuries had stood the Temple of Soma, " lord of the moon," 
 piles of diamonds and sapphires, rubies and gold, streamed 
 from the hollow interior of the idol, which the Brahmins had 
 earnestly endeavored to ransom. The Mohammedans entertain a 
 strong repugnance to image-worship, and Mahmoud had been 
 famous for destroying such stumbling-blocks of offence to Moham- 
 medan eyes. 
 
 The ransom of their chief idol offered by the priests was a tre- 
 mendous temptation, but principle prevailed, and the religious 
 warrior with one blow from his mighty battle-axe sent the idol 
 reeling to the ground among the groaning priests. His piety was 
 well rewarded. In a few hours the accumulations of ages changed 
 hands. James Russell Lowell, one of our most American of poets, 
 has put this striking story into vivid verse. 
 
 THE SULTAX MAHMOUD. 
 
 Mahmoud once, the idol-breaker, spreader of the faith, 
 Was at Somnauth sorely tempted, so the legend saith. 
 In the great pagoda's centre, monstrous and abhorred, 
 Granite on a throne of granite, sat the temple's Lord. 
 Mahmoud paused a moment, silenced by that silent face, 
 Which, with eyes of stone unwavering, awed the ancient place.
 
 THE RULE OF CASTE. 245 
 
 Then the Brahmins knelt before him, by his doubt made bold, 
 
 Offering for their idol's ransom countless gems and gold. 
 
 Gold was yellow dirt to Mahmoud, but of precious use, 
 
 Since from gold the roots of power suck a magic juice. 
 
 "Were yon stone alone in question, this would please me well," 
 
 Mahmoud said, " but, with that block there, I my truth must sell. 
 
 Wealth and rule slip down with Fortune, as her w r heel turns round; 
 
 He who keeps his faith, he only, cannot be discrowned. 
 
 Little were a change of station, loss of life or crown; 
 
 But the wreck were past retrieving, if the man fell down." 
 
 Saying this, his mace he lifted, smote with might and main, 
 
 And the idol, on the pavement tumbling, burst in twain. 
 
 Luck obeys the downright striker. From the hollow core 
 
 Fifty times the Brahmins' offer flooded all the floor. 
 
 In addition to such temples reared for the worship of the gods, 
 there are in India many holy places, in some of which shrines are 
 erected and in others not. To these places great numbers of pil- 
 grims throng, and reside for a time, in the hope of imbibing from 
 the surroundings something of the sanctity which is connected 
 with them. 
 
 Others, whose lives have been spent in the pursuit of gain 
 or in the neglect of religion, resort here towards the evening 
 of their days, so as to die in a sacred locality. They even erect 
 temples and tanks for water at these places, so that by such meri- 
 torious deeds they may secure repose for their souls. It is, how- 
 ever, to the Ganges, the Jumna, the Indus, the Cavery, the Krishna, 
 and other more or less sacred rivers, that the Hindoo chiefly makes 
 liis pilgrimages. 
 
 Water is, according to his belief, the best means of moral 
 as well as physical purification a belief which according to 
 Homer was held by the ancient Greeks. Of these holy Hindoo 
 places, the city of Benares is the holiest. What Jerusalem was 
 to the Crusader, and Mecca to the Mahometan, Benares is to 
 the Hindoo. 
 
 According to Brahminic philosophy, Benares is too holy to 
 be a part of this world, and instead is situated on the point 
 of Siva's trident. Hence, no earthquakes are ever experienced 
 there. From this city there is a way direct to heaven a 
 royal road to salvation. A very short breathing of its holy air is 
 sufficient to secure this, provided the pilgrim visit the shrines and 
 pay for the privilege of so doing.
 
 THE ST. >KY >F . 'YEUNMF.NT. 
 
 All things aiv i*>ssible to the gods ; and it even lies within the 
 invisibilities that the beef-eating " Englishman who n~ 
 thither to breathe his last may obtain -absorption into Brahma." 
 And it may be mentioned, as one of the Curiosities of religions 
 fanaticism, that the Hindoos affirm that one Englishman actually 
 availed himself of this privi!< g 
 
 1" \traordinary though this statement may seem, it is belii 
 that Job Charnock, who in ICOo laid the foundation of the 
 India Company's power in Bengal, aK<olutely leeame a Hindoo, 
 and yearly sacrificed a cock on his native wife's tomb, and that 
 General Stewart also engaged a Brahmin to perform daily wor- 
 ship among the collection of idols which he had arranged on the 
 portico of his house. Night and day, at all seasons of the y 
 
 v dusty road leading to Benares is thronged with pilgrims 
 wending their way to this centre of Hindoo devotion. 
 
 But the Hindoo shrine which is most known in Europe is that of 
 Juggernaut, Juggemauth, or Jagannat'h. When we speak of a 
 person crushing himself under the Juggernaut wheels of custom, 
 we mean to express that the individual's fear of the opinion 
 of others is greater than the strength of his own will, and we but 
 borrow a simile from one of the most famous of Indian supersti- 
 tions or religious rites. 
 
 The temple is situated in Pooree, or Juggernaut, in the province 
 of Orissa, about two hundred and fifty miles southwest of Calcutta, 
 and is chiefly remarkable for the idol contained in it, which is 
 annually dragged in its car in procession. 
 
 Indeed, were it not for this annual procession, and the crowds 
 which come to witness or take part. in it, the whole affair would 
 be of little importance, and command no attention from anyone 
 not immediately interested. The town in which this celebrated 
 procession is held is mean, dirty and badly built. The sir 
 are crowded with sacred oxen, who are trained to attack with 
 their horns any intruders on the saereduess of the route. 
 Various kinds of monkeys may be seen perched on the hoi> B, 
 walls, and trees ; and in the water-tanks are tame crocodiles, which 
 are objects of worship. 
 
 The Pagoda of Juggernaut is at the end of the principal 
 street, which is very wide and composed almost entirely of reli-
 
 TUK TKAU'L,K OF SOMA.
 
 248 THK STOUV OF (i< >VKl;NM KXT. 
 
 gious establishments with low-piDared verandas in front, and plan- 
 tations of trees interposed. The temple stands within a square 
 space inclosed by a lofty stone wall, and measuring 650 feet on a 
 side. 
 
 The principal entrance is crowded witli the baskets and 
 umbrellas of the natives, and the huts of dried leaves and 
 branches which serve as a shelter for a number of Fakirs, and it 
 opens on a vestibule with a pyramidal roof. On each side is a 
 monstrous figure, representing a kind of crowned lion. 
 
 In front is a column of dark-colored basalt, of very light and 
 elegant proportions, surmounted by the figure of the monkey-god 
 Hanuman, the Indian Mercury. The great pagoda rises from 
 twenty feet high within the outer inclosure ; from a base thirty 
 feet square it rises 180 feet, tapering slightly from bottom to top. 
 and rounded off on the upper part, being crowned with a kind of 
 dome. The temple is dedicated to Krishna, who is the principal 
 object of worship in the character Juggernaut, and as an incarna- 
 tion of Vishnoo, but is held in joint tenancy with Siva and with 
 Sabhadra, the supposed sister and wife of Siva. There are idols of 
 each, consisting of rudely sculptured blocks of wood about six feet 
 in height. 
 
 Krishna is dark blue, Siva white, and Sabhadra of a yellowish 
 hue. In front of the altar on which these idols are placed is a figure 
 of the hawk-god, Garounda. A repast is daily served to these idols ; 
 it consists of 410 11>. rice, 225 Ib. flour, 350 Ib. clarified butter, 
 (ghee), 167 Ib. treacle, 65 Ib. vegetables, 186 Ib. milk, 24 Ib. spices, 
 34 Ib. salt, and 41 Ib. oil. During the meal the doors are closed 
 against all but a few favored individuals sanctified by long fasts 
 and a habit of asceticism and penitence. Loud strains of peculiar 
 music drown all other sounds while the gods are. consuming their 
 daily rations. 
 
 About a mile and a half from the temple is a tank, to which the 
 gods are brought by their attendants to pass a few days annually, 
 devoted to bathing in the cool waters of the sacred pool. Each 
 idol has its own car, but that of Juggernaut is the principal one. 
 
 It is about thirty feet square, mounted on sixteen wheels, each 
 more than six feet in diameter, and the whole construction is 
 upwards of forty feet high. It is plentifully adorned externally
 
 THE HULE OF CASTE. 
 
 249 
 
 with sculptures of the usual Indian type, and is conventionally sup- 
 posed to be drawn by two wooden horses, which are only attached 
 
 THE OAK OF JUGGKKNAUT. 
 
 to it on the day of procession when two stout cables are attached 
 to the car. These are seized by thousands, or by as many as can 
 obtain a place to hold by, and formerly when it went along the city,
 
 250 THE STOIIY OF COVKKNM KNT. 
 
 there were many that offered themselves as a sacrifice to the 
 idol, and desperately lay down on the ground that the chariot- 
 wheels might crush them. 
 
 But as the British Government no longer makes profit out of the 
 pilgrims by the tax put upon them, it is doing all it can to dis- 
 courage the annual religious pandemonium. Instead of hundreds 
 immolating themselves before the idol's car, only occasionally now, 
 and even these are rare occasions, a poor decrepit wretch, weary 
 of life, or drugged by the priests witli Indian hemp or opium, 
 will madly throw himself before the wheels in spite of the efforts 
 of the police, who have orders to prevent such suicide. 
 
 The Hindoo is beginning to be wonderfully cautious of that 
 swarthy skin of his, even in the service of the gods, and with 
 a view to his salvation. On a late occasion, indeed, instead of 
 thousands of devotees struggling to get at the ropes, not a single 
 hand assisted to drag the car along ; and to the horror and chagrin 
 of the Brahmins, for the first time in history, the idols of Jugger- 
 naut came to a standstill in the streets of Pooree. But yet in 
 civilized America we are dragging along many a crushing Jugger- 
 naut in the shape of colossal corporations which plunder the 
 people and debauch the politicians. Let us hope, however, not for 
 
 long- 
 Speaking of the Juggernaut car of custom or of conventionality 
 which crushes the individuality of so many recalls another meta- 
 phor borrowed from India. Most readers know of the Pinkerton 
 men who can be hired in some states by any rich man or corpora- 
 tion to fire on striking employees. During the last strike on the 
 New York Central the indignation of the public was aroused by the 
 murderousness of one of these gangs, and many newspapers 
 referred to them as Pinkerton thugs. 
 
 This word and comparison come from India, where murder used 
 to be not merely a fine art, but an article of faith among some 
 fanatics, the surest way not merely of sending but of going to 
 heaven. " Thuggee," as this religious crime is called, originated 
 in this manner: The goddess Kali, as well as those of Devee, 
 Doorga, or Bhavani, by all of which she is known, is looked upon 
 as Siva's wife. 
 
 She is represented in her statues as many-handed, her hands full
 
 THE lU'LE OF CASTE. 
 
 of various kinds of weapons, and around her neck a string of 
 human skulls ; and in old times, according to Hindoo mythology 
 she made war upon a race of giants, from every drop of whose 
 blood sprang a demon^ 
 which blood again had 
 the power of propagat- 
 ing other demons, 
 u n t i 1 the land was 
 overrun with diablerie- 
 
 At last the goddess 
 created two men to 
 whom she gave hand- 
 kerchiefs to destroy 
 the demons. W li e n 
 they had performed 
 this task, she presented 
 them with the hand- 
 kerchiefs, and, in ad- 
 dition, the privilege of 
 using them against 
 human beings for their 
 livelihood. Hence 
 arose the caste of 
 Thugs. 
 
 They are known to 
 have existed during 
 the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, when they used 
 female decoys for the 
 unwary traveller, as 
 they did within the 
 p resent cent u r y, 
 though these decoys 
 are of a much older 
 use than that period. The fraternity is not composed of men 
 of one caste, but of people of different castes and religions, and 
 living in different districts ; having secret signs and a peculiar 
 dialect known to all those who are initiated into the fraternity. 
 
 HUSHING TO JUGGERNAUT.
 
 252 THE STORY OF COVKUNMENT. 
 
 Strange to say, however, the majority of them are nominally not 
 Hindoos, but Mohammedans, and their tradition is that they origi- 
 nally sprang from seven tribes, all of that religion, living in the 
 neighborhood of Delhi, from which they were dislodged in the 
 seventeenth century. 
 
 The Hindoos, however, say that the caste was in existence long 
 before Mohammed's time ; but as they all agree in worshipping- 
 the Hindoo god Kali, observe the Hindoo feasts in her honor, 
 make offerings at her temples, and, especially after any murder, 
 present to her a piece of silver and some sugar, they may be said 
 to be a Hindoo sect. 
 
 Those who are initiated into the body are taught the secret 
 signs, but only those who apply the noose receive the sacred 
 wafer of Thuggee, which is believed to change a man's whole 
 nature. From boyhood to manhood they are taught to look upon 
 the strangulation of unoffending victims as their calling in life, into 
 which they are gradually initiated. 
 
 First, the neophyte is employed as a scout, or sotha, only, 
 his duty being to give warning of the approach of a traveller. 
 Sometimes the women and children, as less apt to be suspected, 
 are employed in this work ; then he is allowed to see the corpse 
 after it has been strangled, and to assist at the interment ; lastly, 
 after a solemn initiation by means of the sacred sugar, lie is. 
 ^Levated to the rank of a bhuttote, or strangler, and allowed to use 
 the noose, or roomed, by which the victims are dispatched. 
 
 The whole gang is governed by a jamadar, sirdar, or chief, and 
 has attached to it a guru, or teacher. Nothing about their unholy 
 calling is in the Thug's eyes unholy ; on the contrary, everything 
 is sacred. The luyliaees, or gravediggers, constitute one of the 
 highest grades in the order. The pickaxe with which the grave 
 is dug is solemnly forged and consecrated. It is considered as a 
 gift from Kali, and looked upon accordingly with great veneration. 
 
 Every seventh day this pickaxe is brought out and worshipped,, 
 and, no matter how pressing the necessity, the grave for the victim 
 can be dug by no other instrument. All the Thugs follow some 
 ostensible trade, but travel about from place to place, under 
 various disguises, straggling into villages in twos and threes, and 
 meeting as strangers. Secrecy is one of the essentials of their
 
 TH.K KFLK OF CASTK. 
 
 253 
 
 work; never will they knowingly strangle a victim in the presence 
 of anyone not belonging to their order. 
 
 One of them sometimes passes as a man of rank, with numerous 
 attendants, and his women in palanquins, which in reality contain 
 
 generally the implements of their calling. They fall in with 
 other travellers as it' by accident, or for mutual protection. Sud- 
 denly, at the favorable spot, one throws the waistband or turban 
 round the victim's neck, another draws it tight, both pushing him 
 forward with their other hands, a third seizes him by the legs 
 and throws him on the ground.
 
 254 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 To strangle a man single-handed is accounted a rare feat, and 
 one so transcendent that it will ennoble the strangler's descen- 
 dants for generations to come. If the locality is dangerous, 
 a canvas screen is thrown up as if to conceal women, and the body 
 buried behind it ; or one of them will distract the attention of 
 travellers by pretending to be in a fit. If a stranger approaches, 
 nevertheless, they weep over the body as over a dear comrade. 
 The traces of the murder are quickly obliterated. 
 
 Such is their expertness that one hundred Thugs have been 
 known to slaughter on an average eight hundred persons in a 
 month, and keep up this record for several years. They always 
 go forward, never passing through towns or villages through 
 which their victims have passed. If they kill a man of note, they 
 take care to dispose of all his attendants. They have implicit 
 faith in omens ; but when the omens are once favorable, they look 
 upon the victim as an appointed sacrifice to the deity, so that if 
 he is not slain, Devee would be wroth with them. So they eat, 
 drink, and sleep without remorse upon new-filled graves. 
 
 Before the body is buried, it is pierced with holes to prevent it 
 swelling, and the grave is so neatly smoothed over that it is next 
 to impossible for any one of the uninitiated to point out where 
 one exists, even though newly made. This last rite over, the 
 Thugs seat themselves round a white cloth, on which are laid the 
 sacred pickaxe, fresh from digging the grave, a salver of silver. 
 and some coarse sugar. The sugar is distributed to all present, 
 and eaten in silence. The silver is supposed to be dedicated to 
 Kali, as is also the sugar. 
 
 This done, the cloth is folded up, the plunder divided, after 
 shares have been set aside for religious and charitable purposes, in 
 accordance with the ranks of the members of the gang, and the 
 Thugs go on their way again in the guise of simple traders, 
 artisans, or travellers. The victims they do not consider killed 
 by them. It was God who allowed them to be killed, and con- 
 science never seems to trouble them. 
 
 Remorseless murderers, their hands steeped in human blood, 
 they might, in their own villages, be good fathers, faithful friends, 
 and be respected in their community as skilful artisans, agricul- 
 turalists, or traders, whose real calling was never suspected, though
 
 THE RULE OF CASTE. 
 
 255 
 
 the community, of course, profit by their wealth. Generally, how- 
 ever, they take the precaution of paying tribute to the Zemindar, 
 or to the police officials, whose very near relatives were often 
 members of the infamous gang. 
 
 Some Thugs, it is said, were even in the employ of the govern- 
 ment itself. Even when discovered, superstition often protected 
 
 THL'OS BUKYING A VICTIM ALIVE. 
 
 them, for there was a tale that such and such a rajah was struck 
 with leprosy for having had two Thugs trampled to death by ele- 
 phants. Indeed, so openly even long after the British rule was 
 established in India, was Thuggee practised, that merchants came 
 from a distance to purchase the plunder of which the murderers 
 had robbed their victims. 
 
 Though the murders are conducted with secrecy, yet it ought
 
 256 THK STOUV OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 to be mentioned that this is only part of the system, and not really 
 from any fear of the consequences, for the Thug exults in his 
 crime, and if caught never attempts to defend himself, but boasts, 
 as he is being led to the scaffold, of the number and quality of the 
 victims whom he has assisted in sacrificing to the goddess of 
 destruction. 
 
 The Thugs believe that at one time Kali assisted them in 
 their work by devouring the bodies of the victims, but that one 
 of the fraternity having indiscreetly pried into her proceedings, 
 she took offence, and left them in future to bury their victims. 
 She, however, so far assisted them that she presented one of her 
 teeth for a pickaxe, a rib for a knife, and the hem of her lower 
 garment for a noose. Hence the sacredness of all these implements. 
 
 Though the existence of this horrible caste was well known to 
 the natives, and even to the native officials, with such secrecy was 
 their business conducted that the working of the system has only 
 been thoroughly understood of late. Such were the pleasant possi- 
 bilities of travelling in India, in addition to such as are shown in 
 the suggestive picture of a siesta in the jungle, where an American 
 explorer is vividly depicted saving the life of his servant by the 
 dexterous use of a bit of cord. Between snakes, tigers, and 
 Thugs, the secret places of India are very alluring to the adventur- 
 ers but not nice winter resorts for quiet citizens. 
 
 Yet though India is the home of many a dark and horrible su- 
 perstition, it is also the home of a religion gentle and beautiful, 
 which of late years has been spreading in European countries, and 
 has even quite a strong following in the United States. This re- 
 ligion is Buddhism, and a brief account of the founder of this in- 
 teresting faith may be of value. 
 
 Buddha was a rajah's son, heir to a throne, but in the midst 
 of the pleasures of the sensual court of Kapilavastu, the young 
 prince Sidclhartha (his original name) found that there was no 
 happiness, and that outside his palace gates there were misery 
 and crime, and suffering and death, such as in the days of his 
 frivolous life he had never dreamt oL Life inanimate alone pre- 
 sented to him pictures which were not those of desolation. The 
 Brahmins afforded him no consolation ; their creed gave the young 
 prince no comfort, nor did it conform to what he believed were
 
 THE IITJ.E OF CASTE. ;>57 
 
 the designs of the beneficent Creator of the universe. His resolve 
 was made. 
 
 " I am determined," he said, " that in disappearing from here 
 below I will not be any more subject to the vicissitudes of trans- 
 migration. I will find the way to put an end to birth and death, 
 and when I have discovered it I will impart it to the world. I 
 will teach the law of grace to everyone." 
 
 He was then twenty-nine years of age ; but he separated from 
 father and mother, wife and children, and set out to visit the 
 schools of the masters of the laws at Manon, and gave up six 
 
 A SIESTA IX THE JUNGLE. 
 
 years to the study of the religious system, as well as to the ascetic 
 exercises enjoined on the Brahmins. He was not long in arriving 
 at the conclusion that this road was not the one calculated to lead 
 to the goal he had in view. 
 
 Breaking loose from all the old faiths, he founded a new one, 
 and believed himself to be imbued with the qualities of Buddha, 
 and in the possession of perfect wisdom. Commencing his preach- 
 ing at Benares, in the thirty-sixth year of his age, he returned to 
 Kapilavastu, and converted to the new faith his father, his wife, 
 and family. His name was soon known all over Central India. 
 
 Now commenced his contests with the Brahmins, which several
 
 258 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 times imperilled his life. But for more than forty years he con- 
 tinued his bloodless crusade without other protection than what 
 was afforded him by the love of his followers, the austerity of his 
 morals, and the perfection of his wisdom. Feeling his end approach- 
 ing, this great and good man took a tender leave of his companions 
 in labor, and seating himself under a tree expired. In the year 
 543 B. c. his followers met and settled the dogmas of their master, 
 for he, like the sweet-souled Son of the Carpenter, had himself com- 
 mitted nothing to writing. 1 
 
 The religion of Buddha, or Fo, as it is sometimes called in China, 
 may well be styled one of the best forms of religion ever invented 
 by man. It inculcates benevolence, humility, piety, and in all 
 things moderation. It has no sacrifices, and none of its rites are 
 secret or cruel. Its sacred books are open to the perusal and study 
 of everyone, and this fact alone is one of the guarantees of the 
 good faith of its originator. 
 
 But in the more corrupt state into which it fell after the death 
 of its founder, it had images of all kinds in the temples. There 
 are images representing gods of the hills, woods, valleys, etc., as 
 well as household deities, to whom offerings, but not sacrifices, 
 are made. In the temples, which are very numerous, there are 
 altars, bells, and beads, jewels and exquisite gem-work. In the 
 shadow of the temple walls the native goldsmiths and jewellers ply 
 their craft, making relics to sell to the pious. Incense and tapers 
 burn day and night in these buildings, around the images, some of 
 which are of colossal size ; and the rites of the religion are celebra- 
 ted by singing, processions of priests, and such-like ceremonials. 
 
 The transmigration of souls is, now at least, a leading doctrine 
 among the Buddhists, and accordingly it follows, from their hold- 
 ing this belief, that they avoid animal food and the act of sacrifice, 
 either of which might involve the killing of some human being 
 who was performing one of the states of transmigration. In Tibet 
 
 i " Ilis doctrine," -writes M. Aim6 Humbert, " which he never intended to have any other 
 end than that of working a moral reform in the Brahmin worship, and substituting a reign of 
 duty for that of the gods, and the practice of good for that of vain ceremonies, became in 
 its turn a dogmatic system, accompanied by a superstitious and Idolatrous worship. Buddhism 
 is now the principal religion in the Island of Ceylon, the Burman Empire, the Kingdoms of 
 Siam and Annam, Tonquin, Tibet, Tartary, Mongolia, China, and Japan. It reigned for some 
 time in the whole of India, Java, and other islands, and still exists in Cashmere and Nepaul, 
 the number of its adherents exceeding four hundred millions of souls, an amount which no 
 other religion on the globe has attained.
 
 THE BULE OF CASTE. 
 
 259 
 
 they have monasteries, containing numerous monks, who pass their 
 time in religious exercises and study. 
 
 The head of the faith is the Dala'i Lama, or Grand Lama, 
 who resides at Lhasa, which is accordingly the capital of the 
 northern Buddhist world. This personage has divine honors paid 
 to him, and is also the nominal sovereign of the country, though 
 the real governing power is vested in the Chinese governor and 
 a Tibetan minister. Lamaism, or the " Great Vehicle," is, how- 
 
 A JEWELLEK IN THE SHADOW OF THE TEMPLE. 
 
 ever, so amplified a form of the faith of Gautama as to be really 
 a new religion, or sect. 
 
 Buddhism is now closely studied by European scholars. The 
 Brahmins called the Buddhists Sangataz, or atheists. This can 
 only be in its very corrupt state, for such a doctrine could surely 
 never maintain its hold upon one third of the human race, com- 
 prising nationalities so varied as the keen-trading Chinese, the 
 energetic Tibetans, the gentle, dispassionate Hindoos, and the war- 
 like, intelligent Burmese and Siamese. 
 
 It was a protest against idolatry and Brahminism by a man 
 who was not a Brahmin but a rajah's son. It abolished caste,
 
 260 THE STORY <>K <;< iVEIJXMENT. 
 
 and hence, independently of other reasons, the violent opposition 
 it meets with from the Brahmins. It is really somewhat difficult 
 to understand its actual doctrines ; but whatever they are. Buddh- 
 ism lias been a power in the world, and it would be a rash 
 assertion to make that it has not been on the whole for good. 
 In India, though not properly the national religion Brahminism 
 being so it probably, in the number of its followers, at one time 
 far outstripped those holding the indigenous faith of the country. 
 
 The marriage customs of a nation like the Hindoo, or indeed 
 any of the older nationalities, are so much a part of their govern- 
 mental status that a full description of them cannot rightly be 
 considered out of place, and will doubtless be intensely interesting 
 to all whose thoughts ever turn to the important subject of mar- 
 riage, which ought to be the abiding rock the firm foundation of 
 human society. 
 
 In the "Institutes of Menu" the most elaborate directions are 
 laid down in regard to the choice of a Brahmin's wife, and to the 
 ceremonies that must be undergone by a Brahmin's son before 
 wedlock. He must sit, for instance, on a stately bed, decked with 
 a garland of flowers. His father then presents him with a copy 
 of the Vedas, and a cow, the symbol of Venus. The father next 
 reads the youth a grave lecture on his coming duties, and how 
 he ought to select a wife. 
 
 The qualifications for a Brahmin's bride are many and strict, if 
 the code of the great Hindoo legislator is followed. Not only is 
 a gill with red hair a rare case among the Hindoos to be 
 avoided, but care must also be taken to shun one with little hair 
 or with too much. The bride elect must not be immoderately 
 talkative, nor must she have inflamed eyes. 
 
 The young Brahmin must avoid one " with the name of a con- 
 stellation, of a tree, or of a river, of a barbarous nation, or of a 
 mountain, of a winged creature, a snake, or of a slave, or one with 
 any name raising an image of terror. Let him choose for a wife 
 a girl whose form has no defect ; who has an agreeable name ; 
 who walks gracefully, like a young elephant (strange comparison !) ; 
 whose teeth are small, whose hair is moderate in quantity, and 
 whose body has an exquisite softness." 
 
 The siege of the girl's parents is not decided upon until a fortu-
 
 THE RULE OF CASTE. 
 
 261 
 
 nate day has been fixed. The father of the young man then takes 
 a number of small presents, and proceeds to the house of the 
 bride-elect, but will immediately turn back if any animal of evil 
 omen, such as a fox, a cat, or a serpent should cross his path. 
 But even if all go well with the ambassador at the house of the lady 
 whom he hopes to make his daughter-in-law, the father of the girl 
 does not give his consent until he hears the chirp of one of the 
 small lizards that creep about old walls. When this favorable omen 
 occurs the bride's father as- 
 sents, and the marriage day is 
 fixed. 
 
 The four summer months 
 usually chosen are the most 
 lucky in the whole calendar ; 
 and, probably on account of 
 the field-labors being suspended 
 during that period, because of 
 the great heat, some leisure is 
 afforded for the performance 
 of the ceremony. During the 
 night preceding the nuptial 
 day, the houses of bride and 
 bridegroom resound with 
 music, and burning lamps are 
 placed at the door by women 
 who utter wishes for their wel- 
 fare. Balls of rice are made 
 by the women, who towards 
 the close of the night eat rice 
 with the bride and bridegroom. 
 
 Next morning the women 
 again assemble, and merry-making recommences. With burning 
 lamps in their hands, a " vessel of pure water, balls of rice-flour, 
 and a quantity of betel, they proceed to visit the neighboring 
 families, and present them with the plant." On their return home 
 the marriage rites are continued. 
 
 After placing the future husband and wife upon a framework, 
 or wicket of bamboo, and thrice waving around their feet a wisp of 
 
 THE WATER CARRIER.
 
 262 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 lighted straw, the women taking a ball of thread, and encompass- 
 ing the bamboo framework four times, bind the betrothed pair 
 together, fastening one end of the thread on the right arm of the 
 youth, and the left arm of the maiden, with a few blades of durva- 
 grass. 
 
 The bodies of the bride and bridegroom are next anointed with 
 fragrant unguents. When these ceremonies are completed, little 
 offerings, intended to secure the happiness of the betrothed, are 
 made at the houses of both parents to the manes or spirits of their 
 deceased ancestors. Presents of betel, fruit, and sweetmeats are 
 then exchanged between the bride and bridegroom ; and in the 
 course of the afternoon their heads are shaved. 
 
 Immediately after the performance of this part of the ceremony, 
 a large stone is placed in the midst of a small artificial pond of 
 water, surrounded by trees, in which are suspended lamps with 
 wicks, made of the fruit of the thorn-apple. Upon this stone the 
 bridegroom stands, and the women, with the burning lamps, rice- 
 balls, etc., in their hands, approach him in single file, and success- 
 ively touch his forehead with the various objects which they bear. 
 The bride, bridegroom and all the principal personages concerned 
 fast until the whole ceremony of the nuptials is completed. 
 
 Rich people, and even those who cannot afford such display, 
 often spend large sums on their weddings, and conduct the cere- 
 monies with the pomp, splendor, and lavishness so dear to the 
 Oriental, and sometimes to the Occidental, heart. At night, the 
 bridegroom, superbly dressed, glittering with gold and silver orna- 
 ments, and with a crown on his head, is carried in a golden palan- 
 quin to the bride's dwelling. 
 
 Before him move a long procession of servants bearing silver 
 staves, and open carriages containing singers and dancing-girls, 
 some of whom, later on, perform the celebrated egg-dance. All 
 along the line of march attendants, carrying lighted flambeaux, dis- 
 charge fireworks as they advance ; and scattered amongst them 
 are musicians who play on various instruments. It is not a little 
 significant that, since the English conquest of India, these musi- 
 cians are frequently Europeans, and European guns are also fired, 
 every now and then, as accompaniments to this marching 
 sometimes martial music.
 
 THE RULE OF CASTE. 
 
 2G3 
 
 Occasionally these midnight marriage processions, when passing 
 through the village, are playfully attacked by the boys and young 
 people. But these encounters, commenced in sport, not unfre- 
 quently end in dread earne.st with the loss of many lives. 
 
 The ceremonies which follow when the bridegroom has reached 
 the bride's house such as his being undressed by the bride's father 
 and clothed in new garments, such as standing on a stool beneath 
 which a cow's head and other sacred things have been buried, such 
 as covering the bride with old garments and carrying her seven 
 times round her future lord, then letting them gaze on each other, 
 
 s.^ ._ 
 
 RAPID TRANSIT IX XORTIIERX IXDIA. 
 
 and approacli and sit down together, take up so much time that 
 once in one's life would seem a festive sufficiency on this question 
 of marriage a la Hindoo. But we must remember that time has 
 little meaning or value to an Eastern mind whose constant concept 
 is eternity, and a stretch of ceremony that would be tremendously 
 tedious to us is to them but a soft and agreeable recreation. 
 
 The father-in-law next presents the bridegroom with fourteen 
 blades of the fragrant kusa grass, pours water into the palm of his 
 right hand, and reads a mantra, or incantation, over it. Water is 
 then spilt upon the ground, and the officiating Brahmin, having
 
 264 THE STORY OF GOVKKNMKNT. 
 
 directed the youth to dip his fingers into a vessel of water, 
 approaches with the girl, and placing her hand upon that of her 
 husband, binds them together with a garland t>f flowers. 
 
 When the bride has been formally given and received, the garland 
 of flowers is removed, while the father of the bride repeats the 
 G-dyatri, or holiest verse of the Vedas. A kind of curtain is then 
 drawn over the heads of the married pair, who once more regard 
 each other, after which they are directed to bow to the priest and to 
 the company, and to invoke the blessings of the gods and Brahmins. 
 
 During these ceremonies, portions of the Misra work 011 the 
 various orders of the Hindoos are rehearsed by the Ghatakas, 
 and the foreheads of the guests are marked with sandal-wood 
 powder. The bride and bridegroom are finally fastened together 
 by their garments in token of union, and led back into the midst 
 of the family. 
 
 Celibacy is accounted a disgrace both to men and women. If 
 a man loses his wife he immediately looks out for a second, but if 
 she also dies he has difficulty in getting a third, owing to the be- 
 lief that some bane is upon him. To avoid this supposed curse, 
 he betroths himself to a tree, on which the threatened evil falls. 
 Fifty is the age which the sacred books fix as the period beyond 
 which a man should not marry, but the Brahmins disregard this 
 injunction. 
 
 Though Indian women are not treated with the same courtesy 
 and consideration as they are in Western society, and are in many 
 respects even degraded, yet it is erroneous to suppose that they 
 are mere slaves, or are sunk as low as they are in Mohammedan 
 harems. 
 
 Still a Hindoo woman is not considered the equal of a man. 
 She is looked upon with small consideration, and is supposed to 
 be incapable of acquiring that degree of mentality which would 
 allow of her ascension in the social scale. If a man does anything 
 reprehensible, it is usually said that he has acted in the spirit of 
 a woman, and she, on the other hand, as the excuse for any fault 
 she has committed, lays all the blame on the natural inferiority of 
 her sex. 
 
 The Abbe" Dubois, a well-known and much esteemed writer 
 on the Hindoos, considers that from some strange perversity
 
 THE 1UJLE OF CASTE. 
 
 265 
 
 of taste, or from the effect of custom, the Hindoo women have 
 absolutely imbibed a taste for ill-treatment. " They would," he 
 assumes, " despise their husbands if they treated them with famil- 
 iarity. I have 
 seen a wife in a ^> X -2\ H p 6 _ 
 
 /** *^~""---^. r**^^^ ^v ' /* ^^^^ 
 
 rage with her -- -^^~^=^~^- 
 
 husband for 
 talking with her 
 in an easy strain. 
 'His behavior 
 covers me with 
 shame,' quoth 
 she, ' and I dare 
 no longer show 
 my face. Such 
 conduct among 
 us was never 
 seen till n o w . 
 Is he b e c o m e 
 a Paranguay 
 (Frank), and 
 does he sup- 
 pose me to be a 
 woman of that 
 caste ? '" 
 
 Yet, if they 
 are despised in 
 private, they are 
 treated with the 
 highest respect THE EGG-DANCER AT \ M \I:I:IA<;K CKLKUKATIOS. 
 
 in public. 
 
 Among the ryots, or peasants, there is no separation of the 
 women. Both sexes sit at night round the lamp, engaged in 
 cheerful conversation, weaving, spinning, cooking, or playing a 
 kind of game of dominoes. 
 
 Among the martial tribes of India, such as the Rajpoots, the 
 opinion of the women is taken in all affairs of moment ; and before 
 war is decided upon, the chief and his wife first agitate the sub-
 
 266 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 ject in private, after which it is confided to the tribal council, 
 which, in turn, petitions the ruling princes in regard to the decision 
 at which they have arrived. 
 
 The wife is also the guardian of the heir to the chieftainship 
 during his minority. Among them the women aro everywhere 
 treated with great delicacy, respect, and even affection. Among 
 these people the Rajpoots Colonel Tod describes a curious 
 festival, which is known as the " Festival of the Bracelet." 
 
 The Festival of the Bracelet is in spring, and whatever its ori- 
 gin, it is one of the few occasions where an intercourse of gallan- 
 try of the most delicate nature is established between the fair sex 
 and the cavaliers of Rajast'h in. Though the bracelet may be sent 
 by maidens, it is only on occasions of urgent necessity or danger. 
 
 The Rajpoot dame bestows with the rakhi (bracelet) the title 
 of adopted brother ; and while its acceptance secures to her all the 
 protection of a cavalier servante, scandal itsell never suggests any 
 other tie. He may hazard his life in her cause, and yet never 
 receive a smile in reward, for lie cannot even see the fair object 
 who, as brother of her adoption, has constituted him her defender. 
 
 But there is a charm in the mystery of such a connection never 
 endangered by close observation ; and the loyal to the fair may 
 well attach a value to the public recognition of being the raklii- 
 bund bhde, the ' bracelet-bound brother,' of a princess. 
 
 The intrinsic value of such a pledge is never looked to, nor is 
 it requisite it should be costly, though it varies with the means and 
 rank of the donor, and ma}'- be of floss-silk and spangles, or gold 
 chains and gems. The acceptance of the pledge and its return is 
 by the katchli, or corset, of simple silk or satin, or gold brocade 
 and pearls. In shape or application there is something similar in 
 Europe ; and, for defending the most delicate part of the struc- 
 ture of the fair, it is peculiarly appropriate as an emblem of de- 
 votion. 
 
 A whole province lias often accompanied the katchli ; and the 
 monarch of India was so pleased with this courteous delicacy in 
 the customs of Rajast'han, on receiving the bracelet of the Princess 
 Kurnavati, which invested him with the title of brother, and uncle 
 and protector to her infant, Oody Sing, that he pledged himself to 
 her service, 'even if the demand were the Castle of Rent'imibor."
 
 THE BULE OF CASTE. 
 
 267 
 
 Humaioori proved himself a true knight, and even abandoned his 
 conquests in Bengal when called on to redeem his pledge, and 
 succour Cheetore and the widows and minor sons of Sanora Raria. 
 
 O 
 
 Certainly the women of Northern India are not slaves, nor in a 
 menial position in the households of their husbands. They have 
 ever been treated with respect and even devotion, and, like women 
 in the Western World, have been the inspiring causes of noble 
 deeds on the part of their admirers and protectors. To win their 
 unseen smiles the Hindoo 
 warrior toils and bleeds ; 
 for there is no recess of 
 the harem into which the 
 renown of a manly char- 
 acter and gallant actions 
 will not penetrate. 
 
 The bards, w h o re- 
 semble the troubadours 
 of the Middle Ages, and 
 the minstrels of ancient 
 Greece, are everywhere 
 admitted, to the palace as 
 well as to the cottage ; 
 and the youth of their 
 country decorated in their 
 glowing songs with all 
 the ornaments of poetry, 
 are presented to the 
 
 ardent imaginations of the fair in a light highly calculated to in- 
 spire admiration and love. 
 
 In general, the women of India enjoy complete liberty; only 
 the women of the higher classes, or those in parts of the country 
 where Mohammedanism prevails, are at all secluded. Among the 
 lower class, indeed, they have to assist in domestic affairs, in busi- 
 ness, and in the labors of agriculture. 
 
 But the most extraordinary custom is that which prevails in 
 some parts of India Mysore, for example. If a woman of any of 
 the four pure castes tire of her husband, or, being a widow, is 
 wearied of a life of celibacy, and goes to thetemples and eats some 
 
 A TKAVKM.IXfi ISAHUKI!.
 
 268 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 of the rice offered up to the idol, she is, if of Brahmin caste, offered 
 the option of either living in the temple or out of it. 
 
 If she chooses the former she receives a daily allowance of food, 
 and a piece of cloth annually. She must in return sweep the 
 temple, fan the idol with a yak's tail, and perform the duties of 
 a wife to the attendant Brahmins. The male children of these 
 women are termed moylar, but are fond of wearing the Brahmin- 
 ical thread. 
 
 The daughters are usually brought up to live like their mothers, 
 and the remainder given in marriage to the moylars who are 
 either employed in menial offices about the temple, or engage in 
 agriculture or other occupations. These temple-women are not 
 looked upon as following a disgraceful life, but are, on the con- 
 trary, treated with profound respect by the visitors to the shrines. 
 
 The women of this character were formerly the only educated 
 females in India, and it is remarkable that while a woman born 
 into this disreputable trade, or adopted in a family of this kind, is 
 not held to pursue a shameless vocation, other women who have 
 fallen from virtue are esteemed to have disgraced themselves and 
 their families. 
 
 A Hindoo woman's time does not hang heavily on her hands. 
 If belonging to an industrious family, she rises early in the morn- 
 ing, lights her lamp, and spins some cotton for the clothing of her 
 family ; she next feeds and attends to the children. This done, 
 she sprinkles and purifies the floor. Next she sweeps the house 
 and the yard. She now breakfasts, cleans the brass and the stone 
 vessels with straw, ashes, and water. Her next duty is to cleanse, 
 bruise, and boil rice. About ten or eleven o'clock she takes 
 a towel, and accompanies the women, her neighbors, to the tank, 
 or river, to bathe. 
 
 The last incident in the life of the Hindoo woman is the famous, 
 or infamous, but now almost abandoned, Suttee. When a Hindoo 
 dies he is burned on a funeral pile, composed of faggots of wood 
 drenched with inflammable substances, and so built as to allow 
 a free draught of air to play from beneath. 
 
 His ashes are then thrown into the Ganges, or, if the place of 
 cremation is at a distance from the sacred river, into a river which 
 is supposed to be the Ganges. For instance, when a young Indian
 
 THE RULE OF CASTE. 
 
 269 
 
 prince died some years ago at Florence, his body was, by permission 
 of the authorities, burned on the banks of the Arno. 
 
 If the deceased is of Brahminic rank, or a man of wealth, the 
 cremation takes place with great and costly pomp ; but if poor, 
 and moreover of low caste, his wretched corpse is disposed of as 
 soon as possible. The burning of the corpse is a widely spread 
 custom, and one which, in the interest of public health, is highly 
 to be commended in tropical countries. 
 
 But, for the chief wife of the deceased to voluntarily become a 
 
 HUSBANDRY IN NOKTIIEHN INDIA. 
 
 "Suttee " is something revolting. Yet, formerly, until suppressed 
 by the British Government, nothing was more common. The wife 
 mounted the funeral pile and laid herself down by her dead hus- 
 band. The faggots were lighted, and in a few minutes the smoke 
 rolled in volumes around the dead and the living. 
 
 If through pain the living victim attempted to escape, she was 
 secured by bamboo rods laid across her body, and held at either 
 side. Generally her sufferings were short, the smoke choking her 
 before the fire seized upon her flesh. But sometimes they were 
 unnecessarily prolonged by the faulty construction of the pile;
 
 270 THE STORY OF (iOVKUN.M KNT. 
 
 and cases liave even been known in which the poor creature has 
 attempted, and even made good, her escape from the torments to 
 which, unaware of her own powers of endurance, she had volun- 
 tarily submitted. 
 
 In most cases, however, the stupefied body soon consumed, and 
 mingled its ashes with those of the form beside it. Sometimes, 
 no doubt, the " Suttee " was stupefied with drugs, such as opium, 
 before ascending the pile, though this has been denied, on the 
 ground that as the woman has to undergo certain forms and repeat 
 certain prayers before she ascends the pile, it requires the pos- 
 session of all her senses unimpaired to perform these aright. 
 
 It is not compulsory on the Hindoo woman to perform this 
 " Suttee ''; it is only regarded as a pious act on her part, and it 
 may be noted that it is generally the Brahmins' widows who per- 
 form it. The reason is obvious. 
 
 A woman of that high caste is left a widow ; from being es- 
 teemed as a goddess, worshipped by those beneath her as part 
 of Brahma, the giver of life before whom kings were abject 
 slaves who could commit any crime so long as it did not infringe 
 the sacred laws of caste in a word, one of the chosen of the 
 earth, she sinks, by her refusal to become a " Suttee " with her 
 husband, to be an unclean thing, loathed, despised, and treated 
 with contempt by the very Pariahs, for whose shadows to fall upon 
 her a few hours before was contamination the most vile. 
 
 For a delicate girl like her to lose all caste is misery compared 
 with which the agony of a few minutes is nothing. These facts 
 we must take into account if we would justly estimate the motives 
 which induce a Hindoo widow to be burned with her husband, or 
 in default of burning to be buried alive. 
 
 In 1829, Lord William Bentinck, among the many other excellent 
 reforms which he was the means of introducing into India, forbade 
 the performance of " Suttee " within the British dominions, under 
 severe penalties. Notwithstanding the passive resistance of some 
 of the Indian conservatives of those days, and the presentation of 
 a petition to the Privy Council in favor of it by some rich Hindoos, 
 the action of the Governor-General was supported by the Home 
 Government, and " Suttee " is now rare, or conducted with great 
 secresy, in the British Territories as well as in the Protected States.
 
 THE KULE OF CASTE. 
 
 271 
 
 The laivs of inheritance among the Hindoos are very curious. 
 The moment a son is born lie acquires a vested right in his 
 father's property, which cannot be sold without the recognition 
 of this right of joint ownership. It is, in fact, simply a sort of 
 Hindoo law of entail, with, however, many variations on the 
 European system. 
 
 For instance, when a son comes of age, he can, even against 
 
 SOWING THE SEED. 
 
 the will of the parent, compel a division of the property; and, 
 should the parent acquiesce, one son can always have a division of 
 the property against the will of the others. On such a division 
 taking place, the father has no advantage over his children, except 
 that he has two shares instead of one. 
 
 Sir Henry Maine, the great English lawyer, observes that the 
 ancient law of the German tribes was very similar ; the allod, or 
 domain, of the family being the joint property of the father and 
 his sons. Among the Hindoos, also, there are cases in which the 
 law of primogeniture is followed as regards political office and 
 power, but not regarding property, a singular distinction.
 
 272 THK STORY OF COYKUXMKNT. 
 
 Education is at a low stand in Hindostan. The child generally 
 begins to acquire the elements of knowledge in its fifth year, being 
 then taught the alphabet, or sent by its father to school. With the 
 exception of architecture and the manufacture of jewelry, the fine 
 arts have never greatly prospered in India, the grinding despotisms 
 which from time immemorial have crushed the country, having 
 been unfavorable to the progress of painting and other branches of 
 art. In architecture even, it is probable that they never attained 
 any great perfection until the Mohammedans came among them. 
 
 For instance, arched bridges are believed to have been unknown 
 to the native engineers. The art of sculpture early occupied the 
 Hindoo mind, and most of their designs were influenced by their 
 religious opinions, the gods and their mythology being the solitary 
 subject in which the minds of the artists revelled. Hence the 
 appalling sameness in most of their figures. 
 
 Painting has been less assiduously cultivated than the sister art 
 of sculpture. The color in their pictures generally frescoes 
 is often good, but the drawing is bad, and the style hard, and 
 lacking in light and shade. The modern artists, though minutely 
 copying the object on which they are at work, have no idea of 
 middle tints or of the harmonies of hues. 
 
 Music is at an equally low standard or rather ebb, for it is clear 
 that formerly the Hindoos' skill and taste in this art were higher 
 than now ; but some of their poems, such as those in the " Vedas." 
 are of a very high literary value. 
 
 Jewelry is manufactured with the simplest appliances, in very 
 beautiful patterns frequently by plaiting wire-work in dainty forms, 
 though, of course, with much of that brilliant barbarism which i.< 
 associated with everything Oriental, and in Delhi a jeweller pur- 
 suing his trade in the street used to be no uncommon sight. 
 
 Agriculture varies in different parts of India, as might be 
 expected from a people so various in race. Horses are never 
 employed, their places in all the labors of the field being supplied 
 by cows, bullocks, or oxen. The illustrations which we give of 
 Indian husbandry show how primitive, even to this day, are the 
 methods and machines in vogue. 
 
 Of the many extraordinary sights which are common in India 
 none, perhaps, is more wonderful and fearfully fascinating to a
 
 THE KULK OF CASTE. 
 
 i73 
 
 stranger than an exhibition t>f snake-charming. For a couple of 
 rupees about eighty cents one can witness tin's spectacle in 
 almost any Indian village, for there are numerous strolling vaga- 
 bonds who seem able to handle the most deadly snakes with apparent 
 impunity by means of music. 
 
 It is said that these snakes have their fangs extracted. This, no 
 doubt, is often the case ; but not invariably so, for men are now 
 and then bitten by these cobras and die in frightful contortions. 
 Some of the performances of these serpent-charmers are remark- 
 able, as will be 
 seen by the follow- 
 ing passage from 
 General Camp- 
 bell's Indian Jour- 
 nal : 
 
 When I was on 
 General Dalrym- 
 ple's staff at Tri- 
 chinopoly, there was 
 a dry well in the 
 garden, which was 
 the favorite haunt 
 of snakes and in 
 Avhich I shot sev- 
 eral. One morning 
 T discovered a large 
 cobra-di-capello at 
 the bottom of this 
 well, basking in the 
 sun ; but while I 
 ran to fetch my gun, 
 some of the native 
 
 servants began to pelt him with stones, and drove him into his hole 
 among the brick-work. I therefore sent for the snake-charmers to get 
 him out. 
 
 Two of these worthies having arrived, we lowered them into the well 
 by means of a rope. One of them, after performing sundry incan- 
 tations, and sprinkling himself and his companion with ashes prepared 
 from the dung of a sacred cow, began to play a shrill monotonous 
 
 TWO I'KASANT WOMEN.
 
 274 THK STMUY OF < i< >Y KK N .M KNT. 
 
 ditty upon a pipe ornamented \vith shells, brass rings, and beads, while 
 the other stood on one side of tin- snake's hole, holding a rod furnished 
 at one end with a slip noose. 
 
 At first the snake, who had lieen considerably annoyed before lie 
 took refuge in his hole, was deaf to the notes of the charmer; but 
 after half an hour's constant playing, the spell began to operate, and 
 the snake was heard to move. Tn a few minutes more he thrust out 
 his head ; the horsehair noose was dexterously slipped over it and 
 drawn tight, and we hoisted up the men, dangling their snake in 
 triumph. Having carried him to an open space of ground, they 
 released him from the noose. 
 
 The enraged snake immediately made a rush at the bystanders, 
 putting to flight a crowd of native servants who had assembled to wit- 
 ness the sport. 'The snake-charmer, tapping him on the tail with a 
 switch, induced him to turn upon himself, at the same time sounding 
 his pipe. 
 
 The snake coiled himself up, raised his head, expanded his hood, 
 and appeared about to strike; but instead of doing so, he remained 
 in the same position, as if fascinated by the music, darting out his 
 slender forked tongue, and following with his head the motion of the 
 man's knee, which he kept moving from side to side, within a few 
 inches of him, as if tempting him to bite. 
 
 No sooner did the music cease, than the snake dashed forward with 
 such fury that it required great agility on the part of the man to avoid 
 him, and then immediately the snake made off as fast as he could go. 
 The sound of the pipe, however, invariably made him stop, and obliged 
 him to remain in an upright position as long as (lie man continued to 
 play. 
 
 After repeating this experiment several times, a fowl was placed 
 within its reach, which he instantly dashed at and bit. The fowl 
 screamed out the moment it was struck, but ran off, and began picking 
 among its companions as if nothing had happened. 
 
 I pulled out my watch to see how long the venom took to opera 1 e. 
 In about half a minute, the comb and wattles of the fowl began to 
 change from a red to a livid hue, and were soon nearly black, but n<> 
 other symptom was apparent. In two minutes it began to stagger, was 
 seized with strong convulsions, fell to the ground, and continued to 
 struggle violently till it expired, exactly three minutes and a half after 
 it had been bitten. 
 
 On plucking the fowl, we found that it had merely been touched on 
 the extreme point of the pinion. The wound, not. larger than the
 
 ' - - t.ii 
 
 A SNAKK-CH AHMKK.
 
 276 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 puncture of a needle, was surrounded by a livid spot; but the remain- 
 der of the body, with the exception of the comb and wattles (which 
 were of a dark livid hue), was of the natural color; and [ afterwards 
 learned that my coachman (a half-caste) had eaten it. 
 
 The charmer now offered to show us his method of catching snakes, and 
 seizing the reptile (about five feet long) by the point of the tail witli his 
 left hand, he slipped the right along the body with lightning swiftness 
 and, grasping him by the throat with his finger and thumb held him fast, 
 and forced him to open his jaws and display his poisonous fangs. 
 
 Having now gratified my curiosity, I proposed that the Snake should 
 be destroyed, or at least that his fangs might be extracted, an operation 
 easily performed with a pair of forceps. But the snake being a remarka- 
 bly fine one, the charmer was unwilling to extract his teeth, as he said 
 the operation sometimes proved fatal, and begged so hard to be allowed 
 to keep him as he was, that I at last suffered him to put him in a basket 
 and carry him off. 
 
 After this he frequently brought the snake to the house, still with 
 his fangs entire, as I ascertained by personal inspection, but so tame 
 that he handled him freely without fear. But one day the snake 
 bit the charmer and ended his life. 
 
 The moral character of the Hindoo has been much misrepre- 
 sented by ignorant men, incapable through prejudice, or from the 
 want of that habit of making due allowance for the different cir- 
 cumstances under which the Hindoo is placed, of forming a calm 
 and charitable judgment on the race. 
 
 The Hindoo must not be weighed in an American balance, any 
 more than an American should be measured according to Hindoo 
 standards. Morality may be absolute, not comparative or relative ; 
 but, at the same time, putting mere philosophical ethics aside, 
 we must, for the sake of arriving at something like an intelligible 
 estimate, adopt a standard somewhat elastic. 
 
 The perfectly moral nation is a poet's dream of the future, as 
 the utterly wicked is a something which has not yet existed. The 
 Hindoos, it must be remembered, notwithstanding the magnifi- 
 cence of their courts, the gorgeousness of their shrines, and even the 
 high state of some of the arts among them, are a comparatively bar- 
 barous people. Their sacred books may be exalted in tone ; but their 
 religion is nevertheless gross, licentious, and cruel in many of its 
 main features.
 
 THE RULE OF CASTE. 
 
 277 
 
 Their passions are excited by art and by religious pageantries, 
 and their religious fanaticism by a cunning, unscrupulous priest- 
 hood, which has, by the aid of that most ingeniously devised 
 lecrend of caste, 
 
 O 
 
 bound all beneath 
 it, and there is no 
 one above it, in 
 iron bond s as 
 merciless and un- 
 breakable as those 
 of fate according 
 to the old Greek 
 idea. 
 
 But the Indian 
 is not the same 
 all over India. 
 The fierce wild- 
 men of the lower 
 Himalayan hills 
 who used to be 
 hunted like wild 
 be^ts by the Eng- 
 lish, seem hardly 
 the same race as 
 the polished, po- 
 lite and subtle 
 denizens of the 
 jreat cities. The 
 
 O 
 
 bold mountain 
 tribes are vastly 
 superior in manly 
 virtues to the peo- 
 ple of the plains, 
 and even the 
 dwellers in the 
 
 MOUNTAIN TRAVEL. 
 
 low lands and in the valley of the Lower Ganges differ in charac- 
 ter. Yet, wherever we rind the Hindoo he is deceitful and slippery, 
 full of adulation and compliment, treacherous and rather wicked.
 
 278 THE STOIiY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 He excels in etiquette and courtesy. He has at least five 
 different ways in which he will make obeisance, according to 
 the circumstances of the case, or the person before whom he 
 desires to debase himself, and lie runs a close race with tilt- 
 Spaniard in the skill with which he can invent and pour forth 
 high-sounding titles and cringing flattery to the person addressed. 
 
 Of all the races of India a Bengalee is the most despicable. 
 Lord Macaulay, who had lived among them and knew them well, 
 long ago expressed their character thoroughly. Speaking of the 
 men with whom Warren Hastings had to deal, he says : 
 
 What the Italian is to the Englishman, what the Hindoo is to the 
 Italian, what the Bengalee is to other Hindoos, that was Nuncomar 
 [a native minister] to other Bengalees. The physical organization 
 of the Bengalee is feeble even to effeminacy. 
 
 He lives in a constant vapor bath ; his pursuits are sedentary, his 
 limbs delicate, his movements languid. During many ages he has been 
 trampled upon by men of bolder and more hardy breeds. Courage, 
 independence, and veracity, are qualities to which his constitution and 
 his situation are equally unfavorable. 
 
 His mind bears a singular analogy to his body. It is weak even to 
 helplessness for purposes of manly resistance ; but its suppleness and 
 tact move the children of sterner climates to admiration not unmirMled 
 with contempt. All those arts which are the natural defence of the 
 weak are more familiar to this subtle race than to the Ionian of the 
 time of Juvenal, or to the Jew of the dark ages. 
 
 What the horns are to the buffalo, what the paw is to the tiger, 
 what the sting is to the bee, what beauty according to the old Greek 
 song is to woman, deceit is to the Bengalee. Large promises, smooth 
 exQuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantial falsehood, chicanery, per- 
 jury, and forgery, are the weapons, offensive and defensive, of the 
 people of the Lower Ganges. . . . 
 
 As usurers, as money-changers, as sharp legal practitioners, no class 
 of human beings can bear a comparison with them. With all his soft- 
 ness, the Bengalee is by no means placable in his enmities, or prone 
 to pity. The pertinacity with which he adheres to his purposes yields 
 only to the immediate pressure of fear. Nor does he lack a certain 
 kind of courage which is often wanting in his masters. To inevitable 
 evils he is sometimes found to oppose a passive fortitude, such as the 
 Stoics attributed to their ideal sage.
 
 THE KULE UK CASTE. 279 
 
 A European warrior, who rushes on a battery of cannon with a loud 
 hurrah, will sometimes shriek under the surgeon's knife, and fall in an 
 agony of despair at the seiitence of death. But the Bengalee, who 
 would see his country overrun, his house laid in ashes, his children 
 murdered or dishonored, without having the spirit to strike one blow, 
 has yet been known to endure torture with the firmness of Mucius, 
 and to mount the scaffold with the steady step and even pulse of 
 Algernon Sidney. 
 
 The general lack of kindness with which the Hindus are treated 
 by their Anglo-Saxon masters strikes the most careless and unob- 
 servant traveller in every corner of Victoria's Oriental possessions. 
 Nor does time nor the frightful warning given by the Sepoy Rebel- 
 lion seem to soften in any way the English habit of oppression. 
 
 An English clergyman not long ago saw the following sight. 
 A passing Hindu, lie says, was rudely taken to task by a petty 
 captain for not making a salaam, or profound bow, on the street 
 to him. 
 
 " Why should I ? " said the man. " You have conquered our 
 race, but I won't salaam." " I'll take you to the general," said 
 the captain, "and see if you will then." This was done, and the 
 general, as brutal as his inferior officer, roared out : " Make a 
 salaam, sir." The man still firmly but calmly refused, whereupon 
 the general seized him by the neck, threw him to the ground, 
 buried his face in the dust, and ordered fifty lashes to be given 
 him. 
 
 Thus by sheer brute force was this Hindu punished for an inde- 
 pendence which did him honor. But the mild. Hindu, as a rule, 
 submits to the English as to a superior race, and all he can do is 
 to bide his time. Yet, if not subdued by justice and kindness, 
 will he not seek his revenge some day, especially as his intelligence 
 increases ? 
 
 What, then, is to be the immediate future of this empire of many 
 mysteries, which is regarded by our scientists as the original birth- 
 place or starting-point of humanity? The question is involved, 
 apparently, not so much in the evolution of the present East 
 Indian race, as it is in several European questions of political, 
 racial, and governmental quality, now pressing forward for answer.
 
 280 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 For, as hinted in the beginning of this brief pen-picture, the 
 English, though now dominating India, are merely a light fringe 
 on her vast darkness. Underneath the supple servility shown to 
 them, a keen-eyed traveller cannot help detecting an intense 
 bitterness an immense hate. 
 
 But the East Indians, thanks to their system of caste, have little 
 cohesion or faculty of continuous cooperation. They might by a 
 sudden uprising drive their present owners into the ocean, but in 
 a few years, very likely, some other predatory nation would be 
 again setting the heel of conquest or of commerce upon their 
 necks. 
 
 With the Russians restlessly pushing south, and with a collision 
 between Russia and England, as is probable, in the early part of 
 the twentieth century, India might possibly achieve a temporary 
 independence, but it would seem far more liable, if it had a chance, 
 to welcome the Russian invasion and glide from English under 
 Russian sway, simply as a change of evils. 
 
 Yet it is difficult for even the heartiest hater of England's 
 commercial civilization to see how the East Indian people could 
 benefit by any such change. Russia is still only a barbarism very 
 lightly gilded, and Russo-Indian rule would be more likely to ravage 
 ruthlessly what remains of India's former splendor in the way of 
 palaces and temples than to restore or maintain what the Anglo- 
 Saxon has spared. And, as for the masses of the people, they 
 would find individual Russians as cruel or more so than the average 
 English officer or private of to-day.
 
 YTT. 
 
 PERHAPS the oddest kind of government a 
 
 scholastic oligarchy 1 with a figurehead emperor 
 - is that furnished by the vast Empire of China 
 which may be regarded as the most compact country in the world, 
 since it encloses an area of nearly 4,000,000 square miles. That 
 China is the oldest of nations of which we have anything like a 
 continuous and tolerably correct history, little doubt can be 
 entertained. 
 
 The researches of antiquarians have proved that in Babylon 
 astronomical observations and calculations were made 2,231 years 
 before Christ, and Chinese records speak of an eclipse calculated 
 2,155 yoars before our era of reckoning. That this eclipse 
 really occurred was proved by the Jesuit missionaries who visited 
 China in the sixteenth century. 
 
 Gaubil, a Jesuit preeminent for his mathematical attainments, 
 examined the series of thirty-six eclipses, to which the Chinese 
 philosopher, Confucius, alludes in his writings, and the Catholic 
 scholar decided that thirty-two of these were absolutely correct, 
 two uncertain, and two false. But the chronology of the Chinese 
 extends far back of the first of these eclipses whose occurrence 
 
 iThe word oligarchy means .government by a few, and in all ages has been one of the 
 worst forms of oppression. 
 
 281
 
 282 
 
 THE STOKY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the scientific priest declared to be established as evidence of the 
 accuracy of Chinese history. 
 
 Before considering the form of government among this mysteri- 
 ous people, perhaps a brief sketch of the country and some of its 
 customs might furnish good stepping-stones to an understanding 
 of its political peculiarities. China proper lies between 18 and 
 41 north latitude. Its eastern extremity bordering on Corea is 
 marked by 124 east longitude, and its western boundary on 
 Burmah and Western Thibet is cut by 98 east longitude. Its 
 seaboard extends over 2,500 miles with many bays and estuaries, 
 so thickly studded with islands that from this geographical fact is 
 
 derived one of 
 the titles of the 
 emperor, " Lord 
 of ten thousand 
 isles." 
 
 This e 11 o r - 
 mous territory is 
 divided into 
 eighteen p r o v- 
 inces varying in 
 size. Each prov- 
 ince is sub-di- 
 vided into poox, 
 counties, a n d 
 
 prefectures. A poo, the capital of which is a market town, con- 
 sists of a number of towns and villages. A county, the capital 
 of which is a walled city, consists of a number of poos; and a 
 prefecture, the capital of which is also a walled city but larger, 
 is a collection of counties, the province being several prefectures 
 with a still larger walled city taken generally as its capital. 
 
 Thus the eighteen provinces contain about four thousand walled 
 cities, the walls in some cases being so broad that two carriages 
 can be driven abreast. The great wall of China, built to keep 
 out the Tartars, runs hundreds of miles across the country. It is 
 now in ruins. The wall around Nankin is eighteen miles in 
 length. These walls, as a rule, are crowned with castles and 
 iiave embrasures for artillery and loopholes for musketry, and on 
 
 A GLIMPSE OF THE GKEAT WALL.
 
 A SCHOLASTIC OLIGARCHY. 283 
 
 the ramparts huge stones are loosely piled to be rolled down on 
 besiegers. During the war in which Christian England forced 
 opium as an article of merchandise on the Chinese, this primitive 
 kind of warfare (that seems to belong more to the days when 
 Pyrrhus was killed at Argos by a tile from the hands of a woman) 
 came into use, and some English soldiers were killed by these stones. 
 At the north, east, west, and south sides of each Chinese city 
 
 OPIUM SMOKERS. 
 
 are folding gates of great strength which are further secured by 
 equally massive inner gates. The south gate is called the gate 
 of honor, being regarded as especially governmental. By it the 
 officials always enter and depart, and no funerals, or unclean 
 merchandise are allowed to go through; and the south gate of 
 Pekin is generally kept closed except for th<> d
 
 284 THE STORY OF OOVKUN.M KNT. 
 
 The streets are wider in the north tlian in the south of 
 China, and those of Pekin are very broad and dirty beyond 
 description or conception. They must be smelt to be realized. 
 The narrowness of the streets makes them cool in the summer 
 months and in many towns they are partially roofed by the 
 residents with canvas, matting, or thin planks of timber. Many 
 of the towns also in the north of Formosa are protected in this 
 \\-ay. 
 
 The sidewalks to the shops are arched over, and as they are 
 frequently constructed in rude arcades, it is possible to pass 
 from one end of the town to the other without annoyance from 
 sun or rain, thus furnishing a model for the umbrellaed streets 
 of that reformed Boston which Bellamy beheld in his vision. 
 "Looking Backward." The streets are paved with granite slab;, 
 bricks, or cobblestones; Canton, for instance, being entirely 
 slabbed, while Soochow is partly, and partly cobblestoned. 
 
 But the sewerage system may be best described as a marvellously 
 successful scheme to produce an intolerable stench in the summer 
 months, which the high-sounding titles of the streets might 
 seem by force of sarcasm to render still more exasperating, for 
 one encounters such names as "The Street of Golden Profits, the 
 Street of Benevolence and Love, of Saluting Dragons, of Refresh- 
 ing Breezes, of Five Happinesses, of Ninefold Brightness, of 
 Accumulated Goodness," and so forth. Other streets are simply 
 numbered First, Second, Third, etc. 
 
 Chinese shops, which are called Hongs, are built of bricks, as 
 a rule, and are entirely open in front. Very few of them have 
 glass windows, except in the city of Pekin. At the door stand 
 very long signboards on each side of which, in bright letters of 
 gold, orange, and other gay colors, are painted the name of the 
 hong, and of the various commodities which it contains. 
 
 In some cases the shopkeeper places above the door a small sign- 
 board in shape of some particular article which he has for sale : as. 
 for instance, a boot-maker might display a boot; or a spectacle- 
 maker a pair of spectacles. Some shopkeepers, not satisfied with 
 the enormous signboards, advertise themselves still further hy 
 painting their names and a list of their wares in large characters 
 on the outer Avails of the cities in which they live.
 
 A STREKT OF HONGS I.V (ANTON.
 
 286 THE STORY OF GOVKUXMKXT. 
 
 In the rural districts, on the outer Avail of their dwelling 
 houses, is a board recording the name of each person residing 
 within, and this custom extends to some of the towns. Above 
 the entrance of each hong lanterns are suspended and from the 
 roof lamps of glass or of thin horn, on which are gaily colored 
 images of players and pagodas. 
 
 These numerous bright signboards and lanterns lend a Chinese 
 street a most cheerful and animated look. The hongs are not 
 distributed promiscuously throughout Chinese towns but are con- 
 fined to certain quarters, each branch of trade having its special 
 place. No members of the tradesman's family reside either above 
 or behind the shop, and in the evening when the shutters are put 
 up, the tradesman hastening to his home in another part of the 
 town leaves his stock in the care of his apprentices. 
 
 In the streets where the gentry reside, the houses are very well 
 built, but of one story only. As the walls which front the street 
 have no windows, they present in many cases the appearance of 
 encampments'. Chinese houses, also, have no fireplaces and in 
 cold weather the occupants keep themselves warm by wearing 
 much clothing, or by means of braziers in which charcoal embers 
 are kept burning. As the houses and shops which form the 
 streets of a Chinese city are rarely of the same height, or 
 arranged in straight lines, every town lias a strikingly irregular 
 appearance. 
 
 The streets or squares are not adorned like those of Euro- 
 pean cities with stone, marble, or bronze statues of the learned, 
 the brave, and the good, but instead, in nearly all the chief 
 cities of China monumental arches are erected in honor of re- 
 nowned warriors, illustrious statesmen, public-spirited citizens, 
 learned scholars, and last, but not least, virtuous women Such 
 monuments are built of brick, marble, and old red sandstone, IT. 
 more commonly, of granite. 
 
 A monument of this kind consists of a triple arch or gateway, 
 that is, a large centre gate and smaller gate on each side. On a 
 large smooth-shining slab above the middle gateway are >eulp- 
 tured figures, or characters, setting forth the object i'nr which the 
 citizens, by Imperial permission, raised the arch. One of the 
 largest of these monuments is in the city of Toong-Ping Chan,
 
 288 THE STOKY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 iii honor of a scholar who, at the age of eighty-two, took the first 
 place at the examination for the Hanlin, or Doctor's degree. 
 As Baltimore with us is called the City of Monuments, Hoo 
 Chow Foo in China is called the City of Arches. When the 
 traveller enters this city by the south gate, a vista of arches very 
 impressive greets his gaze, each of them being of vast dimen- 
 sions and richly sculptured. 
 
 The Chinese take many precautions to save their cities from 
 conflagrations. Wells are sunk in 'many streets, and the law 
 requires that in various parts of the cities large tubs of water 
 must be kept. On the tops of the houses, also, they frequently 
 place earthen jars containing water, and in all large cities there; 
 are several fire brigades maintained entirely by public contribu- 
 tions. The engines, water-buckets and lanterns of these brigades 
 are usually kept in different temples. The officers and men have a 
 uniform, and on their hats in large characters the name or num- 
 ber of their brigade, and the words " Kow-Fow " or fire-quencher. 
 
 Besides these provisions by the citizens, the members of the 
 local government of each city are called on to render their help. 
 For instance, in Canton each magistrate has in his employ several 
 men whose special duty it is to prevent robberies when fires occur, 
 and under the command of the governor are two hundred men 
 whose duty consists in helping firemen. 
 
 In addition to this, from the forty-eight guardhouses of the 
 city, in the event of a fire, two men are instantly told off to 
 hasten to the scene, and at the close of every month the prefect 
 and provincial treasurer, who are very high officials, are required 
 to inspect all the government servants "whose duties lie in the 
 direction of extinguishing fires. 
 
 Moreover, with the view of keeping all officials thoroughly 
 awake to their duties, it is the law that in case eighty houses 
 are destroyed by a conflagration, all the officials where it 
 occurred are reduced in rank one degree, and even when, ten 
 houses are destroyed, the matter is reported to the central govern- 
 ment at Pekin. 
 
 A few days after a fire, the firemen of each brigade present 
 receive as a reward for their services roast pig a great Chinese 
 delicacy jars of choice wine, and small sums of money, the men
 
 A SCHOLASTIC OLIGA1IC1IY. 
 
 289 
 
 who hold the hose receiving more than others, and those who hap- 
 pen to receive wounds during this public duty being still more 
 liberally remunerated. Persons who cause iires by carelessness, 
 or otherwise, when caught, are severely punished. It is only just 
 to add that the Chinese are excellent firemen; quick to arrive 
 at the scene of action, and very daring. 
 
 The population of China, according to Sacharoff fifty years ago, 
 had reached the stupendous figure of 414,686,994. During the 
 next twenty years a great 
 rebellion occurred, in which 
 many cities, towns, and vil- 
 lages with all their inhabi- 
 tants were blotted out. This 
 rebellion covered a period of 
 fifteen years, but in spite of 
 such reduction and check of 
 population, it is probable 
 that the empire contains to- 
 day 450,000,000. 
 
 Of the moral character of 
 this people, whose enormous 
 number tempts us to liken 
 them to the sands on the sea- 
 
 shore, it is not easy to speak 
 justly; for this character is 
 a book written in strange let- 
 trrs more complex to one of 
 another race, religion, and 
 language, and more difficult 
 to decipher than the oddly 
 shaped word-symbols that compose their written language. 
 
 In the same individuals, virtues and vices almost incompre- 
 hensibly incompatible are found side by side. Gentleness, 
 modesty, industry, cheerfulness, politeness, filial affection and 
 reverence for old age are in one and the same Chinaman the 
 companions of insincerity, cruelty, jealousy, ingratitude, and 
 avarice. 
 
 But instances of moral inconsistencies might be found among 
 
 ANCIKNT (IIIXKSK SOMUKK.
 
 lM)0 TilK STOliY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 other nations; and if a native of the Flowery Kingdom, for 
 tilt; purpose of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the American 
 people, should familiarize himself with the records of our police 
 and other law courts, and with the curious transactions that occur 
 in our commercial circles, and the scandals that so often drag our 
 society down from its dollar-shining pinnacle, such a Chinese 
 Traveller might give his countrymen at home a very one-sided and 
 depreciatory account of this country. 
 
 Besides, we should not forget that we possess the manifold bless- 
 ings of Christianity of many kinds, from Catholicism to Univer- 
 salism, and that we have a form of government, under which, we 
 are, at least, invited to dream that we are free. So that, when 
 \ve consider the political and social condition of China and her 
 institutions, it would seem to us rather extraordinary that such 
 an amount of good can be found in the national character. 
 
 The government, to be sure, is an irresponsible despotism; 
 their judges are bribable; their judicial procedure places its 
 whole reliance on the infliction of torture. Their police are dis- 
 honest and their prisons dens of cruelty. Their social life labors 
 under the blight of polygamy and of slavery; and their customs 
 hold women in a state of degradation. Yet, notwithstanding the 
 conditions so unfavorable to the development of civil and social 
 virtues, the Chinese may be fairly characterized as a courteous, 
 orderly, industrious, sober, patriotic and peace-loving people. 
 
 The Emperor of China is taught to regard himself as the inter- 
 preter of the decrees of heaven, and he is recognized by the people 
 as their connecting link with the gods, being designated by 
 such titles as the "Son of Heaven," the "Lord of Ten Thousand 
 Years," and the "Imperial Supreme." This mighty potentate is 
 assisted in the management of his government by a cabinet of four 
 ministers. In addition to which general council are six supreme 
 tribunals for the conduct in detail of all governmental business. 
 
 The first of these tribunals is termed Loo Poo, and divided into 
 four departments; the first of which selects officers to fill tin- 
 various places in the respective provinces and districts. The 
 second takes cognizance or keeps watch on all such officials. 
 The third affixes the imperial seal, along side of which the em- 
 peror sometimes makes marks in letters of red with what is styled
 
 A SCHOLASTIC OLIGARCHY. 291 
 
 the vermilion pencil, to all books and parchments; and the fourth 
 keeps the record of the good service and merits of distinguished 
 men. 
 
 The second Board is termed Hoo Poo, and has the care of the 
 imperial revenues. The third, called Lee Poo, superintends the 
 religious rites of the people and keeps in order all temples 
 endowed by the imperial government. The fourth Board, Ping 
 Poo, has charge of all the naval and military establishments. 
 The fifth, King Poo, supervises all criminal proceedings. The 
 sixth, which is termed Ling Poo, superintends all public works 
 such as mines, manufactories, highways, canals, bridges, etc. 
 
 The chief minister of each of these tribunals lays the decisions 
 or the information secured by his particular board before the 
 Cabinet and when the cabinet has thoroughly discussed them, they 
 are submitted with due reverence to his Imperial Majesty. 
 The power of these ministers is apparently nominal, since the 
 emperor holds himself responsible to none but the gods, and looks 
 upon the people as his children. 
 
 But while outwardly a Chinese sovereign might manifest con- 
 tempt for the suggestion of his cabinet, as a rule, in practice 
 much heed is given to their advice ; very few, indeed, of the 
 sovereigns of China feeling themselves sufficiently endowed with 
 the wisdom of this world to be able to rule without the advice 
 of others. Besides these councils, there are two others the Too- 
 C'ha Yum and the Tsung-Pin Fow. 
 
 The former as a Board of Censors is supposed to attend the 
 meetings of the councils just described for the purpose of ascer- 
 taining whether plots are being concocted against the stability of 
 the government; and the members of this board are also frequently 
 sent into the provinces to watch the way things are going there. 
 Or, in other words, the Absolutism of China depends almost as 
 much for its safety on the service of spies as the Plutocracy of 
 America is beginning to depend on the Pinkertons. 
 
 The second of these two extra Boards consists of six high offi- 
 cials, who keep a register of the births, deaths, marriages, and 
 relations of the princes of the blood royal, and make reports upon 
 their conduct. These records are referred to the emperor every 
 decade, on which occasion he confei-s titles and rewards.
 
 292 THE STORY UF GOVKUN.MKNT. 
 
 These titles are of four kinds hereditary, honorary, for .state 
 service, and for literary attainments, and it is imperative on the 
 ministers of this Board to furnish at frequent intervals to the rirst- 
 named tribunals reports on the conduct of the emperor's different 
 sons, so that it may be discerned which one possesses in the high- 
 est degree the essentials of a good sovereign. These reports, like 
 all others, finally come to the emperor who has the power of 
 naming his successor. As a general rule, however, the eldest son 
 succeeds. 
 
 As every emperor of each dynasty had many wives, the scions 
 of imperial houses are numerous, and once it was the custom 
 to give official employment to each of them. But this custom 
 caused so much trouble and gave rise to so many conspiracies and 
 rebellions that it was abandoned, and each prince nowadays has 
 to rest satisfied with the high-sounding but empty title of his 
 rank, and he is liable to be deprived of that, if any act on his 
 part is deemed beneath the family dignity. 
 
 While the emperor is regarded by his people as the representa- 
 tive of heaven, the Empress, or head wife, on the other hand, is 
 the representative of Mother Earth, and is supposed to exercise 
 some peculiar influence over nature, one of her chief duties 
 being to see that worship is duly paid to the tutelary deity of 
 silkworms. It is also her official function to examine carefully 
 the weaving of the silk stuff which the ladies of the Imperial 
 harem make into garments for certain state idols. 
 
 She is supposed to know no politics, but there are instances on 
 record of Chinese empresses who have been as familiar as some ol 
 the noted French dames of the last century with the minutest 
 details of State intrigues. The choice of an empress and of the 
 sub-wives of the sovereign depends solely on their beauty or per- 
 sonal qualities, and not on their family connections. They ;MV 
 chosen in the following fashion. 
 
 The daughter of the empress-dowager, or in her absence a royal 
 lady invested with authority for the purpose, holds what might be 
 fashionably termed a "drawing-room," and invites Tartar ladies 
 and daughters of Baniiermen, that is, of those baronial houses 
 which have a right to carry banners from various parts of the 
 empire. The belle of this assembly is chosen to he raised to the
 
 A SCHOLASTIC OLIGARCHY. 
 
 293 
 
 dignity of empress, and those next in personal attractions are 
 selected for the rank of sub- wives. 
 
 But sometimes a woman of the lower orders attains to this 
 lofty rank. The mother of the Emperor Hien-Fung was the 
 keeper of a fruit store and, like Nell Gwynne, the orange girl 
 who attracted the attention of Charles II., and from whose liaison 
 with him are descended some of the peers of England, her grace 
 and beauty raised her to a power in the state. 
 
 In each of the 
 provinces there is a 
 formidable array of 
 officials, namely: 
 governor-g e n e r a 1 , 
 governor, treasurer, 
 special commissioner, 
 literary chancellor, 
 chief justice ; the last 
 four being of equal 
 rank; six tautais of 
 equal rank; ten pre- 
 fects of equal rank; 
 and seventy-two 
 county rulers of 
 equal rank. 
 
 Each of these offi- 
 cials has a council to 
 assist him in the dis- 
 charge of his duties, 
 and besides these of- 
 ficials every town and village has its governing body, so that 
 the empire may be said to be honey-combed with officialism. All 
 these officials, as it was in ancient Peru, are subordinate to the 
 one above them; it is a continuous chain. Officials of certain 
 grades are not allowed to hold office in their native province, nor 
 without Imperial permission to marry in the province where they 
 have been appointed to office ; and to prevent the possibility of 
 acquiring too much local influence, they are removed in some cases 
 every three years and in other cases every six to other posts of duty. 
 
 THE FRUIT GIRL WHO BECAME AN EMPRESS.
 
 294 
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT, 
 
 All officials are supposed to be appointed by the emperor on 
 recommendation of the Board of Ceremonies, and candidates for 
 office, according to law, have to be men who have graduated at 
 great literary examinations. But the members of the Board of 
 Ceremonies sometimes submit to the notice of his majesty the 
 names of men whose literary rank has been bought. 
 
 There are nine marks of distinction by which the rank of a 
 Chinese officer may be readily recognized : A member of the first 
 
 class wears on the band of 
 his cap a dark red coral 
 ball or button ; for the 
 second class this button is 
 light red; for the third, 
 light blue ; for the fourth, 
 dark blue ; the fifth class 
 wear a ball of crystal, 
 while mother of pearl is 
 the ball of the sixth class 
 mandarin. Members of 
 the seventh and eighth 
 class wear a golden ball, 
 in one case smaller, and 
 for the ninth class, a sil- 
 ver ball. Each official 
 may be further distin- 
 guished by a decoration of 
 peacock feathers. This 
 feather runs from the base 
 of the ball on the hat slop- 
 ing downwards at the back. The first of the outer garments 
 worn by an officer is a long loose robe of blue silk, richly em- 
 broidered with threads of gold. It reaches the ankles of the 
 wearer, and is bound around his waist by a belt. Above this 
 robe is a violet tunic with very wide sleeves, but usually thrown 
 back over the wrists. 
 
 When an officer approaches the Imperial presence for the pur- 
 pose of conferring with the emperor or performing the kowtow, 
 which in China is the usual act of obeisance, etiquette prescribes 
 
 AN OFFICER.
 
 A SCHOLASTIC OLIGARCHY. 
 
 295 
 
 that the sleeves of this tunic should be stretched over the hands, 
 which action of course renders him helpless. This custom was 
 originally adopted to preclude any attempt on the life of the 
 emperor by those whose duties call them into his presence. A 
 similar one prevails in the Court of Persia. 
 
 The army is made up of the lowest class in the empire, and 
 used to be uniformed so as to frighten the beholder. Govern- 
 ment residences are provided for all Chinese officials. These 
 buildings are called yamuns and sometimes are extensive, cover- 
 
 A CULPRIT IN A CANGUE FED BY HIS WIFE. 
 
 ing acres. From the roofs of the halls in many of these official 
 dwellings richly gilded boards are hung on which are set forth 
 moral maxims from Confucius and other of the great writers; 
 some of these illuminated mottoes being the gifts of the emperor to 
 former officers distinguished for faithful service. To these 
 yamuns are attached public office:*, and to those occupied by dis- 
 trict rulers, chief justices, etc., large prisons are attached. 
 
 County rulers, prefects, and chief justices are the officials 
 specially appointed to preside in the courts of law; and whether 
 it be of civil or criminal character, a judge is assisted by deputies 
 or a deputy. To explain fully how justice, so-called, is admin-
 
 THE STORY OF GOVKKNMKNT. 
 
 istered in China, it is necessary to state that the accused person is 
 first brought before the gentry or elders of his village or county. 
 
 These punish him, if the crime 1>e of a criminal nature, either by 
 imprisonment or by exposing him for some time in what is called 
 a cangue at the corner of one of the most frequented thorough- 
 fares, or right near the place where the crime was committed; or 
 by ha /ing him whipped through the streets with a crier reciting 
 his crime. 
 
 One form of the cangue is a box, through the top of which the 
 head protrudes, and through the sides of which both hands, with a 
 chain connecting them, are thrust. The illustration represents a 
 loving Chinese wife feeding her cangued, or canned, husband, 
 who has committed some slight offence against the peace and 
 dignity of the emperor possibly, by fighting near the temple. 
 A commoner form of the cangue is just the wooden collar alone of 
 a proportion to the man as in the illustration. 
 
 Should a case, however, appear of importance, the prisoner, 
 with the depositions and the comments on his case, is forwarded 
 for the mandarin or ruler of the Poo to which the village belongs. 
 If the mandarin finds the case within his jurisdiction, he pun- 
 ishes the prisoner; if not, he sends him up to a still higher official, 
 the county ruler, who might send up the case to the prefect of 
 his department, who in turn might send it up to the provincial 
 capital, where the chief justice, who only tries capital cases, has 
 his residence. 
 
 The chief justice will then submit his decision to the governop- 
 general and, before a sentence of the chief justice can be carried 
 into effect, it would be necessary that the criminal in the pres- 
 ence of the governor-general should make an acknowledgment of 
 liis guilt. If the prisoner were convicted of treason, piracy, or 
 highway robbery, the governor-general could order his execution at 
 once. But if he were guilty of parricide, matricide, or fratricide, 
 the governor-general must bring the case to the notice of the Ki:ig 
 Poo, or Board of Punishments, at Pekin; the president of which 
 would submit it in turn to the cabinet, who, after brooding 
 over it, would lay it before the emperor, who, it is said, carefully 
 examines the depositions on all such cases before confirming the 
 sentence.
 
 A SCHOLASTIC OLIGARCHY. 297 
 
 A curious sort of lottery adds a certain spice to the life of con- 
 victed criminals, for at the close of each year the governor-general 
 forwards to Pekin a register of the names of those condemned to 
 death. The emperor, after inspecting each register, with his 
 vermilion pencil makes a mark against three or four names on 
 each page. The registers are then returned to the provincial 
 governor and the law takes its course against the marked men. 
 
 Those, however, whose names have been passed over do not obtain 
 a free pardon ; but the second and third year go up with names 
 of fresh offenders to be passed upon by the emperor. Should they 
 
 EXECUTING A PARKICIDE. 
 
 escape the mark of the vermilion pencil on the third occasion, 
 their death sentence is then commuted to transportation for life. 
 
 The mode of trials in China is startling to all who live in lands 
 where the system of giving a prisoner every opportunity to defend 
 and explain himself prevails ; for trials in Chinese courts of 
 law are conducted by torture. But then we who pride ourselves 
 on our advance in civilization must remember that only two hun- 
 dred years ago our ancestors were torturing, not only political 
 prisoners, but also women and young girls, to obtain confessions 
 of their practice of witchcraft. Young girls practise just as much 
 witchcraft to-day, but they are not the ones who are tortured on 
 account of it. 
 
 Chinese courts are open to the general public, but their cruel- 
 ties keep away all visitors except those personally interested in 
 the case. A calendar of cases to be tried, with the prisoners' 
 names subjoined, used to be affixed to the outer gates of the
 
 298 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 yamun, but this custom has lapsed into disuse and the list is now 
 placed on a pillar in one of the inner courts, where it has no 
 chance of attracting public attention. 
 
 The judge sits behind a large table covered with a red cloth, 
 and the prisoner is made to kneel in front as a mark of respect to 
 the court, by whom he is accounted guilty until proved innocent. 
 Secretary and turnkeys stand on each side, no one sitting but the 
 judge. The charge is read aloud and the prisoner called upon 
 to plead either guilty or "not guilty." As the prisoner rarely 
 pleads guilty, trials are very numerous. 
 
 The prisoner is asked a great many leading questions, and 
 should his answers be evasive, torture is at once applied to him as 
 a means of extracting truth. The commonest form of this torture 
 is a beating over his neck and shoulders with a double cane 
 in the hands of the state turnkey. Should he continue to give 
 evasive answers, he is likely to be beaten about the jaws with 
 two thick pieces of leather, shaped not unlike the sole of a 
 slipper. 
 
 Sometimes this latter instrument is applied with such force as 
 to loosen his teeth and cause his mouth to swell to such a degree 
 that for days he is unable to speak or masticate. If he still main- 
 tains his innocence, he is beaten over the ankles with pieces of 
 hard wood, and sometimes as a result of this the ankle bones are 
 broken. If he still persists in refusing to plead guilty, a severer 
 torture is applied. The present writer saw the following pun- 
 ishment administered in Canton in 1873. 
 
 A large trestle was placed perpendicularly, and the prisoner in 
 a kneeling posture was made to lean against it. His arms were 
 then pushed backward and stretched into the upper legs of the 
 trestle from the ends of which they were suspended by cords 
 fastened around the thumbs of each hand. The legs were then 
 pushed backwards and drawn, his knees resting on the ground, 
 toward the upper legs of the trestle by cords around the large toe 
 of each foot. 
 
 "When he had thus been bound, the questions were again put 
 to him, and his answers being unsatisfactory he was whipped 
 up and down his thighs by a split bamboo cane till the blood 
 ran down and the man fainted. Whereupon he was untied,
 
 300 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 thrown like a log of wood into a large flat basket, and carried by 
 two men from the Court of Justice into the prison attached to it. 
 As soon as his skin healed over sufficiently to be flayed again, 
 the judicial examination would continue. 
 
 Justice in China may be rightly called a "Serial Story of 
 Torture," and there are other forms of judicial investigation more 
 frightful than these described, which must be left to the imagina- 
 tion of the reader, for the pen refuses to paint them. But 
 are there no witnesses ? Yes, but as they are also in some cases 
 subjected to torture it is a task of some difficulty to distinguish 
 which of the unfortunate men kneeling before the judgment seat 
 is the prisoner, and which the witness ; for anyone suspected of 
 having a knowledge of another's guilt, and manifesting any un- 
 willingness to give evidence, would be likely to receive a pre- 
 liminary beating by way of encouragement. 
 
 The process in civil cases is somewhat different. If a dispute 
 arises between two persons with regard to houses or lands, at first, 
 as a rule, they have recourse to arbitration, the arbitrators being 
 generally the principal elders of the street or neighborhood. But 
 if either party is dissatisfied with their decision, the matter is 
 taken into the law court and goes before the county ruler. 
 
 But the person thus appealing has to incur great expense in 
 bribing the understrappers about the yarnuns to bring his petition 
 to the eyes of the judge, for in China bribery is the only avenue 
 to success in anything. By liberally paying these underlings he 
 is allowed to stand at the folding doors of one of the inner courts, 
 and when the ruler passes he falls upon his knees in front of the 
 sedan chair of the magistrate who calls upon one of his chair 
 bearers to hand him the suppliant's petition and, having read it, 
 appoints a day for the case. In these civil cases, also, it is not 
 uncommon for the judge to inflict torture. 
 
 If of great importance, the case would be appealed to higher 
 tribunals, but riot as in criminal cases to the provincial chief jus- 
 tice, but to the provincial treasurer, and from his court an appeal 
 lies to that of the governor or governor-general of the province. 
 But the decision of this viceroy is not final, for the next appeal 
 lies to the governor-general of the adjoining province, and from 
 Jam to the emperor through the Cabinet.
 
 A SCHOLASTIC OLIGARCHY. 
 
 801 
 
 Formerly civil suite were appealed from the highest tribunal 
 of their province to the emperor in person, but now another 
 wall of protection to the sovereign against the annoyance of too 
 much litigation has been built up by making the governor of 
 the adjoining province an intermediate tribunal. 
 
 CRUSHING A REBEL. 
 
 Another peculiarity of Chinese government is that registers are 
 kept in which are recorded the merits and demerits of the various 
 civil and military officials. This custom, which is of great 
 antiquity, was also practised by other nations. The records of 
 the Persians and the Greeks contain frequent allusions to it. 
 Although Chinese officials are, perhaps, as a class, the most cor-
 
 302 
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 rapt state servants in the world, there are exceptional men of 
 high integrity who are held in great esteem by the people. 
 
 When Ache-Ong was governor over the province of Kwang- 
 Tung, at his departure from Canton the citizens gave him a 
 most impressive ovation. An imposing procession which took 
 twenty minutes to pass a given point escorted him to the place of 
 embarkation, carrying silk umbrellas and three hundred painted 
 boards of praise which had been presented to him by the people. 
 The way was spanned at frequent intervals by arches, and on hang- 
 ing banners were painted or 
 embroidered in large letters 
 such titles as " Friend of the 
 People," "Bright Star of 
 the Province," " Benefactor 
 of the Age." 
 
 Deputations of different 
 trade-guilds awaited his ar- 
 rival at various temples, 
 where he alighted from his 
 sedan chair to exchange fare- 
 well compliments and par- 
 take of refreshments. But it was not the formal arrangements 
 that spoke of his popularity so much as the enthusiasm of the 
 people; for the silence generally kept, when a Chinese ruler 
 passes, was continuously broken by hearty exclamations of " When 
 will your excellency come back to us?" and at 'many points the 
 crowd was so great as to interrupt the line of march, and almost 
 upset his chair of state. 
 
 Though the penal code of China is so extremely severe, 
 especially in cases attacking the safety and stability of the throne 
 or the peace of the empire, it has some very humane traits. 
 Thus, a judge may grant a free pardon to an only son who has 
 been sentenced to transportation. This pardon is, of course, 
 granted for the sake of the parents, and shows how the religion 
 of China interfuses with its laws. 
 
 Or, for another instance, when three brothers, the only sons of 
 their parents, have committed a crime deserving of decapitation 
 or transportation, the two youngest would be punished, and the 
 
 A PUBLIC WHIPPING.
 
 304 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 first born pardoned. Or, if a father be transported, the law per- 
 mits his son to accompany him into exile, and the wives of 
 convicts are allowed to sojourn with their husbands in penal 
 settlements. 
 
 Imperial clemency also extends to all offenders who are crip- 
 pled; nor does the law allow convicts to be sent into banishment 
 during the first month of the year, which is regarded as a month 
 of rest and indulgence ; nor during the sixth month, as the heat 
 is supposed to render travelling very uncomfortable. 
 
 Reference to the religion of China having been made, perhaps 
 a little information concerning it would not be out of place. 
 According to their fable of creation, in the beginning there came 
 out of a vast egg a Being, who has always been known in Chinese 
 annals as Poon-Koo-Wong. Of the upper part of his cast-off 
 shell he formed the hollow heavens; of the lower, the convex 
 earth. To dispel the darkness, with a wave of his right hand he 
 made the sun, and with his left, the moon, and, of course, the 
 stars also. 
 
 Then he called into existence the five elements : earth, 
 water, fire, metal, and wood; and then in order to people the 
 world, Poon-Koo-Wong caused a cloud of vapor to rise from 
 a piece of gold, and a similar cloud from a piece of wood. 
 Breathing on the gold vapor he made the male principle; and on 
 the wood vapor, the female. From the union of these two human- 
 shaped clouds, or spirits, sprang a son and daughter Ying-Yee 
 and Cha-No-We whose descendants over-spread the whole 
 country. 
 
 In honor of Poon-Koo-Wong there are many temples through- 
 out China. The idol of this hero of antiquity is an almost naked 
 figure made of wood or clay, wearing an apron of leaves. This 
 was probably their original religion, for their present one is a 
 mysterious mixture of several creeds. At one time they appeared 
 to have worshipped a supreme being with attributes of -omni- 
 science, omnipotence, and immutability, whom they speak of as 
 Shang-Te. They appear to have some ideas of a Judgment Day, 
 and a picture of their method of dividing the sheep from the goats 
 after death may amuse the feader. 
 
 But this primitive monotheism has become associated with the
 
 THE CHINESE JUDGMENT DAY
 
 306 THE STOKY OK GOVERNMENT. 
 
 worship of departed ancestors and of spirits supposed to preside 
 over the various operations of nature ; and with this combination 
 that still holds its place as a national religion, the name of their 
 great philosopher, Confucius, is associated. 
 
 Dark as the despotism of Chinese government may seem at a 
 first casual glance (which is generally careless unless the eye be 
 naturally full of sympathy), some stars of promise light up its 
 present, and tempt believers in man to expect for the vast yellow 
 race an evolution as rich and fair to look upon as is their chosen 
 imperial or national color, charming one's eye so often with its 
 infinite varieties which no custom stales. 
 
 For nowhere in this gold- adoring world is wealth less courted, 
 and caressed, and cringed to. In China power and honor spring 
 from learning. Hence, mere wealth must be always vulgar, and, 
 if undistinguished by any other qualities, the mere possessor of 
 riches must rank as inferior to the mandarin, who, by his knowl- 
 edge, can rise to the highest offices of the state, next to the 
 emperor himself; and in many cases, the learned man can finally 
 achieve a wealth also to which "Money-bags," who has made his 
 fortune by buying and selling, huckstering and cheating it may 
 be, can never aspire. The unlearned rich man is not held in 
 respect; he is valued infinitely less than the poorest scholar who 
 has taken a degree at the great competitive examinations. 
 
 There is no hereditary nobility in the empire, unless the 
 descendants of the Imperial family can be considered such, though 
 these do not constitute the real aristocracy of the country, which 
 is official and not hereditary. 
 
 Rank is graded by literary examinations. Every office except 
 that of the emperor, is determined by these, which are accordingly 
 of extreme interest, especially since we in this country have lately 
 adopted a similar method of appointing the minor officers of state, 
 and have thus been imitating the civil service system of the 
 Chinese, with all its good and bad points. 
 
 To obtain the first degree three examinations must be under- 
 gone ; the preliminary one taking place in the chief town of the 
 district where the candidate is native. There are always great 
 numbers of candidates, and the examinations are severe. In 1832, 
 out of 4,000 who competed in the two districts around Canton,
 
 A SCHOLASTIC OLIGARCHY. 
 
 307 
 
 only twenty-seven were successful. Indeed, for fifteen to be suc- 
 cessful out of five hundred is reckoned rather remarkable. 
 
 The next examination is held in the departmental city, and the 
 number of candidates who present themselves are of course much 
 
 A GREAT SCHOLAR. 
 
 fewer. At the first examination the roads leading to the district 
 towns are crowded with candidates on foot, on horseback, in carts, 
 or in palanquins. After this departmental examination another 
 sifting occurs. Those who have passed have their names placarded 
 as having gained "a name in the department," just as at the pre- 
 vious examination they had obtained "a name in the village." 
 The next examination is severer still, being held under the
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 supervision of an imperial examiner, who visits every department 
 twice in three years. The "bachelor degree," if one may use 
 this term, is gained by this, and is only given to a certain num- 
 ber of the successful candidates in proportion to the population of 
 the respective districts. Most men do not think of going beyond 
 this degree, unless they intend to seek official employment. The 
 possession of it confers many privileges ; amongst others exemp- 
 tion from corporal punishment. 
 
 The next examination occurs every three years at the provincial 
 capital in September, and is sometimes attended by as many as 
 ten thousand bachelors, anxious to compete for the degree of 
 licentiate. It is conducted by two examiners from Pekin. At 
 Nankin, on one occasion, twenty thousand men competed, and the 
 degree of licentiate was awarded to less than two hundred. 
 
 Out of seventy-three candidates, who on one occasion obtained 
 this degree at Canton, five were under twenty-five years, eight 
 between twenty and twenty-five, fifteen between twenty-five and 
 thirty, eighteen between thirty and thirty-five, nine between 
 thirty-five and forty, twelve bstween forty and forty-five, three 
 between forty-five and fifty, while three were over fifty. 
 
 Hence it appears that few attain this degree till well advanced 
 in life. However, all these are not fresh candidates; many are 
 unsuccessful and, until rendered hopeless by being " plucked " 
 year after year, will regularly, as the examinations come round, 
 make attempts to obtain the coveted distinction. 
 
 On an average from twelve hundred to seventeen hundred 
 may annually obtain the degree in all the eighteen provinces. 
 At these examinations each student is placed for several suc- 
 cessive days in a little cell, so uncomfortable that it does not 
 admit of the occupant lying down at full length. Every candi- 
 date must have a cell to himself, and the number of competitors 
 being so great, regard has to be had to economy of space, 
 especially as all Chinese cities are very crowded. 
 
 The third, or examination for the doctor's degree, is held at 
 Pekin, and thither all the competing licentiates must go. These 
 seldom exceed from two hundred to three hundred. The highest 
 degree is that of "Han-lin." It is also held at Pekin, and the 
 few who attain it become members of the Han-lin College, and
 
 A SCHOLASTIC OLIGARCHY. 
 
 309 
 
 receive fixed salaries. The licentiates are on the high road for 
 preferment as vacancies occur; the doctors are ensured an imme- 
 diate and important office, while from the select Han-lin College 
 are chosen the 
 emperor's minis- 
 ters. 
 
 The greatest 
 care is taken that 
 these examina- 
 tions shall be 
 fairly conducted. 
 The building in 
 which they are 
 held is specially 
 constructed for 
 the purpose, with 
 double walls, be- 
 tween which sen- 
 tries are continu- 
 ally pacing. The 
 gates are strictly 
 watched, and 
 when the candi. 
 dates enter the 
 examination hall 
 they are searched 
 for books or 
 scraps of paper 
 that might assist 
 them in writing 
 their essays, and the most scrupulous precautions are taken to 
 prevent communications between the candidates. 
 
 Their food they take with them, and the government provides 
 a pitcher of water for each. Three sets of themes are given, each 
 occupying two days and a night. Until that time has expired no 
 one is allowed to leave his examination cell. 
 
 When the essays are written, they are first scrutinized as to 
 their conformity with the regulations, for they must not exceed 
 
 A SCHOOLMASTER OF PEKIN.
 
 310 THE STOEY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 seven hundred characters, nor must there be any character written 
 over the ruled red lines of the examination paper which all have 
 to use ; nor is erasure or correction of any kind allowed. Nor, 
 although the theme might be the same, can anyone repeat with 
 improvements an essay of a former examination. 
 
 Any obvious fault in composition observed by the officers who 
 superintend this department would prevent the essay from being 
 placed in the hands of the higher examiners. These latter then 
 select the best essays, to the number of two or three hundred, and 
 subject them to the judgment of the two chief examiners, who 
 finally decide which are best, and arrange them in the order of 
 merit. In granting offices the emperor follows the order of 
 names. In addition to these precautions equal care is taken that 
 the examiners shall not abuse the confidence reposed in them by 
 showing favoritism, or having any chance to gratify malice against 
 any candidate. 
 
 The examiners are brought from a distance, and surrounded by 
 troops, as much to keep them from being tampered with, as to do 
 them honor in the eyes of the populace. They are not allowed to 
 see the actual examination papers, but only copies made by official 
 transcribers, until they have passed a paper as satisfactory, when 
 the original is brought to them to compare with the copy, and 
 then, if all be right, the candidate's name is seen which up to this 
 point is unknown, having been pasted between two sheets of 
 paper. 
 
 Yet when such great things are staked upon these trials of 
 intellect, it can be readily believed that the ingenuity of the 
 Chinese literati manages sometimes to elude the most lynx-eyed 
 examiners. Most amusing are some of the ways in which this is 
 attempted. 
 
 The American undergraduate who takes into the examination 
 hall a series of notes on his shirt-cuffs, and half a dozen problems 
 of Euclid on his capacious palms, is a bungler compared with his 
 Chinese brother in academical iniquity. The trick of employing 
 a learned substitute himself a graduate to enter under the 
 name of a candidate, perform the exercises and, on leaving the 
 building, substitute his essays for those of the real candidate, is 
 a well-worn device in China.
 
 A SCHOLASTIC OLIGARCHY. 311 
 
 Now and then it happens that a friend in the building learns 
 the themes of the expected essays, writes them in tiny characters 
 on slips of paper, and drops them enclosed in wax into the water 
 supplied to the candidate whom he wishes to favor. But the 
 most daring plan which the reminiscences of the Chinese Dons 
 can recall was that of a candidate who engaged a friend to tunnel 
 under the walls of the examination hall, and thus convey to him 
 through the floor of his cell the documents and other information 
 needed. 
 
 The ancestral worship of China, to which allusion has been 
 made, is carried in certain practical ways to an extreme frightful 
 to contemplate. A parent has absolute control over the lives of 
 his children. If he kills one intentionally, he is subject only 
 to a year's imprisonment, and the chastisement of the bamboo; 
 if the child struck him previously, there is no punishment 
 whatever. 
 
 As among the Hebrews, the penalty of striking or cursing 
 parents is death, and so tenacious of order are the Chinese, that 
 for one person to strike another with hand or foot is accounted 
 not only a private but a public offence. Hence the common 
 spectacle of two Chinese quarrelling with endless gesticulations, 
 but without coming to blows, the surrounding crowd also taking 
 care to see that the quarrel does not lead the disputants to close 
 quarters. This instinct has now become hereditary with the 
 Chinese, for even in the foreign countries to which they have 
 emigrated they carry this wholesome habit of allowing the tongue 
 rather than the fist to act as their safety-valve. 
 
 Some of their habits of life and modes of thought are closely 
 interwoven with their governmental system, and are full of inter- 
 est. A Chinese debtor, for instance, is allowed a reasonable time, 
 fixed by law, to discharge his obligations ; but if, after the expira- 
 tion of these days of grace, he fails to pay, he is liable to the 
 punishment of the bamboo stick. A creditor sometimes quarters 
 himself with his family upon a debtor, and though this is not 
 recognized by the law, no one interferes, provided it be done with- 
 out tumult or violence. 
 
 Death is looked upon by a Chinaman with the utmost uncon- 
 cern, and suicide is adopted as a means of freeing himself from the
 
 312 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 most trifling worry. Yet death is rarely mentioned directly in 
 their ordinary conversation, but is alluded to in a round-about 
 fashion. Ancestors are worshipped, and in every rich man's 
 house is a chamber dedicated to this filial duty. Here are pre- 
 served tablets inscribed with the names of the deceased, and at 
 stated seasons, and according to forms prescribed in that huge 
 etiquette code of China the "Book of Rites" prostrations 
 and ceremonies are performed before them. 
 
 When a person dies it is said that "he has made his salutation 
 to the age," or has "ascended to the sky." "To be happy on 
 earth," they say, "one must be born in Soo-chow, live in Canton, 
 and die in Lianchan; " Soo-chow being famous for pretty women, 
 Canton for luxury, and Lianchan for furnishing excellent wood, 
 for that last important article which a Chinese sets so much store 
 by his coffin. 
 
 The Chinese idea of beauty, or at least of the figure that suits a 
 person of fashion, is rather peculiar. A woman should, for 
 instance, be extremely slender in appearance, while a man should 
 be corpulent, or what we understand as "aldermanic." 
 
 Both men and women of rank, or at all above the laboring 
 class, wear their finger-nails long, as a sign that they are not com- 
 pelled to stoop to manual labor ; and to such an extent are these 
 nails allowed to grow, that cases of ivory, silver, and even of gold, 
 ornamented with precious gems, are used to preserve them from 
 being accidentally broken. Even servants now and then attempt 
 this bit of foppery and, to preserve them from being broken, splice 
 them onto thin slips of bamboo. 
 
 The small feet of the Chinese women are caused by the curi- 
 ous inverted ideas of beauty which Fashion in all nations some- 
 times succeeds in inspiring and maintaining. In China, this 
 monstrosity must have prevailed for a thousand years, because 
 the Tartar women do not favor it, and have never adopted it. 
 Hence the argument that it antedates the Tartar invasion. 
 
 It is produced in early childhood by cramping the feet arti- 
 ficially by means of bandages ; and though it renders those thus 
 mutilated incapable of walking, except by holding on to walls, or 
 by very skilfully tottering along, it is regarded as exceedingly 
 "genteel," probably from the idea of its being associated,
 
 A SCHOLASTIC OLIGARCHY. 
 
 818 
 
 like the corresponding case of long nails, with exemption from 
 labor. 
 
 The Chinese poets rave of such deformed feet as "golden 
 lilies," and describe the rocking of the women in attempting to 
 walk as the "waving of a willow." The muscles of the leg from 
 not being in use dwindle away, so that the space from the ankle 
 to the knee is not so thick as the wrist. Women who have not 
 this deformity of the feet will sometimes hobble along the street 
 
 ON A FASHIONABLE FOOTING. 
 
 in a. manner intended to deceive the observers into believing that 
 the fashionable foot is theirs. 
 
 Ridiculous as this custom is, the student of strange methods 
 for "improving" the person gets habituated to others equally 
 strange : and we who have seen, in the course of our studies of 
 mankind, people flattening their foreheads, tattooing their persons, 
 cutting off their fingers, filing their teeth or dyeing them black, 
 painting their bodies, slitting their ears, compressing the waist, 
 putting stones, bones, or metal through the lips, cheeks, or ears, 
 or in a dozen other ways interfering with nature, have only a 
 gentle compassion instead of profound contempt for such exhibits
 
 314 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 of feminine vanity on the part of Chinese ladies, as depicted in 
 our illustration of a belle resting her fashionable understanding 
 on a table. 
 
 Never was there a more elaborate code of etiquette than that of 
 China. It is not alone a court etiquette, but one regulated by the 
 State in the elaborate "Book of Rites," preserved through ages; 
 an etiquette which is never altered by fashion for fashion never 
 changes and which controls the every-day action of all the 
 Chinese from the emperor to the coolie. Their prescribed cere- 
 monial usages are three thousand in number. The most abject 
 method of showing respect to a superior is by performing the 
 Kow-tow, and is that by which a vassal signifies his obedience 
 to his superior. 
 
 When an audience is about to be obtained of the emperor, this 
 prostration is previously made before a yellow screen, and though 
 it has been performed by the ambassadors of the Dutch a nation 
 which in the East has submitted to any indignity which promised 
 to result in profit it has been always refused by the English 
 and Russian ambassadors, and of late years has not been expected 
 from the representatives of any nation except such as owe vassal- 
 age to China. 
 
 There are various grades of the Kow-tow. For instance, standing 
 and bending the head is less submissive than kneeling on one or 
 both knees, and putting the hands and forehead to the ground. 
 Doing this once is not so humble an act of acknowledgment of 
 inferiority as doing it three, six, or nine times. Abject as it is, 
 such is the innate filial obedience in China, that the emperor will 
 perform it before his mother. 
 
 Chinese ladies are taught to paint on silk, to embroider, and to 
 acquire some skill in music; and though cases of learned ladies 
 are not unknown, yet they are not as a rule studiously inclined. 
 The better class of them are modest. To such an extent is this 
 carried that it is accounted indecorous in a lady to show her 
 hands, and accordingly they are covered with long sleeves. 
 When they have been shown pictures of the very dcollet dress 
 worn by fashionable European ladies, they very naturally ex- 
 press themselves much shocked at such immodest and indecent 
 costumes.
 
 315
 
 316 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Polygamy is not, as frequently described in books, sanctioned 
 by the law. Every man is limited to one wife, but "left-handed" 
 marriage is permitted to any extent that a man may feel justifiable 
 according to his purse. But the first wife is regarded as the 
 social head of the household, and the bickerings which naturally 
 follow the practice of polygamy render it less common than it 
 would otherwise be. 
 
 If the wife has no family, then the taking of a handmaid is con- 
 sidered as natural the Chinese looking upon the want of a son 
 as a terrible affliction. These handmaids are generally bought for 
 a sum of money from the lowest ranks of the population, and 
 really enter the family as domestic slaves. 
 
 No man is allowed to marry any woman with the same surname 
 as himself, all people of the same surname being considered kin, 
 and no government official can marry an actress. Not only is 
 such a marriage, if contracted, void, but both parties are punish- 
 able with sixty blows; though, if the official hold the degree 
 of licentiate, this punishment must be remitted for one of cor- 
 responding severity, into which corporal punishment does not 
 enter. Finally, though the legal wife is small-footed, the brevet 
 ones are not. 
 
 A man may divorce his wife for seven different reasons: 1. 
 Barrenness, though this is generally never taken as an excuse, as 
 he has his remedy in legal concubinage. 2. Adultery. 3. Dis- 
 obedience to the husband's parents; the mother-in-law being more 
 kindly regarded in China than in Europe. 4. Talkativeness. 
 5. Thieving. 6. Ill-temper. 7. Inveterate infirmities. 
 
 Any of these, however, may be set aside by three circum- 
 stances: the wife having mourned for her husband's parents; the 
 family having acquired wealth since the marriage ; and the wife 
 being without parents to receive her back. It is in all cases dis- 
 reputable, and in some (as those of a particular rank) illegal, for 
 a widow to marry again. 
 
 Whenever a widow is herself unwilling, the law protects her; 
 and should she act by the compulsion of parents or other rela- 
 tions, these are severely punishable. Widows, indeed, have a 
 very powerful dissuasive from second wedlock, in being absolute 
 mistresses of themselves and children so long as they remain
 
 A SCHOLASTIC OLIGARCHY. 317 
 
 widows. Marriage is predestined, the Chinese believe, and early 
 marriages are greatly encouraged. " There are three great acts of 
 disobedience to parents, and to die without progeny is the chief \" 
 is a Chinese maxim. 
 
 The amusing contrariety of Chinese customs as compared with 
 ours has been thus epitomized by a traveller : 
 
 On inquiring of the boatman which way Macao lay, I was answered, 
 "in the west-north"; the wind, as 1 was informed, being east-south. 
 " We do not say so in Europe," thought I ; but imagine my surprise 
 when, in explaining the compass, the boatman added that " the needle 
 pointed to the south ! " 
 
 Desirous to change the subject, I remarked that I supposed he was 
 going to some high festival, or merrymaking, as his dress was com- 
 pletely white. He told me, with a look of much dejection, that his 
 only brother had died the week before, and that he was in the deepest 
 mourning for him. 
 
 On my landing, the first object that attracted my attention was a 
 military mandarin, who wore an embroidered petticoat, with a string of 
 beads round his neck, and who besides carried a fan ; and it was with 
 some dismay that I observed him mount on the right side of his horse. 
 Another strange sight was a wagon impelled partly by a sail. I was 
 surrounded by natives, all of whom had the hair shaven from the fore 
 part of the head, while some of them permitted it to grow on their faces. 
 
 On my way to the house prepared for my reception, I saw two 
 Chinese boys discussing with much earnestness who should be the pos- 
 sessor of an orange. They debated the point with a vast variety of 
 gesture, and, at length, without venturing to fight about it, sat down 
 and divided the orange equally bet-ween them,. At that moment my 
 attention was drawn to several old Chinese, some of whom had gray 
 beards, and nearly all of them huge goggling spectacles. 
 
 A few of them were chirruping and chuckling to singing birds, which 
 they carried in bamboo cages, or perched on a stick ; others were catch- 
 ing flies to feed the birds ; the remainder of the party seemed to be 
 delightedly employed in flying paper kites, while a group of boys were 
 gravely looking on, and regarding these innocent occupations of 'their 
 seniors with the most serious and gratified attention. . . . 
 
 Resolute in my determination to persevere, the next morning found 
 me provided with a Chinese master, who happily understood English. 
 I was fully prepared to be told that I was about to study a language 
 without an alphabet, but was somewhat astonished, on his opening the
 
 318 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Chinese volume, to find him begin at what I had all my life previously 
 considered the end of a book. lie read the date of publication 
 " The fifth year, tenth month, twenty-third day." " We arrange our 
 dates differently," I observed ; and begged that he would speak of their 
 ceremonials. 
 
 He commenced by saying, " When you receive a distinguished guest, 
 do not fail to place him on your left hand, for that is the seat of 
 honor ; and be cautious not to uncover the head, as it would be an un- 
 becoming act of familiarity." Hardly prepared for this blow to my 
 established notions, I requested he would discourse of their philosophy. 
 
 He reopened the volume, and read with becoming gravity, " The 
 most learned men arc decidedly of opinion that the seat of the 
 human understanding is the stomach."* I seized the volume in despair, 
 and rushed from the apartment. 
 
 Speaking of stomachs, the Chinese gourmands seem to excel in 
 inventing extraordinary dishes. One of the most remarkable of 
 these consists of young crabs thrown into a vessel of vinegar some 
 time before dinner is served. The vinegar corrodes their delicate 
 shells, so that when the lid of the vessel is removed, the lively 
 young crabs scramble out and run all over the table until their 
 career is cut short by each guest snatching up what he can. 
 
 The Chinese population is said to be decreasing, though whether 
 this is owing to the terrible destruction of life caused by the 
 Taeping Rebellion, when, through massacre, and famine, and dis- 
 ease whole provinces were decimated, or to an exhaustion of 
 vitality in the race, the lack of anything like a regular census 
 renders all theories of purely personal value. Mr. Colborne 
 Baber, Chinese Secretary of the British Legation at Pekin, tells 
 a story which may, perhaps, explain this deficiency of statistics. 
 
 In very early times the city of Wa-ming-hsien was governed by 
 a prefect of more than usual discrimination and energy. Having 
 directed a census to be taken by two independent officials he was 
 not astonished to find that the two reports exhibited such an enor- 
 mous discrepancy that they had to be cancelled, and the deputies 
 reported to the governor for punishment. The prefect then 
 appointed two other officers to number the people. 
 
 This is a mistake for they place is ia the heart. It ij an oH maxim among good house- 
 wives that the way to keep a man's heart lies through his stomach, but this, like many a pro- 
 verb, is a libel on human nature.
 
 A SCHOLASTIC OLIGARCHY. 319 
 
 But they, taking warning by the fate of their predecessors, com- 
 pared notes, and in due time announced "Wa-ming-hsien to contain, 
 exactly 20,401 souls. However, being unable to agree whether 
 the odd figure referred to a male or a fomale, they, in their turn, 
 were reported to the governor for punishment. The prefect then 
 determined to take the census himself and set out for the city. 
 But, in the meantime, the timid citizens, alarmed at the perti- 
 nacity of the prefect, and apprehending that he was coming to 
 
 J'v 
 
 A KAT PEDDLER. 
 
 levy some oppressive tax, fled from the town and hid themselves 
 in the fields. 
 
 The astonished satrap, finding the place deserted, and fearing 
 to be "reported to the governor for punishment," hanged himself 
 in the gate, and when his body was discovered, there was found 
 firmly clenched in his grasp a paper containing the following 
 words : " Return of census of the city of Wa-ming-hsien, in the 
 department of Mu-yu-fu: men, none; women, none; children 
 under fourteen years of age, of both sexes, none grand total, 
 none." 
 
 In China now are three great religions, if they can be so called, 
 Confucianism, Taouism, and Buddhism. The first two are 
 indigenous; the last is an importation from India. Koon-foo-tse, 
 or, as his name has been latinized in the writings of the early 
 missionaries, Confucius, was born about 551 B. C., and is now
 
 320 TIIK STOUV OF GOVKIINMKNT. 
 
 accounted the great sage and teacher of China. He was the son 
 of a statesman, and chief minister in his native kingdom, one of 
 the many into Avhich China was then divided. 
 
 Despising the amusements and gaieties common to his age, he 
 devoted himself to study and reflection in moral and political 
 science; but, unlike the Greek philosopher Aristotle, he investi- 
 gated none of the branches of natural science, nor did he interfere 
 with the common superstitions. His doctrines, therefore, form a 
 code of moral and political philosophy rather than a religious 
 system, and h is followers are really philosophers more than reli- 
 gious sectarians. He endeavored to correct the corruptions which 
 had crept into the state, and to restore the maxims of the ancient 
 kings, who are celebrated in traditional history. 
 
 Unswayed by personal ambition, he promulgated his doctrines 
 .vith a singleness of purpose that, even in conservative China, 
 gained him respect and multitudes of followers; and after being 
 employed in high offices of state he retired in the company of his 
 chosen disciples to compile those collections of philosophical 
 maxims which have now become the sacred books of China. 
 
 Nor can it be denied that, though erroneous in some respects, 
 they deserve much of the honor which has been paid them. 
 "Treat others according to the treatment which thou wouldst 
 desire at their hands," and "guard thy secret thoughts" were 
 among his favorite maxims. P'ilial affection he taught, and even 
 enjoined it to such an extent, that he ordered that the slayer of a 
 father should ba put to death by the son; that "he should not live 
 under the same heaven," were the words in which he urged this 
 application of the lex talionis. 
 
 He was modest in his demeanor, though this virtue has not 
 descended with his doctrines to his modern disciples, who are self- 
 sufficient and overbearing to all who do not profess the state 
 religion of China, as Confucianism really is. 
 
 Confucius began early in life to labor as a public teacher and 
 gathered around him a large circle of disciples. He devoted 
 himself to reducing the traditions and reigning records of antique 
 Chinese wisdom, gathered by the emperors Yaou and Chun, into 
 a more perfect form, and before his death had compiled and edited 
 the five canonical books of the Chinese.
 
 322 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The first, the "Yih King," or the "Book of Changes," treats of 
 the beginning of things and of morals, and may be called a cos- 
 mological and ethical treatise. The second, "Choo King," was a 
 book of histories. The third, "Chee-King," was a book of poetry, 
 a collection of ballads, to which things Confucius attached great 
 value as means of moulding the national character. 
 
 The fourth, the "Lee-Ke," was a "Record of Rites," and is an 
 account of the national ceremonials and religious usages, a knowl- 
 edge of which is considered essential among the Chinese for the 
 maintenance of social order and the promotion of virtue. The 
 fifth, the "Chum-To-Ew," or Spring and Autumn, is a history by 
 Confucius of his time and of a few preceding reigns. The others 
 are compilations, though containing much original matter, but 
 the fifth is said to be the work of the sage himself. 
 
 The writings which rank next to these books in popular estima- 
 tion are the "Four Shoos," which consists mainly of records of his 
 early sayings gathered by his disciples, except the fourth which 
 contains the works of Mencius, a celebrated writer of the Con- 
 fucian school. 
 
 These books of Confucius have had a curious destiny, having 
 survived imperial jealousy; for in the third century Che-IIwang- 
 Te, who had established the supremacy of the Tsin Dynasty, 
 ordered the sacred books of Confucius to be destroyed because 
 they suggested unfavorable comparisons between his own and 
 former reigns. 
 
 This order was tremblingly obeyed, the first alone being 
 exempted from general destruction. As it was then customary 
 for the literati to memorize the writings pf the various philoso- 
 phers, this cruel emperor tried to perfect his infamous scheme by 
 putting four hundred Confucian pliilosophers to death. But 
 under succeeding sovereigns, these lost works of Confucius were 
 rescued from where they had been hidden by the philosophers or 
 restored by those who had been trained and had trained others to 
 keep them in memory. 
 
 "The kings," said Confucius on his death-bed, "will not 
 hearken to my doctrines ; I am no longer of use on earth, and it 
 is time for me to go." But to-day, while tenets of other national 
 philosophers have been superseded, those which came from the
 
 A SCHOLASTIC OLIGAItCHV. 323 
 
 lips of Confucius are admired and embraced by one third of the 
 great human family. 
 
 Throughout the empire his works are regarded as the standard 
 of moral and political wisdom. Only by a knowledge of them 
 can literary and political distinction be won; and filial piety 
 which has assumed the form of ancestral worship and which was 
 the pivotal point of the sj'stem of Confucius may be regarded as 
 the chief religion of the Chinese; for the doctrines of Taouism 
 and of Buddhism have but a very small percentage of followers in 
 comparison with those of Confucius. 
 
 The Chinese literature is certainly the most extensive and com- 
 prehensive in Asia. The printed catalogue of the emperor's 
 library is contained in 122 volumes, and it is said that a collec- 
 tion of the Chinese classics, with scholia and commentaries, com- 
 prises 180,000 volumes. In addition to the "classics," such as 
 the writings of Confucius and Laoutsze there are the codes of the 
 law of China, and a rich series of works on medicine, natural 
 history, agriculture, music, astronomy, etc., and numerous dic- 
 tionaries. 
 
 There are also various encyclopaedias and geographical works, 
 as well as a series of the national annals from the year B. c. 2698 
 to A. D. 1645, comprising 3,706 books. Poetry and the drama 
 are also cultivated, and they have now so far thrown off their 
 national pride and reserve as to have translated several of the best 
 English works on medicine, surgery, etc., into the Chinese lan- 
 guage. Book-sellers' shops are common in every town, and books 
 can be bought cheap. 
 
 All classes read; even the coolie, resting on his burden for a 
 minute or two, will pull out a book, it may be a romance or a 
 volume of popular songs, and commence reading. Such is the 
 respect for written or printed paper that any waste material of 
 that sort is burnt daily in front of the door, or collected by men 
 who go about from house to house in case any of it should be 
 profaned. 
 
 A few Chinese proverbs may show the character of the people 
 and their way of thinking better than any mere description: "A 
 wise man adapts himself to circumstances, as water shapes itself 
 to the vessel that contains it;" "Misfortunes issue out where
 
 324 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 disease enters in at the mouth;" "The error of a moment 
 may become the sorrow of a lifetime ; " " Disease may be cured, 
 but not destiny;" "A vacant mind is open to all suggestions, as 
 the hollow mountain returns all sounds;" "He who pursues the 
 stag regards not hares; " "If the roots be left the grass will grow 
 again " (this is the reason given for exterminating a traitor's 
 family); "The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor the 
 man perfected without trials ; " "A wise man forgets old 
 grudges;" "Riches come better after poverty than poverty after 
 riches;" "A bird can roost but on one branch;" "A horse can 
 drink no more than its fill from a river " (Enough is as good as a 
 feast); "When the port is dry the fishes will be seen" (When 
 the accounts are settled, the profits will appear); "Who swallows 
 quick can chew but little " (applied to learning) ; " You cannot 
 strip t\ro skins off of one cow;" "He who wishes to rise in the 
 world should veil his ambition with the forms of humility;" 
 "The gods cannot help a man who loses opportunities; " "Dig a 
 well before you are thirsty" (Be prepared against contingencies); 
 "The full stomach cannot comprehend the evil of hunger;" 
 " Eggs are close things, but the chicks come out at last " (Murder 
 will out); "To add feet to a snake " (Superfluity in a discourse 
 when the subject is altered) ; " Who aims at excellence will be 
 above mediocrity; who aims at mediocrity will fall short of it; " 
 "To win a cat and lose a cow" (consequences of litigation); "I 
 will not try my porcelain bowl against his earthen dish;" 
 " Though the life of man fall short of a hundred years, he gives 
 himself as much, anxiety as though he were to live a thousand."
 
 VIII. 
 
 
 Paternal 
 
 Socialist!^ 
 
 A SYSTEM of government that reduces material misery 
 to a minimum ; that makes sober habits of industry 
 characteristic of the people ; that converts chaos into 
 order and wreathes order with beauty, is surely 
 worthy of study, although it has perished from the face of the 
 earth and lives to-day only in the annals of the more forcible 
 civilization which is trying to build upon its ruins. 
 
 It would seem, too, especially worthy of attention at this time 
 in this country, because the unnecessary inequalities between man 
 and man, the vast and intricate problem that stretches between 
 the two extremes of tramp and millionnaire, the foolish waste of 
 energy and material which marks our present industrial state, are 
 pressing on the minds of all candid students and are forcing ;i 
 path into our politics with the tremendous, too often misdirected, 
 energy of those whose thinking is rather a rude passionate feel- 
 ing than an orderly outcome of ripe reason. 
 
 Time, the best, though slowest, of teachers, brings about many 
 changes in the meaning or value of words. Twenty years ago if 
 a man in this country called himself a Socialist, he would have 
 been looked upon with grave suspicion either as a crank or an. 
 
 325
 
 326 THE STOUY <)K GOVERNMENT. 
 
 enemy to society. To-day a m.m \vlio lias been professor of inter- 
 national law at one of our leading colleges permits himself to be 
 nominated on a Socialist ticket in New York, and actually receives 
 over thirteen thousand votes. Nor is this an exceptional fact. 
 In many State legislatures bills are being introduced which are 
 either openly or veiledly socialistic in their tendencies. 
 
 Socialism to many of us comes with the electric shock of a new 
 idea, and at first some are unable to decide whether the shock is a 
 pleasant one or the reverse. The question, of course, at once 
 arises what is it ? what does it mean ? And the answer is rather 
 difficult, because in modern days there are a great many varieties. 
 The fundamental ethics of it, however, are not new. They are 
 expressed or implied in every great religion, and especially are 
 they marked with strength in the teachings of the founder of 
 Christianity and in the early development of that belief. 
 
 Probably the purest expression of the ethical side of Socialism is 
 that implied by Christ in the parable of the vineyard. The master 
 paid those who came in to work at the eleventh hour just the same 
 as the workers who had borne the heat and burden of the day, and 
 rebuked those who grumbled at the apparent unfairness of this. 
 The surface argument is that the first had no cause to complain 
 because they received all they had bargained for, and the employer 
 had an inherent right to pay just as much as he wished to the 
 others who worked less. 
 
 But a comparative study of all Christ's attitudes towards the 
 economic conditions of his time is likely to draw a candid mind 
 to the conclusion that, under the superficial argument of the em- 
 ployer's inherent right to do as he pleased with his own, lies the 
 intended suggestion that those men who only had the opportunity 
 or ability to work one hour were paid the same by the just and 
 tender taskmaster on the broad ground that their human needs 
 were the same. 
 
 The modern phrasing of this doctrine is that society should 
 demand from each a measure of work in accordance with ability, 
 and should give to each a measure of comfort according to indi- 
 vidual need; or, in other words, the philosophic Socialist aims to 
 equalize men as much as possible materially, being cognizant, of 
 course, that vast moral and mental inequalities must continue to
 
 A CASTLE IN SPAIN.
 
 ol'S THK STOKY OF COVKHXMKNT. 
 
 prevail for ages; must always, indeed, persist within certain 
 decrees, else there \voiild he no difference of character, Imt one 
 vast dead-sea level of monotony. 
 
 Briefly stated, the chief moral argument of modern Socialism, 
 and perhaps the strongest plea that could he put forth in its favor, 
 is that, by doing away \vith the sordid pressure of material in- 
 equalities, a greater opportunity will be afforded for the develop- 
 ment of finei, more original individualities. 
 
 Men to-day in the mass are becoming too much like the 
 machines which they tend. Our civilization seems to be reduc- 
 ing itself to an absurd plav of mere materialistic forces, a:id to be 
 bringing forth, on an average, as its children, a mere concatena- 
 tion of echoes, not men. but sounding brasses and tinkling 
 symbols of men. 
 
 But some individuals are inclined to recoil, when brought face 
 to face with the ultimate economic proposition of Socialism, 
 namely, that every business necessary to the general welfare 
 should be managed by the people collectively: that is, that 
 every municipality should have its public bakeries, shoeshops, 
 etc., and supply its citizens with the necessaries of life at cost, 
 instead of allowing private citi/.ens to make fortunes at the 
 expense of the majority of workers by the accidents or the chica- 
 neries of trade. 
 
 Socialism, it is true, already operates as an active element in 
 the Government of the United States, the post-office being a 
 shining example of it on a national scale and the ownership by 
 some cities and towns of their water supplies, gas and electric- 
 light, being instances also of its advance into popular favor. 
 
 But while all sensible men who have ever given the matter 
 sufficient study agree as to the advisability of socializing the 
 larger businesses of the country such as railroads, telegraphs, tel- 
 ephones, expressage, mines of all kinds, lighting and water sup- 
 plies, and possibly meat, bread, and ordinary clothing, yet some 
 cautious thinkers are inclined to feel that Socialism might 
 become too much like a monstrous monotonous despotism, if it 
 were permitted to permeate all the avenues of human activity. 
 
 Still there would be a vast difference in a Socialism like that 
 of ancient Peru, which emanated from an authority above, forcing
 
 330 THE STORY <>l < i< >VKKNMKNT. 
 
 itself down on a people, and the Socialism that grows up from a 
 democratic community superseding the old fancy of government 
 as a power independent t' tlie. governed, and making it mean 
 a simplified administration of the business of the people con- 
 sidered as an organic whole. 
 
 Many small examples of democratic Socialism have existed, and 
 in the chapter on Switzerland its political aspects are fully presen- 
 ted. There are to-day certain communities in the United States 
 which are Socialistic in character, though religious in name ; but 
 there have been very few examples in the world of Socialism on 
 a national scale. The present Emperor of Germany is, indeed, 
 giving spread to a belief that he intends to socialize his empire as 
 much as possible, but it can hardly be called an example of national 
 Socialism, though it presents many of its features. 
 
 To find our best illustration, therefore, we are forced to look in 
 the early histor}'' of the new world, for when Pizarro, with a mere 
 handful of greedy adventurers, conceived the audacious project of 
 wresting the empire of Peru from the grasp of the Incas, he found 
 himself face to face with a system of government more strange to 
 the European mind of that epoch than any of the physical marvels 
 which the Europeans who followed Columbus had gazed on in 
 Mexico or Panama. 
 
 Pizarro, of whom we present a picture in one of his most famous 
 attitudes, was a wonderful man, although he could neither read 
 nor write. Nearly every schoolboy remembers how in his day of 
 apparent weakness and disaster, he drew a line in the earth with 
 his sword, saying, "On this side lies Panama with its poverty, on 
 that, Peru with its untold treasures. Those who will follow me, 
 step across that line," and a famous little band, whose names the 
 Spanish liistorian proudly records, crossed the line, after which 
 there was no hint of turning back. 
 
 The Government of Peru was an absolutism, but not in the sense 
 with which we apply that word to Russia or China, because under 
 the beneficent rule of the Peruvian kings the country from the 
 Andes to the ocean had been transformed into a garden, and the 
 government, apart from the necessary maintenance of the emperor 
 and the national religion, was essentially the business of the peo- 
 ple, wisely administered and with very little friction.
 
 PATERNAL SOCIALISM. 
 
 331 
 
 That a vast country in which the term, national wealth, really 
 meant national health a polity which had largely multiplied and 
 then fairly divided the sum of human happiness should have 
 succumbed so easily to so small a band as Pizarro led, might seem 
 to imply some inherent weakness in the socialistic scheme as a 
 basis for permanent government. 
 
 For two hundred men to seize such an empire what a miracle I 
 But Fate fought on the Spanish side. 
 
 PIZARRO DRAWING THE LINE. 
 
 Coming as they did partly on the horse, a new and monstrous 
 sight to Peruvian eyes, and clad in shining armor, and having 
 strange and terrible weapons full of thunder and lightning, the 
 Spanish invaders seemed unquestionably the divine children of 
 the Sun, fresh from Heaven, for whom popular superstition had 
 long looked forward. Then, too, Pizarro, imitating Cortez, seized 
 the Inca's person, and the Inca, being High-priest as well as 
 Emperor, his subjects hardly dared to attempt a rescue, lest his 
 sacred blood should be shed.
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The Spanish historians record with grave amazement that they 
 had discovered a miraculous land in which there was no such 
 thing as a poor or discontented man; in which everybody worked, 
 from the emperor downward, a reasonable length of time at tasks 
 fitted to their strength and their ability; in which the problem of 
 mere living, as it confronts us moderns in our so-called civilized 
 cities, had been satisfactorily settled; in which the average of 
 human happiness was large and increasing. The Spaniard found 
 Peru a comparative paradise of paternal Socialism; he made it 
 a hell of brutal competition. 
 
 This wonderful Socialistic Empire (which, partly because of 
 the superiority of the Spanish fire-arms to the Peruvian weapons, 
 and partly because the superstitious people readily believed that 
 their invaders, so fair of countenance, were direct children of the 
 Sun, fell such an easy prey to Spanish cupidity) was at this period 
 of its overthrow spreading its power in every direction, and some 
 of the neighboring nations which it was trying to absorb were of 
 a civilization almost equal in splendor, if not in some respects 
 superior; as for instance, the Chimuans, whose architecture, as 
 conjecturally restored from ruins by the modern scientific mind, 
 must have been something at once delicate and massive, and far in 
 advance of Peruvian art. The contrast between clashing systems 
 of civilization is sometimes clearly shown in their architecture, 
 and the two pictures, "A Castle in Spain" and "A Chimuan 
 Palace," with which this chapter opens, are excellently suggestive 
 examples of this fact. 
 
 The material realm of the Incas, when Pizarro seized it with 
 an audacity that has no parallel in history, was of vast extent and 
 singular shape. It fronted the Pacific Ocean from 2 north lati- 
 tude to about 37 south ; or, in other words, it consisted of the 
 western part of the modern republics of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, 
 and Chili, with an indeterminate stretch to the east where the 
 mountains and barbarous tribes made its expansion somewhat slow, 
 although that growth had been constant for three hundred years. 
 
 This comparatively narrow strip of land, rarely more than sixty 
 miles in width, 1 was a country apparently unfavorable to agri- 
 
 1 One of the native historians, Garcilasso, intimates that the empire at its widest place did 
 Hot exceed four hundred miles.
 
 A MAOfKV S1SPENSION IIIUUGK.
 
 334 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 culture or to easy intercommunication and comfortable living, for 
 along the sandy coast it rarely rained, and but scanty streams fed 
 the earth, and it was hemmed in all along by colossal mountains 
 IK mi three to four miles high whose solemn and forbidding 
 grandeur seemed to cast a sort of deterrent shadow over the 
 aspirations and attempted improvements of man. 
 
 The steeps of these sierras with their frowning giant faces of 
 naked porphyry and granite, the frightful precipices, furious 
 torrents, and gorges of impenetrable gloom that abound in these 
 regions, at times struck terror or at least dismay into the stout 
 hearts of the invading Europeans. But they found, as they 
 advanced, that the art of man had conquered the stubborn heart 
 of nature in a way that filled them with wonder; for Europe at 
 that time presented no equal spectacle or even hint of such superb 
 triumphs of mind over matter as the Government of Peru had 
 achieved for its people. 
 
 The naturally barren coast was fertilized by a system of canals 
 and underground aqueducts. Many of the most imposing moun- 
 tains were terraced up to their snowy plateaus with gardens in 
 which the fruits and vegetables of various zones were raised, and 
 amid these orchards ;md gardens at many points towns and ham- 
 lets were seen clinging to the mountain sides so high above the 
 average track of the clouds as to delude at first, when the dawn 
 disclosed them to the beauty-loving eyes of the Spaniard, with 
 the physical fancy that these villages were suspended in mid-air 
 and might vanish, like dreams, at the voice of the breeze of 
 morning. 
 
 Above these towns nestling so confidingly on the breasts 
 >f the giant mountains, were snowy plains that rose gradually 
 towards the peaks, and over these white deserts of the sky wan- 
 dered innumerable flocks of llamas, the Peruvian sheep, from 
 wluwu wool the government clothed the people. And across 
 chasms, from the like of which, when they traversed the empire's 
 borders, the Spaniards had shrunk back almost with horror as from 
 living pictures of the abyssc-s ,,f that hell with which their religion 
 threatened them, across ravines whose dark, dizzying depths 
 tempted such as gaze too long to plunge into annihilation, 
 across wide gorges where tumultuous torrents chanted mad litanies
 
 PATERNAL, SOCIALISM. 335 
 
 of liberty or seemed like the rude flashing laughters of the Titan 
 mountains, laughters at the pygmy, Man, who had dared 
 attempt to utilize their forces, across these divisions of unco- 
 operant and defiant nature the genius of the Peruvian had swung 
 suspension bridges, binding precipice to steep and hill to hill 
 with rope-roads made from the fibres of the maguey. 
 
 FKONT VIKW OF A MAGUEY BRIDGE 
 
 These ropes were twisted into cables the size of a man's body, 
 and fitted into holes in immense pillars of solid rock carved out 
 of the opposite faces of the cliffs. They were cross-pieced with 
 wood and other smaller ropes, and the sides were protected by a 
 sufficiently high railing. Of course, there was some elasticity to 
 bridges made of such material, and their oscillations under the pass- 
 age of troops were at first frightful and sea-sickish to the Spaniards. 
 
 But these bridges, in their size, frequency, and stability, 
 together with the great smooth stone roads traversing the moun-
 
 336 TMK STOKY OF <;OYKI:NMK\T. 
 
 tuiii passes and connecting the capital, Cu/.co, with the remotest 
 villages of the empire, never ceased to excite the admira- 
 tion of the conquerors. These roads have been suffered now to 
 fall from disrepair into decay, and mostly into disappearance. 
 But the fragmentary stretches that remain attest their pristine 
 massiveness, and the great traveller and philosopher, Humboldt, 
 always sparing in his praise, ranks them among the most useful 
 and stupendous works ever executed by man. 1 
 
 Let us glance at the chief capital of ancient Peru, the city of 
 Cuzco, 2 the heart of the empire in which centred all the roads 
 like the arms of the government. Peru was not the name of the 
 empire, but was given by the Spaniards in mistake. The natives 
 with pardonable pride called their country Tavantinsuyu, or the 
 Four Quarters of the World, and, as if in token of the truth 
 thereof, from the great city of Cuzco where hundreds of thousands 
 lived happily, with no want, no poverty, and but little disease, 
 rayed forth four great roads to the four points of the compass, and 
 the four provinces of the empire. 
 
 Cuzco, too, was divided into four quarters, and the various 
 races that gathered there lived each in the quarter nearest its own 
 province, and each by law wore the general costume of the 
 province, modified of course in some measure by individual taste, 
 but never so much as to hide the place or the rank to which they 
 belonged. 
 
 The capital was thus a miniature of the empire. Each of these 
 provinces was ruled by a viceroy, or royal deputy, and a council, 
 and these viceroys not only sent continual reports to the sovereign 
 or Inca residing in Cuzco of the condition of the people, the 
 weather, crops, etc., but a certain part of every }-ear they con- 
 vened in Cuzco to pay their respects to the Inca, and listen to his 
 plans for the improvement or extension of the empire, thus form- 
 ing a sort of Cabinet to the Crown. 
 
 The decimal system invented by the French and adopted by all 
 scientists was used by the Incas of Peru in their government with 
 remarkable results. Such things as the finding of an unknown 
 
 1 Le grand chemin fie 1'Inca 6tait tin des ouvrages les plus utiles et en meine temps des plus 
 gigantesques que les homines aient execute. Huml>oldt. 
 *It was situated about the middle of present Peru.
 
 PATERNAL SOCIALISM. 
 
 337 
 
 dead body, or a mysterious disappearance which we so often read 
 of in our newspapers was an impossibility in Peru, for every per- 
 son was numbered, not in the sense of having a tag, but in 
 the sense of that Scriptural passage which informs us that in the 
 eyes of a truly paternal deity every hair of our heads is numbered. 
 So in Peru, there was no one so insignificant as not to receive the 
 attention of the government. 
 
 The nation at large was divided into decades, or tens, and every 
 tenth man was an officer, or high servant of the rest, his duty 
 
 MODERN CUZCO. 
 
 being to see that they enjoyed all their rights, to solicit aid for 
 them from the government when necessary, and to bring offenders 
 to justice. Justice, so often a bitter jest with us, was a reality 
 in Peru, for in case of neglect the judge had to pay the penalty of 
 the guilty, and he had only five days to decide cases. 
 
 These decades were grouped in fives, tens, and hundreds, up to 
 ten thousand, each head of a decade being under the supervision 
 of a man representing five decades sometimes, but generally ten; 
 or in other words each hundred men had nine special officers and 
 one general captain, each thousand men the same, every captain 
 of one grade being a subordinate of the next higher till ten thou-
 
 338 THE STOKY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 >;\n<\ \vas reached. The whole empire was arranged in depart- 
 ments of ten thousand with a special governor appointed from the 
 Iiica nobility. 
 
 Under this system authority was so subdivided and graduated, 
 and hud so many mathematical checks on it that individual 
 oppression or domination was almost impossible. Officialism or 
 bureaucracy was prevented from being an evil by making it 
 all-pervasive. 
 
 Not only was every man accounted for from his birth to "his 
 death, but he felt that he counted in the vast sum of serene hap- 
 piness which radiated from the sacred person of the Inca, who 
 was at once the hereditary high priest of the national religion, 
 and the loving manager of his people's material affairs, watch- 
 ing over the minutest concerns of their daily lives. This was 
 not felt to be, as some administrations in France have been, 
 a vast system of espionage, but a sympathy of the great man with 
 his children that was tireless and almost sleepless. 
 
 The Peruvian felt always, a line of communication vibrating 
 from himself to his sovereign, for although there were no courts 
 of appeal, and the few laws were very severe, the rights of the 
 individual were safeguarded by a committee of visitors which 
 at certain periods perambulated the kingdom, investigating 
 the character and conduct of the magistrates, and punishing 
 in a summary way any judicial errors or delinquencies. Nor this 
 alone, for the lower courts had to make monthly reports of all 
 cases to the higher, and these to the viceroy, so that the Inca 
 seated at Cuzco could review, reach out and rectify any abuses. 
 
 There being no money in Peru, few laws were needed, and 
 crime was rather a rarity, and at the time of the invasion was 
 probably becoming rarer, because death was the penalty of the 
 most grave violations of law, and criminals were thus prevented 
 from perpetuating themselves. 
 
 The crimes of theft and murder were capital, and so was a 
 breach of the marital vow, though it was justly provided that 
 extenuating circumstances might be taken into consideration by 
 the judges to soften the sentence. Blasphemy against the Sun or 
 against the Sovereign, an exceedingly rare offence, and burn- 
 ing a bridge were death.
 
 PATERNAL SOCIALISM. 
 
 339 
 
 Removing landmarks, turning a water-course from a neighbor's 
 land to one's own, and destroying a house were rigorously pun- 
 ished, as for instance, by a public flogging. Yet no needless 
 
 EARLY PERUVIANS WORSHIPPING THE SUN. 
 
 cruelty was displayed. No ingeniously prolonged torments such 
 as we used to have in the mediaeval period of our civilization 
 were permitted among the mild and polished Peruvians.
 
 340 
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 But we must consider their religion in order to understand 
 fully the vastness of the authority which a Peruvian Inca must 
 have possessed in order to be able to produce such a majestic 
 fabric of government composed of harmonized minutiae like a 
 huge temple built of many little bricks, and furthermore to be 
 able to hand it from sire to son for centuries with improvement 
 instead of impairment. 
 
 This religion was primarily a worship of the sun, whom they 
 identified as the source of all spirit and force in the universe, just 
 
 as our modern 
 science identifies 
 that luminary as 
 the parent of all 
 the celestial phe- 
 nomena of our 
 system. The 
 late dictum of 
 science, that our 
 earth and all its 
 potentialities had 
 no separate crea- 
 tion, but was at 
 some unimagin- 
 ably distant 
 epoch shot forth 
 from the sun as a flying spark or cooling cinder of fiery nebulous 
 matter, was an old accepted belief with the Peruvians. 
 
 The earth was sun-born, and all its children were of that high 
 origin, but they had fallen from their first estate according to 
 the Peruvian, as well as the Judsean tradition, and stood in sore 
 need of redemption from their degraded habits of worshipping 
 widely and wildly nearly everything in nature, of making war 
 their pastime and cannibalism their festivity. Therefore the 
 Sun-God in his pity sent two of his direct children, Manco Capac 
 and Mama Cello Huaco, to gather the natives into communities 
 and teach them the arts of a softer, sweeter, and serener life, a 
 life more worthy of their originally divine descent. Rarely do 
 fables bear such practical fruit as was the case in Peru. 
 
 LIGIITIX;; TIII-: SACKED i II;K
 
 AN EA1UA- INCA AND HIS 
 
 (From an old Spanish drawing.)
 
 342 THK STOIIV <>F <;>VKi:N.MKNT. 
 
 Tliis celestial pair, brother and sister, husband and wife like- 
 wise, were bidden, so says the fable, to advance along the high 
 plains near Lake Titieaca, bearing with them a great wedge of 
 gold, and where the wedge should slip from their hands and sink 
 into the ground, there they were to abide and found the City of 
 the Sun. They had gone but a short spare in the valley of C'u/.eo 
 when the miracle occurred, and proved itself completely by the 
 wedge sinking speedily into the earth and disappearing forever. 
 Here was founded the Holy City, and from the holy pair were 
 descended, so the people believed, the Inca race who ruled them. 
 
 High descent is not such a vain thing, after all, as it often 
 seems at first blush to a philosopher, if those who have it strive 
 to live up to it. And it appears. to. be admitted that the Inca 
 sovereigns were as deeply conscious of what was due from 
 them as demi-divinities to the people they swayed, as they were 
 of what was due to them in the matter of reverence and honor. 
 The French motto "Nobltase <>l<l !</<'" was exemplified in the lives 
 of the Peruvian princes to a wonderful degree. 
 
 Before considering the minute details of the policv developed 
 by these extraordinary monarchs, perhaps a brief picture of an 
 Inca's personal pomp might be of interest and value. The Inca 
 was placed, by his being the head of the Church as well as of the 
 State, so immeasurably above all his subjects that even the 
 haughtiest of the nobles who claimed descent from the same 
 divine luminary could not venture into his presence except bare- 
 foot, and bearing on the shoulder a slight burden in sign of servi- 
 tude or homage. 
 
 As the sun is the source of all force, so the Inca was the foun- 
 tain of all honor, power, or wealth. He raised armies and 
 usually led them in person, whenever an extension of the empire 
 among the barbarous tribes to the East was planned. He imposed 
 taxes, made the laws, and appointed the judges. Louis XIV. 
 of France was, according to his own epigram, himself, the 
 State, but a Peruvian Inca was more ; he was Church and State 
 in one. 
 
 And the Inca never forgot the supreme seriousness of the part 
 assigned him by destiny in the drama of this earth-life. He 
 assumed a pomp in his style of living and an exclusiveness
 
 PATERNAL SOCIALISM. 
 
 343 
 
 such as few kings could conceive or sustain. His dress was of 
 the finest wool dyed in divers colors and crusted profusely with 
 bits of gold and jewels. A many-colored, many-folded turban 
 crowned his head, blazing with jewels, and with a tasselled 
 fringe of deep scarlet, while two feathers of a rare and strange 
 bird, called the coraquenque, 1 standing upright in the turban gave 
 a certain touch of 
 serial or winged 
 grace to the daz- 
 zling splendor of 
 the royal head- 
 dress. 
 
 But though the 
 Inca was, or felt 
 himself to be, so 
 superior to even 
 the highest of his 
 subjects, he con- 
 descended occa- 
 sionally to frater- 
 nize with them, 
 and took especial 
 pains to inspect 
 the condition of 
 the lower classes 
 and to provide for 
 their pleasures. At some of the religious festivals he presided in 
 person, instead of by deputy, and even entertained at his table 
 some of the great nobles, complimenting them on their manage- 
 ment of his provinces or his armies, and even drinking the health 
 of such as he was most inclined to honor. 
 
 At intervals of several years he made a circuit of his vast 
 estate, or empire, carried in a sedan chair, stopping at the govern- 
 mental inns along the route, or at some of his many palaces in 
 the great towns. 
 
 As he passed along the grand roads which the genius of his 
 
 AN INCA TliAVELMNG. 
 
 These birds were only found fa a desert among the mountains, and it was death to touch 
 them, as they were reserved for royal headgear.
 
 344 
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 ancestors had conceived, and which lie kept in perfect condition, 
 the glad populace crowding from adjacent villages strewed floAvers 
 before him and sang songs, as they carried forward his baggage 
 from one village to the next. Now and then he made a longer 
 stop to listen to grievances, or to settle points referred to him 
 from legal tribunals, and wherever he halted in this way the 
 people regarded the spot thereafter as holy ground. 
 
 The palaces of the Inca were not of imposing exterior, being 
 low and long with rather small apartments not communicating with 
 each other, but opening into a common square or courtyard. The 
 
 A GOVERNMENTAL HOTEL. 
 
 sides were of massive stone, and the roofs were of wood or in 
 some places only a thatch of rushes. 
 
 But, inside, the wealth of the empire flooded floor and wall 
 with splendor, and dazzled the senses with a barbaric drunken- 
 ness of magnificence. Gold and silver wrought into strangely 
 shapen vessels, images of animals and plants made of the same 
 rostly stuff, and tapestries of gorgeously colored wool as delicate 
 in texture as it was rich in hue would have tired the vision by 
 their profusion, had it not been relieved by the marvellous variety 
 in shape and arrangement. 
 
 The favorite retreat of the Incas from cares of state was at 
 Yucay, about twelve miles from Cuzco. Here, amid groves and 
 gardens they loved to linger with their favorite wives, for though 
 llit- re:;t of the people were monogamous the Incas as a rule were
 
 PATERNAL SOCIALISM. 
 
 345 
 
 not. The queen wife, as among the Egyptians, was generally a 
 sister, this being a part of their religious duty as descend- 
 ants from the first Inca pair who were brother and sister. 
 
 Here they had baths that put to shame those of the Roman 
 emperors; huge tanks of gold into which crystalline waters deli- 
 cately perfumed were conducted through subterranean pipes of 
 silver, while flowers of rarest hue and richest odor grew crowding 
 over the margins ; and side by side with the natural flowers and 
 graceful shrubs that sprang up without coaxing in this temperate 
 region of the tropics were planted parterres of a kind never seen 
 
 A TEMPLK OF THE si N. 
 
 in Europe, myriad forms of floral and vegetable life skilfully 
 imitated in gold and silver. 
 
 Among these what most astonished the Spaniards were repro- 
 ductions of Indian corn that most beautiful growth am^ng 
 American grains where the workmanship was so exquisite that 
 an ear of gold was half displayed nestling among broad leaves of 
 silver with a light feathery tassel of the same metal dangling 
 gracefully from its top. 
 
 Should such a sketcli of Peruvian opulence stagger the reader's 
 faith, let him reflect that the Andes teemed and still teem with
 
 346 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 gold and silver, and that none of the ore taken from the mines 
 was converted into use as money but all belonged to the Inca to 
 be converted into beauty. But the display of kingly wealth such 
 as the Spanish historians attest may fairly cause surprise when 
 coupled with the fact that in this respect an Inca owed nothing to 
 inheritance. 
 
 His tremendous treasures were of his own amassing, for at 
 death all his palaces but one, with all their contents just as he 
 had left them, were closed up forever. The reason for this was 
 the belief that the soul of the departed might or would return to 
 earth sometime, and they wished him to find everything just as 
 he left it before he took his journey among the stars. 
 
 When an Inca died, or in his own language " was called home 
 to the palaces of his father the Sun," his funeral was even more 
 solemn and gorgeous than his life. His bowels were removed and 
 buried in the temple of Tampu, fifteen miles from Cuzco, and with 
 them were buried some of his gold and jewels, and some of his 
 servants and favorite wives. 
 
 As in India, where a similar custom prevailed even into this 
 century till abolished by the British, many of the immolations 
 on the part of the women were voluntary; and it is of record 
 that sometimes the women when denied this doom of conjugal de- 
 votion took the religious rite into their own hands and killed 
 themselves over the grave. 
 
 This curious ceremony was followed by a year of general mourn- 
 ing, the people grieving in processionals and the poets singing the 
 virtues and glories of the departed as if to stimulate his successor 
 to still higher achievement. The Peruvians were more skilful 
 than the Egyptians in the wretched device of prolonging the 
 integrity of the body beyond the limit set to it by nature, and 
 this skill produced a spectacle that filled the Spaniards with an 
 awesomeness \vhi<-h even for years continued to affect them. 
 
 On entering the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco one might see, 
 ranged face to face, the men on the right, and the women on the 
 left, the embalmed bodies of all the kings and queens of the Inca 
 race ; while on the walls of the temple shone many a dazzling re- 
 production in gold of the sacred, all-beholding sun. 
 
 These bodies, dressed precisely as in life, sat on golden chairs,
 
 PERUVIAN BOYS GUARDING A GRAIN FIELD.
 
 348 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 with their heads bent slightly forward and their hands crossed 
 over their bosoms. It seemed like au assembly of priests at some 
 invsterious devotion, and was so startlingly like life that the 
 Spaniards at first found difficulty in believing that it was merely 
 a museum of mummies. 1 . 
 
 A very strange custom prevailed in regard to these "dead, but 
 sceptred sovereigns who still ruled men's spirits " from their 
 temple and their tomb. On certain festivals each was brought 
 out with great ceremony into the public square of the capital 
 and a banquet was served before this kingly "death's head at 
 a feast," the guests partaking in the presence of the royal phantom 
 with the same forms of courtly etiquette as though he were 
 a living king. 
 
 Note has been made of the legislative functions of the empire, 
 showing how they began and ended in the Inca, like the curve of 
 a circle returning on itself. The fiscal regulations and the laws 
 respecting property were equally curious. 
 
 The whole territory was divided into three parts; one for the 
 sun, that is, for the maintenance of the national religion, another 
 for the Inc?., and the last for the working-classes. These propor- 
 tions varied in different provinces according to the amount of pop- 
 ulation, and the greater or less quantity of land needed by the 
 people. 
 
 The lands were divided, per capita, in equal shares, and as it 
 was -provided by law that every Peruvian should marry on attain- 
 ing a certain age, when this happened the commune in which he 
 lived furnished a dwelling and a lot of land, an additional portion 
 being granted for every child, the amount for a son double that 
 for a daughter. 
 
 This division of the soil among the workers was renewed every 
 year, and the possessions of a tenant increased or diminished ac- 
 cording to his family. Such a provision might be fancied fatal 
 to any feeling of attachment to the soil, or to that desire for im- 
 proving it which generally results from permanent ownership. 
 
 'After the conquest the Peruvians hid these royal effigies lest the Spaniards should pro- 
 fane them ; but flve of them were discovered years after, and the historian Garcilasso saw 
 them In 1560, " perfect as life," he says, "without so much as a hair or an eyebrow wanting." 
 As they were borne through the streets of conquered Cuzco, the populace knelt down with 
 tears and groans, and were deeply touched when they beheld some of the Spaniards doffing 
 their caps in sign of respect to departed greatness.
 
 PATERNAL SOCIALISM. 
 
 849 
 
 But it is probable that the law in its practical operation con- 
 firmed the first occupant in possession year after year, making 
 him a tenant for life, even though his offspring might die, unless, 
 of course, part of his land were actually needed for other mem- 
 bers of the community. 
 
 The cultivation of the entire territory was done wholly by 
 the people, who first planted and tilled the lands belonging to 
 
 MODEltN LLAMAS AS BEASTS OF BURDEN. 
 
 the church, next the lands of the old, the sick, the widow, the 
 orphan, and of soldiers who were away in actual service, and 
 these duties of religion and of morals having been performed, 
 the people were then allowed to till their own grounds, each for 
 himself, but with the understanding that he must assist his 
 neighbor whenever sickness or the burden of a young family
 
 350 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 might demand. Finally came the cultivation of the lands espe- 
 cially appropriated to the crown or the Inca. 
 
 It speaks well for the government that in this agricultural 
 arrangement the lands of the Inca were ranked last, and this 
 cultivation of the king's lands was turned into a sort of holi- 
 day performance, for the men, women, and children, summoned 
 by musical instruments from the central tower of each neighbor- 
 hood, came clad in their gayest apparel, and went through their 
 labors singing the popular songs which were so soft and pleas- 
 ing in character that after the conquest many of them were set 
 to music by the conquerors. 
 
 A like system prevailed as to manufactures. The llamas, or 
 Peruvian sheep, belonged exclusively to the Church and to the 
 Inca. A large number were sent every year, from the colder 
 regions where they fed, to the capital for the consumption of the 
 court, and for the religious sacrifices, but these were only the 
 males, and their flesh was not eaten by the common people. 
 
 At the season of shearing all the wool was put in public store- 
 houses and then dealt out to each family as it was needed. In the 
 lower or warmer part of the empire cotton was furnished by the 
 Crown in the same way to the people for their garments. After 
 the workers had made their year's supply of clothing, they were 
 required to make the clothes of the Inca and the court officers. 
 
 While engaged in both these tasks, committees of inspection 
 visited them to make sure that each household employed the 
 materials furnished for its use in the manner intended, and also 
 to see that everybody in each household, from the child of five to 
 the old granny able to hold a distaff, did their share in this 
 cooperative work. 
 
 No one, except the very old, or the sick, could eat the bread of 
 idleness in that empire of order, for law had made impossible the 
 parasitic forms that hang on our civilization and may some day 
 drag it down to chaos and a just oblivion. Idleness, indeed, 
 was a crime in Peru, and industry was made a matter of public 
 honor and rewarded with special prizes. 
 
 A similar course was pursued in regard to all other manufac- 
 tures, special skill in any craft having a tendency, of course, to 
 make that craft hereditary in certain families, and the government
 
 A CHIMUAN PRINCESS.
 
 :\. r )'2 THK STORY OK COVKUNMKNT. 
 
 wisely directing that those who were employed in more arduous 
 or dangerous labors should have shorter hours; as, for instance, 
 those who worked in mines or quarries. 
 
 The object of this mild semi-religious despotism was not to 
 get as much work as possible out of a man and use him up in a 
 few years, but to make him work' just enough to keep him in good 
 health and keep the general government in a like condition. 
 
 Fortified against the pressure of penury on one side, and saved 
 from the degrading passion of avarice on the other, by there being- 
 no such mysterious, inanimate mischief as monfty breeding discord 
 among them, the Peruvians had a fair chance to cultivate the real 
 graces and dignities of life, which are few in number, and do not 
 need far-seeking. 
 
 But it was a despotism, and though all fared well and were 
 happier on an average than any race to-day, some fared better than 
 others, possessed a larger share of authority, had finer houses, and 
 walked more proudly in each other's eyes. For there were two 
 orders of nobility in this empire; the first and most important of 
 which was that of the Inca race who boasted a common descent 
 with their sovereign, and basked in the reflected splendor of his 
 celestial origin. 
 
 These nobles of the blood royal were utilized as officers all over 
 the kingdom. They wore a peculiar dress just as Chinese man- 
 darins do to-day, and like Chinese mandarins are said to have 
 spoken a special language, not entirely intelligible to the com- 
 mon people. 
 
 They alone were admissible to the offices of the priesthood, and 
 the choicest part of the public domain was assigned for their 
 support. For a long time the laws made exception in their favor 
 and just as an early English noble could plead his rank in bar of 
 certain accusations, so an Inca nobleman was held incapable of 
 crime except against one of his order. 
 
 The other nobility was that of the curacas who were the caciques 
 or chiefs of recently conquered nations or their descendants. 
 It was the policy of the Peruvian government, when it added by 
 conquest a new tribe to its empire, to retain the ruler of such 
 tribe in his office, and to take his son to the Peruvian capital to 
 be educated. 

 
 PATEKNAL SOCIALISM. 353 
 
 These sons were thus hostages for the fidelity of the father and, 
 by receiving a governmental education at Cuzco on terms of 
 perfect equality with the sons of the native nobility, they were 
 converted into contented and valuable officers when it came time 
 to appoint them to positions of trust and importance. 
 
 They generally succeeded their father in the office of curaca, 
 though it appears that in some provinces the Inca permitted the 
 people to elect their own rulers a strange germ of democracy or 
 
 A PERUVIAN VICEROY RECEIVIlfG REPORTS BY QUIPUS. 
 
 home rule to find in a despotism dead three hundred and fifty 
 years ago ! 
 
 So well regulated was the Peruvian government that our 
 cumbrous, costly, and extremely uncertain system of taking the 
 census would have filled them with amazement or amusement. 
 Their census was being taken all the time and verified itself 
 from month to month. 
 
 The nature of all service required and the amount of all com- 
 modities needed in the government of the smallest village were 
 reported month by month to the Inca in his state palace at Cuzco, 
 and a register was kept of all the births and deaths throughout
 
 354 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the country, so that exact returns of the population were made 
 every year; and at certain intervals resurveys of the country were 
 taken so that, furnished with complete statistical details, it was 
 easy for the government, after determining the quantities and 
 qualities of work required, to distribute it among the respective 
 provinces best fitted to perform it. For the different provinces 
 of the country furnished persons peculiarly suited to different 
 employments; one district supplying the most skilled miners, 
 another the most skilled workers in metals or in wood. 
 
 The artisan was provided by the government with the mate- 
 rials, and was only required to give a certain portion of his time 
 to the public service. He was then succeeded by another for an 
 equal term, and all engaged in government work were main- 
 tained for the time at the public expense. 
 
 By this constant rotation of labor, and by this study of the 
 special aptitude of each individual, it was intended that no one 
 should be over-burdened, but each have time to provide for his 
 own household. And in the judgment of a Spanish historian 
 who was correyidor of Cuzco directly after the conquest, there 
 was no flaw discoverable in this system of governmental distribu- 
 tion, so perfectly was it adjusted to the needs and abilities of 
 the artisan. 
 
 The Peruvians had no written language, although they had a 
 literature which the Spaniards found full of beauty and sublimity, 
 and their poets, or haravecs, as they were called, were numerous. 
 Their means of transmitting their histories and of communicating 
 with one another were twofold. 
 
 Like the early Greek rhapsodists who from father to son, by oral 
 teaching, transmitted the poems of Homer till a later age gathered 
 them into books, the Peruvian literature was always from mouth 
 to mouth, a living literature that recited itself constantly to the 
 people, each historian before he died training a younger one in 
 all his knowledge. 
 
 In addition to this method of preserving thought they had what 
 is called the quipu, which was a cord about two feet long made 
 of different colored threads tightly intertwisted, with a quantity 
 of smaller threads -suspended in the fashion of a fringe. These 
 threads were of different colors and were tied in knots.
 
 PATERNAL SOCIALISM. 
 
 355 
 
 The colors denoted objects ; white stood for silver, yellow for 
 gold. They sometimes, too, represented abstract ideas; white 
 signifying peace, red war, etc., but though they were used as 
 means of communicating ideas, they were chiefly valuable for 
 arithmetical purposes; the knots serving for ciphers and being 
 
 THE QUIPU. 
 
 combined in such ways as to represent numbers to any amount. 
 
 All the statistics of the empire were forwarded from the dif- 
 ferent provinces in this fashion, and these skeins of many colored 
 threads, collected and carefully preserved, constituted the national 
 archives. The Spaniards bear witness to the rapidity of their 
 calculations by these means, and at the same time their accuracy. 
 
 Clever as were the Peruvians in manipulating their curious 
 language of knots and colors, they were quick to perceive the 
 superiority of an alphabet and of written signs to convey or con- 
 serve ideas, when this new method was made known to them by 
 their conquerors. 
 
 This point is illustrated in a very striking anecdote told by 
 Garcilasso, a descendant of the Incas who wrote in Spanish a 
 little after the conquest. It is given by him as an additional
 
 356 THK STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 cause for Pi/arm's barbarity to tin- captive Inca, Atahualpa, who 
 after a long imprisonment was sentenced to be burnt at the stake. 
 
 As tin- taints were being kindled, a priest besought the Inca 
 to embrace Christianity and be baptized, promising that if he did 
 his burning should be commuted to the milder punishment of 
 death by strangulation. The Inca yielded, was Christianized and 
 parroted. Garcilasso's story is this. 
 
 While in prison Atahualpa, having noticed Spaniards reading, 
 asked a Spanish soldier to write the name of God on his thumb 
 nail. Tins done, the captive monarch held up his thumb to 
 several of his guards, and as they read it and each pronounced 
 the same word, the penetrative mind of the monarch was pleased 
 with a ne\v science of which his own civilization presented no 
 likeness. 
 
 But Avhen he displayed the inscription to his chief captor, 
 Pizarro, that chief said nothing, and the Inca, inferring instantly 
 that he could not read, as was the fact, conceived a contempt for 
 a leader less educated than the men he led. 
 
 This contempt the luckless barbarian was not sufficiently politic 
 to conceal, and Pizarro, learning it, thus received the additional 
 sting of a wound to his vanity as a stimulus to his natural 
 cruelty. 
 
 Hence one the darkest pages in Spanish history a page 
 almost as dark as that in which the honest historian has to tell 
 how the Pilgrims and Puritans of New England roasted a whole 
 town of Indian women, children, and old men, firing on all sides 
 at those who sought escape from the conflagration, which is humor- 
 ously called " An Indian Barbecue " by the Puritan author who 
 wrote an account of it.
 
 IX. 
 
 Theocratic government, if it is 
 to be understood according to the 
 etymology of the words, is the only 
 possible legitimate government. God 
 only hath dominion absolute and universal. 
 All existences distinguishable from Him are 
 He is their creator and ruler. God is sovereign 
 in His own right ; all owe Him unconditional obedience ; 
 no one can make any inquiry into the intrinsic nature 
 of His commands before obeying ; inquiry can only be made into 
 what is commanded and whether it is really God who commands. 
 Briefly put, this is the basis in principle upon which every 
 theocratic or priestly government has been established from the 
 beginning. The early human sovereign combined in his per- 
 sonality both the spiritual and temporal authority. In the start 
 it should be remembered these powers were not detached the one 
 from the other, but were both united in the person of the patri- 
 arch, or pater-familias, the patrician of early Roman history who 
 was both priest and king for his own family, household, or gens. 
 In this order of government originally the two powers were united, 
 
 357
 
 858 THE STOliY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 but according to Biblical history in the time and person of 
 Nimrod the temporal separated itself from the priestly sovereignty 
 and erected its own authority. 
 
 Nimrod proposed to found a mighty empire of which he alone 
 would reign as absolute lord and master. Amon^ the Gentiles, 
 that is to say, the people who broke away from the patriarchal 
 order and religion, it may be fairly assumed that the separation 
 took place at a much earlier period, probably by violence, which 
 evidently does not appear to hare been the case respecting the 
 Jewish people. 
 
 These Gentile nations to the superficial observer may appear to 
 have become more vigorous as the priesthood became corrupt, as 
 its influence declined, and as the secular power became more and 
 more predominant; but it is in appearance only; it is the hectic 
 flush of the internal disorder which presages death. In the heroic 
 ages of Greece and Rome religious ideas were a living reality 
 among the people and exerted their most potent influence. When 
 these nations were most assiduous in the worship of their gods, 
 they were at the zenith of their real power. 
 
 But when the philosophers came and undermined the belief in 
 the popular religion, and ridiculed the popular worship, Greece 
 became corrupt, fell an easy prey to the invader, lost her inde- 
 pendence, and retrogressed almost into barbaric darkness. Rome, 
 which was founded by a colony not yet idolaters, became gradually 
 vile; the power and influence of her priesthood declined, the 
 piety of her people so renowned during her ages of progress dis- 
 appeared, and the Mistress of the World entered upon her long 
 agony under the Csesars, those tyrants who assumed the title, 
 when alive, of Pontifex Maximus or High Priest and claimed 
 worship as divinities when dead. 
 
 The pagan temples were the oldest centres of learning, the 
 oldest repositories of books, and the pagan priests the most 
 cultured class and the first librarians. Such was certainly the 
 case in Egypt from the earliest period, and it was largely so in 
 the Grecian and Roman States. Culture and books were deemed 
 something sacred that should find their home near the sanctuaries 
 of the gods and under the watchful guardianship of the priest- 
 hood. The temple of Minerva at Athens, of Serapis in Egypt,
 

 
 THEOCRACY OR PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 363 
 
 and that of Jupiter Palatine at Rome, not to mention many others 
 of less note, were all renowned centres of learning, and contained 
 extensive libraries. The idea in which this practice originated, 
 that of making literature tributary to religion, was both 
 beautiful and sublime. 
 
 The Temple of Apollo at Delphi, at the foot of Mt. Parnassus, 
 was the most remarkable on account of the celebrated Amphic- 
 tyonic League, comprising representatives of all the Grecian 
 states formed for the purpose of avenging the pilgrims to the 
 shrine of the Sun-god, the inhabitants of Cirrha, a neighboring 
 town, having treated the pilgrims unjustly. This temple con- 
 tained the famous oracle of which we give the most perfect illus- 
 tration which modern art, by restoring ancient fragments, has 
 been able to evolve. 
 
 A singular fact connects this marvellous home of miracles with 
 early Christianity, namely, that the emperor Nero, who so oppressed 
 and tortured the early Christians, plundered this beautiful pagan 
 temple of its wonderful treasures and its magni rice nt works of art, 
 and silenced the oracle. Constantino, afterwards converted to 
 Christianity, did likewise, but the oracle regained its voice, and 
 continued to flourish till the reign of Theodosius, having lasted, 
 with a few brief breaks, for nearly a thousand years. 
 
 The adytum of the temple where the oracles were delivered and 
 which our illustration depicts, was underground. Within it, over 
 a deep, dark chasm, stood the tripod on which the pythoness or 
 priestess sat. From the chasm rose a warm vapor with a strong, 
 strange odor, acrid and aromatic. Chewing the leaves of the 
 laurel, a tree sacred to Apollo, the Sun-god, the priestess after 
 a while, very likely being affected by the vapor, fell into convul- 
 sions in which she poured forth voluminous, though not very 
 luminous, sayings. 
 
 These fragmentary sentences were instantly jotted down by the 
 attendant priests who turned them into hexameters or hexameter 
 and pentameter couplets, the popular verse of the time, and gave 
 them forth as the revelations of Apollo, Lord of Life and Light 
 and Poesy. In the earliest days the Pythoness was a young girl, 
 but later only women over fifty were chosen for this important 
 office. Pythonesses had to be natives of Delphi, and old maids of
 
 364 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 most unblemished reputation. The snakes represented in the 
 picture were temple pets, their fangs having been drawn, and the 
 name of the priestess, Pythia, or Pythoness, was derived from 
 the Greek word, -rrvOeiv, to rot; because, according to the tradi- 
 tion, on the spot where the temple was founded, the Sun-god had 
 slain a huge serpent whose body rotting into the soil gave a 
 magical fertility to the charming valley. 
 
 The Hebrew nation presents to us the most complete form of 
 theocratic government which the world has ever seen. Under the 
 patriarchs perfect freedom was enjoyed. Each family was a little 
 state of which the father was king and priest. The faith was 
 handed down by tradition from father to son, and great care 
 taken to preserve the memory of important occurrences by the 
 erection of pillars, altars, and other monuments. Abraham built 
 altars in many places where he said Jehovah appeared to him. 
 
 When the patriarchal rule of Abraham, Jacob, and their suc- 
 cessors had become absorbed into and overshadowed by that of the 
 inspired law-giver, Moses, the crystallization of the Hebrew nation 
 had begun. The basis of the national unity rested on the unity 
 of faith in Jehovah. The latter was the Lord God of Israel, the 
 omnipotent and omnipresent ruler of his chosen people. He 
 directed Moses to lead them out of oppression in the land of Egypt ; 
 smote the Egyptians with plagues and with the death of every 
 first-born, and overwhelmed Pharaoh and his armies in the waters 
 of the Red Sea. His presence on their toilsome march through 
 the desert was made manifest to their corporeal senses, for the 
 Scriptures say, " The Lord went before them to show the way by 
 day in a pillar of cloud and by night in a pillar of fire; that 
 He might be the guide of their journey at both times." 
 
 And when they grew hungry in the wilderness and murmured for 
 the flesh-pots of Egypt, He fed them on manna for forty years, unti 1 
 they reached the borders of the land of Canaan. Then on Mount 
 Sinai He declared His solemn covenant: "If therefore you will 
 hear My voice and keep My covenant, you shall be My peculiar 
 possession above all people, for all the earth is Mine. And you 
 shall be to Me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation." 
 
 And the Scriptures say, "All the people answered together: 
 All that the Lord hath spoken, we will do." Thus was the cove-
 
 THEOCRACY OK PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 365 
 
 riant agreed upon ; and three days later when, as the Scriptures 
 say, "All Mount Sinai was smoking, because the Lord was 
 come down upon it in fire," He delivered to His chosen people 
 amid the thunders and lightnings those commandments, laws, and 
 precepts which constitute the most sublime moral code the world 
 has ever bowed down before. Whereupon the twelve tribes of 
 Israel by the foot of the mountain, at an altar surrounded by 
 twelve pillars, offered whole burnt offerings to the Lord, promis- 
 ing to keep all the laws and ordinances which they had received. 
 And Moses sprinkled the blood of the victims upon the people 
 saving, "This is the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath 
 made with you concerning all these words." Thus the covenant 
 was solemnly ratified, and the Hebrew nation established as a 
 theocracy. 
 
 Some of these Mosaic laws look singular if they are viewed 
 from the standpoint of the modern political economist. For 
 instance, the Lord said, " Observe the rest of the Sabbath to the 
 Lord. Six years thou shalt sow thy field and six years thou shalt 
 prune thy vineyard and shalt gather the fruits thereof ; but in the 
 seventh year there shall be a Sabbath to the land of the resting of 
 the Lord; thou shalt not sow thy field nor prune thy vineyard" 
 (Lev. xxv. 2, 3, 4). 
 
 If such a law were proposed to-day nearly all our economists 
 and statisticians would quickly demonstrate that to carry it into 
 effect would lead to wholesale want and starvation among the 
 masses of the people, and that the proposal could only emanate 
 from some one bereft of sense. Yet it does not appear that the 
 Israelites suffered want at any time from a strict observance of 
 either the Sabbath day or of the Sabbath year. Possibly this 
 observance gave them an opportunity to solve the question of over- 
 production of food crops which is such a stumbling-block to our 
 economists ; or probably syndicates, trusts, usury and land-specu- 
 lation not being known in Israel proved a blessing. 
 
 Again the Mosaic ordinance runs, " And thou shalt sanctify the 
 fiftieth year and shalt proclaim remission (reinstating each man in 
 his former position) to all the inhabitants of the land; for it is 
 the year of jubilee. Every man shall return to his possession and 
 every one shall go back to his former family, because it is the
 
 366 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 jubilee and the fiftieth year. You shall not sow nor reap the 
 things thai grow in the field of their own accord, neither shall 
 you gather the first fruits of the vines; because of the sanctifica- 
 tion of the jubilee, but as they grow you shall presently eat them. 
 In the year of the jubilee all shall return to their possessions. 
 The land also shall not be sold forever; because it is mine, and 
 you are strangers and sojourners with me. If thy brother l>e 
 impoverished and weak of hand and thou receive him as a stranger 
 and sojourner, and he live with thee, take not usury of him nor 
 more than thou gavest; fear thy God, that thy brother may live 
 with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury nor 
 exact of him any increase of fruits" (Lev. xxv. 10, 11, 12, 13, 
 23, 35, 36, 37). 
 
 These laws meant a periodical plenary remission of debt, an 
 unconditional return of the land to the original owner or his heirs 
 in the year of jubilee, and a most positive prohibition of usury. 1 
 Not in the diluted modern sense which means a very high rate of 
 interest, but any interest at all, and it is worthy of note the pro- 
 hibitory injunction is repeated in the sacred text. A curious 
 thought arises from the reading of these statutes: How the land 
 monopolists and money changers of the nineteenth century would 
 rage if an attempt were made to put these precepts of Jehovah 
 into actual operation. How conclusively the former would show 
 that the feudal tenure under which they buy and sell and hold 
 title is much superior to that indicated by the Lord, and the 
 latter class would no doubt forcibly insist that Moses knew noth- 
 ing of brokers' boards with its "bulls and bears," and that it" he 
 lived in our civilized day he would worship v/ith them the golden 
 calf set up at the foot of Sinai by his brother Aaron. And many 
 of our political economists would endorse these conclusions and 
 claim, as Alphonso of Castile respecting the Ptolemaic system of 
 astronomy, that they could have given the Lord many valuable 
 suggestions, had they been present when He declared the land was 
 His, not to be sold forever, and denounced the exaction of interest 
 
 'A ilNtinirni>litMl Jewish Rabbi of Boston believes that the spirit of these laws among his 
 ancient people was not respected, but was circumvented in various ways, but this s.-.-m- 
 rather a lil>el on the race, for it is more likely that the Jews were not always so keenly com- 
 mercial a people as centuries of forced habitation among nations who denied them social and 
 rights or outlets for intellectual energy have naturally tended to make them.
 
 .MOSKS A.M) Till: TA1U.KS OF TIIK I,A\V.
 
 368 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 from an impoverished brother or the taking back more than was 
 given him. 
 
 The Mosaic statutes and ordinances along with the others 
 delivered by his successors from time to time formed the whole 
 code of public laws of the Jews for a period of fifteen hundred 
 years, or up to the time of Christ, and they are practically bind- 
 ing on the world of Judaism at the present time, save in those 
 matters which relate to the national organism which long ago 
 ceased to exist. Joshua was chosen successor to Moses, immedi- 
 ately preceding the death of the latter. Afterwards judges ruled 
 in Israel and special leaders were raised up by God to deliver His 
 people from the oppression of neighboring nations which, we are 
 told in Holy Writ, invariably resulted from their grievous sins, 
 chief among which was the sin of idolatry. Again and again they 
 fell ; but always on repenting, Jehovah, remembering the covenant 
 which He had made with their fathers, called upon the required 
 leader to arise and deliver his people. Othoniel, Aod, Samgar, 
 Barac, Deborah the prophetess, Gideon, and others were thus 
 called. 
 
 The command of the armies belonged to those whom the people 
 chose or God raised up in an extraordinary manner ; but none were 
 subject to them but the country or tribes that chose them or to 
 whom God gave them for deliverers. The rest of the people, dis- 
 orderly and in confusion abusing their libeity, often exposed 
 themselves to the insults of their enemies which made them ask 
 for a king. In their vain imaginings the novelty of kingly rule 
 possessed a fascination for them. When Gideon delivered them 
 from the Midianites they wanted him to be king, saying: "Rule 
 tliou over us and thy son and thy son's son." But he answered : 
 " I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you, 
 but the Lord shall rule over you." But again they clamored to 
 Samuel for a king, who rebuked them, reminding them of the cove- 
 nant of Sinai and warning them of the tributes which a king 
 would exact to support a standing army, an institution yet 
 unknown in Israel, and of the tithes which they must furnish to 
 support the royal state, but they would not hear them but still 
 persisted in calling for a king. And Saul was anointed and set 
 over them by Samuel, who was succeeded by David, Solomon, and
 
 THEOCRACY OR PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 369 
 
 a long line of monarchs, the salient points of whose reigns are to 
 be found in the Biblical record down to the time of the Baby- 
 lonian captivity. 
 
 The wisdom of Solomon is much doubted by modern optimists, 
 who do not believe that life is to be summed up in his saying 
 "All is vanity and vexation of spirit," but the practical sense 
 of the great King, of which an example is given in the illustra- 
 tion, had spread his fame everywhere. Barrenness among the 
 Jews was accounted a stigma, and two women laid claim to the 
 same baby. Whereupon, to discover who was the real mother, 
 Solomon calmly ordered the child to be divided between them. 
 The real mother protested against the killing, exclaiming, "No, 
 no! he is not mine." "But he is," said the wise King, "for the 
 other woman kept silence and you spake." 
 
 The large picture near the end of this chapter represents 
 a marriage festival among the Jews in the days of Solomon and 
 is indicative of the high sanctity the Jews attached to marriage 
 even at a period when polygamy prevailed among the rich and 
 aristocratic classes. 
 
 Shortly after the reign of Solomon the Hebrew nation began to 
 decline. The division among the people into the two kingdoms 
 of Israel and Judah augmented the evil. Among the ten tribes 
 who bore the name of the kingdom of Israel corruption and 
 wickedness prevailed, while Judah, consisting of the two tribes 
 of Benjamin and Levi, the latter embracing the whole priesthood, 
 preserved the tradition of the primitive faith, and a more strict 
 observance of the law- 
 
 After the return of the exiled nation to Jerusalem from the 
 seventy years' captivity in Babylon, they selected for their gov- 
 ernment a council of seventy-two elders, called the Sanhedrim, 
 presided over by the high priest, which form of government lasted 
 until the dispersion. They rebuilt their temple and city. They 
 were never so faithful to God as after their return from Babylon. 
 They had experienced the fulfilment of all the prophecies regard- 
 ing their exile, and henceforth not a symptom of idolatry can be 
 discovered amongst them. 
 
 The pure theocracy which they had again adopted was to con- 
 tinue until the work of the coming Messiah had been accomplished.
 
 370 
 
 THE STORY OF (JoVKltNMKNT. 
 
 Mi The high priesthood 
 descended by inherit- 
 ance to the eldest in 
 the line of the family 
 of Aaron until the 
 time of Judas Mac- 
 cabeus, when it passed 
 into his family, as 
 Joseph us declares. 
 The Jewish priest- 
 hood was confined to 
 the family of Aaron 
 
 KINO SOLOMON DECIDING A CASK.
 
 THEOCRACY OR PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 371 
 
 of the tribe of Levi exclusively. They first attended to the 
 tabernacle and afterwards to the temple. Although the whole 
 tribe of Levi were Levites and connected with the temple, only 
 the Aaronic family were permitted to offer sacrifice or do any- 
 thing about the altar. The other tribes paid tithes to the Levites, 
 who paid one tenth of that which they received to the priests. 
 The latter were also entitled to the first fruits and a large 
 portion of the offerings made in the temple. The duties 
 assigned to the Levites were first defined by Moses and after- 
 wards by David. The latter appointed some to guard the 
 temple's gates, others to sing psalms, while others were to guard 
 the treasures. 
 
 Maimonides lays down the conditions under which the func- 
 tions of the Levite could be exercised. He could not be admitted 
 as a novice until lie was at least twenty-five years of age, and his 
 novitiate continued for five years so that he must be at least thirty 
 years before his final consecration to the Lord's service. These 
 Levites who were thirty years of age numbered in Solomon's time 
 thirty-eight thousand, of which twenty-four thousand were to set 
 forward the work of the house of the Lord, and six thousand were 
 officers and judges. Four thousand were porters, and four thou- 
 sand praised the Lord with instruments, all of which is related in 
 the twenty-third chapter, first book of Chronicles. Maimonides 
 states that in the temple there was a general officer or master of 
 ceremonies, with fifteen assistants whose duty it was to announce 
 the time for the solemnities, the time of sacrifice, and to assign 
 the guard. They also had charge of the music, the instruments, 
 and the schedule in which every one's office was marked down, 
 the libations, the seals, the waters, the shew-bread, the incense, 
 oils, sacerdotal robes, and vestments. The priests were divided 
 into twenty-four classes, each class having at its head one who 
 was called the first, or the prince of priests. Every week one of 
 these classes went up to Jerusalem to officiate, and on Sabbath 
 days they succeeded one another until they had all served, but on 
 solemn feast-days all officiated together. 
 
 The prince of each class of priests assigned an entire family 
 each day to offer sacrifice, and at the close of the week they all 
 joined together in sacrificing. As there were a number of fami-
 
 372 THE STORY OF GOVKK NM KNT. 
 
 lies in each class, and as each family contained a number of 
 priests, they drew lots for the performance of the different offices. 
 This last explains the meaning of the first chapter of St. Luke 
 which, speaking of Zachary, the father of John the Baptist, says : 
 "According to the custom of the priestly office it was his lot to 
 offer incense going into the temple of the Lord." 
 
 There were several defects which would exclude from ordina- 
 tion in the Jewish priesthood very much like some of those which 
 prove a bar in the Catholic priesthood at the present day. Among 
 the physical defects which excluded were fifty common to men 
 and animals, and ninety peculiar to men alone. Those who had 
 no bar sinister of birth, but possessed some prohibitory defect of 
 body, were allowed to live in the department where the wood for 
 the sacrificial fuel was kept which they were obliged to prepare for 
 the service of the altar, being careful to reject all rotten and 
 worm-eaten wood which it was unlawful to use. The priests 
 while officiating were forbidden the use of wine, conversation with 
 their wives, and had no other food than the temple shew-bread 
 and the flesh of the sacrifice. All the rites were performed stand- 
 ing and barefoot with feet washed and head uncovered. Their 
 chief duties were to keep up the fire on the altar of the burnt 
 offerings that it might never be extinguished ; to offer sacrifices, 
 guard the sacred vessels, wash the victims, make the aspersions or 
 sprinklings whether of blood or water upon the persons offering 
 the victims, or upon the book of the law, to burn the incense 
 upon the altar, to attend to the lamps, to put new shew-bread on 
 the table, and to remove the old. It was also a part of their duty 
 to catch the blood of the victims and sprinkle it upon the altar. 
 
 All the duties just stated were common to all the priests, but 
 the high-priest alone was entitled to enter the holy of holies once 
 a year on the day of expiation, and he alone could offer up the 
 sacrifice which was prescribed for that day both for his own sins 
 and those of all the people. Several minor ecclesiastical officials 
 were connected with the synagogues. One read prayers and 
 preached, and others collected alms and looked after the poor and 
 helpless. The synagogues were also used as schools where the 
 teachers, who were called sages, sat on benches with their pupils 
 at their feet, hence Saint Paul's declaration that he learned the
 
 THEOCRACY OR PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 373 
 
 law at the feet of Gamaliel. Others outside the priesthood 
 throughout the many vicissitudes of the Hebrew nation were 
 distinguished for holiness and piety, and for being in close 
 communion with the Almighty from whom they received extraor- 
 dinary marks of the divine favor. Among these were the 
 prophets who were called from among all the tribes, the Recha- 
 bitcs an ascetic and contemplative society of persons, and the 
 Nazarenes. 
 
 To this people of the covenant, with their priesthood still 
 wielding theocratic power in the Jewish province of the Roman 
 ('a-sars, the fulness of time had arrived and the Word made flesh, 
 which had been promised to their patriarchs and foretold by their 
 prophets. The Messiah was in their midst, and they knew him 
 not. " He was in the world and the world was made by him ; 
 and the world knew him not; he came unto his own and his own 
 received him not." 
 
 Caiaphas was the high-priest, the head of the theocracy under 
 which the Jewish law was administered, subject to revision only 
 in very important matters by the imperial authority. The Man of 
 Sorrows was brought before him to answer for his teaching and 
 doctrine. And when he answered, Holy Writ says, "The high 
 priest rending his garments saith: What need we any further 
 Avitnesses? " And they led Jesus to Pilate, the representative of 
 Rome, accusing him. Pilate said to them: "Take him you and 
 judge him according to your law." But they refused, insisting 
 that Pilate should condemn him according to Roman law, which 
 with much misgiving he did. And Jesus was crucified between 
 two thieves. 
 
 Thirty-seven years later the walls of Jerusalem were battered 
 down by Titus, the people who had survived the terrible siege 
 were put to the sword or carried into slavery, the walls of the 
 temple were levelled to the ground, the holy of holies profaned, 
 and the ground was sown with salt. About a million of Jews 
 perished in the rebellion, and the living were dispersed among all 
 the nations of the world where at the present hour they present 
 the singular anomaly of a small remnant of people unassimilated 
 to any great extent by the nations into which they have entered, 
 although eighteen centuries have elapsed since their dispersion.
 
 374 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The sceptre has long passed away from the Hebrew theocracy, 
 but the ignominious cross of Calvary in the hands of its legiti- 
 mate successor became the insignia of a more potential and far- 
 reaching power than the patriarchs or the prophets foresaw, the 
 symbol of an institution which was designed to bear throughout 
 the whole world the light of truth, to confound the wisdom of 
 the pagan philosophers, and to sit in the judgment seat till the 
 end of time. 
 
 The men whom Jesus lirst selected and organized to forward II is 
 work, His helpers, and teachers, were mostly ignorant and obscure 
 fishermen, uncouth in appearance, and entirely unacquainted with 
 the learning of the schools. It would seem as if the design in 
 this selection was to confound the ordinary prudence of mankind in 
 conducting worldly affairs which assuredly would have rejected such 
 ignorant and unpromising instruments to teach and preach on any 
 subject, and to show to the world that what Saint Paul calls the 
 folly of the cross was the way of Christianity, the wisdom of Ciod. 
 
 After the crucifixion the apostles and the multitudes whom 
 they had converted in Judea were of one heart and mind; they 
 formed practically but one family, and held everything in com- 
 mon. There were no poor among them because they who had 
 lands or houses sold them and brought the price to the apostles 
 for distribution among the indigent. About the year 4<> tin- 
 apostles separated in obedience to the injunction to preach the 
 gospel to all nations, but before doing so they met together and 
 composed a substantial abridgment of the Christian doc-trine. 
 which is known as the Apostle's Creed, and the chief object of 
 which was to define and secure the unity of faith which they 
 deemed essential. A few years later the first council of the 
 church was assembled in Jerusalem. 
 
 A short time afterwards occurred the dramatic scene of Saint 
 Paul standing before the Sanhedrim, which was presided over by 
 Ananias, the Jewish high priest, who charged the prisoner with 
 being a contemner of the law and a profaner of the temple. The 
 head of the Jewish theocracy and the great missionary of the new 
 faith stood face to face. The high priest, who was a very bitter 
 enemy of the Christians, had the sentence of death prepared, when 
 Paul reminded the Pharisees present that he had become an object
 
 Tin-: CRUCIFIXION.
 
 376 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 of hatred to the Sadducees for having maintained the doctrine of 
 the resurrection. This statement kindled the fire of party spirit 
 among the members of the Sanhedrim, the Pharisees declaring 
 with great veheiiienee that they could find nothing whatever In 
 the licensed which was worthy of chastisement. Lysias, the 
 Roman tribune, led I 'aid away from the warring factions, and 
 brought him before the Roman tribunal presided over by Felix, 
 the governor, from whom he appealed to Caesar, and therefore, to 
 prosecute his appeal, made his voyage to Rome to which, according 
 to the liest authorities, Peter had preceded him. Nero was Emperor 
 of Rome just then, and was Pontifex Maximus of the Pagan priest- 
 hood. A brief examination of the condition of the world at this 
 period can be made here with some profit to enable us to judge of 
 the contest on Avhich the Galilean fishermen had entered. 
 
 The Roman Empire was mistress of the world. For half a cen- 
 tury she had practically lorded it over all the civilized, semi-civil- 
 ized, and many of the barbarous nations of the earth. She was most 
 strongly established at the birth of Christianity. The zenith of 
 her power and prosperity was reached at about the time when Jesus 
 the Christ was laid in the manger of the little Judeari village of 
 Bethlehem, one of its outlying conquered provinces. The time 
 which has been termed the golden age of Augustus had opened 
 and the gates of the temple of Janus were closed to signify 
 peace. But society presented a most repugnant aspect underneath 
 the surface. It furnished a picture of most revolting corruption 
 slightly veiled by wealth and ostentation. Manners were with- 
 out modesty, morals without reality, passion without restraint, 
 laws without authority, save against the poor who were unable 
 to purchase immunity, and religion had become a farce. What- 
 ever pristine strength idolatry once had was exhausted by time 
 and by the evil use to which it had been made subservient by 
 the basest passions. The philosophers and satirical poets had 
 dethroned the gods, and little was left to attract and satisfy the 
 highest ideals of man's spiritual nature. "Eat, drink, and be 
 merry, for to-morrow we die," pervaded the empire. 
 
 It is worthy of special note at this very time that wh'ile the 
 greater part of the human race groaned in the most abject slavery, 
 successful generals and soldiers, and even the most degraded and
 
 THE HOLY FAMILY. (RAPHAEL.)
 
 378 THE STOltV OF OnVKIlNMKNT. 
 
 abominable monsters which have disgraced Immunity, were apotheo- 
 sized or elevated to the rank of gods. The bestial and depraved 
 when dead were deified by the living. The heart of society was 
 corrupt : moral principles had lost their force. 
 
 The zeal and intrepidity of Peter and Paul in the imperial 
 city itself made many converts at an earl;,' date, some even within 
 the precincts of Nero's palace. Paul in his epistle from Rome 
 to the Philippians mentions the fact in his greeting, saying, "All 
 the saints salute you, especially they who are of < V.NV//.S- house." 
 
 But Nero proposed to sweep these contemners of the gods, the 
 despicable Christians, from the city of Home, not exactly because 
 he feared or hated them, they were too insignificant as yet, but 
 to gratify a cruel caprice and impelled probably by a sub-conscious 
 antipathy to teachings of which he must have heard from the 
 courtiers. The pretext of the monster was worthy of him. 
 
 He ordered the city to be set on fire in many places, as the 
 simplicity of the ancient houses displeased him, and he wished 
 to have them replaced by more ornate edifices, and also to give 
 the populace who were hungering for excitement a spectacle 
 which would outrival the taking of Troy. Ten of the fourteen 
 divisions of the city were destroyed, and it is alleged that ihe 
 tyrant played a fiddle while watching the bla/.ing scene from 
 a balcony of the palace. To exculpate himself from the infamous 
 (rime, he charged the Christians with having caused the confla- 
 gration. They were arrested by his orders, and condemned to die 
 by the most fiendish torture which his perverted ingenuity could 
 devise. 
 
 A favorite imperial and popular amusement was to feed wild 
 beasts in the amphitheatre with Christians or men suspected of 
 Christianity. Some were sewed into the skins of wild beasts 
 and hunted through the streets by savage dogs which worried 
 and devoured them; others were crucified. Some were swathed 
 in garments and bands soaked in pitch and other inflammable 
 material, and tied to posts along the streets and in the guldens 
 of the palace, where they were set on fire, when night came on, t.<, 
 furnish light for the locality. Within a year afterwards, June 29, 
 A. !>. U7. Saint Peter and Saint Paul were put to death by Nero's 
 orders, the former on Mount Janiculum, being crucified head
 
 THEOCRACY OK PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 379 
 
 downwards ;it his express request as unworthy the honor of his 
 Master's position on the cross, and the latter near the Fulviaii 
 waters, being beheaded, as the law provided, beeause he was a 
 Roman citizen. 
 
 Thus the issue was joined between the two forces which were 
 to contend through many centuries for the control of the civilized 
 world. The vanguard of the Crucified One had encountered the 
 master of many legions and to the eye of the world suffered igno- 
 minious defeat. And thus the contest raged for two hundred and 
 lifty years; all the power of Pagan Rome, its army, courtiers, 
 spies, and pseudo-philosophers being wielded 
 to stamp out the church from the earth. What 
 terrible odds there were in the desperate con- 
 
 PAUL PLKAWXCi HIS CASE AT ItOMK. 
 
 flict! Passion, prejudice, power, culture, and the sword on one 
 side, on the other the folly of the cross, purity, humility, 
 weakness, and fortitude. Never before had earth witnessed such 
 scenes, and probably never again will such occur. 
 
 Again and again in the imperial city the infant church was 
 driven to the underground refuges which it had excavated, the 
 labyrinthine catacomlw in which the remains of the dead con- 
 fessors were deposited, and where the hunted survivors crouched 
 in the darkness, cold and trembling.
 
 380 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Such were the times ;uul conditions under which the Christian 
 theocracy was assuming shape and form. The process of crystal- 
 lization was slowly but efficiently at work. It had a doctrine, 
 a hierarchy, a discipline, and a worship, all regularly but simply 
 constituted, as befitted the church in its infancy. 
 
 The nature of its membership is succinctly given by one of its 
 early apologists. Athenagoras, of Athens, who says : "Among us 
 will be found the ignorant, the poor, laborers, and old women 
 who cannot, perhaps, deiiiu; by reasoning the truth of our doctrine. 
 They do not enter into discussion, but they do good works. The 
 most aged we honor as our fathers and mothers. The hope of 
 another life makes us despise the present, even in the midst of 
 lawful pleasures. Marriage with us is a holy vocation which 
 imparts the grace necessary to bring up our children in the fear 
 of the Lord. We have renounced your bloody spectacles, 1 being 
 persuaded that there is very little difference between looking on 
 murder and committing it." 
 
 The martyrology of the church grew apace, while at the same 
 time her membership increased in a marvellous manner in every 
 place among all ranks and classes of society. Over thirty popes, 
 successors of Saint Peter, won the laurel crown of martyrdom in 
 Rome within the two hundred and fifty years which elapsed from 
 the time of Nero to Constantine. The robust figures of Saint 
 Gregory of Nyassa, Saint Basil, Saint Justin, Saint Cyprian, 
 Saint Polycarp, Origen, Tertullian, and a host of others entered 
 the arena and did valiant service during this supreme trial in 
 combatting error and explaining the gospel. Beneath the sword 
 of the executioners the gospel was extended. Saint Justin says: 
 " At the commencement of the second century there is no nation 
 among whom we do not find believers in Christ." The end of 
 the first great struggle had arrived. The cross, which, according 
 to the story of the time, appeared in the midday heavens before 
 the astonished eyes of Pagan Constantine and his whole army 
 with its letters of iiie, In hoc siyno vinces, 2 Avas about to change 
 the face of the world. 
 
 This instrument and sign of ignominy was now adopted as the 
 
 ladiatorial lights which delighted the populace. 
 - " 15y this sign thou shalt conquer."
 
 382 THE STORY OF <;< >\ KKNMENT. 
 
 imperial standard, henceforth to be carried side by side with the 
 ancient eagles. Constantino signalized his accession to the sover- 
 eign power in Rome by an edict in favor of the Christians. He 
 granted them liberty. For the first time during three centuries 
 an emperor dared openly to proclaim his sympathy for the faith of 
 Jesus Christ. He bestowed on the Christian priests all the 
 privileges accorded to the Pagan priests. The popes hencefor- 
 Avard became persons of consideration, enjoying the confidence of 
 the emperor. Thus was practically closed a combat of nearly 
 three centuries between the doctrines of the Church of Christ 
 and idolatrous Home. The imperial decree was dated at Milan, 
 A.D. 313, and was sent to all the consuls and governors throughout 
 the empire. From this time there were two sovereignties recog- 
 nized and proclaimed in the world; that of the Pope, and that of 
 emperor. 
 
 Shortly after Constantine issued his decree of toleration, the 
 Donatists, bishops of the African sect which followed Donatus, 
 earnestly requested him to convene a council of the bishops of 
 Gaul to judge of their differences with the Christians who opposed 
 them. Constantine replied saying: "You ask judges of me, you 
 bishops, of me who am in worldly life, and who myself await the 
 judgment of Jesus Christ." He forwarded their memorials and 
 papers to Melchiades, the Pope, who called a council of the bishops 
 of Italy and Gaul in the Lateran palace to settle the troubles of 
 the Church of Carthage. The government of the church, founded 
 on the principle of unity in the high priesthood or supremacy of 
 the Roman bishops, and perpetuated by an always living hierarchy, 
 was thus recognized in one of his first acts by the first Christian 
 Caesar, Constantine. 
 
 The heresy of Arius of Alexandria arose at this time, which in 
 effect was substantially a denial of the Godhead in the person of 
 ( 'hrist. Arius and his teaching Avere condemned at a convocation 
 of the bishops of Egypt and Libya, but he refused to submit, and 
 was excommunicated A. n. 320. Very great dissension prevailing 
 throughout the east on this account, Constantine, the emperor, 
 was requested to assemble a council representative of the whole 
 church, or ecumenical council, as it is expressed in the Greek 
 language. In concert Avith the Pope, Saint Sylvester, he there-
 
 384 THE STORY OF <J< >V KKN.M KNT. 
 
 fore summoned a general council of all the bishops in the world 
 to meet at Nice in Bithynia in tlie month of June, A. D. ?>-,'>. 
 
 From every quarter of the known globe they assembled to the 
 number of three hundred and eighteen bishops, exclusive of priests, 
 deacons, and acolytes. The travelling expenses of all who 
 attended were paid out of the public treasury. This was really 
 the first great council of the universal church, the Council of 
 Jerusalem, presided over by Saint Peter, consisting of but a 
 few members, many of whom had seen the Saviour face to face. 
 The Pope was represented at the council by his legate Osius, 
 of Cordova, in Spain. Constantino was also present seated 
 upon a throne. Arius and the bishops who supported him 
 were heard in defence of their views, which were embodied 
 in a profession of faith drawn up by themselves and laid 
 before the assembled fathers. On a vote it was rejected by an 
 overwhelming majority. The belief of the great majority Mas 
 then expressed and formulated by the papal legate, at whose 
 dictation Hermogenes wrote it. 
 
 This profession of faith, known as the Nicene Creed, has becolne 
 the received expression of Christian faith. It has stood the test 
 of ages, and every generation of Christians have used as a solemn 
 act of faith that formula which Osius the legate read aloud in the 
 Greek tongue to the fathers of the Nicene Council. The creed 
 \\as signed by all the bishops present save two. The council 
 accordingly condemned them along with Arius, and anathematized 
 the latter's writings. Constantino confirmed these decrees by 
 his authority which gave them the force of law throughout the 
 empire. This council also drew up several canons or rules of 
 discipline which were termed the Apostolic Canons. They 
 embody the whole canonical jurisprudence of the fourth century. 
 They may be briefly summarized thus: 1. The primacy of the 
 Roman Church. 2. Hierarchical authority of Patriarchs and 
 Metropolitans. 3. Election and consecration of bishops. 4. 
 Celibacy of clerics. 5. Rules for public penance in reconciling 
 heretics. 6. Ecclesiastical discipline relative to marriage. 
 
 Respecting the Church of Rome the canon of the council says : 
 " The primacy has always resided in the Church of Rome. Let 
 the ancient custom then be vigorously maintained in Egypt,.
 
 THEOCRACY OK PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 385 
 
 : . !)- 
 
 Libya, and Pentapolis so that all pay the homage of submission to 
 the Bishop of Alexandria, for so the Roman Pontiff orders. Let 
 the same be observed in respect to the Bishop of Antioch, and so 
 in all other provinces, etc." 
 
 The hierarchical authority of the Patriarchs is stated and 
 defined in the 
 
 thirty-ninth of n . 
 
 the Apostolic 
 canons. It is 
 entitled "Of the 
 solicitude and 
 power of the 
 Patriarch over 
 the bishops and 
 archbishops of 
 his patriarchate, 
 and the primacy 
 of the bishop of 
 ilnine over all,'" 
 and it proceeds 
 to lay down the 
 rule of govern- 
 ment upon the 
 lines indicated 
 in the title. The 
 rules for the 
 ordination of 
 bishops and 
 priests, the ob- 
 >rrvance of cler- 
 ical celibacy, 
 tin: reconcilia- 
 tion of heretics, 
 
 and the prohibition of marriages within certain degrees of kindred, 
 and in other respects, were set forthwith considerable minuteness, 
 all of which are easy of access to the student who desires to study 
 them in their entirety. 
 
 From the Council of Nice, therefore, the church came forth 
 
 CONSTANTINE AFTER HIS CONVERSION.
 
 :>S; THE STOKV OF <;< >VKI!N M KNT. 
 
 consciou ; of its power and mission, fully organized and equipped 
 for the warfare of time on the earth. The Christian theocracy 
 became visible henceforward to all men. Thirty-seven years later 
 Julian, who has been termed the Apostate, was emperor. His 
 whole family had been murdered by his predecessor Constantins. 
 He endeavored to restore the worship of the Pagan gods and over- 
 turn Christianity, and precipitated a bitter conflict with the Gali- 
 leans, as he derisively called the Christians. His proclamations 
 were disregarded by the latter when conflicting with their faith, 
 and they were prosecuted with the utmost rigor. 
 
 Julian even undertook to falsify the prophecy of Christ 
 relative to the temple of Jerusalem, that one stone should 
 not be left upon another, by rebuilding the temple. But 
 . \inmianus Marcellinus, a Pagan historian, relates as a mat- 
 ter of fact that Julian's workmen were driven from the ruins 
 by balls of fire which issued from the earth, making it 
 impossible to carry on the work. Finally, to make himself 
 greatest of all the Csesars, he proposed to conquer Persia, and 
 annex it to his great empire. On June 26, A. D. 308, his army 
 was attacked by the Persians. Julian rode rapidly into the fight 
 without putting on his armor, when a javelin from an unknown 
 hand pierced him through the body. Theodoret says that he flung 
 a handful of the blood issuing from his wound towards the 
 heavens crying out, "Galilean, thou hast conquered." His death 
 soon followed and his anti-Christian edicts were immediate lv 
 repealed by his successor. 
 
 The decline of the Roman Empire as a political entity dates 
 from this period, that is, from the close of the fourth century. 
 The Goths had some time previously swept down the northern 
 forests, crossed the Danulw, defeated a large Roman army under 
 the walls of Adrianople, and held possession of a great part of the 
 northern portion of what is now known as Turkey in Europe. 
 The Huns and Alani, peoples unknown to the first C;esars, eame 
 rolling along like great tidal wavep from the great plain of Tar- 
 taiy driving the Goths before them. The country bordering on 
 the Rhine and Danube was attacked by the Germanic tribes, the 
 Alemanni, the Franks, and Suevi; the Persians and Nemenians 
 were attacking the Roman posts along the Euphrates and the
 
 THEOCRACY OR PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 387 
 
 Tigris. Saint Jerome writing at this time says: " The Roman 
 Empire is falling to pieces." 
 
 In 451 Attila, the fierce king of the Huns, who claimed the 
 
 THK SCOtrnOE OF GOD. 
 
 official title of "The Scourge of God, "swept over Europe, brush- 
 ing the other tribes who had gone before from his way and 
 capturing the chief cities of Gaul which he gave up to pillage
 
 .',S8 THE STORY OF CJOVKi: N.MKNT. 
 
 and to the violence of his semi-savage soldiery. The two emperors 
 who claimed sovereignty over the empire, Valentinian and Theo- 
 dosius II., tried to negotiate with him by offering him the title 
 of General of the Empire with a large tribute which they would 
 pay him annually. The reply which he told his ambassadors to 
 give the emperors was, "Attila, our master and yours, orders you 
 to prepare him a palace." 
 
 This answer meant an invasion. The semi -barbarous invaders 
 who preceded him by half a century had been partially converted 
 to Christianity and, although independent of imperial authority, 
 some of them now made common cause with the imperial forces 
 against this awful scourge, who said of himself, " The star falls, 
 the earth trembles ; I am the hammer of the universe ; the grass 
 never grows where Attila's horse has once trod." The combined 
 armies of the Roman general ^Etius and Theodoric, king of the 
 Visigoths, met the hosts of Attila on the plain of Chalons, in 
 France, just outside of Orleans, in June. The two armies num- 
 bered about one million of men. It was probably the bloodiest 
 battle ever fought on earth. From sunrise until sunset the battle 
 raged at close quarters with battle-axe, sword and spear. Three 
 hundred thousand men lay dead, when the fight was ended by the 
 retreat of Attila. Theodoric, the Visigoth king, fell in the conflict 
 which his valor and skill had contributed to win for the allies. 
 
 But the next year, 452, Attila appeared on the borders of Italy 
 with a larger army than that of the preceding year, laying waste 
 the cities and towns on his march with fire and sword. He 
 destroyed the large and ancient cities of Padua, Vicenza, Verona, 
 Bresscia, Bergamo, Aquileia, Milan, and Pavia. He pushed on 
 amid the smoking ruins of the conquered cities direct for Rome, 
 but halted near Mantua, whose inhabitants fled in dismay to the 
 marshes where Venice now stands. 
 
 The last hour of the Roman Empire of the west seemed to have 
 struck. The Pontiff, Saint Leo I., appeared in the camp of the 
 barbarians. He was conducted to the tent of Attila, where he 
 came as the representative of the God of Peace. The two stood 
 face to face, one armed with the sword, the other with a crozier. 
 Attila was awed by the bearing and words of the great Pontiff, of 
 whose fame he had already heard. He heard with favor the propo-
 
 THEOCRACY OR PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 389 
 
 sition of Saint Leo, and retraced his steps with his army across 
 the Danube, where he died suddenly the following year while 
 preparing for further devastation. Saint Leo on his return was 
 hailed as the savior of Rome, and the enthusiastic people bestowed 
 upon him the title of Great. A few years later and the Roman 
 Empire of the west was utterly extinguished. The various prov- 
 inces were parcelled out by barbarians whose very name was a 
 terror to the Roman race, which was now everywhere oppressed 
 by the rude, uncouth and unlettered conquerors. The Church 
 alone stood between the victor and the vanquished to afford pro- 
 tection, mercy and peace. It was the only institution of the 
 empire which had neither shared the overthrow nor been crushed 
 by its fall. The conquerors saw this; they were awed and 
 attracted by the pomp of its celebrations and ritual. The Chris- 
 tian religion, which these tribes and nations embraced in the 
 course of time, gradually tamed their native fierceness, but 
 this result of their conversion was slow and it required several 
 generations to develop. Clovis, the king of the Franks, one day 
 after his conversion, listening to the Bishop of Rheims reading to 
 him of the trial of Christ before Pilate and of his crucifixion, 
 leaped to his feet and cried out with honest indignation: "Oh, 
 that I had been there with my Franks ! " 
 
 With the greater part of the new converts it was the reluctant 
 work of years to give up their old habits, their violent and irrita- 
 ble temper, a passionate love of hunting and fighting, and a rude 
 contempt for the arts and sciences of the conquered Romans whom 
 they now held as serfs, and over whom they claimed the right of 
 life and death. It was necessary to humanize them first and 
 Christianize them afterwards. The Church, therefore, labored to 
 do this work, and during the period embracing from the fifth to 
 the tenth century she saw nation after nation bow down reluc- 
 tantly to her authority; in far-off England St Austin converted 
 the Saxon king Ethelbert in 596, but the majority of the Hun- 
 garians were not converted until as late as the year 1000. 
 
 To protect the oppressed and to shield the persecuted in those 
 days of turbulence and rancor, the privilege of church asylum was 
 established, which was, in effect, that the fugitive who succeeded 
 in reaching the precincts of the altar should not be attacked, but
 
 390 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 that judicial inquiry be made in the case, and the violation of this 
 decree was enforced by the penalty of excommunication, which 
 was a punishment of dire significance in those days. 
 
 Council after council of the Church framed laws to abridge and 
 curb the power of the feudal lord over his serf. In a word the 
 Church was the only authority that was generally reverenced 
 during that age of iron. 
 
 Christianity, or rather reverence for the Church, was the most 
 powerfully formative element of modern civilization. The ruler 
 learned from it some rude justice; the ruled learned faith and 
 obedience. Within the Benedictine monasteries learning found 
 a home, when the only books in use were written by the hands 
 of the monks on the skins of beasts. 
 
 On the dismemberment of the Roman Empire of the wst, 
 Odeacer, the first barbarian king of Italy, claimed the right to 
 nominate the Pontiff, but the claim was not allowed. His suc- 
 cessor, Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, put forward a similar 
 claim with a like result. Other rulers from time to time 
 claimed this right, and when the German emperors became masters 
 of Rome they followed the same policy and sought the right, if 
 not to appoint the Pope, to confirm his election. The latter claim 
 was acquiesced in for a considerable time in the person of the 
 German emperor. Meanwhile the popes had become temporal 
 sovereigns in their own right. The country which they thus 
 ruled over was the city of Rome and some of the adjacent 
 territory. Many of the princes in those days invoked the aid of 
 the Pontiff to settle differences between them precisely as Leo 
 XIII., the present Pope, a few years ago was called on by Germany 
 and Spain to adjust a dispute about the Caroline Islands. 
 
 Many of these princes took the oath of fealty to the Pope and 
 became his feudal subjects as a prudential measure, because as 
 such they had a right to expect from him protection against for- 
 eign invasion or usurpation of their throne. They paid to him as 
 their ^suzerain a small annual offering, in return for which their 
 territory was declared under the protection of Saint Peter, after 
 which, if anyone recklessly invaded it upon being admonished 
 by the Pope, he was formally excommunicated. 
 
 This state of things may appear strange in the nineteenth cen-
 
 ST. AUSTIN CONVEHTING THE ENGLISH TO CHRISTIANITY. 391
 
 392 THi: STOKV OK COVKKNMKNT. 
 
 turv, but it would be very unsafe to measure the situation of 
 Europe in the ninth century with the standard of the present day. 
 The two chief disturbing elements in the government of the 
 Chuivh, up to the eleventh century, were the exercise by some of 
 the temporal rulers of the investiture of bishops, and their efforts 
 by violence, intrigue and corruption to fill the papal chair with 
 creatures devoted to their interests. The meaning of investiture 
 claimed chiefly by the emperors of Germany was this : the emperor, 
 having richly endowed the bishoprics and abbeys, claimed the 
 right of naming the bishop or abbot, and investing him with the 
 insignia of office. 
 
 Most of these offices, even if considered only from the worldly 
 standpoint, were of great importance, as the glebe lands, the serfs., 
 and the tithes were annexed to the office. The new incumbent, 
 on being invested by the emperor with the episcopal ring and 
 crozier, took the oath of fealty which required, among other things, 
 that he should join the standard of his liege lord with all his 
 aimed retainers whenever called on to do so. In many instances 
 of appointments, therefore, more regard was given to the bishop's 
 military qualifications, or to the amount of money which he would 
 pay for the office, than for his knowledge of canon law or his good 
 morals. Men of most dissolute character among the clergy and 
 laymen, and even minors of wealthy family, were often made 
 bishops in this way. Under a ruler of depraved character it may 
 be reasonably inferred that all these appointments were given to 
 the highest bidder or greatest favorite, and that the inferior 
 clergy under such superiors were sunk in immoralit}" and wicked- 
 ness. The popes claimed that appointing bishops in this way 
 was in direct opposition to the ancient canon law and custom of 
 the Church, which provided that the bishops of a province, or at 
 least three of them, with the consent and approval of the Pontiff 
 should elect, thus securing to the Church the right of choosing her 
 own ministers as well as perfect freedom in the exercise of that 
 right. The popes continually protested against the right of the 
 sovereigns to thus introduce the feudal law within the domain 
 of the Church, but the latter persisted in these attempts until 
 the monk Hildcbrand, Gregory VII., in the eleventh century, 
 confronted the German emperor from the papal chair.
 
 THEOCRACY Oil PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 393 
 
 The other disturbing element to which reference has been made, 
 the intrusion of popes or anti-popes by the secular power through 
 violence, intrigue, or corruption, was equally as bad as the 
 simoniacal intrusion of bishops, and it led to scenes and scandals 
 in Rome which were a disgrace to Christendom. A few instances 
 of this secular interference will serve as illustrations. The 
 Count of Tusculum, whose tyranny had excited frequent out- 
 breaks in Italy, and whose territory was about twelve miles from 
 Rome, secured the election of his own son as Pope Benedict VIII., 
 on July 20, 1012. He made a fairly good Pope, however, not- 
 withstanding the suspicious circumstances attending his elec- 
 tion. Immediately after his death his brother was elected as 
 Pope John XX., on July 9, 1024. 
 
 Some of the chronicles say he was a layman when elected, 
 and that some who voted for him were paid for doing so. 
 X<> serious charge has been made against himself personally. 
 On the death of John XX. his brother Alberic, Count of 
 Tusculum, who had a son ten or twelve years of age, con- 
 ceived the idea of placing this boy in the chair of Saint 
 Peter. In spite of the canons of the Church, which were express 
 in the matter, and notwithstanding the sacrilegious nature of the 
 act, he bought the accomplishment of his criminal design with 
 money, and the boy was elected Pope under the name of Benedict 
 IX., on December 9, 1033. It was hoped by the upright and 
 zealous bishops and the faithful generally that Conrad II., 
 Emperor of Germany, would exercise in this case the right of 
 non- confirmation for which he and his predecessors had so strongly 
 contended with preceding popes. But he would not interfere, for 
 he was engaged himself in selling bishoprics to the highest bidder, 
 young or old, lay or cleric. 
 
 This boy Pope grew up a depraved wretch, a miserable, wicked 
 and brazen sinner; but his authority as Pope was acknowledged 
 and respected by all Christendom, even by those who most loudly 
 denounced his personal conduct. Saint Peter Damian, who was a 
 contemporary, called him "the poisonous viper of the Church." 
 Darras, a Roman Catholic writer, apologizing for this blot on 
 the papacy, says: "It is doubtless a part of the divine scheme 
 which guides the destinies of the world that the Church should
 
 394 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 more clearly prove the divinity of its foundation and preservation 
 through all ages by meeting at times the deadliest shocks, by 
 resisting even the un worthiness of its head." 
 
 The extent to which simony was carried 011 may be judged 
 from the fact that when Leo IX. became Pope, about a year after 
 the retirement of the wretched Benedict IX., he announced that 
 he would suspend from ecclesiastical functions all whom he found 
 tainted with the sin, but the declaration drew protests from, all 
 the Italian bishops who assured him that if he carried his threat 
 into execution the pastoral ministry must by the very fact cease 
 in most churches. He contented himself, therefore, with permit- 
 ting them to continue in the ministry after performing public 
 penance. This Pontiff appears to have been an exemplary man, 
 and indefatigable in trying to reform the clergy and enforce 
 salutary discipline as laid down by the law of the Church. Nine- 
 teen years after the death of Leo IX. the pontifical chair was 
 vacant by the death of Nicholas II. A cardinal was despatched 
 to the German court to consult the young prince, Henry IV., 
 who was then a minor in the hands of a faction, in reference to the 
 election of a pope ; but the courtiers would not permit Cardinal 
 Etieime to have access to the prince. On Cardinal Etienne's 
 return the archdeacon Hildebrand assembled the electors, who 
 immediately elected Alexander II. 
 
 As this election substantially opened the great struggle between 
 Henry IV. of Germany and Hildebrand, afterwards Pope Gregory 
 VII., a few words are necessary by way of preface to a brief state- 
 ment of the facts of their contest. Many writers 1 in discussing 
 the quarrel between this emperor and pope have condemned 
 Hildebrand as an ambitious monk who attempted to rule Chris- 
 tendom in the temporal as well as in the spiritual sphere, while 
 many other writers, including, of course, all who accept the faith 
 of the papacy, laud the Pontiff in highly eulogistic terms and 
 denounce his imperial antagonist. 
 
 Pope Alexander II. was elected without the concurrence of the 
 
 1 The facts given in these pages are taken from a very exhaustive and apparently impar- 
 tial work in two volumes by Professor J. Voigt, of the University of Halle, Germany, en- 
 titled, " History of Pope Gregory VII. and of his age, from original documents." Professor 
 Voigt is a Protestant, but is evidently unbiassed, and he quotes directly from original manu- 
 scripts which he has carefully examined.
 
 ?
 
 THEOCRACY OR PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 399 
 
 emperor, A. D. 1061. The latter, indeed, was only a boy about 
 ten years of age, but a certain faction of his court governed in 
 his name. His chancellor, Guibert of Parma, sold abbacies and 
 bishoprics whenever a vacancy occurred, and grew rich through 
 these sales. When the news of the Pope's election reached 
 Henry he formally declared it null and void, and nominated a 
 bishop of Parma, notorious for his simoniacal irregularities, as an 
 anti-Pope under the name of Honorius II. The latter, backed up 
 by an army, marched on Rome to assert his claim, but was 
 repulsed by the citizens, aided by Godfrey, Duke of Tuscany. 
 After making some further trouble the anti-Pope died. Some 
 years later when Henry IV. was but eighteen years of age he 
 showed a most flagrant wickedness. He was already a heartless 
 debauchee who hesitated at nothing, not even assassination, to 
 accomplish his foul purposes. He was married to the Italian 
 Princess Bertha when she was fifteen years old, but he put her 
 away in a year after their marriage. 
 
 This public act aroused deep indignation in Italy and in 
 Germany also. On the request of the Archbishop of Mentz, 
 Germany, the Pope, Alexander II., was asked to investigate 
 the matter, which he did by sending Saint Peter Damian to 
 Henry's court. After Damian made a judicial examination 
 into the matter, he told Henry that his conduct was un- 
 worthy not only of a prince but of a Christian. "If you 
 despise the authority of the holy canons, have some regard, at 
 least, for your reputation," said the papal legate, and to Henry's 
 half -apologetic and sullenly given explanations he finally replied: 
 " If you resist this advice dictated by reason and faith, the sover- 
 eign Pontiff will find himself compelled to use the thunders of 
 the Church against you, and will never consent to crown you 
 emperor." 
 
 It should be understood that the German emperors up to this 
 time had been crowned by the Pope. Henry had not been 
 crowned, hence he was simply king and emperor-elect. The 
 young monarch quailed at Damian's threat and promised to 
 reform; still his general conduct and morality were in no way 
 improved, but quite to the contrary. As fast as a vacancy 
 occurred among the prelates of the empire, he filled it with one
 
 400 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 of liis creatures, in many instances with notoriously immoral 
 men. Pope Alexander II. died on April 21, 1073, and Hilde- 
 brand was elected on the following day, taking as his official 
 name Gregory VII. The latter was the son of a Roman carpen- 
 ter, became a monk of the monastery of Cluny, and was the 
 preceptor in early boyhood of Henry IV. It was a singular coin- 
 cidence in the lives of these two men that they should first meet 
 as master and pupil, and afterwards as antagonists in the bitterest 
 struggle which ever took place between the Pope and any tem- 
 poral sovereign. 
 
 Hildebrand's election was enthusiastically received by the citi- 
 zens of Rome, who knew him well, and it was applauded by all 
 that was sound in the Christian hierarchy throughout the world. 
 Immediately after his election, which it is alleged Avas forced 
 upon him, he, designating himself as Pope-elect, despatched a 
 delegation to Henry IV., requesting him to refuse his sanction to the 
 election. In a letter which he sent by the delegates to the emperor 
 the following passage was written : " Should you approve the choice 
 made in my person, I must warn you that I shall not pass over the 
 scandalous disorders of which all good men accuse you." 
 
 The German bishops advised Henry to refuse consent, which 
 he was quite willing to withhold, but he was afraid to arouse 
 the hostility of all that was pure and true in the Christian 
 world, to whom the fame of Hildebrand, the monk, was not 
 unknown. He, therefore, reluctantly confirmed the choice of the 
 electors. The first act of the new Pontiff was directed against* 
 the scandals of the priesthood. A decree was issued against all 
 priests who had bought their offices or who profaned them by 
 looseness of conduct. 
 
 Priests were to be immediately deposed who refused to reform 
 their lives, and the people were commanded to refuse to assist at 
 the masses or other services of the rebel priests or to receive the 
 sacraments from them. A storm of protestations from all sides 
 was heard in response to the decree. The bishops of Germany, 
 France, Italy, and other countries alleged that a great many 
 churches must be closed if it was enforced, that it was dangerous 
 to forbid the laity to' receive sacraments from loosely living 
 priests, as it would make laymen judges in ecclesiastical matters,
 
 402 THE STOKY OF GOVKlt NMKNT. 
 
 and it seemed to imply that the efficiency of the sacrament was in 
 measure dependent on the worthiness of the priest. Others pro- 
 tested upon less plausible and more unworthy grounds, showing 
 the depth of demoralization and depravity to which the ministry 
 had fallen. 
 
 But the iron will of Gregory intensified as the opposition 
 increased. He sent copies of the decree to all the sovereigns, 
 urging them to carry it into effect. A few complied, the 
 many refused. The bishops of France and Germany rejected 
 the decree altogether, and refused to obey it. Gregory called 
 a council in Rome (A. D. 1075) when he issued a second decree : 
 "Forbidding any layman of whatsoever rank, whether emperor, 
 marquis, prince, or king to confer the investiture; and any cleric, 
 priest, or bishop to receive it for benefices, abbacies, bishoprics, 
 and ecclesiastical dignities of whatsoever nature. No one may 
 keep the government of a church bought for money by a simoni- 
 acal traffic. Incontinent clerics are suspended from the exercise 
 of all ecclesiastical functions. No priest shall contract a matri- 
 monial alliance. He who already has a wife shall put her away 
 under pain of deposition. No one can be raised to the priesthood, 
 unless he first promise to observe perpetual continence. The 
 faithful should not assist at the offices celebrated by a cleric 
 whom they see trampling upon the apostolic decrees." 
 
 The new decree aroused the wrath of princes and prelates in 
 many countries. Henry IV. and the bishops of Germany publicly 
 denounced it and its author. Its promulgation in many German 
 cities led to riotous mobs headed by disgraceful clergymen. The 
 Pope, writing after its issuance to one of his brother monks, 
 Hugh of Cluny, says: "Whether I turn to the west, to the south, 
 or to the north, I see scarce a single bishop who has reached the 
 episcopate by canonical means, and who governs his flock in a 
 spirit of charity. As for the secular rulers, I know not one who 
 prefers the glory of God to his own, or who sets justice above 
 interest. The Lombards and Normans among whom I dwell I 
 often reproach with being worse than Jews or heathen. Had I no 
 hope of a better life hereafter, or no prospect of serving the Church 
 here, God is my witness that I would not dwell another hour in 
 Rome, where I have been chained for the last twenty years. Thus
 
 404 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 divided between a grief which is daily renewed and a hope, alas! 
 too distant, I am beaten by a thousand fierce storms, and my life 
 is but one lengthened agony." 
 
 In the meantime a formidable insurrection had broken out in 
 Saxony because of the enormous taxes levied upon the people by 
 the emperor. After a number of bloody battles the insurgents 
 were defeated and large numbers were put to death for engaging 
 in it. At its close it is alleged that Henry instigated Guibert, 
 his chancellor, who was the simoniacal archbishop of Ravenna, to 
 seize the pontiff, imprison him, and procure the election of 
 another in his place who would pay deference to the emperor's 
 wishes. The attempt to carry out this scheme was partially suc- 
 cessful. One of the Cenci, son of a former prefect of Rome, with 
 a band of armed men burst into the Church of Saint Mary -Major 
 on Christmas night (A. D. 1075), and dragged the Pope from the 
 altar where he was celebrating the midnight mass, and amid the 
 groans and shrieks of the horror-stricken worshippers carried him 
 off to a stronghold of the Cenci. They hoped to remove him from 
 the city before daylight and bring him a prisoner to Germany, 
 but the manhood of Rome had the tower of the Cenci surrounded 
 within a few hours after the seizure. They threatened to 
 storm the place and put to death Cenci and every member of 
 his band. 
 
 The captor begged his prisoner to save his life from the maddened 
 multitude, who were getting the scaling ladders in readiness to 
 begin the assault. The Pope secured the lives of his captors, 
 and was then borne to the Church from which he had been carried, 
 where he continued the celebration which had been so rudely 
 interrupted. Gregory on the very next day, December 20, wrote 
 to Henry, spying, "We are astonished at the unfriendly bearing 
 of your acts and decrees toward the Apostolic See. You have 
 continued in contempt of our rescripts to bestow investitures for 
 vacant bishoprics. We would remind you in true fatherly affec- 
 tion to acknowledge the empire of Christ, to think of the danger 
 of preferring your own honor to His." 
 
 Henry made answer by calling a council of the German bishops 
 at Worms. A formal accusation against the Pope was laid 
 before this council in which he was charged with many infamous
 
 THEOCRACY OR PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 405 
 
 crimes, one of which was that he had hired assassins to kill Henry 
 IV. He was denounced as "a heretic, an adulterer, a ferocious 
 and blood-thirsty beast." The council at the close of a three days 
 session deposed the Pope, which sentence was signed by the king 
 and all the bishops in attendance. A messenger was sent from 
 the emperor to Rome with two letters, one for presentation to the 
 Pope, and the other for the Roman people. The letter to the 
 Pope ran thus : 
 
 " Henry, by the grace of God, King, to Hildebrand. Whereas I 
 expected from you the treatment of a father, I have learned that you 
 act as my worst enemy. You have robbed me of the highest marks of 
 respect due from your See ; you have tried to estrange the hearts of 
 my Italian subjects. To check this boldness, not by words but by 
 deeds, I have called together the lords and bishops of my states. The 
 council has received ample proofs, as you will see by the enclosed acts, 
 that you are utterly unworthy any longer to occupy the Holy See. I 
 have agreed to this sentence. I cease to look upon you as Sovereign 
 Pontiff, and in virtue of my rank of Roman patrician I command you 
 to quit the See forthwith." 
 
 The two letters were read by the imperial messenger before an 
 assembly of the Roman clergy and nobility over which the Pope 
 presided. The assembly desired to proceed at once to depose the 
 emperor in the presence of his messenger, but Gregory suggested 
 that they adjourn until the next day. Before adjourning, address- 
 ing the bishops specially, he said: "We must display the sim- 
 plicity of the dove as well as the prudence of the sequent." 
 
 On the following day he addressed the assembly, reciting 
 endeavors which he had made to induce Henry to obey the laws 
 of the Church, and referred with powerful eloquence to the 
 demoralized condition of the world, owing chiefly to^he bad men 
 who had been introduced into the Episcopal seats by temporal 
 sovereigns against the continued protests of the pontiffs. 
 
 The bishops of the assemblyarose and unanimously requested that 
 Henry be excommunicated for malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfea- 
 sance, as a public and notorious corrupter of morals, and contemner 
 and violator of the laws of the Christian Church which he had sworn 
 to obey. The decisive battle of spiritual service reform in Chris-
 
 4o; 
 
 THE STORY OP GOVERNJMKNT. 
 
 OFF1CKK OF THE PAPAL HOUSEHOLD. 
 
 tendom had begun. 
 Gregory VII. then arose 
 and pronounced the fa- 
 mous sentence of excom- 
 munication and deposi- 
 tion as follows : 
 
 " St. Peter, prince of the 
 Apostles, hear thy servant. 
 I call thee to witness, thou 
 and the most holy mother 
 of God, with St. Paul, thy 
 brother and all the saints, 
 that the Church of Rome 
 compelled me in spite of 
 myself to rule. In the 
 name of Almighty God, 
 Father, Son and Holy 
 Ghost, and by thy author- 
 ity, I forbid Henry to 
 govern the German realm 
 and Italy. I release all 
 Christians from the oath 
 by which they have bound 
 themselves to him, and I 
 forbid anyone to serve him 
 as King. Since he has 
 refused to obey as a Chris- 
 tian, rejecting the counsels 
 given him for his salvation, 
 and withdrawing from the 
 Church which he seeks to 
 rend, I hereby declare him 
 anathema that all nations 
 may know even by experi- 
 ence that thou art Peter, 
 and that upon this rock 
 the Son of the Living 
 God has built his Church 
 against which the gates of 
 hell shall never prevail."
 
 THEOCRACY OR PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 407 
 
 A pontifical bull notified the Christian world of the sentence 
 passed upon Henry, the news of which created a tremendous 
 sensation. Germany was divided into two hostile camps, one 
 papal, the other anti-papal. An assembly of the German bishops 
 and nobles met near Mentz to consider the situation. Gregory 
 was represented by two legates. It was determined, in a session 
 that lasted seven days, to elect a new ruler instead of Henry, 
 and that unless "within the space of a year he had obtained 
 absolution from the sentence of excommunication and deposition 
 weighing upon him, he should' be considered finally deposed from 
 the throne." And lie must disband his army and cease exercising 
 sovereign authority until he had obtained absolution from the 
 Pope. Henry consented to the terms and hastened to meet the 
 Pope at the castle of Canossa in northern Italy. He put off every 
 insignia of royalty from his person and dressed as a penitent, 
 barefooted and bareheaded, awaited for the space of three days, from 
 the 17th to the 20th of January, the Pope's judgment. Prostrate 
 at the Pope's feet he cried out, "Forgive, most Holy Father, in 
 your mercy forgive me." Gregory pronounced him absolved, and 
 reinstated as ruler of the German Empire, and in a bull announced 
 to the Christian world that Henry was released from his censures. 
 
 But Henry was evidently acting the part of a hypocrite. In 
 a few weeks later he sent a force of men-at-arms into Lombardy 
 to capture the Pope, which failed through the project leaking 
 out. Determined not to be foiled, and gathering around him 
 all the simoniacal bishops and their retainers, and the nobles 
 who disregarded church authority, he proposed to dictate terms to 
 all his opponents. The German nobles who refused to follow 
 him met and elected Rudolph, Duke of Suabia, as "the lawful 
 king of Germany, and defender of the empire of the Franks." In 
 the civil war which followed Henry was victorious. 
 
 Again he was excommunicated and deposed by Gregory, to which 
 sentence he replied by calling a convocation of the simoniacal 
 bishops whom he had appointed. These bishops said : " In a council 
 of twenty-nire bishops we have resolved to depose, expel, and if 
 he refuse to obey our injunction to devote to eternal perdition 
 Hildebrand, the corrupt man who counsels the plunder of churches 
 and assassination, who defends perjury and murder; Hildebrand,
 
 408 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 that monk possessed of the spirit of hell, the vile apostate from 
 the faith of our fathers." 
 
 They also unanimously elected the imperial chancellor, Guibert 
 of Ravenna, as Pope Clement III., who instantly set out for 
 Rome with an army to take possession of the pontifical office. 
 All the disorderly clerics, all the riotous, both lay and cleric, 
 flocked to the standard of the anti-pope who claimed that the 
 emperor should exercise the chief authority in the choice of popes 
 and bishops; that no pope or bishop could be lawfully elected 
 unless chosen by the emperor or king of Germany, and that no 
 account was to be made of a sentence of excommunication pro- 
 nounced against a temporal sovereign. 
 
 Professor Voigt says : " The pen of history refuses to record all 
 the woes that followed in the train of this schism." Gregory 
 stood almost alone ; the mighty of earth and many of the unworthy 
 were arrayed against him. The emperor's pope, Guibert, with 
 the emperor and a large army, laid siege to Rome in the spring 
 of 1082. The Romans successfully defended their city and 
 pontiff for two years, but, wearied out at length by the rigors of 
 the protracted siege, they sent a deputation of citizens to offer 
 Hemy the keys of the city. 
 
 The latter and his pope made their entry March 21, 1084. 
 Guibert was formally installed as Pope, and he then crowned 
 Henry as Emperor of Germany in the church of Saint Peter, 
 the latter having borne only the titles of king and emperor- 
 elect previously. Gregory VII. withdrew from Rome to Salerno 
 where he died May 25, 1085. Around the couch on which 
 he lay dying stood his cardinals, the faithful ones who 
 repudiated the intruded Pope of the emperor. To these he 
 bequeathed as his only legacy the preservation of the inde- 
 pendence of the church. He adjured them in his last moments, 
 saying, "In the name of Almighty God, in virtue of the authority 
 of the holy apostles, Peter and Paul, I command you to acknowl- 
 edge as lawful Pope no one who is not elected and consecrated 
 according to the canonical laws of the Church." 
 
 He then grew rapidly weaker and for a time was unable to 
 speak, but rallying for a moment the ebbing life-forces he uttered 
 the words which will go down to all the unborn generations of
 
 THEOCRACY OR PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 409 
 
 men of every creed and country : " I have loved justice and hated 
 iniquity, therefore do I die in exile." The last words had been 
 spoken. The son of the Roman carpenter, the monk Hildebrand, 
 the Supreme Pontiff, was dead. The struggle between Gregory 
 and Henry was ended. 
 
 The student of history will perceive a certain similarity 
 between the actors in this conflict and that which took place 
 between Henry VIII. of England and Fisher, the Bishop of 
 Rochester. Hildebrand was a preceptor of the German emperor 
 in early boyhood ; Fisher was a preceptor of the English monarch. 
 Hildebrand, for maintaining the papal supremacy, was driven into 
 exile by his pupil, while Fisher was beheaded for the same 
 offence by his pupil. 
 
 Professor Voigt closes his History of Gregory VII. in these 
 words : 
 
 " It is difficult to bestow on him exaggerated eulogy, for he has laid 
 everywhere the foundation of a solid glory. But every one should 
 wish to render justice to whom justice is due ; let no man cast a stone 
 at one who is innocent; let every one respect and honor a man who 
 has labored for his age with views so grand and so generous. Let him 
 who is conscious of having calumniated him, re-enter into his own 
 conscience." 
 
 Apparently the German emperor was triumphant; but the 
 triumph was in appearance only. The right of temporal princes 
 to exercise the investiture of bishops was doomed. Pope Victor 
 III., who followed Gregory VII., took up the work which the 
 exile of Salerno bequeathed to his successors, and his successors 
 in turn prosecuted it until this claim was altogether relinquished 
 by Henry V., emperor of Germany, thirty-seven years after the 
 death of Gregory VII. 
 
 In 1196 the papacy and a French monarch, Philip Augustus, 
 came into collision on the marriage question. The king, on a 
 false pretext of kindred, convened some bishops who declared his 
 marriage void with the queen, a daughter of the king of Denmark. 
 The latter, when cited before the assembly to answer interrogato- 
 ries and defend herself against her husband's charges, could not 
 speak the language of her judges. When an interpreter trans-
 
 410 
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 lated for her the sentence of her repudiation, she could only cry 
 out in an appeal of anguish and indignation : " Rome, Rome ! " 
 She refused to leave France and return to her father, whereupon 
 the king confined her in a convent and married another woman. 
 Innocent III., a man of extraordinary ability, was Pope. Some 
 writers charge him with a boundless ambition. However that 
 may be, he espoused the cause of the repudiated queen and sum- 
 moned a council at Dijon before which Philip Augustus was 
 
 cited to appear to answer 
 for his conduct. The king 
 refused to appear, bidding 
 defiance to Pope and coun- 
 cil. The legate presiding 
 
 THE QUEEN OF PHIMP AUGUSTUS APPEALING TO ROME. 
 
 over the council in the Pope's name, and acting under his in- 
 struction, laid the French kingdom under an interdict until 
 proper reparation should be made. The king persecuted the 
 faithful clergy with great cruelty and civil war was provoked, 
 many of the feudal nobles drawing the sword to protect the clergy 
 within their fiefs. 
 
 Growing weary of the struggle, Philip made a last appeal to 
 an assembly of all the nobles and prelates of his realm which he 
 convoked. " What must I do ? " asked Philip. " Obey the Pope,
 
 THEOCRACY OR 3'RIESTLY GOVKK N.M KNT. 411 
 
 put away Agnes, and take back your queen," they answered. 
 The king was forced to yield and the queen was restored to her 
 rightful station. 
 
 In regard to the state of education considerable improvement 
 had been made in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It will, 
 of course, be understood that printing, as we have it to-dav, was 
 unknown; that every book was produced by the slow and labori- 
 ous work of writing out every word by hand. 
 
 The third general council of the Church, held at Rome by Pope 
 Alexander III. in 1179, ordained that "since the Church of God, 
 like a tender mother, is bound to provide for the poor both in 
 those things which appertain to the aid of the body and in those 
 which belong to the advancement of the soul, lest the opportunity 
 for such improvement should be wanting to those poor persons 
 who cannot be aided by the wealth of their parents, let a compe- 
 tent benefice be assigned in each cathedral church to a teacher whose 
 duty it shall be to teach the clerks and poor scholars of the same 
 church gratuitously ; by which means the necessity of the teacher 
 maybe relieved, and the way to instruction be opened to learners. 
 Let this practice be also restored in other churches and monasteries, 
 if in times past anything was set apart in them for this purpose. 
 But let no one exact a price for granting permission to teach." 
 
 Pope Innocent III., who has already been referred to, renewed 
 this decree in 1215, and extended the law to all parochial 
 churches. Universities arose throughout Europe to light the course 
 of the centuries. Oxford was founded in 886, Cambridge in 915. 
 Charlemagne founded the University of Paris about 800, and a 
 large number of Italian universities, including that of Padua, 
 Pisa, Pavia, Bologna, and Rome were well-known centres of 
 learning as early as the twelfth century, each counting its students 
 by thousands. Padua alone, the alma mater of Columbus and 
 Vespucius, had at one time 18,000 students. Anthony Wood, 
 the chronicler of Oxford, says that that institution in the thir- 
 teenth century had not less than 30,000 students. 
 
 The notorious politico-ecclesiastical tribunal known as the 
 Spanish Inquisition was established by Ferdinand and Isabella 
 toward the close of the fifteenth century. Prior to this time the 
 Inquisition prevailed throughout Christendom as a species of
 
 412 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 purely ecclesiastical court, the members of which were appointed 
 by the Pope to determine cases in which heresy or heretical teach- 
 ing was charged against anyone. Heresy was down on the statute 
 book of every Christian nation as an offence of the greatest magni- 
 tude to be punished with extreme severity. 
 
 After the capture of Grenada, the last stronghold of the Moors 
 in Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella asked and obtained permission 
 from Pope Sixtus IV. to appoint their own ecclesiastical inquisi- 
 tors. Then the frightful cruelties of this institution whose juris- 
 diction was extended to embrace other than heretical crimes were 
 practised, cruelties too well known to require more than a 
 passing reference here. They are probably only paralleled by 
 those perpetrated on the Catholics of Ireland. 
 
 All the Christian states of Europe, Protestant as well as 
 Catholic, enforced vigorously the laws against heresy, and even 
 the early settlers of New England who fled from persecution 
 themselves pursued heretics, Quakers and witches with zeal 
 almost equal to that of the Spaniards who persecuted Moors, 
 Jews and other unbelievers. But one of the most singular 
 features of the Spanish Inquisition consists in the fact that its 
 machinery was quite often directed against some who had attained 
 high rank in the Church and despite the wish of the Pope him- 
 self. It laid hands upon and imprisoned for some time in Alcala 
 Saint Ignatius, of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, and some of 
 his companions on suspicion of heresy. When the General Coun- 
 cil of Trent was in session, Bartholomew Caranza, Archbishop of 
 Toledo, was arrested by the Inquisition and confined in prison 
 on a charge of heresy. Neither the interference of Pope Pius IV., 
 nor the protest of the Council of Trent, at whose deliberations the 
 archbishop should be present, were of any avail in procuring his 
 release. The Inquisition kept him in prison for eight years until 
 he was liberated by a special order of King Philip II. 
 
 During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the papacy passed 
 through what is called in history the Great Schism. It was prob- 
 ably the most critical time which the Roman Church ever experi- 
 enced, viewed from the standpoint of unity and the primacy of the 
 Roman pontiff, upon which marks of the divine commission 
 Catholic writers lay so much emphasis. The schism begun at an
 
 THEOCRACY Oil PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 413 
 
 election of a pope in Rome in April, 1378, when Urban VI. 
 was unanimous! 3- declared elected by the cardinals, but afterwards 
 the French cardinals protested against the legality of che election 
 and proceeded to elect a pope under the name of Clement VII. 
 The latter transferred himself to Avignon, in France, from which 
 he ruled a small portion of the Christian world, chiefly France, 
 
 THE TRIAL OF A DEAD POPE. 
 
 while the pontiff in Rome was recognized as the lawful Pope by 
 the greater part of Christendom. 
 
 The rival popes and sometimes there were three claimants 
 excommunicated one another, and when they died their successors 
 who were elected by the respective factions did likewise, and on 
 one occasion a dead pope was actually tried by his successor. The 
 Christian world was in deep distress, and sadly puzzled at this 
 apparent sacrifice of the unity under one head, which was the 
 time-honored boast of the papacy. Persons of highest reputation, 
 reverenced for the holiness of their lives, were to be found on 
 opposite sides. The unity of faith and worship was not dis- 
 turbed ; the only question at issue being who was the true Pope. 
 The schism lasted until 1417, when it was ended by all the elec- 
 tors unanimously voting for Pope Martin V.
 
 414 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 It would seem that the ambition of the French king fanning 
 the ambition of certain French cardinals was the cause of this 
 schism. The papacy in the beginning of the Middle Ages in its 
 efforts to humanize Europe, was obliged to come into close con- 
 tact, and in many instances into conflict a few examples of 
 which have been cited with the temporal rulers, and thus it 
 was drawn into the arena of politics where it was consequently 
 subject to all its vicissitudes and dangers. 
 
 Many monasteries became a scandal and reproach to Christen- 
 dom at this time. Yet a large number of the purest and holiest 
 men and women, whose names adorn the page of Christi- 
 anity, lived at this epoch, who kept their faces firmly set against 
 the evils of the time, working in patience, silence and humility 
 to resist the loud-voiced wrong which walked abroad at noonday. 
 Luther at this time entered upon the stage, and the Reformation 
 of the sixteenth century was under way. The monk of Witten- 
 berg found all the material necessary for a great upheaval at 
 hand; he touched the train and the explosion followed. He 
 cried out reform on the Alpine heights and an avalanche was set 
 in motion. He appealed from the authority of the Pope to the 
 Bible interpreted by every Christian for himself as the only rule 
 of faith. 
 
 A great number of sects sprang into existence immediately, some 
 of which upheld very fantastic doctrines. When Luther reproved 
 them and insisted upon the soundness of his own views they told 
 him that he taught the sole authority of the Bible upon which 
 they based their belief. One of the most numerous of these sects, 
 the Anabaptists, protested against the payment of tithes and 
 other dues, and maintained the right of every parish to choose 
 and remove at will the preachers who occupied the pulpits. 
 They supported these professions by force of arms under their 
 leader Miinzer, who called himself " Gideon sent of God to re- 
 establish with the sword the kingdom of Jesus Christ," and the 
 Peasants' War ensued, in which the unfortunate Anabaptists were 
 beaten and Miinzer killed. Luther had endeavored to restrain 
 them, but finding expostulation useless, he advised the German 
 princes by letter to "hunt these rebellious peasants like wild beasts ; 
 kill them like mad dogs: they are sold body and soul to Satan."
 
 THEOCRACY OR PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 415 
 
 The Reformation spread quickly to countries outside of Ger- 
 many. Henry VIII. reformed the Church in England in the 
 course of a few years by making himself, by act of Parliament, 
 the head of it. The cause of the Reformation in England was 
 that Pope Clement VII. refused to grant Henry a divorce from 
 his wife Catherine, to whom he had been married eighteen years. 
 Henry wished for young Anne Boleyn, and he advanced the usual 
 pretext of other royal libertines that his conscience troubled him 
 for living with his queen because of a certain too close kinship 
 whicli they bore to each other before marriage. 
 
 The Pontiff, on being appealed to for the necessary dispensa- 
 tion, said he would examine carefully into the matter, but 
 could not sacrifice his conscience and trample on the laws 
 of God. After the matter was protracted for some years, 
 during which he tried every possible means to dissuade 
 Henry from his purpose, a decision was rendered, deciding 
 definitely against the divorce on which Henry had already 
 resolved. The king was indignant and made himself pope of 
 the English Church. He then ordered Rowland Lee, one of his 
 chaplains, to marry him immediately to Anne Boleyn, who was 
 soon to become a mother, and the thing was done. 
 
 The history of this royal monster, his many marriages, his 
 treatment of his wives and subjects, are too well known to require 
 reference at any great length here. He reformed the Church in 
 accordance with his views. While doing so he executed two 
 queens, one cardinal, two archbishops, eighteen bishops, thirteen 
 abbots, five hundred priors and monks, thirty-eight doctors, 
 twelve dukes and counts, one hundred and sixty-four noblemen of 
 various ranks, one hundred and twenty-four private citizens, and 
 one hundred and ten women. These executions were all for 
 offences committed against his royal personality against his 
 majesty. Among these was his early preceptor, the venerable 
 Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, who was eighty years of age. When 
 Pope Paul nominated Fisher as cardinal Henry said, " Paul may 
 send him the hat, but I will take care that he shall have never 
 a head to wear it on." 
 
 Pope Paul III. called a general council of the Church at 
 Trent which assembled on December 13, 1545. The council
 
 416 THK STOIIY ()K <;<)VKKNMKN T T. 
 
 pronounced definitely on the teachings of Luther, Calvin, 
 Zwinglius, and other reformers, condemning them as heretical. 
 
 At this period of strife and world-wide religious contention, 
 the organization arose which was founded by Ignatius of Loyola, 
 and known as the "Society of Jesus." This order of priests was 
 especially designed to counteract the influence of Protestantism. 
 It has always appeared an object of the greatest terror to many 
 Protestant minds. The society has been denounced with the 
 greatest bitterness as a monster of iniquity since it first appeared 
 in the arena of conflict, and its members from time to time have 
 been expelled from states ruled by kings as well as from states 
 under republican government. Even members of the Catholic 
 Church itself have assailed it. Its brethren have been accused 
 of pandering to the absolutism of princes, and arousing feelings 
 of revolt among the masses at one and the same time. The fol- 
 lowing is an accurate summary of the constitution of this notable 
 society : 
 
 A. M. D. G. (Ad major em Dei gloriam) is its motto. The end 
 of this society is the greater glory of God. Its members are to 
 labor for the salvation of their neighbor as for their own. Their 
 duty toward their neighbor they discharge by means of preaching, 
 missions, catechetical instructions, conferences with heretics, 
 the confessional, and especially by the education of youth ; their 
 own perfection they seek by means of mental prayer, examination 
 of conscience, the reading of ascetical works, and frequent com- 
 munion. 
 
 Candidates for admission into the society are tried by a novi- 
 tiate of two years, during which time all studies are laid aside, and 
 the novices devote their time chiefly to spiritual exercises. At 
 the end of the novitiate the novice may be admitted to the first 
 vows, chastity, poverty and obedience, which are like those of 
 other orders. The poverty of the members consists in their 
 incapacity to possess either individually or collectively any 
 income or property. They are to remain satisfied with what is 
 given them to supply their wants. 
 
 Their colleges, however, are endowed in order that neither stu- 
 dents nor teachers may be taken from their duties to provide for 
 their own subsistence. After the novitiate they begin the course
 
 418 Till: STOIIV OF (iOYKRNMKNT. 
 
 of studies languages, belles-lettres, rhetoric, philosophy, theol- 
 ogy, church history, and the Sacred Scriptures. While pursuing 
 these studies they are to preserve the spirit of piety in their hearts 
 by means of frequent examination of conscience, by approaching 
 the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ at least every 
 eighth day, and by renewing their vows twice a year. When 
 they go out of the house they should generally have a companion. 
 
 After the completion of his studies, the Jesuit performs a 
 second novitiate, lasting one year, during which he is employed 
 in spiritual duties and lives in retirement, perfecting himself in 
 the knowledge of the constitutions of his order. The members of 
 the order are divided into three classes, according to their degree 
 of learning and virtue : 
 
 1st. The professed, who beside the three monastic vows, chas- 
 tity, poverty and obedience, make a fourth vow of absolute 
 obedience to the Pope in regard to missions. There are compara- 
 tively few professed Jesuits or Jesuits of the four vows. From 
 this class are chosen the general of the order and the other prin- 
 cipal superiors. Their establishments are : the professed houses, 
 directed by a praepositus ; the colleges, containing at least thirteen 
 members under a rector, and the residences in charge of a 
 superior. 
 
 2d. The spiritual coadjutors, who are in greater number than 
 the professed according to their talents and the constitutions of 
 the order, and the professed in their ministry. 
 
 3d. The temporal coadjutors, or lay brothers who are received 
 for domestic employments. 
 
 Each province of the order, as the United States for example, 
 is governed by a provincial. At the head of the whole order is a 
 general, who resides at Rome and enjoys full power within the 
 limits of the constitution. Modifications can be introduced only 
 by the general congregations. The general appoints nearly all 
 the officers of the order to prevent whatever dissensions and 
 intrigues might arise from elections by suffrage ; these appointments 
 are made after consulting the provincial and the proper con- 
 suiters. The superiors of the various houses at stated times send 
 reports to the general of the capacity and conduct of their 
 subjects.
 
 ELEVATION OF POPE PIUS VII.
 
 420 TIIK STOKY OF (JOVKKNMKNT. 
 
 The general has six: assistiints whose advice lie is bound to 
 seek; they are to be tried and able men belonging to different 
 nations, by the names of which they are respectively known. 
 They are elected by the general congregation and form the 
 council of the general, but without authority except that of calling 
 a general congregation in extraordinary cases. The general con- 
 gregation also elects the general's admonitor who must admonish 
 him whenever he deems it necessary. The constitution main- 
 tains (lie strictest unity in the system, and in the matter of 
 teaching it aims at repressing, Avith the most vigorous energy, 
 whatever is at variance with the doctrine of the Church, leaving, 
 as it is claimed, at the same time in matters of mere opinion, a 
 freedom which favors the aspirations of genius. 
 
 The object of setting forth at such length the rules of this 
 order, which has been called " the right arm of the Church, " is 
 because the average American knows as little about them as lie 
 
 O 
 
 does about the laws of the Pharoahs, and aside from their novelty 
 it is assuredly not a matter for self-gratulation to be ignorant of 
 the methods and aims of a society of priests which already wields 
 such a powerful influence throughout our country. And they are 
 by no means strangers or newcomers in this land. Bancroft, 
 speaking of their work, says : " The history of their labors ic con- 
 nected with the origin of every celebrated town in the annals of 
 French America; not a cape was turned, nor a river entered but 
 a Jesuit led the way. . . . Thus did the religious zeal of the 
 French bear the cross to the banks of the Saint Mary and the 
 confines of Lake Superior, and look wistfully towards the homes 
 of the Sioux, in the valley of the Mississippi, five years before the 
 New England Elliot had addressed the tribe of Indians that dwelt 
 within six miles of Boston Harbor." The student Avho desires to 
 stud}' the labors of the Jesuits in North America can do so with 
 profit in Parkman's works. 
 
 The society was suppressed by tin; governments of the Catholic 
 countries of Europe, not only in Europe, but in all their foreign 
 ] K ^sessions between 1758 and 1707 . The charges which were made 
 the pretext for its expulsion are undeserving serious notice. The 
 chief charge was that a member of the order in Martinique signed 
 a bill of exchange on another in Paris which was protested.
 
 Louis XV., of France, 
 had no personal dislike to 
 the society, but his mis- 
 tress, the notorious Mad- 
 ame de Pompadour, had a 
 
 A JESUIT MISSIONARY. 
 
 421
 
 422 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 most vindictive hatred of its members, and as she was the 
 greatest power in the kingdom, governing Louis, the so-called 
 Parliament, and the Minister Choiseul, the decree of banishment 
 in France was readily obtained. A few years later Pope Clement 
 XIV., under pressure of the Catholic governments, and much 
 against his will, issued a bull dissolving the society. Then a 
 most singular episode occurred. Frederick the Great of Prussia, 
 and Catherine I., Empress of Russia, wrote to the Pope informing 
 him that, knowing no better teachers of youth than the Jesuits, 
 they meant to keep them in their dominions. 
 
 The situation was a unique and delicate one. By the bull of 
 suppression the Jesuits were forbidden to continue living in com- 
 munities, to receive novices, and consequently to perpetuate their 
 order. Their General Ricci had solemnly sworn to the Pope to 
 renounce all power and jurisdiction as superior. The other 
 Jesuits, obedient to the papal bull although it was their death- 
 warrant, refused the offers of Frederick and Catherine as long as 
 the Pope did not authorize their acceptance. The latter was 
 afraid of arousing the hostility of the Catholic powers by inde- 
 pendent action in the premises ; so he laid the proposition before 
 them for consideration. He was informed that he might follow 
 his wishes in the matter, provided he did so quietly and without 
 great formal publicity. Thus the Jesuits opened their educa- 
 tional institutions, established their novitiates, and maintained 
 their order in two non-Catholic countries, while they were pro- 
 hibited in the Catholic states. This fact is almost as singular as 
 the arrest and imprisonment of Ignatius of Loyola and his first 
 companions by the Spanish Inquisition. 
 
 During the last century the conflict between the papacy and 
 the temporal rulers continued in one form or another, the first 
 claiming that the spiritual domain was infringed upon by the latter 
 and vice versa. In France the opposition proceeded chiefly from 
 the Parliaments strongly imbued with the principles of Gallican- 
 ism or national churchism. In Spain the decrees of the Church 
 were always promulgated with the accompanying restriction 
 "without prejudice to the royal prerogative." 
 
 The opposition in France was chiefly directed against the 
 decrees relating to fines and imprisonment, in spiritual matters to
 
 THEOCRACY OR PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 423 
 
 be left to the ecclesiastical power, against those forbidding duels, 
 concubinage, and divorce, those reserving the judgment of bishops 
 to the Pope alone, and those relating to the consent of parents 
 deemed necessary in France for legal marriage, and not required 
 by the laAv of the Church. 
 
 Joseph II. of Germany, towards the close of the century, assumed 
 and exercised the right of settling all ecclesiastical questions 
 within his empire ; he deprived bishops of their revenues, expelled 
 them or abolished their dioceses. By an imperial manifesto he 
 declared all pontifical bulls subject to his ratification. Bishops 
 were forbidden to ordain priests without the previous consent of 
 the emperor; he suppressed a large number of the religious com- 
 munities, and went so far as to fix the number of priests for each 
 church. The Pope protested vigorously. The emperor and the 
 bishops who supported him carried out their views of church govern- 
 ment for a time, threatening a schism when the tidal wave of revo- 
 lution which swept over Europe from Paris gave the emperor 
 and his brother monarchs other matters to occupy their atten- 
 tion than things of theocratic discipline. 
 
 The French Directory had Pope Pius VI. arrested on Feb. 12, 
 1798, and brought to France as a prisoner, where he died in 
 confinement August 29, 1799, because he refused to govern 
 the Church in accordance with the notions of the gentlemen 
 in Paris, who proposed to relieve the world of all kinds of 
 rule save that of "the Republic One and Indivisible." Ranke, in 
 his " History of the Popes," speaking of the death of Pius VI., says : 
 "In truth, it seemed as if the papal power was forever at an end." 
 
 The emperor, Napoleon I., a few years later established amicable 
 relations with Pope Pius VII., who crowned the emperor at his 
 request in Paris. Afterwards, in 1805, he appealed to the Pope 
 to annul the marriage which his brother Joseph, when a minor, had 
 contracted in Baltimore, in this country, with Miss Patterson, on 
 the ground that the lady was a Protestant and her husband was a 
 minor. Whatever opinion one may entertain of the papacy in its 
 religious aspect, the reply of the aged Pontiff to this monstrous 
 demand made by the dictator of Europe is worthy of the highest 
 commendation. Pius VII. in his reply says: "Your Majesty will 
 understand that, upon the information thus far received by us, it
 
 424 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 is not in our power to pronounce a sentence of nullity. We can- 
 not utter a judgment in opposition to the rules of the Church, and 
 we could not, without laying aside those rules, decree the in- 
 validity of a union which, according to the Word of God, no 
 human power can sunder." 
 
 But the emperor was not to be stopped by this refusal. At his 
 instigation the state tribunals annulled the marriage, and Joseph 
 married a princess of Wurtemberg. Afterwards, on the 6th of 
 July, 1809, the emperor arrested the Pope and all the cardinals 
 whom he was able to lay hartds on, and brought them all as 
 prisoners to Paris, so that in case the Pontiff died he would be 
 able to determine who should be elected in his stead. But Pius 
 VII. did not die in Paris, although he remained a prisoner in the 
 emperor's custody until May, 1814, when he was liberated by the 
 allied sovereigns at the downfall of Napoleon. 
 
 Pius VII., on his return to Rome, issued a bull which re-estab- 
 lished the order of the Society of Jesus throughout the world. 
 This Pontiff, who is with some truth called one of the greatest of 
 modern times, governed the Catholic Church for a long time, and 
 died on the 20th of September, 1823. Since his pontificate the 
 conflicts between the papacy and temporal rulers have not been so 
 fierce nor so numerous as in the past centuries. Indeed, the only 
 great subject matter of strife has been the temporal jurisdiction 
 which the popes exercised over the small territory known as the 
 States of the Church, or as it is generally termed by Catholics, 
 "the patrimony of Saint Peter." 
 
 Victor Emanuel, the King of Italy, invaded the states of the 
 Church during the pontificate of Pius IX., the predecessor of the 
 present Pope, and annexed them to his kingdom, making the city 
 of Rome his capital. Most Catholics throughout the Avorld have 
 protested, and still protest, against this act, calling it a flagrant 
 violation of right, and a sacrilege in a spiritual sense. They 
 claim that the popes since the days of Pepin and Charlemagne 
 have administered the temporalities within the Papal states as 
 executors of the Catholic Church, and that it is impossible for the 
 Pope to be absolutely free as the head of the Church under the 
 jurisdiction of any flag but his own, however small the territory 
 that flag may cover.
 
 I'OI'K I.KO Mil.
 
 426 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 A brief explanation of the administration of the Catholic Church, 
 its powers and how exercised, may be of interest to the average 
 American reader. The priesthood and governing body of the 
 Catholic Church is the hierarchy comprising the Pope, the Bishop, 
 and the Clergy. The Pope is the executive and supreme judicial 
 authority. The popes were formerly elected by the cardinal 
 bishops with the consent of the other cardinals and the clergy 
 and people of Home, saving also the honor due to Henry III., 
 Emperor of Germany and king of the Romans in 1059, and to 
 any of his successors in whose favor the Holy See should make 
 the same reservation. But this recognition of the imperial right 
 to interfere in the election proved to be fertile in anti-popes and 
 great confusion, hence it was decreed by the Pope and general 
 Council of Lateran in 1179, that elections should henceforth rest 
 with the cardinals alone, and that in order to be canonical it 
 must be supported by the votes of two thirds of their number. 
 This method of election was confirmed and developed at a 
 subsequent council in 1274, and is practically the rule at the 
 present time. 
 
 When a pope dies the cardinals who are absent are immediately 
 to be summoned to the conclave by one of the secretaries of the 
 sacred college ; the election is to begin on the tenth day after the 
 death. In whatever city the Pope dies, there the election must 
 be held. Within the ten days the conclave must be constructed 
 in the papal palace, or in some other suitable edifice. The large 
 halls of the palace are so divided by wooden partitions as to 
 furnish a number of sets of small apartments all opening upon a 
 corridor. Here the cardinals must remain until they have elected 
 a pope. 
 
 On the tenth day a solemn mass is said in the Vatican Church, 
 and after it the cardinals form a procession and proceed to the 
 conclave, taking up their respective apartments as the lot has dis- 
 tributed them. All the entrances to the building but one are 
 closed, and that is in the charge of officials who are partly pre- 
 lates, partly officials of the municipality whose business it is to 
 see that no unauthorized person shall enter, and to exercise a sur- 
 veillance over the food brought for the cardinals lest any written 
 communication should be conveyed to them by this channel.
 
 THEOCRACY OK PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 42T 
 
 Morning and evening the cardinals meet in the chapel and a 
 secret scrutiny by means of voting papers is usually instituted in 
 order to ascertain whether any cardinal has the required majority 
 of the two thirds. A cardinal coming from a distance can enter 
 the conclave after the closure, but only if he claim the right of 
 doing so within three days of his arrival in the city. Papal 
 elections have visually been made with reasonable despatch, yet 
 in times of disturbance the difficulty of obtaining a two 
 thirds majority has been known to protract the proceedings 
 for a long time, as in the celebrated conclave of 1799, which 
 lasted for six months. 
 
 The cardinals are not elected; they are appointed by the Pope. 
 They have for many centuries been taken in part from all the 
 great Christian nations, though those of Italian birth have pre- 
 dominated. The duties of cardinals are of two kinds: those 
 which devolve on them while the Pope is living, and those which 
 they have to discharge when the papal chair is vacant. Their 
 first duty consists in taking an active part in the government of 
 the Church, for although the Pope is in no way bound to defer to 
 the opinions of the sacred college, as the cardinals are termed in 
 practice, he seldom, if ever, takes an important step without their 
 counsel and concurrence. 
 
 The cardinals now take precedence of archbishops and bishops, 
 although it was not so formerly. At the death of the Pope they 
 alone elect his successor. Archbishops exercise a limited species 
 of jurisdiction over the bishops of their archdiocese. An arch- 
 bishop can receive appeals from the bishops in his jurisdiction in 
 some cases. The right also devolves upon him of appointing a 
 vicar capitular on the death of a suffragan bishop if the chapter 
 of the diocese fails to appoint within eight days. 
 
 A bishop is superior to simple priests, and the council of Trent 
 defined that this superiority is of divine origin. The words of the 
 council are, " If anyone affirm that bishops are not superior to presby- 
 ters, or that they have not the power of confirming and ordaining, 
 or that the power which they have is common to presbyters also, 
 let him be anathema. " 
 
 In his own diocese it is a bishop's duty to teach. He is required 
 to preach the word of God unless he be lawfully hindered, nor
 
 428 THE STORY OF GOVKIINM KNT. 
 
 can anyone, secular or regular, preach in the diocese without his 
 leave. He must watch over purity of doctrine, especially in 
 schools public and private. No hook treating on religion can be 
 published till it has been examined and has received his imprimatur. 
 He must administer the sacrament of confirmation, ordain priests, 
 and consecrate the holy oils, churches, altars, chalices, etc. He 
 must also approve priests, and give them their "faculties" to hear 
 confessions, administer other sacraments, etc. 
 
 He may make laws for his diocese, not, however, such as are 
 contrary to the law of the Church. He decides in the first 
 instance all ecclesiastical causes. He can inflict penalties, sus- 
 pension, excommunication and the like. Bishops are usually 
 selected by a majority vote of the chief priests of a diocese, and 
 confirmed by the Pope, although the practice varies in different 
 countries. The bishop-elect must be thirty years of age, a priest, 
 of Catholic parentage, of good fame, able to produce the public 
 testimony of some university or academy to his learning. Bishops 
 are consecrated by the Pope or by a bishop specially commissioned 
 by the Pope for the purpose. 
 
 Next in order after the bishops are the priests, deacons, sub- 
 deacons, acolytes, exorcists, readers, ostiarii, or doorkeepers. 
 The first three are as old, it is alleged, as the time of the 
 apostles. In addition to these are various ecclesiastical orders of 
 missionary clergymen, monks, nuns, and lay confraternities, all 
 engaged in the work of the Church. 
 
 We conclude this brief survey of theocratic government, as 
 illustrated by the Jewish theocracy and the Catholic Church, with 
 a few observations respecting the latter. Whatever views mry be 
 entertained of her doctrines and pretensions to infallibility, the 
 Catholic Church cannot be ignored by the learned or ignorant, by 
 the rulers or persons ruled. She touches civilization everywhere 
 at all points in various ways. She has a direct or at least a most 
 powerful indirect influence on civil governments. She is a 
 world- wide, stupendous fact well worthy the profound attention 
 of the philosopher, the statesman, and the ordinary student of 
 history. 
 
 In these days of more dispassionate historical investigation 
 than could reasonably be expected at a period closer to the great
 
 430 THE STORY OF GOVKHXMKNT. 
 
 revolution of the sixteenth century, when men's minds were 
 unbalanced by bitter party strife, justice can be rendered to her 
 merits as well as to her demerits. The student of history will 
 find among her grievous shortcomings that she has always pro- 
 claimed and maintained one great fundamental truth which is the 
 bedrock of true civilization: that to her "there is neither Gen- 
 tile nor Jew, barbarian nor Scythian; but Christ is all, and in 
 all." The prince and the beggar, the princess and poorest 
 peasant girl, the master and the servant, kneel side by side in her 
 most stately temples, on terms of perfect equality, all reduced 
 to the same level of humble suppliants for mercy before the altar 
 of the Crucified One. 
 
 The student will also find that her form of government is an 
 elective monarchy combined with an aristocracy that should 
 possess considerable merit, and a democracy at the present day at 
 least without bitter party factions. Every Christian man of every 
 class, no matter how lowly, is eligible to the highest offices in the 
 Church. Many of the Popes have been chosen from the lowest 
 walks of life. The few men of bad reputation who have occupied 
 the pontifical chair serve to show by way of contrast the long line 
 of august men who have adorned it by their virtues and fortitude 
 in trying times. Macaulay, who was much opposed to the 
 Church, in reviewing Ranke's history of the papacy, concludes by 
 saying : " There is not and there never was on this earth a work 
 so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. 
 The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of 
 human civilization. 
 
 "No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back 
 to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, 
 and when the cameleopards and tigers bounded in the Flavina 
 amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, 
 when compared with the line of the Roman pontiffs. 
 
 " This line we trace back in an unbroken series from the Pope 
 who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who 
 crowned Pepin in the eighth, and far beyond the time of Pepin the 
 august dynasty extends until its origin is lost in the twilight of fable. 
 
 " The republic of Venice came next in antiquity. But the 
 republic of Venice was modern when compared with the papacy ;
 
 THEOCRACY OR PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 431 
 
 and republic of Venice is gone and the papacy remains. The 
 papacy remains, not in decay, nor a mere antique, but full of life 
 and youthful vigor. 
 
 " The Catholic Church is still sending forth to the furthest ends 
 of the world missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent 
 
 THE OLDEST CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 SAN MIGUEL AT SANTA FE. 
 
 with Austin, and still confronting hostile kings with the same 
 spirit with which she confronted Attila. The number of her 
 children is greater than in any former age. Her acquisitions in 
 the new world have more than compensated her for what she has 
 lost in the old. Her spiritual ascendency extends over the vast 
 countries which lie between the plains of the Missouri and Cape 
 Horn, countries which a century hence may not improbably con- 
 tain a population as large as that which now inhabits Europe. . . .
 
 STOKY OF (JOVKKNMKNT. 
 
 "Nor do we see any sign which indicates that the term of her 
 long dominion is approaching. She saw the commencement of all 
 the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that 
 now exist in the world, and we feel no assurance that she is not 
 destined to see the end of them all. 
 
 " She was great and respected before the Saxon set foot on 
 Britain before the Frank had passed the Rhine when Grecian 
 eloquence still flourished at Antioch when idols were still wor- 
 shipped in the Temple of Mecca. 
 
 " And she may still exist in undiminished vigor when some 
 traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, 
 take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the 
 ruins of St. Paul's." 
 
 This striking tribute by a Protestant historian, this confession 
 of a profound and brilliant scholar, that the Catholic Church 
 appears to bear promise of permanence, tempts a scientific student 
 of human affairs to look beneath the jewelled crust of her cere- 
 monial and traditional assumption, to discover, if possible, a prac- 
 tical human explanation of her long, and strong, and still un waning 
 success. 
 
 Catholicism, apart from its celestial claims, is a vast historic 
 fact. Surviving the persecutions of its enemies, and the still more 
 dangerous persecutions that some of its benighted professors have 
 inflicted on others, it shows to-day, in the new world especially, 
 a fresh force in the sphere of tangible action. 
 
 Is this power the offspring of a new or simply the continuance 
 of an old policy, not so vigorously asserted, perhaps, as in days of 
 yore, but possibly all the more potent because veiled in some 
 degree and quiet in its movements ? It seems to us nothing new, 
 but simply the ancient policy of restraining the high and raising 
 the low, the same old policy pursued by her popes towards so 
 many cruel kings and barbaric barons in the Middle Ages, which 
 the Church is now trying to apply to the monstrosities which our 
 present industrial system has spawned. 
 
 For what greater monstrosities can there be than such absolutely 
 irresponsible money-kings as Andrew Carnegie who, in a nomi- 
 nally free nation, can hire with impunity a band of bravos to 
 commit treason against the government by invading a sovereign
 
 JA.MKS CAJJDIXAI. <;II!HOX.S.
 
 484 THK STORY OF (K >VKKNM KNT. 
 
 State, and provoking a conflict witli workmen ground down by 
 the very capitalist whose fortune they built up ? 
 
 Now the Catholic Church in London, through the person of its 
 cardinal, Henry Edward Manning, not long ago brought about a 
 peace between the striking dockmen and their capitalistic oppres- 
 sors. This Prince of the Church, since gone to his well-earned 
 rest, never rested during his life in his efforts to better the condi- 
 tion of the poor. 
 
 He stood for the masses against the classes; and in this conntry 
 the princes of the Church, such as Cardinal Gibbons, whose like- 
 ness adorns this book, have always been firm in upholding the 
 rights of the people against the anarchistic money-men who are so 
 near to wrecking this republic on the grinning reefs of their 
 selfishness and their greed. 
 
 The great thinkers of the Catholic Church have always been of 
 the people and for them, maintaining the divine doctrine of the 
 Crucified One, that the right of a human being to live and to live 
 properly outweighs any rights of property ; in' brief, that a human 
 soul is of more importance than all the gold, or silver, or brass of 
 a Carnegie or a Gould. 
 
 Nor is it alone in their private capacities that the chiefs of the 
 Church have shown themselves the champions of the masses. The 
 present Pope, much to the disgust of certain Protestant sovereigns' 
 and of some American trade-kings, several years ago refused to 
 condemn the order of the Knights of Labor. 
 
 Is it, then, a wild guess, a rash prophecy, or a fair calculation, 
 that in the irrepressible conflict soon to come, the weight of the 
 Catholic Church, and of all other churches with life in them, Avill 
 be thrown into the scale on the side of humanity against the real 
 Devil, the truly dangerous, debasing power that springs from vast 
 accumulations of private property ?
 
 X. 
 
 THE story of the Swiss Republic, its ori- 
 gin and development, is a political romance 
 of intense interest. 
 
 Switzerland has been for centuries and is 
 at this moment a more perfect democracy than any other country 
 on earth. The average American citizen, however, knows much 
 more about the Wars of the Roses and the Act of Settlement and 
 the Peasant's War than he does of the fact that the people of the 
 three Forest Cantons, Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, drew up a 
 written constitution nearly five hundred years before the first 
 Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia, and successful ly 
 defended their ancient liberties against the powerful and rapa- 
 cious countries which environed them. 
 
 This lack of knowledge should not exist. The story of Swit- 
 zerland to the American should possess a peculiar fascination, fru- 
 it is the history of a sister republic ancient in years, yet youthful 
 in democratic vigor. Americans, therefore, will naturally rr;ul 
 with sympathy a brief sketch of this interesting country. But 
 very few works in the English language treat on the subject, - 
 a fact which undoubtedly accounts for the almost tot:il lack of 
 any material information among the English-speaking people 
 regarding Swiss institutions, their rise and growth. 
 
 435
 
 436 THE STOKY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 In the thirteenth century the people Avho inhabited the upper 
 valleys among the Alps acknowledged allegiance, as was the 
 custom under the feudal law, to some paramount lord, the 
 emperor of the Roman Empire, or some nobleman, or monas- 
 tery. The bailiffs or agents whom these lords employed, becom- 
 ing obnoxious to the people for attempting to exact more taxes 
 than the ancient customs allowed, the people offered resistance, 
 many tumults arose, and at the death of the Emperor Rudolph of 
 Hapsburg, in July, 1291, a brief term of anarchy ensued. 
 
 At this juncture the people of the communities of Uri, Schwyz, 
 and Unterwalden came together to consult and devise ways and 
 means to protect their common interests, and they framed the 
 famous Treaty <>r Pact, the original of which is preserved in the 
 archives of the Canton of Schwyz, and which may properly be 
 described as the tirst federal constitution of Switzerland. The 
 following is a correct translation of this venerable document: 
 
 The First Federal Constitution of Switzerland. 
 Perpetual League of the Forest Cantons, 1291 . 
 
 In the name of God. A men. 
 
 1. Honor and public welfare are enhanced when agreements are 
 entered into for the proper establishment of quiet and peace. Therefore, 
 know all men, that the people of the valley of Un\ the democracy of the 
 valley ofSwit^, and the community of mountaineers of the lower valley, T 
 in view of the evil of the time, in order that they may better defend 
 themselves and their own, have promised in good faith to assist each 
 other, with aid, counsel, and every favor, with person and good's, 
 within the valleys and without, with all power and endeavor against 
 all and every, who may inflict upon any one of them any violence, 
 molestation, or injury, or may plot evil to their person or goods. 
 
 2. And in every event, each people has promised to hasten to the aid 
 of the other whenever necessary, and at their own expense, so far as 
 needed, in order to resist attacks of evil-doers, and to avenge injuries. 
 70 -which end they have taken oath in person to do this without deceit, 
 and to renew by means of the present (agreement} the ancient oath- 
 confirmed confederation.' 2 
 
 Nldwalden. Obwalden, the other part of Unterwalilen, entered the confederation later. 
 
 Upon this clause is based the hypothesis that a confederation existed previous to this 
 time, perhaps a* early as ir.o. No earlier document, however, has been preserved, hence the 
 charter of 11*)! is called the First Perpetual League (f r I'l
 
 SIMPLE REPUBLICANISM. 
 
 437 
 
 j. Yet in such a manner that every man, according to his rank, 
 shall continue to yield proper obedience to his overlord. 
 
 4. By common agreement and by unanimous consent, we promise, 
 enact, and ordain that in the aforesaid valleys we will in nowise receive 
 or accept any judge who has obtained bis office for a price, or for monev 
 in any way whatever, nor one 
 
 who is not a native or resident 
 with us. 
 
 5. If dissension shall arise 
 between any of the confeder- 
 ates, prudent men of the con- 
 federation shall come together 
 to settle the dispute between 
 the parties as shall seem right 
 to them, and the party which 
 rejects their judgment shall 
 be an enemy to the other con- 
 federates. 
 
 6. Furthermore, it is es- 
 tablished between them that 
 whoever maliciously kills 
 another without provocation 
 shall, if captured, lose his life, 
 as his nefarious crime de- 
 mands, unless he can show 
 his own innocence in the 
 affair ; and if he escapes he 
 shall never return. Conceal- 
 ers and defenders of the afore- 
 said malefactors shall be ban- 
 ished from the valleys, until 
 they are expressly called back 
 by the confederates. 
 
 j. If any one of the con- 
 
 A 8WITZER OF ANCIENT DAYS. 
 
 federates, by day, or in the 
 
 silence of the night, maliciously attempts to injure another by fire, he 
 
 shall never he owned as a compatriot. 
 
 8. If any one protects or defends the aforesaid evil doer, he shall 
 render satisfaction to the person injured. 
 
 9. Further, if any one of the confederates robs another of his goods, 
 or injures him in any way, the goods of the evil-doer, if found within
 
 438 THE STOKV OF GOVKKNM KNT. 
 
 the valleys, shall be seized in order that satisfaction may be given to 
 tbe party damaged, according to justice. 
 
 10. Furthermore, no one shall sei\e another's goods for debt, unless 
 he be manifestly his debtor or surety, and this shall only take place 
 with the special permission of his judge. Moreover, every man shall 
 obey his judge, and if necessary, himself ought to indicate the judge 
 within (the valley) before whom he ought properly to appear. 
 
 1 1 . And if any one rebels against a verdict, and if, in consequence 
 of this pertinacity, any one of the confederates is injured, the whole body 
 of confederates are bound to compel the contumacious party to give 
 satisfaction. 
 
 12. If war or discord shall arise among any of the confederates, and 
 one contending party refuses to accept proffered justice or satisfaction, 
 the confederates are bound to assist the other party. 
 
 i 3, The regulations above written, established for the common wel- 
 fare' and utility, shall, the Lord willing, endure forever. In testimony 
 of which, at the request of the aforesaid parties, the present instrument 
 has been made and confirmed with the seals of the three democracies and 
 valleys aforesaid. Done in the year of the Lord MCCLXXXX primo. 
 at the beginning of the month of August . 
 
 This declaration of the forest cantons bears ;i powerful analogy 
 to the declaration of the American Continental Congress of 1774. 
 They did not throw off their allegiance to the emperor of Ger- 
 many, Imt asserted that they would defend their rights by whom- 
 soever assailed. Their nominal allegiance remained until it was 
 formally abolished by treaty at Westphalia in 1648. 
 
 A secret meeting was afterwards held on the field of Griitli, by 
 the borders of the lake of Luzerne, on the night of November 17, 
 1307, to make arrangements for opposing by force of arms any 
 power which would attempt to abridge their ancient rights. 
 Walter Fiirst, with ten others of his canton, represented Uri; 
 Werner, Stauffacher, and ten others represented Schwyz, and 
 Arnold of Unterwalden, with ten compatriots, represented his 
 canton. Before they separated they swore to defend their homes 
 and one another against every oppressor, and to be "each for all 
 and all for each." 
 
 A fter some years the emperor proposed to compel the stubborn 
 Swiss to obey such laws and accept such bailiffs or governors as 
 he chose lo send them. For this purpose he despatched Duke
 
 Leopold of Austria, will 
 a large and well-appointed 
 army, into the mountains. 
 On the 15 th of November, 
 1:51."), the imperial forces 
 were assailed in a deiile 
 at Morgarten in the canton 
 of /ng. Enormous boul- 
 ders, loosened by the peo- 
 ple up the mountain sides, 
 rolled downward, tearing 
 their \vay through the 
 armor-clad columns of the 
 knitrhts and men-at-arms.
 
 440 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 At the narrowest part of the defile, a terrific storm of all sorts of 
 missiles preceded the headlong onslaught of the peasant soldiers 
 who grappled in hand-to-hand conflict with the invaders of their 
 homes. 
 
 The horns of the bulls of Uri sounded the charge of the con- 
 federates. The conflict was hut short. The Austrian cavalry and 
 infantry becoming inextricably mixed up impeded each other's 
 movements, and thus were helpless before the athletic moun- 
 taineers, wielding spears and huge two-handed swords. Leopold 
 was completely routed, leaving over half his army dead and 
 wounded in the defile of Morgarten. 
 
 A few weeks after this great victory on the 9th of December. 
 the representatives of the three cantons met at Brunnen and con- 
 cluded a new treaty which re-affirmed the old and added some 
 new features, one of which was that any canton which had a 
 lord-paramount should obey him in all proper things, but should 
 never obey him in any way against the three confederates. It 
 was also agreed in the new treaty that neither one of the 
 confederates should bind itself to a lord without the assent of the 
 others; that all disputes between themselves should be settled 
 peaceably, and that they would aid each other in case of any 
 interference in their affairs by any outsiders. 
 
 The growth of the national germ can be readily perceived in 
 these latest stipulations, while at the same time they acknowl- 
 edged the suzerainty of the German empire. In the year 13:>:Z 
 the city of Luzerne with its adjacent territory joined the con- 
 federation, making the fourth state of the Union. The city of 
 Zurich joined in 1851, and during the following year Glaums 
 and Zug sent their Austrian bailiffs away and cast in their lot 
 with the original confederates. In the succeeding year, 13.">:!. 
 Berne joined hands with the sisterhood, thus making the eighth 
 in the galaxy of states. 
 
 In 1386, the emperor made another great effort to bring the 
 confederates under subjection. A very large army under the 
 command of another Leopold of Austria, a nephew of the Duke 
 Leopold who was defeated at Morgarten, marched into the terri- 
 tory of the canton of Luzerne, where it was met in the open field 
 by the confederates on the nineteenth day of July in a long and
 
 SIMPLE REPUBLICANISM. 441 
 
 fiercely contested battle, and finally routed after great slaughter 
 on both sides. 
 
 This engagement is known in history as the battle of Sempach. 
 The chronicles assert that the carnage was awful. The Austrian 
 commander, Leopold, with the flower of the imperial chivalry, 
 was left dead on the field. This is the battle in which we are 
 told by Swiss tradition that Arnold of Winkelried, having per- 
 ceived that the repeated attacks of his countrymen upon the 
 Austrian square of levelled lances had proved ineffectual, con- 
 ceived and carried out the sublime project of securing an 
 entrance into the enemy's midst at the expense of his own life. 
 Calling upon his battalion to follow him, on reaching the 
 Austrian line he extended his arms, and seizing as many of their 
 lance points as he could reach, gathered them against his breast 
 holding them firmly, as he cried -out, " Make way for Liberty to 
 enter." 
 
 Through the gap thus made the Swiss entered, and falling upon 
 the heavily armored foemen in the rear, who now proved as help- 
 less as they had hitherto been invincible, the desperate contest 
 was soon decided by the wholesale slaughter and complete over- 
 throw of the imperial forces. Two years later, in 1388, the 
 Austrians advanced a force into the canton of Glaurus, but were 
 defeated by the combined levies of Glaurus and Schwyz on the 
 9th of April, 1388. This was practically the last attempt of 
 Austria to enforce her rule on the confederates. 
 
 They had now for more than half a century no trouble with the 
 outside world, their troubles and dissensions springing altogether 
 from within. The form of their institutions and the right of 
 suffrage were not alike in the several cantons. In the three forest 
 cantons, Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, all the citizens were 
 free and equal politically. The whole people of each canton 
 met in general assembly to decide every important matter. 
 In the municipal cantons or sovereign cities, like Berne, 
 Zurich, and Luzerne, on the other hand, none but the burghers 
 could vote, so that the opinions of the country people in the terri- 
 tories of these cities were never consulted. 
 
 Other troublesome questions arose from time to time. The 
 municipal canton of Zurich made an alliance with Austria upon
 
 442 THE SToltV <>F (JOVKKXMENT. 
 
 which the canton \vas invaded by the troops of the confederates, 
 and peace was only restored after a. number of serious engage- 
 ments in 1450. The federal bond seemed to be weak in peaceful 
 times, but when the national existence was threatened, the people 
 of the cantons rose as one man to defend it. In 1474, diaries 
 the Bold, of Burgundy, captured the town of Grandson on the 
 lake of Neuehatel by treachery, and put the Swiss garrison to 
 death. He was attacked immediately after by the confederates 
 and signally defeated. Again at Moral they swept his army from 
 the field in titter confusion, and finally before the walls of Nancy, 
 on January *>, 1477, his last army was crushed and Charles him- 
 self was killed. 
 
 On the return of peace internal troubles broke out again which 
 threatened to become quite serious, but fortunately at a diet of 
 the cantons held in Stanz, a new "covenant'' or convention was 
 signed on the 22d of December, 1481, which was fairly satis- 
 factory to all concerned. At this diet two other municipal can- 
 tons, Frieburg and Solothur, were admitted into the confederation, 
 making the ninth and tenth states, and the federal sovereignty 
 was much strengthened by this convention. Separate alliances 
 between the cantons were prohibited, the division of booty cap- 
 tured in war was regulated, and other provisions made to definitely 
 settle disputed questions Avhich had arisen from time to time. 
 
 This Treaty of Stanz was the third solemn covenant made 
 l>etween the confederates since the adoption of the original charter 
 in 1291. In point of time they occurred as follows: 
 
 Charter of the Forest Cantons (1291). 
 
 The Priest's Charter (1370). 
 
 The Convention of Sempach (1393). 
 
 The Convention of Stanz (1481). 
 
 The cities of Basel and Srhaffhausen were admitted as the 
 eleventh and twelfth states of the confederation in 1501, and 
 Appenzell entered the Union in 1513. These thirteen cantons 
 or states which now constituted the confederation remained with- 
 out any substantial change or modification until the close of the 
 last century, at which time the French directory established in 
 Switzerland what it was pleased to designate "The Helvetic Re- 
 public."
 
 SIM 1M.K REPUBLICANISM. 
 
 443 
 
 The French form of Republican government which the Swiss 
 were forced to receive at the point of French bayonets in 17 ( .s 
 was almost a complete reversal of the old order of a number of 
 dominions held 
 together by a 
 slight, if not a 
 very frail, bond. 
 The new order 
 of things was a 
 strong central 
 state, with the 
 ( 'antons simply 
 integral or de- 
 pendent parts or 
 departments of 
 the whole, the 
 latter adminis- 
 tered by pre- 
 fects, the com- 
 munal districts 
 by sub-prefects, 
 and the com- 
 m u n e s by 
 agents, these 
 officers, as was 
 the case in 
 France, being 
 appointed by 
 the central gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 A great ma- 
 j o r i t y of the 
 S w i s s people 
 offered the most 
 strenuous pass- 
 ive resistance to 
 the government 
 thus imposed NAPOLEONIC CAVALBY CKOSSIXO TIIK AI.I-S.
 
 Ill THE STOIIY OF <ioY KKXMENT. 
 
 upon them, and the country AMIS divided into two bitter factions. 
 The very active minority, composed <>!' the partisans of a strong cen- 
 tral authority, was found chiefly in the cities, while the vast ma- 
 jority of the Federalists \\h<> k-lieved in returning to their own 
 methods of government were found in the rural cantons. Uri, 
 Schwy/., l"nter\\aldeii. and the other old cantons preferred to elect 
 their governor than to have him selected for them. Bonaparte, after 
 a long consultation with the representatives of both of the Swiss 
 political parties, drew up a new constitution called the Act of 
 Mediation, which went into effect on the 2d of February, 1803. 
 
 By the new constitution, six new cantons were added to the 
 republic, viz., Orisons, St. Gallen, Aargau, Thurgau, Vaud, and 
 Ticiiio, this making nineteen cantons in all. A diet was pro- 
 vided for, consisting of one deputy for each canton, but as every 
 deputy who represented a canton containing more than one hun- 
 dred thousand people had the right to give two votes on the same 
 subject, the nineteen deputies had between them an aggregate of 
 twenty-five votes. 
 
 The diet met once a year in June, when its members voted on 
 all questions as they were instructed by their respective cantons, 
 for they could not vote otherwise. This constitution lasted until 
 the fall of the Emperor Napoleon in 1815. Valais, Neuchatel, 
 and Geneva were admitted into the confederation in 1814, which 
 now consisted of twenty-two cantons. After the fall of Napo- 
 leon, a federal declaration was drawn up at Zurich in 1815 by 
 the diet at the instructions of their constituents, which was 
 accepted by the Congress of the great European powers assembled 
 at Vienna, and which took the place of the Act of Mediation and 
 remained in force till 1848. 
 
 The new agreement restored nearly all the old sovereign power 
 of the cantons, and was received with general favor. No mate- 
 rial change was made in it until religious dissensions arose 
 between the Catholics and Protestants, culminating in a short 
 campaign against some of the Catholic cantons organized in the 
 Sonderbund in 1847. These dissensions and the very natural 
 desire of the larger cantons to have a greater voice in federal 
 affairs than those of much smaller populations, afforded an 
 excellent pretext to ask for a change in the federal compact.
 
 CKY8TAL SEEKERS ON MONT BLANC. 
 
 445
 
 446 i HI: ST<>I:Y OF <;OYKI;NMI-:NT. 
 
 On the 17th of February, 1848, the work of preparing- a new 
 constitution was assigned to a committee of fourteen, who com- 
 pleted the work by the 8t,h of April. This was then submitted. 
 to a vote of the cantons, all of which' endorsed it by a majority 
 vote, and it \vas officially promulgated on the 12th of September, 
 1848, as the fundamental law of the land. The new constitution 
 provided for the lirst time in the history of Switzerland for the 
 creation of two legislative chambers; one designated as the Coun- 
 cil of the States, corresponding to our American Senate, to which 
 each canton, large or small, sends two members and no more, 
 while the other, styled the National Council, corresponding to 
 our House of Representatives, is composed of deputies elected on 
 the basis of population. 
 
 These two chambers constitute the Federal Assembly which 
 elects the executive power or, as it is called, the Federal 
 Council. The Swiss Presidency, therefore, is a collective institu- 
 tion consisting of seven members, elected by the Federal Assem- 
 bly in joint session. 
 
 This really first Federal Constitution of Switzerland was 
 revised in certain directions with the assent of the required 
 number of cantons, and the requisite popular vote on the 29th of 
 May, 1874, so that it is now designated as the "Federal Con- 
 stitution of the Swiss Confederation" (of May 20, 1874). 
 
 The following are the constitutional provisions relative to the 
 Federal Assembly, National Council of States, and Federal 
 Council : 
 
 Art. 71. Wit}) the reservation of the rights of the people and of the 
 cantons (Articles 89 and 121), the supreme authority of the confedera- 
 tion is exercised by the Federal Assembly, which consists of two sec- 
 tions or councils, to wit : 
 
 (A) The National Council. 
 
 (B) The Council of States. 
 
 Art. J2. The National Council is composed of representatives of 
 the Swiss people, chosen in the ratio of one member for each 20,000 
 persons of the total population. Fractions of upwards of 10,000 per- 
 sons are reckoned as 20,000. 
 
 Every canton, and in the divided cantons every half-canton, chooses 
 at least one representative.
 
 SIMPLE REPUBLICANISM. 447 
 
 Art. 7?. The elections for the National Council are direct. Thev 
 are held in federal electoral districts, which in no case shall be formed 
 out of parts of different cantons. 
 
 Art. J4. Every Swiss who has completed twenty years of age, and 
 who in addition is not excluded from the rights of a voter by the legis- 
 lation of the canton in which he is domiciled, has the right to vote in 
 elections and popular votes. 
 
 Nevertheless, the confederation by law may establish uniform regula- 
 tions for the exercise of such right. 
 
 Art. 75. Every lay Swiss citizen who has the right to vote is eligible 
 for membership in the National Council. 
 
 Art. 76. The National Council is chosen for three years, and 
 entirely renewed at each general election. 
 
 Art. 77. Representatives to the Council of States, members of the 
 Federal Council, and officials appointed by that Council, shall not at 
 the same time be members of the National Council. 
 
 Art. j8. The National Council chooses out of its own number, for 
 each regular or extraordinary session, a president and a vice-president. 
 
 A member who has held the office of president during a regular 
 session is ineligible either as a president or as vice-president at the 
 next regular session. 
 
 The same member may not be vice-president during two consecutive 
 regular sessions. 
 
 When the votes are equally divided the president has a casting vote ; 
 in elections he votes in the same manner as other members. 
 
 Art. 79. The members of the National Council receive a compensa- 
 tion out of the federal treasury. 
 
 Art. 80. The Council of States consists of forty-four representa- 
 tives of the cantons. Each canton appoints two representatives ; in the 
 divided cantons, each half-state chooses one. 
 
 Art. 81. The members of the National Council and those of the 
 Federal Council may not be representatives in the Council of States. 
 
 Art. 82. The Council of States chooses out of its own number for 
 each regular or extraordinary session a president and a vice-president. 
 
 Neither the president nor the vice-president can be chosen from 
 among the representatives of the canton from which the president has 
 been chosen for the regular session next preceding. 
 
 Representatives of the same canton cannot occupy the position of 
 vice-president during two consecutive regular sessions. 
 
 When the votes are equally divided the president has the casting 
 vote ; in elections he votes in the same manner as the other members.
 
 448 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Art. 83. Representatives in the Council of States receive a compen- 
 sation from the cantons. 
 
 Art. 95. The supreme direction and executive authority of the con- 
 federation is exercised by a Federal Council composed of seven members. 
 
 Art. 96. The members of the Federal Council are chosen for three 
 years by the councils in joint session from among all the Swiss citizens 
 eligible to the National Council. But not more than one member of 
 the Federal Council shall be chosen from the same canton. 
 
 The Federal Council is chosen anew after each election of the Na- 
 tional Council. 
 
 Vacancies which occur in the course of the three years are filled at 
 the first ensuing session of the Federal Assembly for the remainder of 
 the term of office. 
 
 Art. 97. The members of the Federal Council shall not, during 
 their term of office, occupy any other office, either in the service of the 
 confederation or in a canton, or follow any other pursuit , or exercise 
 a profession. 
 
 Art. 98. The Federal Council is presided over by the president of 
 the confederation. There is a vice-president. 
 
 The president of the confederation and the vice-president of the Fed- 
 eral Council are chosen for one year by the Federal Assembly from 
 among the members of the council. 
 
 Art. 101. The members of the Federal Council have the right to 
 speak but not to vole in either house of the Federal Assembly, and also 
 the right to make motions on the subje-J under consideration. 
 
 The constitution is very long, containing about fifty per cent, 
 more words than the Constitution of the United States. It is 
 very specific on things touching the sovereignty of the cantons 
 which it declares can exercise all rights and powers that they 
 have not expressly delegated to the federal power by the consti- 
 tution. The federal authority guarantees the rights and liberty 
 of all the people, and alone has the right to make treaties with 
 foreign states, to declare war and make peace. 
 
 There is no standing army in Switzerland, but when the citizen 
 soldiers are required for duty they march under the control of the 
 federal military department. The entire strength of the volun- 
 teer army is 202,479 men. No canton has over three hundred 
 permanent soldiers within its territory except by the express per- 
 mission of the federal executive.
 
 ELECTING A PKKSID
 
 SWITZERLAND.
 
 SIMPLE REPUBLICANISM. 453 
 
 The people, represented by the Federal Government, own and 
 manage the entire postal, telegraphic, and telephonic systems of 
 the country. The manufacture and sale of war-powder and of 
 spirituous liquors is carried on by the government, and the receipts 
 are paid into the federal treasury. This governmental manufac- 
 ture of liquors insures absolute purity in such things to start 
 with, however much they may deteriorate in passing through 
 private hands afterwards. 
 
 All things relating to the revenue, internal and external, 
 coinage, weights, and measure, copyright, bankruptcy, patents, 
 and other like matters are federal concerns exclusively. The 
 Federal Council, or Executive of Switzerland, as provided in the 
 constitution, is elected by the two national legislative bodies who 
 met in joint session for that purpose at the capital city, Berne. 
 This session is held in the month of December in the chamber 
 of the National Council or popular branch, the members of which 
 have been elected two months previously in October for a period 
 of three years. These newly elected members with the deputies 
 of the upper House, or Council of the States, elect by ballot the 
 seven members of the Federal Council who are to serve for a term 
 of three years. Two citizens of the same canton cannot be 
 members of the Federal Council at the same time. 
 
 The chairman and vice-chairman of the Federal Council are 
 selected for one year from among the seven members by the 
 Federal Assembly. The chairman thus selected baars for one 
 year the title of President of the Swiss Confederation. At the 
 expiration of his one year's term of office he cannot be re-elected 
 president nor even serve as vice-chairman for the ensuing year, 
 but must take his place as one of the ordinary members, from 
 which it appears that our fashion of permitting a president to be 
 his own successor, if he can so pull the strings of politics, is not 
 in the least degree favored by the democracy of Switzerland. 
 
 The vice-chairman of one year may be selected by the Federal 
 Assembly as president the following year, but the same member 
 cannot be vice-chairman for two years current. The members 
 of the Federal Council take charge one at the head of each of 
 the seven great departments of state which are designated as 
 follows :
 
 -\,">4 TIIK STOKV OF GOVEUNMENT. 
 
 1. Foreign affairs. 
 
 '1. Interior. 
 
 0. Justice and police. 
 
 1. .Military. 
 
 ."">. Finance and customs. 
 Industry and agriculture. 
 Posts and railways. 
 
 The council meets twice a week to discuss and determine all 
 matters of importance which come within its province. No 
 decision which it may make is legal except not less than & 
 majority, or four members, is present. Any one of the members 
 can submit to either of the chambers, bills of his own initiative 
 having relation to his own department. The council as a whole 
 can also submit to the legislature drafts of such measures of 
 public legislation as it deems wise. 
 
 All of the memln-rs of the executive have the right to appear on 
 the Hour of either chamber, and to speak for or against any 
 measure, but they are not allowed to vote in either house. 
 This privilege of addressing the law-makers in session enables 
 the executive to explain fully, publicly, and without reserve, 
 their purposes and policy, and the members repeatedly avail 
 themselves of the opportunity. Is there not a hint here that our 
 nation might take with profit namely, to make the Cabinet 
 ollicers courtesy members of Congress, with a voice to explain 
 all matters, but not a vote? 
 
 A very singular spectacle, however, at least it would appear 
 so to the average American, presents itself occasionally in 
 connection with the members of the executive addressing the 
 chambers. It has sometimes occurred that they held contra ry 
 opinions on the subject matter of the legislation under discussion, 
 and the unique sight has been witnessed not unfrequently of one 
 member of the executive speaking strongly in favor of a measure 
 who was immediately followed by one of his executive colleagues 
 in opposition. 
 
 There is really nothing strange in this, when one comprehends 
 the democratic character of the executive, which is practical Iv a 
 board of managers acting within the constitution under the chair- 
 manship of the president. But it should be understood that th-ir
 
 SIMl'LF REPUBLICANISM. 
 
 455 
 
 election is not a purely party victory. They are usually selected 
 to represent, as far as practicable, all the shades of party opinion 
 in the National Council. 
 
 There is a wholesome democratic feeling, the growth of cen- 
 turies, among the majority in the Swiss Chambers, which is ready 
 to concede that the executive should represent parties, so that 
 the true democratic spirit may prevail. 
 
 THK PRESIKKXT DKI.I VKKIM: HIS INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 The president receives about $2,700, and each of the other 
 members of the council about $2,400 a year for the services 
 they render. The Council of States, or smaller House of the 
 Federal Assembly, consists of forty-four members. Each can- 
 ton, large or small, is equally represented in this chamber by 
 two members. In some cantons these members are elected by 
 the legislatures, as are the senators of the United States, while 
 in others they an- elected by the whole body of the voters by
 
 456 THE STOKY OK GOVKKNMKNT. 
 
 ballot or by the ancient democratic assembly of the people called 
 the Landsgemeinden. 
 
 The duration of their term of office is left entirely to the can- 
 tons, so that some cantons elect for one year, and others for three 
 years. The Council of States selects a president and vice- 
 president from among their number in a manner similar to the 
 National Council, but neither of these officials can be chosen from 
 the deputies of any canton, a deputy of which was president in 
 the ordinary session immediately preceding. Neither can depu- 
 ties of the same canton serve as vice-president tor two current 
 ordinary sessions. The members of this house are paid by their 
 respective cantons, save that when any are engaged on committee 
 tvork during recess they are paid from the national treasury. 
 
 The National Council or popular branch of the Federal Assem- 
 bly (or Congress) consists of one hundred and forty-nine members 
 returned by forty-nine electoral districts. Each member is elected 
 by twenty thousand of the whole population, but fractions of 
 population above ten thousand are competent, according to tin- 
 constitution, to elect a member. The electoral districts are laid 
 out within the cantonal boundaries like the congressional electoral 
 districts in the United States, but while in the latter they are 
 determined by the legislatures of each state, the Swiss Federal 
 Assembly attends to that business which is denied to the cantons. 
 
 The basis of representation to the National Council is the 
 Federal census which is taken every ten years. The number of 
 members to which a canton is entitled ranges from one returned 
 by Uri from its one electoral district to twenty-seven returned by 
 Berne from its six districts. Every male Swiss of twenty-one 
 years of age is entitled to cast as many votes as there are members 
 for his electoral district. The method of voting is entirely within 
 the control of the cantons, and it differs veiy much as it does 
 among the states of the Union. In some places the ballots are 
 sent to the house of the voter to be marked, while in others he 
 must present himself at the polling place to secure a ballot. 
 How many valuable citizens there are in this land of business 
 and money-getting who would like to have ballots sent round to 
 their houses, and be saved the trouble of going to the polls! 
 The candidates to the National Council must be elected at
 
 SIMPLE REPUBLICANISMS 
 
 457 
 
 the first or second ballot by an absolute majority of all the votes 
 cast, but if a third ballot is required a plurality of votes will be 
 
 " 
 
 TIIK <;OVi:i:XMKXT Ilfll.DI X'S AT r.KIJNK. 
 
 sufficient. The general election is held triennially on the last 
 Sunday of October.
 
 458 THE STOKV <)!' <J< >VKU N.M KNT. 
 
 The National Council meets in Berne in ordinary session on 
 the first Monday of June, and when it assembles again on the first 
 Monday of December for the second portion of the session, a 
 president and vice-president of the National Council are chosen. 
 A special session can be held at any time when the occasion 
 demands it. Its members are paid a sum equal to about *4 pel- 
 day for every day they are actually present during the session. 
 But if anyone fails to answer to his name when the roll is called 
 that day's pay is lost to him except he can give a good excuse 
 satisfactory to the Secretary of the Chamber. Every member 
 receives travelling expenses at the rate of about five cents a mile 
 for every mile travelled on sessional business. 
 
 The two chambers together form the Federal Assembly. They 
 elect the members of the Federal Council, or executive, the 
 Federal Tribunal, or judiciary, and the general -in-chief in time 
 of war. Their scope of power when sitting includes the making 
 of general or special laws within the limits prescribed by rite 
 constitution. 
 
 Neither chamber of the assembly can do any valid business, 
 unless there is an absolute majority of all the members of that 
 chamber present. Any member of either chamber can introduce 
 such proposals for the enactment of new laws as he deems right, 
 and they must be acted upon as a matter of course. Any single 
 voter or body of voters in a canton can do likewise. This is the 
 right of initiative, as it is called. 
 
 A member of either chamber can move in his own body that 
 certain legislation is desirable. If his general proposal is favor- 
 ably received it will be referred to the Federal Council for the 
 purpose of having a proper bill drawn upon it which will come 
 before the assembly for discussion. Or the Federal Council may 
 endorse the project itself, proceeding on its own initiative; or 
 a canton can exercise the right of initiative by correspondence ; 
 or a certain body of citizens can exercise the right. It should 
 be remembered, however, that every bill, arising through the 
 right of initiative, must pass through the hands of the Federal 
 Council who make such recommendations in reference to it as 
 they deem proper before placing it before the assembly. 
 
 When a bill is laid before either chamber by the Federal
 
 SIMPLE REPUBLICANISM. 459 
 
 Council, a special committee is selected to consider and report 
 upon it. When the committee report, and the bill has been 
 debated, the vote is taken. If passed, it is then sent to the otlier 
 chamber where, if the decision is also favorable, it becomes law 
 upon its promulgation by the Federal Council in the official 
 gazette. 
 
 But it is now subject to the referendum. If thirty thousand 
 citizens whose names are on the voting lists, or eight cantons 
 acting in their sovereign character, make a demand within two 
 months after the passage of any general law not declared urgent 
 at the time of its introduction, it must be submitted in a short 
 time to the popular vote. If a majority of the people vote No, 
 the measure is killed; if Yes, it becomes law. This is the famous 
 Swiss referendum to which pure advanced democracy there is 
 something analogous in a dissolution of Parliament in England, 
 and an appeal to the country when a ministry is defeated by a 
 few votes on any measure, but in our government there is nothing 
 of this kind yet. 
 
 The popular initiative and referendum are the peculiar and 
 genuine offspring of that glorious democracy whose ancestors 
 penned the great charter of their ancient liberties in 1291, and 
 defended it in bloody conflict only a few years after the bishops 
 and barons wrung the reluctant, trembling signature from King 
 John at Runny mede. The referendum means the submission of 
 every general law passed by representatives to the people them- 
 selves for their direct action thereon. It is pure democracy. 
 It places the veto power where in every democracy it should 
 properly belong in the people not in a governor or president. 
 It is the democratic method of the New. England town meeting 
 applied to the State and nation. 
 
 The principle of the referendum was adopted centuries ago by 
 the diet of the thirteen cantons, the membei-s of which had to 
 refer (ad audiendum et referendum) to their respective cantons all 
 their proceedings for endorsement or rejection. The evolutionary 
 development of this principle secures to Switzerland to-day, as 
 has been stated at the opening of this sketch, the best form of 
 democratic government on earth. 
 
 There are two kinds of the referendum in Switzerland: tin- MM
 
 460 THK STOKV OF COVK i:\.MKNT. 
 
 compulsory and tin- other optional. The compulsory form 
 originally had but reference to one point; an amendment to the 
 
 constitution \vbicb had to be submitted to the popular vote some- 
 what similar as a constitutional amendment would be voted upon 
 by the States of the American Union. The optional referendum 
 in federal matters has already been touched upon. The refer- 
 endum now prevails throughout Switzerland except in a few of 
 the old cantons of small population where the landsgemeinden 
 or open air popular assemblages of all the voters make it possible 
 to take the popular vote at once. 
 
 Sir Francis O. Adams, the late British Minister Plenipotentiary 
 to Switzerland, speaking of the referendum says: "It has given 
 back to the people of Switzerland rights originally possessed by 
 them in most of the old cantons but partly or wholly lost in 
 the course of time. As to the moral effect which the exercise of 
 this institution has had upon the people we are assured that it is 
 admitted to be salutary even by adversaries of democratic govern- 
 ment." 
 
 The Swiss people do not dread much the wiles of the lobby, the 
 seductive influence of the corporation attorneys, or even the direct 
 work of the corrupter, for they have an efficient and never failing 
 corrective at hand which they can administer immediately through 
 the referendum. If the initiative and referendum systems pre- 
 vailed in the States of the American Union, is it not likely that 
 many bad laws would be soon wiped from our statutes and a few 
 additional good ones enacted? 
 
 Professor Ely, in his excellent work " Taxation in American 
 States and Cities," mentions a strong case in point where he says: 
 "The last convention of the dominant political party in a certain 
 State adopted a platform in which it was demanded that corpora- 
 tions should pay their fair share of taxes. The party pledged 
 itself to change the laws of taxation so as to meet the require- 
 ments of this plank in their platform in case the party received a 
 majority. The taxation of corporations was the rallying cry of 
 the campaign. The candidates of the party received large 
 majorities, and a bill to tax corporations was introduced in the 
 legislature. This bill was defeated by the efforts of the attorney 
 "t one of the most powerful railroad corporations in the United
 
 SIMPLE REPUBLICANISM. 461 
 
 States, and of tho attorney of a great telegraph company. Of 
 these two attorneys one was president of the convention of the 
 dominant party to which reference lias been made, and the other 
 wrote the platform/' 
 
 What severer commentary could be made by a critical foreigner 
 opposed to democratic principles on our country as a successful 
 democracy, than the bare statement of such an incident furnishes? 
 
 Now, if the Swiss initiative and referendum prevailed in the 
 State where the occurrence to which Professor Ely makes reference 
 took place, no two corporation attorneys could defeat the wishes 
 of the people nor could even the wholesale corruption of the 
 legislature, which was unquestionably elected in that case chiefly 
 on the issue of the proper taxation of corporations. 
 
 Every one acquainted with practical politics in the United 
 States can duplicate Professor Ely's illustration regarding the 
 tremendous power which corporations, syndicates, and trusts 
 exercise in shaping legislation to their own advantage, and in 
 most instances against the public welfare. These powers are 
 continually defeating the will of the people by corrupting the 
 legislatures, and the people without a referendum are powerless. 
 
 In the cantons the sovereignty inheres in the whole people 
 perpetually, and the opening declaration of each of their consti- 
 tutions asserts that principle explicitly. The constitution of 
 Zurich, for instance, states in its first article that the power 
 of the state rests on the totality of the people; which power 
 is exerted directly through the voting citizens, and indirectly 
 through the authorities and officials whom they elect or cause to 
 l>e selected. 
 
 The ancient landsgemeinden, or open-air assemblies, which 
 obtained among the old cantons from time immemorial, prevailed 
 until 1848, when they were abolished by Zug and Schwyz. But 
 the ancient custom still exists in Appenzell, Glaurus, Unter- 
 walden, and Uri. 
 
 Let us witness the time-honored proceedings in Uri. It is the 
 first Sunday in May. The landammann, or governor of the 
 canton, having attended mass in the village church, which is not 
 large enough on this occasion to hold a quarter of the worship- 
 pers, heads a procession of the whole congregation from the
 
 462 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 rliuivh door to the ancient place of meeting, which is a meadow 
 not far from the town of Altdorf. The landammann is escorted 
 by ushers garbed after the fashion of a by-gone age, in black and 
 yellow, the colors of their canton. Upon an ancient banner, 
 borne before him, appears the cantonal arms of Uri, a bull's head 
 on a yellow ground, while quaintly dressed men carry aloft 
 upon poles old wild bull's horns of enormous size, said to be 
 the identical horns that sounded the charge for the men of Uri 
 over four centuries ago against the mail-clad knights of Charles 
 the Bold, of Burgundy, on the terrible field of Morat, 
 
 " When the Switzer phalanx on the Morat field swept on 
 Like a pine-clad hill 
 By an earthquake's will 
 
 Hurled the valley upon." 
 
 The landammann, having arrived at the meadow, accompanied 
 only by his secretary, takes up a position in the centre of the 
 crowd at a table. The people sit or stand around this table, 
 which is on a slight elevation. When silence is secured, the 
 landammann makes a statement respecting all the important 
 matters which have any bearing on the interests of the people of 
 the canton, the voters of which are now assembled before him. 
 When he concludes, there is profound silence for some time, for 
 every one is offering up a prayer of thanksgiving to God for the 
 pa >t year's blessings; but they pray strong rather than long, and 
 soon the business of the landsgemeinden begins. 
 
 Every man who desires to speak can do so as long as he pleases, 
 and every subject of special interest is discussed with great 
 decorum by the oldest men generally from the different com- 
 munes of the canton. At last when all debatable matter lias 
 been disposed of the officers for the coming year are elected. 
 The landammann, whose office has expired, now delivers up his 
 charge to the people of the canton with an affirmation that he has 
 injured no one voluntarily, and he asks pardon of any citizen who 
 may think himself aggrieved. 
 
 The new landammann then stands forward, and before the 
 assembled multitude takes the prescribed oath of office with great 
 solemnity; after which the whole people swear to obey him, to 
 serve their country, and respect the laws. The other state offi-
 
 
 T1IK (JIJKAT ST. HEHXAIMi. 
 
 463
 
 464 THE STOKY OF < ;< WKKNMKXT. 
 
 cials are now elected by a sh<>\v of hands. Then the descendants 
 of tin- men \vlio helped to draw the Perpetual Alliance Treaty of 
 1291 adjourn for one year. 
 
 Most of the cantons have a representative form of government 
 frith provision for the referendum Avhen duly demanded. In 
 Basel fifteen hundred citizens can exercise the popular initiative, 
 while the referendum is compulsory for all laws, resolutions, 
 .and conventions. In Schwyz and Vaud the referendum is 
 optional; in the former, the demand must be made by two 
 thousand voters; in the latter, by six thousand. In all the other 
 cantons where the compulsory referendum does not exist, the 
 number of voters required to demand it in writing varies from 
 fifteen hundred to five thousand. 
 
 The State Council or executive of nearly all the cantons 
 appoints the judicial officials of the respective canton for a term 
 of years; then one permanent tribunal for civil and criminal 
 causes and juries for the latter. In the French cantons the laws 
 are based on the Code Napoleon; while the German cantons have 
 peculiar codes of their own, and the oldest cantons have an 
 extensive common law to which the courts give effect equally 
 witli their written law. 
 
 The communes or townships are the basis on which rests the 
 whole structure of Republican institutions in Switzerland. The 
 people of each possess common interests, live in the same vici- 
 nage, and are self -governed. The communes existed before tin- 
 canton or the confederation, and the people firmly believe that 
 the natural growth of Democratic liberty is upward from the 
 commune to the canton, the latter being but an aggregation of 
 independent communes, and from the canton to the confederation. 
 
 Each commune is practically independent within its own 
 boundaries, but the canton exercises a slight supervision over 
 each in matters relating to education, the repairs of roads, and so 
 forth. A number of communes in a canton form a communal 
 district. Some cantons have several districts; others have but 
 one. A communal district council is elected to attend to certain 
 duties which are prescribed by the communes forming the district. 
 All citizens who have the right to vote have their names placed on 
 the voting list of their commune for public inspection.
 
 TELL ESCAPING IN TUK STOKM. 
 
 4C5
 
 466 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 That the Swiss voters take a lively interest in national as well 
 as in communal affairs may be gathered from the fact that, with 
 less than a population of three millions (according to the census 
 of 1880) at a voting held on November 26, 1882, under the 
 referendum, a total of 490,149 votes were polled for and against 
 "a law authorizing the appointment of a Federal Secretary of 
 Education," and the measure was rejected by nearly two to one. 
 
 The communes perform many public services, and enter into 
 many undertakings for the benefit of the people which may be 
 characterized as essentially socialistic. These undertakings vary 
 in their nature. For instance, in the commune of Grindelwaldt 
 which is in the communal district of Interlaken, in the canton 
 of Berne, each householder is entitled to a certain amount of 
 wood annually on the payment of a small sum of money. Any 
 householder not belonging to the commune can get wood from 
 the communal authorities, but he must pay over fifty per cent, 
 more for it than the resident. The money received for firevood 
 is paid in salaries to the communal foresters, who cut the timber, 
 plant young trees, and take care of them. The inhabitants of 
 nearly all the communes have pasture lands in common. 
 
 But while the rules, regulations, and customs of the communes 
 differ in these respects, the freedom which they possess to make 
 the most of their opportunities cannot be questioned. This free- 
 dom they have preserved and defended against every attack since 
 the beginning of their history. The local self-government of the 
 commune has been the cradle and the schoolhouse which evolved 
 the present Swiss Confederation. 
 
 Educated by the past, and jealous of their national birthright 
 liberty, the Swiss people evidently do not propose to have 
 it filched from them, slowly but surely, under mere forms of 
 representative government. Hence they have safeguarded the 
 shrine with the popular initiative and referendum. Not a few 
 representatives, or a select committee, but the people alone, 
 standing before the ballot-box, is their court of last resort to pass 
 upon all important general laws. 
 
 This is true democracy, worthy of the ancient commonwealths 
 of that mountain land which has preserved its liberty for centu- 
 ries in the midst of powerful and hostile foes. Well ma}*- the
 
 SIMPLE REPUBLICANISM. 467 
 
 average Switzer quote these words from the play of William 
 
 Tell : - 
 
 " I have thought of other lands, whose storms 
 Are summer flaws to those of mine, and just 
 Have wished me there ; the thought that mine was free 
 Has checked that wish, and I have raised my head 
 And cried in thraldom to that furious wind: 
 ' Blow on ! This is the land of Liberty ! ' " 
 
 No historical sketch of Switzerland could seem complete with- 
 out some mention of William Tell, but unfortunately the majority 
 of modern authority in matters of tradition incline to the opinion 
 that the tyrant Gesler was a very amiable administrator of jus- 
 tice, and that Tell was not a good enough marksman to shoot the 
 famous apple on his son's head for the sad but sufficient reason 
 that William Tell never existed save in the imagination of a poet 
 who thought he ought to exist. We present a picture of him, 
 however, according to an artist who agrees with the poet, and 
 represents the traditionary hero escaping from a boat and the 
 trammels of historical research on to the unshakable rock of 
 popular love and honor. 
 
 The varied climate of Switzerland affords the people, despite 
 the limited amount of arable ground which so mountainous a 
 country supplies, ample opportunities for varied agriculture. On 
 the upper reaches of the Alps grazing and the arts which depend 
 on it are largely practised. In the warmer valleys and slopes the 
 vine nourishes so well that wine-making is an industry in most 
 of the cantons. Water power is of course plentiful, and linen, 
 cotton, and woollen spinning are extensively followed, while the 
 watches and pill-boxes of the Swiss are famous all over the 
 world. 
 
 Switzerland is, however, too small for the support of its popu- 
 lation. Accordingly, the Swiss, as domestic servants, inn- 
 keepers, couriers, and waiters, arc found in every city of Europe 
 and America. Indeed, at one time, the word "Suisse " became so 
 synonymous Avith hall porter, that in Paris such a functionary is 
 still known as "a Swiss," and in many parts of France the 
 church beadle is still called the "Suissd." At an earlier date 
 they hired out as soldiers. The Bourbon monarchs had their 
 Swiss guards, and the Pope enjoys a like luxury.
 
 4(58 THE STOKY OK <;<>YKKNMKXT. 
 
 This habit of taking service abroad as in truth had the Scots 
 and Irish, and for much the same reason, namely, the little which 
 was to keep them at home, obtained for these mountaineers an 
 invidious reputation which is embodied in the proverb "No 
 money, no Swiss," though the proper meaning of it is, that 
 without pay you cannot have a servant. The king in Hninli-f- 
 NIVS, "Where are my Swit/ers? Let them guard the door." In 
 truth, to this day, the Swiss, who is the most liberty-loving of 
 men, and, like the Scot, the most homesick after a long separa- 
 tion, lives to a great extent by attending on the stranger. 
 
 Switzerland has been nicknamed the "playground of Europe.' 1 
 Every year its lovely valleys and mountains are inundated with 
 thousands of holiday makers, and hence, a large portion of its 
 population is directly or indirectly dependent on ministering to 
 the convenience or the amusement of this swarm of pleasure 
 seekers. Hotel keeping on a great scale is, especially for the 
 summer months, an important "industry." The upland pastures 
 are utilized for cattle breeding and dairy farming The most 
 enterprising of the Alpine villagers make money by acting as 
 guides and porters to the more ambitious tourists, and even since 
 railways have penetrated the most unpromising places there is* 
 plenty of room for the numerous people who have something to 
 do with horses, either in the shape of drivers or of post-house 
 keepers. 
 
 Peasant farmers are almost as numerous as in France, whole 
 cantons being divided up into these little territories. In the 
 well-situated localities the peasant proprietors are, as a rule. 
 better off than their French neighbors, being educated, and very 
 often quite refined. Moreover, when their property is small, 
 they have generally some other occupation by which to help their 
 income, otherwise they would sometimes be hard enough pinched, 
 
 Take, for example, the Canton Berne, one of the most thriving 
 portions of German Swit/erland. Taxes are high, and everv year 
 numbers of peasant proprietors are forced to emigrate. <>\viii'_r to 
 the difficulty of keeping their heads above water. Land is dear 
 and the peasant has, like all his class, a passion for borrowing oh 
 mortgage, either to round off his property or to improve it. There 
 are mortgages in existence which Avere contracted more. than two
 
 SIMPLE REPUBLICANISM. 
 
 4(59 
 
 hundred years ago, and bid fair to hang like in ill stones round the 
 necks of generations yet unborn. 
 
 The new lender is, however, less tolerant than the old one. 
 The spread of banks, railways, and joint stock companies has 
 made it easier to invest money than formerly; the old capitalists 
 press for their money, and the professional money-lender is apt to 
 demand the in- 
 terest w h e n 
 due, or fore- 
 close without 
 much regard 
 for the suscepti- 
 bilities of the 
 borrower. 
 
 In the Swiss 
 Romande, that 
 is the French 
 a n d Italia n 
 speaking por- 
 tions of the 
 country, this 
 system has not 
 taken such 
 root. But the 
 model canton, 
 the paradise 
 of peasant-pro- 
 p r i e t o r s , is 
 undoubtedly the 
 Canton Vaud. 
 A Vaudois peas- 
 ant, with twenty 
 
 or thirty acres of land, one half of it under vines, the rest meadow 
 and pasture, and a bit of forest and marsh, is one of the most for- 
 tunate of men, as much to be envied as the inhabitant of Southern 
 California who owns his homestead. 
 
 True, he works hard, but the work is pleasant, and though 
 grapes may be a precarious crop, they seldom wholly fail, and a 
 
 A OIKL OF BEHNK.
 
 470 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 good vintage represents a fair proportion of the value of his land. 
 The bit of forest supplies him with firewood and timber for 
 mending his carts and repairing his house and barns; the marsh 
 furnishes rushes for bedding his cattle. One way and another, 
 he not only contrives to make both ends meet, but to lay by 
 something every year as a doAver for his daughters and a provision 
 for his sons. On the sunny slopes of the Lake of Geneva, from 
 Chillon to La C6te, many peasants may be found to whom this 
 description would apply. And as nearly every inhabitant of these 
 lacustrine communes has at least a bit of land, poverty in Canton 
 Vaud is almost unknown, and pauperism does not exist. 
 
 Education, moreover, both primary and secondary, is free of 
 cost. Every commune possesses a communal estate, the income 
 from Avhich is applied to the diminution of local rates, and to the 
 bringing up and education of the children of deceased members 
 a Swiss commune being, in effect, a benefit society, whose mem- 
 bers are mutually responsible for each other's support in case of 
 need. An instance occurred not long ago of a "ne'er-do-weel'* 
 member of a Vaudois commune being paid *1, ">00 to abjure his 
 membership and betake himself with his family to America. 
 Strangers are admitted to the freedom of a commune only by pay- 
 ments, which vary according to the communal possessions. In 
 the commune of Montreux the entrance fee is about $150. 
 Strangers who fall into want are, if Swiss, temporarily relieved 
 and ^ent to their native communes. Foreigners are simply 
 escorted to the nearest frontier and left there. 
 
 Even in the colder Jura country, where grapes ripen with diffi- 
 culty, the thrifty Vaudois have managed to extinguish pau- 
 perism, by dint of these little industries which have already been 
 mentioned as forming part of the secondary occupation of the 
 small farmers. The result is that, while on the French side of 
 the imaginary line which separates the two cantons, the houses, 
 though built of stone, are squalid, the windows dirty, the floors 
 likewise, the men who live in them grimy, and the women 
 frowsy ; the dwellings and their inhabitants on the Swiss side of 
 the border are smart and cleanly. Every man willing to work 
 has the means of living, and the communal organization secures a 
 provision as well for the sick and aged as for fatherless children.
 
 SIMPLE REPUBLICANISM. 
 
 471 
 
 Crossing from the Franche Comtd into Canton Vaud is like step, 
 ping from a disorderly kitchen into a dainty parlor. The first 
 habitation on the Swiss side of the border is a neat cottage with 
 shutters painted in the Vaudois colors green and white, and, 
 as you may see through the open doors and transparent windows, 
 as clean inside as it is irreproachable outside. You never find a 
 Vaudois who cannot sign his name ; you rarely find a Frenchman 
 who can. The staple industry, after agriculture, is pill -box and. 
 clock-case making, for which suitable timber is found in the 
 neighboring forests. There are no factories; the men work at 
 their own houses and before 
 nearly every cottage door is to 
 be seen a pile of timber sawn 
 into shapes suitable for the 
 bench and the lathe. 
 
 On the slopes of Mont Tendre 
 and the shores of Lac de Joux 
 are made the finest watches in 
 the world. Chronographs, re- 
 peaters, watches with three or 
 four dials which give simultan- 
 eously the time of London, 
 Paris, Berlin, and New York, 
 act in perpetual calendar, and when cased and regulated at 
 Geneva or Berne, sell at prices varying from $200 to $1,000. They 
 might, of course, be manufactured elsewhere, but, as a matter of 
 fact, it is only in the remote and lofty valley of Lac de Joux 
 La Vallee, par excellence, to every Switzer that they are made, 
 study, practice, and an aptitude which has become hereditary', 
 having rendered the peasants of this portion of Switzerland the 
 most skilful in the world. Yet, considering the character of 
 their work, their wages are surprisingly low the men making 
 from $3.75 to $5.50 a week, while the work which can be done 
 by women is paid at the rate of forty cents a day. Families, 
 however, work at home so that their combined earnings are con- 
 siderable. With few of them is watchmaking the sole profession. 
 Nearly every one of the La Vallde people is a farmer also, and 
 divides his time pretty equally between horology and husbandry. 
 
 THE PEASANT'S FRIEND.
 
 472 THK STOItV OK (JOVKIINMKNT. 
 
 How watchmaking became the sole industry of the valley, how, 
 slowlv and painfully, with what practice and patience, the people 
 of Joux have become the deftest horologists in Christendom, 
 would take too long to tell. They doubtless owe something to 
 nature. The very isolation and remoteness of their position, 
 their brief summers and silent winters, are favorable to that con- 
 centration of mind and freedom from distraction which the pursuit 
 of so delicate a calling imperatively demands. The art and mys- 
 tcrv of fine and complicated watchmaking are taught only to 
 members of their own families. 
 
 Outsiders are as rigorously excluded from the profession us ;uc 
 laymen from practice at the British Bar, for the Jurassic horologist 
 lias no intention of making his art too cheap. 
 
 The rise of so many small industries in the French and Swiss 
 Jura, the manufacture of pill-boxes, clock-cases, wooden pipes, 
 spectacles, paste diamonds, and fine files, is doubtless in some 
 measure explained by the geographical position of the country and 
 its climatic conditions. La Vallee, for instance, is thirty-four 
 hundred feet above sea level; the winters are hard, the summers 
 short; the land cannot keep the population that lives on it, and a 
 few generations ago it became necessary for the mountaineers 
 to develop some industry or emigrate, at a time when emigra- 
 tion Avas neither easy nor popular. Manufacturing in a region 
 utterly without coal, and, a century ago, almost destitute of 
 roads, was clearly impossible. But there was and still is timber 
 in abundance, and necessity suggested, in one case, the making 
 of pill-boxes, in another, the making of clock-cases. 
 
 From clock-cases to clocks there is only a step, and the making 
 of clocks leads, by natural transition, to the construction of 
 watches. About the year 1706 clock and watchmaking was first 
 introduced into Le Chenit, one of the three communes of La 
 Valle'e. The result has been that the population, which at one 
 time was only one hundred and sixty, is now six thousand, and 
 one of the most prosperous in Switzerland. 
 
 A few miles from Le Pont, at the northern extremity of Lac de 
 Joux, lies the town of Vallorbe, consisting, like La Valle'e, of a 
 confederacy of three communes, the inhabitants of which are 
 engrossed in the fabrication of fine files for watchmaking, and of
 
 474 THK STOKY OF (JOVKKNM KXT. 
 
 scythes, sickles, and other implements for local consumption. 
 The files of Vallorbe are almost as widely known as the watch 
 movements of La Vallee. Iron is found in the neighboring moun- 
 tains, but as nowadays iron cannot be profitably smelted without 
 coal, the file-makers use for the most part English steel, which 
 they find best suited to their purposes, and they have a way of 
 preparing it with charcoal and without oil which is peculiarly 
 their own. 
 
 To this art the superiority of their files and cutlery is said to 
 be largely, if not altogether due. There are a few large firms 
 here. But the majority of the workmen are peasants living in 
 their own houses and tilling their own land, devoting themselves 
 to file-making only when the demands of agriculture admit of 
 indoor work. Possibly were the people to apply themselves more 
 constantly to one art, they might attain greater prosperity. The 
 variety of pursuits relieves life of some of its monotony, and 
 favorably affects health, character, and mind. "The workman of 
 the country," says Vallolon Aubert, the historian of Vallorbe, 
 " holds himself very high : he must be treated with deference by 
 the master *whom he serves, and will tolerate in him an air 
 neither of affected superiority nor of haughty scorn. 
 
 k ' As touching morals, the people are religious, honest, faithful 
 to their word, and delicate on the point of honor." There is no 
 poverty at Vallorbe. When the old people are past work, they 
 are maintained by the commune, and children who have lost one 
 or both parents are also kept at the public charge. But in neither 
 case is there any discredit attaching to the proteges of the com- 
 mune. They are members of a benefit society with accumulated 
 funds, not paupers for the support of whom their more fortunate 
 neighbors have to pay an unwilling tax. There is a special fund 
 for the purpose mentioned, which produces about $1,000 a year. 
 When it is insufficient the deficiency is made good out of the 
 ordinary revenue of the commune, arising principally from land 
 and forests ; for the commune is bound not alone to bring up and 
 educate, but to put to trades the children of deceased members.
 
 XI. 
 
 THE story of the growth 
 of constitutional monarchy, 
 for which we have taken England as an 
 
 i T&MJ raj! illustration, is full of the most singular 
 
 j>W fl(PJ, and startling contrasts. Shakespeare has 
 
 been accused by some critics of being too much 
 of a courtier in his writings, of toadying to 
 royalty ; but when one comes to consider how full of dramatic 
 incident, and how sadly illustrative of human destiny in its devel- 
 oping, rather than in its completed, state the lives of English kings 
 have been ever since the battle of Hastings, one can readily under- 
 stand that a mind like Shakespeare's might be artistically tempted 
 to write chiefly about kings and nobles, rather than to depict the 
 humors, follies, and disasters of the common people. One of the 
 most quoted lines written by the great dramatist, " Uneasy lies the 
 head that wears a crown," is a reflection that must force itself on 
 even the most careless and desultory reader of English annals. 
 
 "William the Norman, when disembarking on the shore of Eng- 
 land, fell flat upon his face, a token so appalling that it roused 
 a murmur of dismay among his men-at-arms, "Save us; 'tis a 
 fearful omen!" But the leader, with ready presence of mind 
 (as great men always try to do with falls or failures), turned the 
 
 475
 
 476 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 tumble; to advantage by shouting to his men as lie picked himself 
 up, " Fear ye, then, to see me clutching at this earth ? By the 
 splendor of God, I am only seizing my throne." 1 
 
 Yet, if there wen; anything in signs and tokens, it might seem 
 as if this fall of William were prophetic of the singular disasters 
 that pursued the rest of his dynasty. Starting at first with the 
 mere military despotism of this adventurer, who crowned himself 
 after defeating King Harold and the Saxons, and apportioned the 
 lands of the conquered people among his followers, the constitu- 
 tional monarchy of England has evolved by a series of struggles 
 on the part of the feudal lords against the king for more power, 
 and of attempts by the king to raise money from the people, either 
 for his private debaucheries, or to prosecute warlike adventures in 
 other lands. And this conflict, now between king and nobles, then 
 again between king and common people, has been complicated 
 from time to time by curious encroachments and attempted en- 
 croachments on the Church by the king, and in turn by the 
 Church on royal and popular rights. 
 
 England has not only been the most pugnacious of nations out- 
 side of her borders, but has had more internal disturbance in 
 proportion to the length of her national life than any country with 
 whose history we are familiar. In detailing this growth, however, 
 there are many reigns not necessary to consider, because the popular 
 mind was taken up with foreign wars, or because the quarrels be- 
 tween the nobles and the king offset each other, and the people made 
 little or no headway in obtaining rights and privileges which to- 
 day seem to us the merest basic necessities of comfortable existence. 
 
 For instance, although King Harold, the last of the Saxons, is 
 a striking, pathetic figure, losing crown and life so soon after his 
 taking the oath of office, a constitutional ceremony that marks the 
 popular element of Saxon sovereignty as distinct from the military 
 dictatorship of the Norman conqueror, we do not dwell upon his 
 reign because it was so brief, full of promise for the masses, but 
 with no chance for such promise to ripen. Nor shall we consider 
 the reign of Alfred the Great, who was a mild paternalist trying 
 to be a popular sovereign. 
 
 * The HUM anecdote IB told of <':i-sara thousand years before. Possibly the Xorman duke 
 had heard of this. Possibly it was only history repeating itself.
 
 HAROLD, THE SAXON, TAKING THE OATH OF OFFICE. 477
 
 478 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The first reign, as it seems to us, in which the people as a body 
 came into any strong prominence and were regarded as anything 
 more than mere pawns to be sacrificed at pleasure for the benefit 
 of kings, knights, and bishops, was the reign of Henry II. grand- 
 son of William of Normandy, beginning in 1154. For thirty-five 
 years Henry governed England well under the greatest difficulties. 
 Amid personal sorrows of a heart-rending nature, this great man 
 tried to give the whole people an orderly and comfortable 
 government. 
 
 It is perhaps one of the greatest, and certainly, like that of 
 George III., one of the saddest of regal histories. Henry was beset 
 by a cohort of greedy nobles anxious for more power to oppress the 
 people, and by a legion of lazy and tumultuous priests. He was 
 cursed with a bad wife who encouraged his sons to plot and rebel 
 against him, and his troubles with the Church led to an act which 
 clouded his whole life with passionate remorse. He had hoped, by 
 making one of his familiar friends, Thomas a Becket, in whom he 
 thoroughly trusted, Archbishop of Canterbury, to be able to rule 
 the turbulent priests and so have plenty of time to keep the nobles 
 within due bounds. But no sooner was a Becket raised to this 
 lofty eminence than he tried to turn himself into a personal rival 
 of his monarch; not only refusing to take the oath of obedience to 
 the ancient customs of the country, but causing every other 
 priest, except one, to qualify this oath of allegiance by the clause, 
 " Saving my order." 
 
 All that King Henry desired was that a certain priest, who 
 had committed a horrible murder, should be delivered up to be 
 tried in the same court and in the same way as any other mur- 
 derer. Calling a solemn gathering in Westminster Hall, the kino 
 demanded that in future all priests found guilty before a clerical 
 court of crimes against the laws of the land should be considered 
 priests no longer and should be handed over to the common law 
 for punishment. Surely, a most reasonable request on the part of 
 a king, and a true step toward the equalization of all men before 
 the law, that is, before the collective conscience of all men. 
 
 From the refusal of the proud prelate and his insolent priests a 
 series of quarrels arose, in which the archbishop found countless 
 ways of annoying the poor king, already under a continual cloud
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONAlM'H V. 
 
 483 
 
 of family trouble, till one day, when Henry burst forth passion- 
 ately, " Have I no one who will free me from this man ? " some of 
 his friends took it as a sign that he wished the archbishop to be 
 murdered, and murdered he was by four knights, within the 
 sanctuary and holding one of the horns of the altar. Hubert, an 
 early English judge, was killed in the same way and under the 
 same circumstances, and as the church was considered an asylum 
 in those days, even for 
 a criminal pursued by 
 civil authorities, such a 
 crime committed in the 
 holy of holies was ac- 
 counted peculiarly 
 atrocious. 
 
 A study of Henry's 
 character satisfies that 
 his fatal speech, wrung 
 from him in the torture 
 of passion, Avas not the 
 expression of a delib- 
 erate desire or hint for 
 action; but it shadow- 
 ed his life in spite of 
 the Pope's forgiveness, 
 because Henry II. was 
 warm of heart and had 
 loved the old, familiar 
 friend who had betray- 
 ed him, and who had 
 paid the penalty of 
 treachery with his life, 
 deserted by many of 
 
 MAC.XA CHAISTA ISLAM). 
 
 As this monarch lay in his last illness, 
 his nobles, while his army was fighting 
 against the King of France and his own son, Richard, a treaty of 
 peace was brought him in writing, and with it was also brought 
 a list of English deserters from their allegiance whom he was 
 required to pardon. That list was headed with the name of 
 John, his favorite son. This was the last stab that cut in twain 
 the great heart of the first Plantagenet, the first English king,
 
 484 THK STOKV OF <;< (VF.i'.NM KNT. 
 
 except the Saxon Alfred, who h;id any conception of the rights 
 of the common people. Turning' on his side, he groaned out, 
 "Let the world go; I care for nothing more," and cursing the 
 hour of his birth and the children whom he left, he gave up the 
 battle of life. 
 
 There was one sweet romance in this reign, the story of Fair 
 Rosamond. 1 It tells how this great king had one jewel of true 
 happiness, one rose of joy amid his crown of thorns; that he 
 loved a fair girl and built her a beautiful bower in a park at 
 Woodstock, and the bower was built in a labyrinth that could 
 only be found by following the clue of a thread of silk. And the 
 legend goes that the bad queen, becoming jealous, found the clue 
 and confronted the sweet and gentle girl with a dagger and a cup 
 of poison, giving her the choice ; and the Fair Rosamond, after 
 many tears and prayers, all fruitless, took the cup and fell dead 
 in the happy garden where the birds sang on lovingly just the 
 same as they had sung before. 
 
 Now there was a Fair Rosamond, and the king loved her and 
 the bad queen probably hated her, but history tells us that we 
 must give up the bower, and the labyrinth, and the silk thread, and 
 the death by poison. As Dickens says in his charming way : " I 
 am afraid Fair Rosamond retired to a nunnery near Oxford and 
 died there peacefully ; her sister nuns hanging a silken drapery 
 over her tomb and often dressing it with flowers in remembrance 
 of the youth and beauty that had enchanted the sad king when 
 he, too, was young and when his life lay fair before him." 
 
 The next important event in the history of England was the 
 signing of the Great Charter. This occurred on June 15, "i215, 
 in the pleasant field called Runymede, on the banks of the silver 
 Thames. Signing this charter was, perhaps, the most bitter pill 
 that an English king ever had to swallow. And John, the mean- 
 est of the sons of the great Henry, did it with a very bad grace, 
 as indeed everything in his life he did with singularly bad 
 grace, except the extracting of teeth, for he was one of the 
 most inventive and successful dentists on record. For if we may 
 be permitted to indulge for a moment in the political slang of the 
 present day, King John, up to the signing of the charter, had had 
 
 1 This name is from two Latin words Rosa Muncli meaning, Rose of the World.
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 
 
 485 
 
 A great pull on all the people, but especially on the Jews, who 
 were the most useful and the most abused inhabitants of London. 
 Scott, in his Ivanhoe, draws a very mild picture of John's char- 
 acter in his treatment of Isaac of York, for John, like most of 
 liis predecessors and successors in office, even down to the present 
 reign, had always 
 been in want, 
 the royal want of 
 money, and he 
 utilized his prerog- 
 ative to the extent 
 of taking the rich- 
 est Jew he could 
 lind and telling 
 him that he must 
 iill the royal cof- 
 fers. On the Jew's 
 refusal, John or- 
 dered that a tooth 
 should be pulled 
 out every day till 
 he consented: on 
 the eighth day the 
 unhappy Israelite 
 yielded. But the 
 hour of reckoning 
 came, and the char- 
 ter forced from 
 John at Runymede 
 probably caused 
 him more pain than 
 was condensed in 
 the Jew's gum-ache 
 
 and was doubtless productive of more good to the people than his 
 reckless squandering of the Jew's money. 
 
 This charter provided that the Church should be maintained in 
 all its rights ; that the barons should be relieved of oppressive 
 obligations as vassals of the crown ; the barons, in their turn, 
 
 KING JOHN IN ANGER.
 
 486 TIIK STOIJV OF 
 
 pledging themselves to relieve their vassals, the people ; that the 
 liberties of London and other cities should not be infringed ; that 
 foreign merchants should be protected ; that no man .should be 
 imprisoned without a fair trial ; and that to no one should there 
 be any sale, delay, or denial of justice. 
 
 Brave words these, worthy of the brave barons who forced the 
 mean and cowardly cur, who wore the crown, to sign them ; but at 
 the same time to the eye of posterity it seems as if the barons them- 
 selves found it almost as hard a task to live up to this charter 
 as did the most contemptible creature that ever disgraced the 
 English throne. Another provision of the charter was tin- 
 appointment of a council of twenty-five barons to see that John 
 kept as near to his word as possible, with power to declare war on 
 him if necessary. 
 
 "They have given me five and twenty over-kings," cried the 
 hampered tyrant, as in a fit of rage right after signing, he rolled 
 on the floor of his palace, biting sticks and straw. 
 
 We now come to one of the most curious reigns in England : 
 curious on account of the character of the king, the length of time 
 that he was endured by the barons, and the great gains made, not 
 by the people, but for them, in the development of constitutional 
 government. 
 
 Henry III. began to reign as a boy, in 1216, a great council 
 meeting at Bristol, revising Magna Charta and making Lord 
 Pembroke Regent or Protector of England, as the king was too 
 young to rule alone. Soon as he came of age Henry showed him- 
 self a true son of his father. He made oaths, and agreements, 
 and promises with wonderful ease, and broke them with an ease 
 more wonderful. Always in want of money he resorted to all 
 sorts of tricks to obtain it, so that he gained the popular title of 
 being " the sturdiest beggar in all England." He even took up 
 the cross, pretending that he wished to head a crusade and rescue 
 the tomb of the Saviour from the possession of infidels, and he 
 got permission from the Pope to lay taxes on the English clergy. 
 But some of the clergy stood up for their rights. " The Pope 
 and King together," growled the Bishop of London, "may take 
 the mitre off my head, but if they do, beneath it they may find 
 a soldier's helmet. I'll pay nothing."
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY . 
 
 So Henry had to give up his crusade against the pockets of the 
 priests. Then he badgered the barons in every possible way to 
 increase his revenues, and after ten years' squabbling they made 
 Parliament vote him a large sum which he frittered away with 
 the usual royal rapidity. One of the most amusing things in this 
 reign was the episode of the Sicilian throne. This happening to 
 be empty, the Pope obligingly offered it to Henry III. for his son, 
 Prince Edward, and gave the English king permission to levy a 
 special tax, raise an army and invade Sicily. But the barons and 
 the clergy, thinking that their king had already been altogether 
 too expensive a luxury, re- 
 fused to take any part in the 
 Sicilian business, or to con- 
 tribute a farthing to it by 
 vote of Parliament. Where- 
 upon the Pope offered his 
 bargain to the King of France 
 and a little while after sent 
 to Henry III. of England a 
 little bill of 100,000 for not 
 having taken advantage of 
 the papal advice and permis- 
 sion to possess himself of 
 Sicily. 
 
 Fancy, for the sake of con- 
 trast between those days and 
 our own, the present wise and 
 
 venerable Supreme Pontiff of that marvellous hierarchy, the 
 Catholic Church, sending to our President advice, or permission, 
 to go to war with Chili, or to annex Canada, and then sending in 
 a little bill of $500,000 for not taking the advice. 
 
 King Henry gave the barons so much trouble that finally the 
 great Earl of Leicester, Simon de Montfort, who, though a foreigner 
 by birth, was admired by the men of his order for his great abili- 
 ties, and beloved by the common people for his suavities, invented 
 a check upon the regal power which appears to be the germ of the 
 present department of English government called the British Min- 
 istry ; a sort of intermediary between the commons and the crown. 
 
 A C'BUSADEK.
 
 488 TMK STORY OF (iOVEKN.M KNT. 
 
 This plan of Simon tie Montfort, which he proposed to the 
 abject, thoroughly scared monarch at Oxford, was no less than a 
 (':>mmittee of Government, twelve men to be selected by the barons 
 and twelve men by the king. Henry agreed to this, but on 
 the return of his brother Richard from abroad summoned up 
 courage enough to oppose the barons again ; and as they began 
 to quarrel among themselves the Earl of Leicester left the 
 kingdom in disgust. Then the people began to be dissatisfied, 
 thinking that the barons were not doing enough for them, so that 
 the chances for Henry III. to be once more the real, instead of 
 nominal, King of England brightened up again. 
 
 It was a common kingly trick in those days to play the people off 
 against the barons, or the barons off against the people, whichever 
 could be done most easily ; and even to-day shrewd politicians, in cer- 
 tain governments supposedly popular, sometimes succeed in shaping 
 their policies successfully for themselves, by tapping with one hand 
 the barrels of monopolists, while with the other they tickle the 
 people, as they fill their ears with promises of better legislation. So 
 Henry III., or, as he should be called, Henry the Ridiculous, told 
 the Committee of Government that he had decided to abolish 
 them, in spite of his oath, and seizing all the money in the treasury, ' 
 he shut himself up in the Tower of London. Having gained these 
 coigns of vantage, that is, the money and the Tower, he published a 
 letter, which he claimed to have received from the Pope, addressed 
 to the world in general and the English people in particular, inform- 
 ing them that for five and forty years he had been a just and excellent 
 king. It was very much as if Nero, who set Rome burning, 
 should have informed the populace that he did so to demonstrate 
 the necessity of having fire insurance companies. 
 
 But the Earl of Leicester, returning and joining the Earl of 
 Gloucester, took several of the royal castles and advanced on 
 London, at which the London people, who had always disliked 
 the king, were heartily pleased. Then Henry moved out of the 
 Tower and began scampering about the country till, managing to 
 secure the assistance of the Scotch, he gave battle to Leicester and 
 the Londoners, and, after losing five thousand men, was captured, 
 whereupon the Pope promptly excommunicated the Earl of Leices- 
 ter ; but as the English people loved him he became the real king,
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 
 
 489 
 
 always, however, treating his captive, King Henry, with the great- 
 est respect, yet taking him along everywhere under guard as a 
 piece of royal furniture. 
 
 De Montfort, in the year 1265, summoned the first parliament 
 in which the people had any real share, and for several years 
 he governed Eng- 
 land with strength 
 and tender ness 
 combined. 
 
 A new Parlia- 
 ment was called in 
 January, 1265, to 
 Westminster, but 
 the weakness of 
 the patriotic party 
 among the baron- 
 age was proved by 
 the fact that only 
 twenty-three earls 
 and barons could 
 be found to sit be- 
 side the hundred 
 and twenty ecclesi- 
 astics. This arith- 
 metical weakness 
 drove Earl Simon 
 to a constitutional 
 change of vast im- 
 port. As before, 
 he summoned two 
 knights from every 
 
 EDWARD I., THE SUCCESSFUL, CRUSADER. 
 
 county. But he 
 
 called a new force into English politics when he summoned to sit 
 beside them two citizens from every borough. The attendance 
 of delegates from the towns had long been usual in the county 
 courts, when any matter touching their immediate interests was in 
 question ; but it was the writ issued by Earl Simon that first sum- 
 moned the merchant and the trader to sit beside the knight of the
 
 490 THE STOItY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 shire, the baron and the bishop in the parliament of the realm, 
 and so set the example and laid the foundation of the present 
 parliamentary system. 
 
 But King Henry's son, Edward, having escaped from custody, 
 succeeded in gathering an army of disaffected barons, defeated 
 De Montfort's son, and with the De Montfort banners advanced 
 on the Earl of Leicester. The face of this greatest of mediteval 
 English statesmen flushed with joy as he beheld his own ban- 
 ners advancing to greet him ; but, when on nearer coming he saw 
 who carried the banners, he knew that the end of his just and 
 generous life was upon him. " Lord have mercy on our souls," 
 quoth he, " for our bodies are Prince Edward's." He fought with 
 his little army, however, till the last ditch, and fell as a great man 
 always falls, greatest of all in failure. His enemies mangled his 
 body and sent it as a compliment to a certain noble dame, the 
 wife of his worst enemy ; for those were pleasant days and com- 
 pliments of this kind flew around easily as flies in summer. 
 
 But they could not unshape his memory, and for many years 
 afterwards the people always spoke of him as Sir Simon the 
 Righteous, crossing themselves as for a saint. And even though 
 he was dead, and mangled, and unburied, "a prey to dogs and 
 kites," the cause for which he died still lived and flourished. For 
 in great causes every step taken makes the movement faster, and 
 when once a new idea, if it is a true idea, or a just one, comes into 
 the world, though it may suffer a temporary defeat or eclipse, it is 
 sure to shine forth again and add to itself new lustre with every 
 successive century. 
 
 The notion that the people really had some natural rights in the 
 business of government, and that it was, or should be, something 
 more than a game of greed or glory between kings and nobles, 
 was now thoroughly alive in the English mind ; and though at the 
 death of De Montfort, Henry III. was restored to his public func- 
 tions, he was obliged to respect the great charter and the laws and 
 customs established by the Earl of Leicester, and a period of peace 
 ensued. 
 
 During this calm in the kingdom Prince Edward took up the 
 cross arid set out to the Holy Land on a crusade. There he had 
 many adventures, and came back to England after the death of
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 491 
 
 his father to ascend the throne, laden with well-earned honors. 
 As a soldier of the cross he had been a superb success, and his 
 return through different countries was made the occasion of much 
 international glorification, so that on his arrival in England the 
 national pride was as deeply and widely enlisted in his favor as 
 ever before or since in behalf of any great man. London gave 
 him an ovation almost equal to that which was given to Disraeli 
 in this century on his return from Berlin bringing in triumph 
 * Peace ivith Honor ." 
 
 But they did things in those old days a little differently. It 
 is related that the return of Edward I., or Longshanks, as he was 
 nicknamed, was celebrated by turning the conduits of the streets 
 and the fountains into rivers of red wine, typical, perhaps, of the 
 Saracen blood which his sword had set flowing ; the houses were 
 tapestried outside with silk and cloths of gold and silver; and 
 bonfires were lit and oxen were roasted whole. But though Edward 
 came back in a blaze of popularity he soon tumbled into trouble, 
 into a ditch from which his long legs were not agile enough 
 to help him jump out with ease or grace. Of course, it was the 
 old, old kingly trouble, the need, or rather the want, of money. 
 
 Edward was more fertile than most of his prototypes in schemes 
 for raising it, but in spite of his prestige, in spite of his persistence, 
 in spite of the acknowledged strength of his character, he found 
 even more difficulty than his weak-minded father had experienced 
 as a financier. He attempted to tax 'the clergy without the per- 
 mission of the Pope, but succeeded no better then his father had 
 with the Pope's permission, and had it not been for the Jews, 
 whom he threw into prison and then ransomed at thousands of 
 pounds and finally banished from the kingdom, seizing all their 
 property, he might have had to sell his palace. 
 
 And now a curious thing happened out of a cruel murder 
 a great benefit arose. A Norman crew, who had quarrelled with 
 some English sailors when filling their water casks at the same 
 place, and who had been soundly bethwacked and bethumped, 
 attacked the first English ship they met of sufficiently small size, 
 sei/ed a merchant and hanged him in the rigging of their own 
 vessel, with his pet dog at his feet. From the hanging of this 
 merchant grew a national quarrel, and as the preparations for war
 
 492 TIII-: STOKY OF <;OVKI:NMKNT. 
 
 were expensive, King Edward impatiently began to attempt to 
 raise money in arbitrary ways, and the chief barons, especially 
 Bohun, Karl of Hereford, and Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, strongly 
 opposed him, refusing even to take command of his forces, and 
 leaving the court attended by many lords. 
 
 ' By G d, Sir Earl," said the King to Bigod, "you shall <.-ii lin- 
 go or hang." 
 
 " By G d, Sir King," replied the Earl stoutly, "I will neither 
 go nor hang." 
 
 Then he adopted a rather clever means to force the clergy to 
 pay the taxes which he had levied on them, for when they refused 
 he declared that if they would not support his government they 
 had no claim on it for protection, and any man might plunder 
 them who would. This general permission, or immunity offered 
 to the thieves and robbers of the kingdom, frightened some of the 
 clergy into paying, but this money in hand only sharpened Edward's 
 appetite for more. His next move was to seize all the wool and 
 leather in the hands of the merchants, promising to pay for it when 
 convenient. Not satisfied with that, he set a tax on the exporta- 
 tion of wool, but this proved the last straw. 
 
 The barons under Bohun and Bigod, at the nrgeiice of the mer- 
 chants, came together and evolved the new democratic doctrine 
 that any taxes imposed without the consent of Parliament were 
 unlawful, and Parliament refused to impose taxes until King 
 Edward should reaffirm the two great charters, and solemnly 
 declare in writing that nevermore should there be any power in 
 the country to wring money from the people except the power of 
 Parliament representing all ranks of the people. 
 
 Here, we see, was the germ of the phrase used by our English 
 forefathers when they severed from England: "Taxation without 
 representation is tyranny." Is it not a singular proof of the 
 average dulness of the royal brain that George III., in the eigh- 
 teenth century, should not have been able to profit by the lesson 
 which Edward I. learned in the thirteenth? If it takes five hun- 
 dred years for a just idea to find permanent lodgment in the average 
 mind of even a constitutional monarch, what slow progress must 
 be expected in the perfection of any governmental system where 
 power has accidentally fallen into one hand, or into a few hands !
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 493 
 
 But Edward I., in spite of his attempts to be a tyrant, after 
 learning his lesson became one of the best administrators of the 
 affairs of his country. To him is due the conception that Scotland, 
 Wales, and England ought to be one country, and he set himself 
 sturdily to the task of realizing this. But unity, which is the 
 dream of all religions, and the doctrine of our recent science as to 
 the composition of the material universe, is sometimes a thing very 
 difficult to achieve between contiguous nations who seem geograph- 
 ically intended to be one. It is an ultimate very often just as 
 difficult as it is desirable, and the first steps towards unity between 
 peoples, as between individuals in friendship or in love, are often 
 steps of pain. It was so with King Edward's dream of a perfected 
 nationality, but he laid the foundation of that English oneness 
 which to-day affects so strongly the civilized world. 
 
 His campaign in Wales against Llewellyn, their prince, had 
 some singular features illustrative of the spirit of those times. 
 When Edward came to the throne he required the Welsh prince 
 to swear allegiance to him, as had been done to his father, but 
 Llewellyn refused, and Edward, with a great fleet, invested the 
 coast of Wales, forced the prince to take refuge on Mount Snow- 
 don, starved him into an apology and a treaty of peace, and then 
 returned to London, supposing he had reduced Wales to obedience ; 
 but the Welsh, though a gentle and hospitable people, were 
 intensely proud, and the airs some English lingerers in Wales 
 assumed after this treaty were a little too much. 
 
 Then was revived a prophecy made by a traditional magi- 
 cian named Merlin, whom Tennyson has put to more beautiful use 
 in his poetry than probably ever resulted in Merlin's life. This 
 prophecy was that, when English money should become round, a 
 Prince of Wales would be crowned in London. Now King 
 Edward had forbidden the cutting of the English penny into 
 halves and quarters to represent halfpence and farthings, and had 
 recently introduced a round coin. The Welsh people took this as 
 the first part of Merlin's prophecy, and rose with great violence to 
 complete the prophecy by overturning the English. 
 
 Llewellyn's brother, Prince David, led the revolt, surprised the 
 castle of Hawarden, killed the whole garrison, and instantly all 
 Wales was in a flame of insurrection. Edward, with his customary
 
 494 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 energy, crossed the Menai Strait, near where the wonderful tubular 
 iron bridge stands to-day, by a bridge of boats that enabled forty 
 men to march abreast. But the tide rose and divided the boats, 
 and the Welsh fell upon the soldiers who had landed and drove 
 them into the sea where their heavy armor caused them to drown 
 by thousands. 
 
 Llewellyn, helped by the bad weather, gained another battle, 
 but was finally captured, and had his head sent to London, where 
 it was set on the Tower encircled with a wreath, some say of 
 silver, to make it look like a ghastly coin and in ridicule of the 
 crowning of a Prince of Wales in London prophecied by the 
 Welsh magician. His brother David, six months afterwards, was 
 also captured, hanged, drawn, and quartered, a barbarity which from 
 that time became the established punishment of treason in England. 
 
 All Wales now yielded to the arms of Edward; and Edward's 
 queen, who was with him on all his military expeditions, happening 
 to give birth to a young prince in the Welsh castle of Carnarvon. 
 Edward had the politic impulse to parade the little babe to the 
 Welsh people as their countryman and to call him the Prince of 
 Wales ; thus, in his own way, fulfilling the Merlin prophecy and 
 originating the title that has since been borne by the heir-apparent 
 to the English throne. Having conquered the Welsh in pursuance 
 of his cherished ambition to make Wales, Scotland, and England 
 one nation, Edward set himself to work improving their condition, 
 clarifying their laws, and stimulating their trade. 
 
 This is, perhaps, one of the most brilliant reigns in English 
 history, and one is almost tempted to linger over the Scotch 
 campaigns of this great king ; but we are concerned chiefly in 
 showing, not the military exploits of crowned statesmen, but tin- 
 growth of constitutional monarchy, a monarchy, as Tennyson 
 puts it, 
 
 " Broad based upon the people's will 
 And compassed by the inviolate sea." 
 
 So, noting once more, to impress it on the memory, that the 
 reign of Edward I. marks the conception that a king cannot im- 
 pose taxes without the consent of a parliament representing tin- 
 people, we pass on to the reign of Edward II., the little boy who 
 was born in Wales.
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 495 
 
 This reign is still more remarkable than the preceding for its 
 showing the rising of the popular tide and the eating away of the 
 stubborn rocks of royal privilege and prerogative. Tradition hath 
 it that the dying hero, Edward I., made his son promise not to 
 bury his bones, but to carry them about with him till his ambi- 
 tious dream of uniting the three kingdoms had been fully realized, 
 as the great Edward fondly hoped it would be by his successor. 
 But from Edward the Great to Edward the Little the fall was 
 tremendous. Instead of improving the opportunities left him by 
 his father, Edward II. recalled from Gascony a certain boon-com- 
 panion, a young man named Piers Gaveston, of whom Edward 
 I. had so disapproved that he had banished him from England, and 
 made his son swear never to bring him back ; but no sooner was 
 Edward the Little crowned than he broke his oath, a kingly 
 habit, according to all history. 
 
 Gaveston, from all accounts, seems to have been a handsome, 
 indolent, insolent fellow who fancied himself a wit. He reck- 
 lessly made nearly all the prominent English nobles his enemies 
 by giving them nicknames, calling one the Hog, another the 
 Black Dog, another the Jew and so on, and when Edward the 
 Little made this favorite Earl of Cornwall and then Regent of the 
 Kingdom, while he went on a journey to France to marry the 
 French princess, and when on his return he ran into the arms of 
 his favorite, embraced him and called him his brother, the English 
 lords took offence, as did the people, who had never called the 
 Gascon by his English title, Earl Cornwall, but persisted in address- 
 ing him as plain Gaveston. 
 
 At last the barons told the king bluntly that he must send his 
 boon-companion away, and they made Gaveston take an oath that 
 he would never come back. Their anger was redoubled when 
 they found out that in sending him away his royal admirer had 
 made him Governor of Ireland. A year afterwards he came back 
 and then the queen joined the barons in taking offence at the 
 favorite's presence. 
 
 Edward by this time being well-nigh penniless called a parlia- 
 ment to help him fill his coffers, but the nobles refused to 
 convene unless he banished the favorite. On his doing this, they 
 assembled, each in armor, and gave him the desired money, but
 
 496 TUK STOKY OF <;<>VKKNMKNT. 
 
 appointed a committee to look after his household affairs and cor. 
 rect abuses in (lie state. This committee, after some months of 
 study, ordained that the king, instead of summoning a parliament 
 whenever it suited his whim or convenience, should summon one 
 once a year certainly or twice if necessary. They also decided 
 that if Guveston ever came back he should be beheaded, where- 
 upon the favorite, who, like a bad penny, had returned again, was 
 sent to Flanders. 
 
 Soon after, however, breaking this particular oath for about the 
 seventh time, Edward the Little had his fellow-reveller back with 
 him in the North of England, where he was trying to raise an army, 
 not to complete the concpuest of Scotland, as he had promised his 
 father, but to oppose the nobles. They, however, followed him 
 up, caught Gaveston, set him on a mule and carried him with the 
 mockery of military music to Warwick Castle, or the kennel of 
 the nobleman he had nicknamed the Black Dog. There they 
 sentenced him to death, and he was taken out on the pleasant 
 road near the beautiful river by which long afterwards was born 
 sweet-hearted William Shakespeare, and in the bright sunshine 
 of an English May-day the favorite was beheaded. This seems 
 another step gained, namely, that an English king would not be 
 allowed to have a counsellor or favorite who was obnoxious to the 
 nation at large. 
 
 Edward showed considerable spirit in trying to revenge the 
 death of Gaveston, and the civil war between the king and the 
 barons went on for six months, the barons joining their forces 
 with Bruce of Scotland. Then the king got another favorite, 
 Hugh le Despenser, to help him with advice. Le Despenser was 
 handsome and brave, but to be favorite and confidential adviser to 
 such a king was no sinecure, and disaster after disaster followed 
 the royal arms, although occasionally they gained a victory. Ed- 
 ward's queen, on account of his neglect, had long refused to live 
 with him, and now, going back to her native country, France, she 
 raised an army and invaded England. She was at once joined by 
 the Earls of Kent and Norfolk; the king's two brothers, by other 
 powerful noblemen, and -finally by the very general whom her 
 husband sent against her. 
 
 This was the beginning of the end, and marks a new encroach-
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 
 
 497 
 
 ment on royal power, the Bishop of Hereford suggesting to the 
 queen that the wretched king, who, after running about the coun- 
 try like an outlaw, finally gave himself up, should be asked to 
 resign and that his son should reign instead. This suggestion was 
 carried out. They 
 haled him into the 
 House of Commons, 
 where Sir William 
 Trussel, the speak- 
 er, belabored him 
 with a tremendously 
 long and fiery speech 
 to the purpose that 
 everyone h a d re- 
 nounced allegiance 
 to him and he was 
 no longer a king. 
 Then Sir Thomas 
 Blount, the royal 
 high steward, ad- 
 vanced and broke 
 his white wand, a 
 ceremony only per- 
 formed at a king's 
 death. Edward the 
 Little then resigned 
 himself to his fate 
 and they proclaimed 
 his son, Edward III., 
 King of England, in 
 w h o s e coronation 
 chair was set the 
 Stone of Scone on 
 which the Scottish kings had been crowned, and which his grand- 
 sire had brought from Scotland. From Edward III. we pass to 
 the reign of his grandson, Richard II., a mere boy of eleven, who 
 began by showing some of the courage of his famous father, 
 Edward the Black Prince. The kingdom, as usual, was involved 
 
 rOHOXATION CIIAIlt OF EDWAKD III., WITH 
 THK STONE OF SCONE.
 
 498 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 in war, and the English government needing money, a poll tax 
 of three groats a year for every one above the age of fourteen 
 was instituted. Three groats were equivalent then to about a 
 shilling, but making allowance for the difference of value in 
 money at the present time would amount to about two dollars 
 and a half. 
 
 Only beggars were exempt from this tax and clergymen were 
 taxed more. It is rather curious to note that so long ago the 
 clergy should have been taxed even in Catholic England, whereas 
 lately the Supreme Court of the United States has gone to the 
 extent of making an exception to the contract labor law in the 
 case of the Rev. Dr. Warren, who was imported from England to 
 be the pastor of the Church of the Holy Trinity in New York. 
 
 This poll tax provoked the greatest indignation ; the people of 
 Essex rebelled against it and in the county of Kent, a county 
 which has always had the nickname of the Bold, one Wat, a tiler 
 by trade, killed the tax-gatherer with one blow for insulting his 
 daughter, put himself at the head of the malcontents, joined the 
 people of Essex, who were in arms under the leadership of a priest 
 named Jack Straw, and taking out of prison another popular 
 priest named John Ball, marched on London. 
 
 Some have asserted that these peasants had a socialistic intention 
 to abolish property and declare all men equal ; but it is extremely 
 doubtful whether they aimed so high, for they stopped everyone 
 they met, and made them swear to be true to " King Richard and 
 the people." This was rather to be expected, for the people, not 
 being in such direct contact with their kings as with the nobles, or 
 feudal lords between them, frequently looked to the king as a pos- 
 sible protector against the extortion and oppression of the nobles. 
 
 This mob marched into London, threw open the prisons, burned 
 all the documents in Lambeth Palace, destroyed the Duke of 
 Lancaster's palace, the Savoy, which was considered the most 
 beautiful in the kingdom, made a bonfire of all the law-books in 
 the temple, and yet, singular to relate, stole nothing. Seeing one 
 man take a silver cup at the burning of the Savoy Palace and put 
 it in his breast, they drowned him in the Thames, cup and all. 
 
 Rather different from a London mob to-day ! They waited 
 patiently, when a proclamation was made that the king would
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 499 
 
 meet them and grant all their requests ; and the king did meet 
 one section of them, and pretended to be keeping thirty clerks up 
 all night writing out a new charter. 
 
 Their requests were really very moderate, being simply these 
 four : That neither they, their children, nor any of their descendants 
 should be held in slavery any longer by their feudal lords for any 
 cause. Secondly, that when they rented land of these feudal lords 
 they should be alloived to pay in money instead of in service. 
 Thirdly, that they should have liberty to buy and sell freely in all 
 markets ; and, fourthly, that they should be pardoned for all past 
 offences. 
 
 Wat Tiler is said to have desired in addition to this an abolition 
 of the cruel forest laws, which punished a starving peasant with 
 death if he killed one of the royal rabbits, or any other game. 
 Wat Tiler was not leading the party of insurgents with whom 
 the king was pretending to treat, but in another part of London 
 was breaking into the Tower, and he and his men are said to have 
 thrust their swords even into the bed where the Princess of Wales 
 was sleeping to see if any of their enemies were concealed under 
 the mattresses, which would indicate that any sense of *' the divin- 
 ity that doth hedge a king " was at rather low ebb among the 
 people of England. 
 
 The meeting between Wat and King Richard, which occurred 
 the next day, furnishes another apt illustration of the temper of 
 the times. Wat rode boldly up to Richard and said, without 
 the usual reverence, " King, dost see all these men here ? " " Ah," 
 said the king, " why so ? " " Because," said Wat, " they are all 
 at my command and have sworn to do whatever I say." 
 
 Some affirmed afterwards that while speaking he reached over 
 and laid a hand on the king's bridle-rein, whereupon Wai worth, 
 mayor of London, stabbed him in the back, and Wat's followers 
 bent their bows to avenge the fall of their leader. It was a very 
 risky moment for King Richard, but the boy had the presence of 
 mind to spur his horse into the ranks of the rioters and shout out 
 that Wat was a traitor, and that he, King Richard, would be their 
 leader. Taken by surprise, the mob set up a cheer and followed 
 the young monarch to Islington, where a body of soldiers met him 
 and then, turning on his deluded followers, put them to the rout.
 
 500 THE STORY OF < ;<>V KItNM KNT. 
 
 Fifteen hundred men were liung in chains as a result of this 
 insurrection, the chains being added to their bodies to prevent their 
 grieving kinsmen from taking them down and giving them tin- 
 last sad services of interment. This was the beginning of the 
 barbarous custom of hanging in chains and leaving the bodies to 
 the beaks of birds. 
 
 The kingdom now was governed by ministers of King Richard's 
 choice, he being only sixteen, but Parliament quarreled with him 
 so about these ministers that he was obliged to consent to tin- 
 appointment of a commission of fourteen for a year. On coming 
 of age, of course he took things into his own hands again, ap- 
 pointed a new chancellor and a new treasurer, and announce* 1 
 to the people that he alone was King of England, which despotic 
 ground he held for eight years without much opposition. Then 
 a large cauldron of trouble a very witch's broth of woe to the 
 people also began to bubble for Richard, stirred up at iirst, 
 some thought, by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, whom he had 
 made Duke of Hereford. 
 
 Bolingbroke had stood high in the royal favor, but lost his 
 influence, and was forced to flee to France. His estates were con- 
 fiscated and his career apparently ended. Yet the king's conduct 
 was smoothing Bolingbroke 's return, for Richard began to plunge 
 deeply into debauchery. The Commons had granted him a duty 
 on wool for life, but this had only whetted his avarice, that 
 basest of a]l passions. In his mad greed to raise money he out- 
 lawed seventeen counties at once so as to impose fines, and then 
 left England and invaded Ireland. This was Bolingbroke's 
 opportunity. He returned from France, reclaimed the estates 
 which had been wrested from him, and being joined by the Earl of 
 Northumberland and Westmoreland, lay in wait for the king. 
 
 Richard, returning from Ireland, deserted by his soldiers, rode 
 from castle to castle begging for food, and at last surrendered 
 himself. He was conducted to the castle of Flint where Henry 
 Bolingbroke met him and dropped on his courtly knee, as if la- 
 were still respectful to this wandering shadow of a king. 
 
 " Your people complain, my liege," said Bolingbroke, " that for 
 two and twenty years you have oppressed them bitterly. I will 
 help you to govern them better in future.''
 
 502 THE STO11V OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 " Fair cousin," said the fallen king, " since it pleaseth you, it 
 please th me mightily." 
 
 Richard was then taken for safe keeping to the Tower, but 
 before he reached there it is related that even his dog left him to 
 lick the hand of Bolingbroke. The day before Parliament met, a 
 deputation waited on him and told him he must resign, which he 
 did, saying that if he had any choice he would prefer to appoint 
 his cousin his successor. 
 
 The next day, in Westminster Hall, Henry Bolingbroke, Duke 
 of Hereford, commonly called Henry of Lancaster, arose from his 
 seat beside the empty throne, which was covered with cloth of 
 gold, and, making the sign of the cross on his forehead, claimed 
 the realm of England as his right, and the Archbishops of York 
 and Canterbury, each taking him by an arm, seated him on the 
 throne. Thus began one of the most brilliant and picturesque 
 periods of English history, of which Shakespeare has made immor- 
 tal use and beauty in his plays. 
 
 The gains in popular government during this reign were but 
 slight, yet there seems to have been an extension of the power of 
 law, and with that extension a corresponding increase of respect. 
 As an example of this extension, the beheading of a churchman, 
 Scroop, Archbishop of York, might be adduced ; for Henry the IV., 
 like Henry the II., whom he somewhat resembled in other 
 respects, was determined that every man, priest, or prince, or 
 peasant, in his dominion should be amenable to the general laws. 
 It is even said that Chief Justice Gascoigne sent the king's son, 
 afterwards Harry the V., to prison simply for insulting the majesty 
 of the law, and that the king approved of it. 
 
 But Bolingbroke, who got the throne by strategy and force, had 
 to hold it all his life by still greater force and strategy. Plot 
 after plot against him was unearthed and punished, and it would 
 appear that aspiring nobles made existence such a burden for him 
 that he actually grew tired of living. An illustration of the man- 
 ner of conducting public business at this time is afforded by the 
 fact that the first parliament Henry IV. summoned was so quarrel- 
 some that on one day forty steel gloves were thrown on the floor 
 among the members as challenges to mortal combat. 
 
 Jn a reign like this very great gains on the part of the people
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 503 
 
 were hardly to be expected ; nor in the next reign, though Harry 
 A', was a man much larger in heart, and in ability almost equal to 
 his father. But beyond gratifying the national vanity by his 
 fine generalship and deeds of personal prowess in France, he made 
 little impression on the national life. 
 
 The reign of his successor, Henry VI., was marked by Parlia- 
 ment's reversal of the wishes of the dead king by appointing the 
 Duke of Bedford instead of the Duke of Gloucester at the head of 
 the Council of Regency. This reign was also marked by another 
 insurrection on the part of the people in Kent headed by an Irish- 
 man, who called himself Mortimer, but whose real name was Jack 
 Cade. They gathered twenty thousand strong and put forth two 
 papers styled "The Complaint of the Commons of Kent," and 
 " The Requests of the Captain of the Great Assembly." 
 
 They defeated a royal army sent against them, and Jack Cade 
 himself in the armor of the dead general led his men to London. 
 There he seized, tried, and beheaded an unpopular nobleman 
 named Lord Say, but was unable to keep his army in order. It 
 gave itself up to gluttonous excesses, and attempted to pillage 
 London but was soon divided and cut in pieces, and Cade endeav- 
 oring to escape was killed. Then began the famous series of 
 quarrels between the great houses of York and Lancaster, the 
 wars of the Roses. 
 
 The king became an idiot and the queen essayed to govern the 
 country, the Duke of York sometimes being in the ascendant as a 
 minister and sometimes the Duke of Somerset. Whichever party 
 triumphed would seize the king, call a parliament, and make him 
 declare the other side traitors. On one occasion it is related that 
 the Duke of York entered the House of Lords and laid his hand 
 upon the gold cloth that covered the empty throne as if he had a 
 strong inclination to sit down there. This duke was a great man 
 and when in power tried to govern well the racked country, but 
 he fell at last by the axe of the headsman ; and yet, a few years 
 later, his son Edward, Earl of March, after making a speech to a 
 crowd of applauding Londoners, entered the House of Lords and 
 sat himself on the throne on which his father had laid a prophetic 
 hand. 
 
 Edward IV. tried at first to be a popular king. He married a
 
 504 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 London widow, one Elizabeth Woodville, and his life started 
 happily ; but thorns sprang up under his bed of roses in the shape 
 of her relations, who were clamorous for offices at the expense of 
 the people, and to supply their needs and his own was a task hard 
 and continually harder. Towards the end of his life he revived 
 the old English idea of having a war with Prance, to obtain funds 
 for which he not only got special grants from Parliament, but 
 extorted money from the principal citizens of London in the form 
 of loans, to which were given at the time the facetious title of 
 "Benevolences/' lie went over to Calais with great pomp, but 
 instantly accepted the peace proposed by the French king. 
 
 The proceedings on this occasion were very gorgeous but amus- 
 ingly distrustful. The Kings of France and England met on a 
 temporary bridge over the river Somme in a strong wooden grating 
 something like a lion's cage and embraced each other through two 
 holes in this grating, made some exquisite bows and speeches and 
 departed back to Paris and London. On his death-bed this king 
 repented of his " Benevolences " and extortions and ordered restitu- 
 tion to be made to the people lie had robbed. 
 
 The next three reigns, that of Edward V., Richard III., and 
 Henry VII. are not remarkable for any advances in the idea of 
 popular government ; but a great quickening of the popular mind 
 began to ensue in the reign of Henry VII. from the discovery of 
 the New World by Columbus, for the king appreciated the im- 
 portance of this discovery and with the merchants of London and 
 Bristol fitted out an English expedition for further discoveries 
 under the command of Sebastian Cabot. 
 
 After having had glimpses, as it were, of a possible civil and 
 religious liberty in the reigns we have been considering, it was 
 the curious destiny of the English people to behold two violent 
 abolitions of the advantages they had gained, and an apparently 
 compleie extinction of their slowly developing constitutional mon- 
 archy in an absolutism more savage than that of the Ca-sars. 
 
 The long civil wars that ceased when Henry VII. ascended the 
 throne had hastened the fall of Feudalism 1 by breaking the power 
 
 'The essential facts of the feudal system were three. 1st. The nature of territorial prop- 
 erty was entirely different from its present, nature, because no man except the chief or kin.tr 
 owned anything independently, but held his possessions as derived from an overlord, with 
 certain obligations that had to be fulfilled .under pain of forfeiture. iM. As a necessary
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 505 
 
 of the baronage. This power had consisted of the hosts of dis- 
 orderly retainers swarming about their castles ready to furnish 
 force at a moment's notice in case of revolt. The Avars had 
 thinned out these ranks, and Henry VII. found himself able to 
 enforce an old statute of Edward I. called the Statute of Liveries 
 Avhich ordered a dissolution of these military households. Henry 
 VII.. Avho Avas called the miser king, when visiting the Earl of 
 ( )xford, one of his stanchest supporters, found two long lines of 
 liveried retainers drawn up to receive him. "Thanks for your 
 good-cheer, my lord," quoth the king at parting, "but I cannot 
 have my hiAvs broken in my sight. I must send my attorney to 
 visit you." The lawyer's visit cost the Earl of Oxford ten 
 
 result of this the whole of what we call sovereignty or public power and which we feel to be 
 impersonal was then personal, being lodged in the individual lord. So that when Louis the 
 Great exclaimed ''L'ttat, c'rst intii," " The State, I'm the S~ate," lie was giving perfect expres- 
 sion to the doctrine of feudalism. 3d. The distinctive mark of feudalism was its conscious, 
 and if one may use the term, its vociferous interdependence. All the legislative, judicial, and 
 military institutions which united the possessors of fiefs or feuds among themselves, and 
 formed them into society were obligatory i:i their reciprocations. The vassal owed service 
 to his lord, the lord owed protection to his vassal, and if either failed in his duty, for- 
 feiture of land or fief ensued. 
 
 Nowadays, when what some progressive papers call the factory lord or the coal baron has 
 paid his men the agreed-upon wages, his legal obligation ceases. He is not bound to protect 
 them in any way, although they have given him far more valuable service than most vassals 
 of old gave 10 their lords. This is, indeed, the great difference between this epoch of 
 eeonouuc evolution and that one, that many duties have been raised from the narrow 
 material, or legal, sphere into t'.ie ever-widening realm of morals. 
 
 Though the one-man power, the perpetuated rule of the one strong man, or in one word, 
 royalty was the fountain of feudalism, it soon found itself in antagonism with the streams 
 of force of which it was the source. The history of feudalism is full of examples of vassals 
 aiding their immediate lords against the king. 
 
 Tlie ceremonies occurring on the granting a fief were principally homage, fealty, and 
 investiture. Homage expressed the devotion of the vassal, and the oath of fealty differed 
 little from the act of homage but was indispensable and was also taken by ecclesiastics even 
 when they did not hold any property. Investiture was the actual conveyance of the feudal 
 lands by the lord and was of two kinds. Proper investiture was the actual placing of the 
 vassal on the ground to be conveyed by the lord or his deputy, which is called in English 
 law "livery of seisin" meaning, in modern language, delivery of possession. Improper 
 investiture was the handing over of a stick or stone or piece of turf as a symbol. The vas- 
 sal's duties after investiture were so numerous and varied so with place that only a few can 
 l>e specified, such a:* the duty of bearing military service for the lord or king, and of supply- 
 ing ;i certain amount of their productions from the soil, or a certain number of their cattle, 
 etc. Sometimes a fief was given by favor for some very trifling service to be performed, such 
 a- -ending to the king a gray fox fur every year. 
 
 The length of service was often scrupulously defined. For instance, forty days was the 
 usual term that the tenant of a knight's fief was bound to be In the field at his own exj>ense. 
 The vassals of the king had vassals under them bound to their estates by subfealties, ami 
 sme of these by forfeiture had become reduced to mere slaves dependent on the v/him of the 
 master for everything. 
 
 This was the system which William the Xorman introduced into England, but for his own 
 protection against the encroachments of his rapacious Norman vassals he was forced to take 
 up into his government some of the political customs of the j>eople he had conquered.
 
 506 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 thousand pounds, rather a high price to pay for keeping so 
 many retainer's. This incident shows how the power of tin- 
 baronage had been weakened. 
 
 Henry VIII. has been epigramatized by one indignant English- 
 man as " a huge blot of blood and grease " on the history of his 
 nation. His reign is indeed the part of English history which 
 provokes the profoundest disgust, and yet this epoch, in which 
 the liberty of the subject went to its lowest ebb, and the mon- 
 archy reached its worst pitch of cruel, almost insane, absolut- 
 ism, was in reality a transition period. Some recent historians. 
 Froude for instance, have endeavored to rehabilitate this regal 
 wretch, Henry VIII., and to make out that he was a king of more 
 than ordinary talents, but the truth appears to be that he was for- 
 tunate in having about him ministers of unusual intellectual 
 powers, whose abilities he had Lie trick of absorbing, and of reflect- 
 ing to a certain extent as his own. He had one gift that often 
 dazzles the multitude, a tremendous energy, an almost tireless 
 activity in projecting his personality upon his subjects. He ne\ -i 
 allowed the popular interest to flag for one moment, but played 
 from first to last a gorgeous drama, brutal, barbaric, bizarre, hut 
 never dull. His quarrels with the Pope, his tyranny over his 
 nobles, his extraordinary marital record, and the strange apparent 
 success that attended all his wickedness, made him not a popular 
 idol but an object of keener popular concern than any preceding 
 monarch except Henry the Second, Edward the First, and Harry 
 the Fifth. 
 
 The religious agitation that sprang from the mere personal 
 whim, passion, and vanity of Henry the Eighth was productive of 
 great intellectual results, although it deluged England with blood 
 for several successive reigns, and fills the close reader of annals 
 with continual horror. The revival of learning which took place 
 in this reign may be said to have shown its most perfect fruit in 
 one man. This was Sir Thomas More, for a long time tin 
 adviser of Henry the Eighth, till the crimes of that monarch 
 estranged him. Sir Thomas More died a Catholic, and yet in his 
 delightful book, " I'topia," More embodied the feelings and aspi- 
 rations which reveal to us the general yearning that brought 
 about what is called the Reformation. From a world where

 
 508 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 fifteen hundred years of misapplied Christianity had produced a 
 frightful crop of social injustice, religious intolerance, and class 
 tvrumiv, this delicately humorous philosopher turned to his con- 
 ception of Utopia, a country in which the struggles of natural 
 virtue realized those purposes of equality and free fraternity for 
 which alone society has any excuse for existence. In this won- 
 derful book, the parent of so many modern volumes, More touches 
 with a hand of exquisite lightness and almost caressing tender- 
 ness all the questions that affect the widest human hearts of 
 to-day. The great problems of labor, of government, of con- 
 science he examines, not merely with a keenness that proves the 
 analytical power of his mind, but in the solutions which he 
 proposes he shows himself possessed of a far-reaching originalit}-. 
 He is not content, like some modern anarchists, witli seeking to 
 destroy what is clearly wrong, but anxious to build on its ruins 
 what is nearly right. In some points, such as his treatment of 
 the labor question, lie still remains far in advance of average 
 civilized opinion, though it must be admitted that the ranks of 
 those who hold his extremest doctrines are being rapidly increased 
 by accessions of the most intelligent and conscientious thinkers. 
 
 The whole system of society around Sir Thomas More seemed 
 to him, as he phrased it, "Nothing but a conspiracy of the rich 
 against the poor." Its economic legislation he called simply the 
 perfecting of such a conspiracy by processes of law. " The rich 
 are ever striving to pare away something further from the daily 
 wages of the poor by private fraud and even by public law, so that 
 the wrong already existing (for it is a wrong that those from whom 
 the state derives most benefit should receive least reward) is made 
 yet greater by means of the law of the state. The rich devise every 
 means by which they may in the first place secure to themselves ivhat 
 they have amassed by wrong, and then take to their own use and 
 profit at the lowest possible price the work and labor of the poor, 
 and so soon as the rich decide on adopting these devices in the name 
 of the public, then they become laws, the result of which is the life 
 to which the labor class is doomed, a life so wretched that even a 
 beast's seems enviable." 
 
 With this he contrasts the life in "Utopia," where the aim of 
 legislation is to establish the social, industrial, intellectual, and
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCH V. 509 
 
 religious welfare of the community as a unity, and of the labor 
 class as the true basis of an orderly commonwealth. In " Utopia " 
 goods were possessed in common, but work was compulsory on 
 all. The term of toil was shortened to the nine hours demanded 
 by modern workers with a view to affording opportunity for the 
 intellectual improvement of those Avho are forced to toil with their 
 hands. Whereas in England half the people could not read, 
 every child was taught in "Utopia." 
 
 In "Utopia," too, they had come to realize the connection 
 between public decency and the health that springs from plenty 
 of light, air, comfort, and cleanliness. The same foresight indi- 
 cated in More's treatment of labor and public health is yet more 
 apparent in his treatment of crime. He was the first to suggest 
 that prevention was better than punishment, and that the object 
 of punishment should be reformation of the individual, and not a 
 mere reprisal or revenge perpetrated by society. 
 
 " If you allow people to be badly taught, their morals corrupted 
 from childhood, and then when they are men punish them for the 
 very crimes to which they have been trained, what is this but to make 
 thieves and then to punish them ? " 
 
 Simple theft in that day Avas punished the same as murder, and 
 More argued that by making the penalty identical the law was 
 tempting the thief to secure his theft and do away with his chance 
 of detection by adding murder to robbery. In the great princi- 
 ples More laid down he anticipated all the improvements that 
 have marked our criminal system in the last hundred years, and 
 his treatment of the religious question, which had just begun to 
 flood Europe with blood, was even more wonderfully in advance 
 of his age. 
 
 The religion of "Utopia" was in strong contrast, conflict, with 
 the faith of Christendom. It rested simply on nature and reason. 
 It declared God's purpose to be the happiness of man, and that 
 any ascetic rejection of human delights, save in exceptional cases 
 for the common good, was a thanklessness to the Giver which was 
 indeed the blindest and most appalling blasphemy. Christianity, 
 it is true, More admitted to be prevalent in his " Utopia " ; but it 
 was a Christianity in which there were few priests, religion center- 
 ing rather in the family than in the congregation, and each house-
 
 510 THi: STOKY OK ( ',( >VKi:N M KXT. 
 
 liokl confessing its faults to its father or mother instead of a 
 priest. More than a century before William of Orange, Thomas 
 More proclaimed the great principle of toleration, for in u Utopia " 
 it was lawful for every man to believe as he pleased. Disbelievers 
 in (rod and immortality were excluded from public office, not, how- 
 ever, on the ground of their disbelief, but simply because their 
 opinions were felt to be degrading to mankind, and likely to 
 incapacitate those who held them from governing with nobility 
 of temper, but they were subject to no punishment, because More 
 declared that the people of his undiscovered country, Utopia, 
 were "persuaded that it is not in a man's power to believe what 
 he list." 
 
 He anticipated also the desire and dream of all religious philoso- 
 phers for essential religious unity b}' his statement that, although 
 each sect in Utopia performed its special rites in private, all 
 assembled at times in a spacious temple to join in pniycrs and 
 thanksgivings, so framed as to be satisfactory to all. But such a 
 man as Thomas More had no chance to live out his life at such n 
 period, and in 1534 he was brought to the block because he would 
 not dignify with his approval the divorce of his sovereign. 
 Henry VIII. had forced the obsequious Parliament, which in this 
 reign had become simply a tool of regal power instead of a check 
 upon it, to pass what was called an Act of Succession that made 
 legitimate the children of his marriage with Anne Boleyn. This 
 Act of Succession was twofold, requiring an oath to be taken by 
 all persons, not only recognizing Anne's children as the legal heirs 
 to the crown, but containing an acknowledgment that Henry's 
 former marriage with Catherine had been contrary to Scripture, 
 and therefore invalid from the start. The king and his chief 
 counsellor, Thomas Cromwell, knew More's belief on this point, 
 and the invitation to take this oath was merely a summons to 
 death. Thomas More, being unwilling to swear to a deliberate 
 lie, at the age of sixty- four gracefully laid his head on the block, 
 a singular contrast to Charles the First who lost his crown and 
 head a hundred odd years later chiefly because he could not tell 
 the truth. 
 
 This was the beginning of what has been aptly styled a Reign 
 of Terror in England, to which the brief period in which Robes-
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 
 
 511 
 
 pierre made the streets of Paris run red was but a slight affair 
 comparatively. From 1530 to 1540, during which time Thomas 
 Cromwell was the chief adviser of Henry the Eighth, the people 
 of England felt "as if a scorpion slept 'neath every stone." 
 While the great revolution that struck down the Church was in 
 
 O 
 
 progress the English people looked on silently. In the contest 
 over papal power, in the reform of clerical courts, in the lessening 
 of the legislative independence of the clergy, the nation as a 
 whole had sided with the king. But from the utter debasement of 
 the churchmen, the gag- 
 ging of pulpits, and the 
 suppression of monas- 
 teries, the heart of the 
 people revolted. Yet 
 such was the terror in 
 which they had been 
 bound that only here 
 and there in stray facts 
 that have been tossed up 
 to the surface do we 
 catch glimpses of the 
 intense popular discon- 
 tent and righteous wrath 
 that lay seething in se- BLOCK, AX, AND MASK OF HEADSMAN, IN DAYS 
 cret under this forced OF * IR THOMAS MOHE ' 
 
 silence, a wrath destined to break out in later years, and entirely 
 overflow the banks of custom, and sweep away the royal power. 
 
 This was a period in which men hardly dared speak to each other 
 lest their lightest phrase should be repeated to some spy, and 
 twisted into an expression of treason, yet even the refuge of com- 
 plete silence was attempted to be taken away by the most infamous 
 law that had ever blotted a statute book. Secret thought was 
 legislatively made treason, and men were forced to reveal their 
 thoughts on pain of having their silence punished as treason. 
 Had this tyranny lasted very long, it must have turned the frank, 
 nutspoken English into a nation of hypocrites. Now, though the 
 former minister, Wolsey, had strained law to the utmost, still he 
 had shrunk from assembling parliaments, because of his feeling
 
 512 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 that they were the natural bulwarks of popular liberty against 
 royal encroachment. But Cromwell, not content with rendering- 
 judges of the law mere mouth-pieces of the royal will, conceived 
 and carried out during his administration the idea of making Par- 
 liament itself but the puppet of a reg;il potentate as absolutely 
 lawless as any Oriental despot, and with bill after bill Cromwell 
 broke down every legal barrier between his desire for a subject's 
 death, and the speedy gratification of such desire. 
 
 It was a singular retribution that the crowning injustice which 
 this pre-eminently bad man sought to introduce into the practice 
 of attainder, namely, the condemnation of a man without hearing 
 his defence, was only practised on himself; for, at the moment of 
 his fall from royal favor in 1540, the council cried unanimously. 
 " He shall be judged by the bloody law he himself has made." And 
 with taunts and execrations bursting from the lords at council, the 
 Duke of Norfolk tore the star of the garter from its ribbon around 
 his neck, and in the month after he was beheaded amid a perfect 
 riot of public applause. 
 
 At Cromwell's death the success of his policy seemed complete : 
 monarchy had reached the acme of its power; the former liberties 
 slowly gained by the people appeared lost. The lords or barons 
 had been cowed into submission, and the House of Commons, 
 filled with the creatures of Cromwell, had been transformed into 
 an engine of tyranny. Royal proclamations were superseding 
 parliamentary legislation. Benevolences or forced gifts were 
 encroaching more and more on the right of parliamentary taxa- 
 tion, and the indeterminate powers of the royal council were 
 eclipsing the processes of the common law. 
 
 Then, too, the religious changes had thrown an almost sacred 
 character over the majesty of the sovereign. In making himself 
 the head of the church Henry VIII. unconsciously originated the 
 dogma of divine right which was destined to cause his successors 
 among the Stuarts so much trouble. The voice of England's 
 preachers had become the piping echo of the royal will, forms of 
 worship and statements of belief being shifted about at the mon- 
 arch's caprice like the stock-in-trade with which a juggler amuses 
 his audience. Half of the former wealth of the religious bodies of 
 the kingdom had gone to swell the royal coffers and the other
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MOXAKOHY. 
 
 513 
 
 half lay at his mercy. It must have been this unprecedented and 
 hitherto unimaginable concentration of power in the person of one 
 man which overawed the minds of the people of England, and 
 kept them for years in a state of daze or amazement wondering 
 what next, and which made a large mass of the people come to 
 regard the monarch as a being high above the laws that applied to 
 
 EXECUTION OF LADY JANE UUEV. 
 
 common men. So strong had grown this dreadful servility that Par- 
 liament rose as one man and bowed to the empty throne when 
 Henry 's name was mentioned, for a slavish devotion had replaced 
 the old loyalty to the law, and when the primate of the English 
 Church was eulogizing Cromwell, he stated, as that minister's 
 chief merit, that he loved the king no less than he loved God. 
 
 But no sooner was Cromwell dead than this fabric of king wor- 
 ship which he had built began to crumble away like an ice palace 
 struck by a summer sun. The veiy success of his measures 
 caused the ruin of his policy. He had succeeded in cowing the
 
 514 'I' "I-: STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 House of Lords and crowding the Commons with members 
 directly <>r indirectly elected In* tin- royal council; he had made 
 Parliament an accomplice in his attempt at constructing an abso- 
 lutism; by parliamentary statutes he had draped the Church 
 down to the feet of the monarch; by bills of attainder he had 
 hounded great nobles to the block; under constitutional forms he 
 had gagged freedom with new treasons, and oaths, and sen.ile 
 questions, but the continuous success of such a system, of course, 
 depended wholly on the continuous servility of Parliament to the 
 will of the crown, and whenever a weak king or a weak minister 
 should happen to be in power, a reversal of the situation would 
 naturally result. Is it not a curious reflection that Cromwell, 
 the wickedest minister of England's cruellest king, should have 
 made the way clear by the very success of his schemes for that 
 other Cromwell a hundred years after, who gave a death blow to 
 the dogma of the divine right of kings? 
 
 It Avas in this reign that stout Lord Hussey gave vent to a senti- 
 ment which, by the light of later events, reads like a prophecy: 
 "The world will never mend till we fight for it." Like many 
 another noble in this reign, Hussey paid with his head for the 
 privilege of speaking his mind. The succeeding reigns of 
 Edward VI., the ten days of Lady Jane (>rey, who paid for her 
 brief taste of royalty with her beautiful head on the block, and 
 the crimson reign of Mary, called the bloody by Protestants. 
 though she caused no more blood to flow than many Protestant 
 princes, were distinguished by no diminution of the royal prerog- 
 atives, and no gains on the part ot any class in England; nor was 
 the reign of Elizabeth, splendid as it seemed to the people by 
 comparison of its quietude, and by reason of the popular man- 
 ners and picturesque personality of their queen, marked by any 
 political gains. 
 
 Elizabeth's chief ambition was to preserve her throne, keep 
 England out of war, and her realm in good order; but she had no 
 conception of being a popular or constitutional monarch save in 
 the way of dazzling the people with pageantries, and even that 
 not to any great degree, for she was as economical as the present 
 queen. But though Elizabeth's sovereignty was almost a des- 
 potism it was productive of great good to the English people.
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 
 
 515 
 
 The feeling of nationality was intensified, tlie great success which 
 accident and the ability to take advantage of accident gave to 
 English arms against the Spanish Armada not only crippled 1 in- 
 most formidable rival, but awakened England to the idea that she 
 might become not merely a great naval power but a great colo- 
 nizing power. 
 
 Moreover, in this age, the impetus given to the minds of men 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S IUKTIIPLACE BEFOKE BESTOKATIOX. 
 
 by the revival of learning, of which we quoted Sir Thomas Mow 
 as a conspicuous example, produced an intellectual harvest some- 
 thing like the purse of Fortunatus, because to-day we are still 
 reaping it. This era is called by nattering historians the Kli/.a- 
 bethan Age. It could be more aptly, more justly, entitled tin- 
 Shakespearean or Baconian Age; for these two minds (whom 
 some scholars would have us believe wen- only one) were of such 
 extraordinary richness that they not. only adorned their own time,
 
 51<5 THK STOKY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 turning even much of its tinsel into gold, but they had, in one 
 case perhaps unconsciously, the faculty of fecundating the future, 
 and impressing themselves not merely on, hut deep into, the 
 national life as a permanent force. 
 
 Their comparative power has waned somewhat through the ex- 
 tension of the empire and the vast increase in population unaccom- 
 panied by a corresponding increase in education, and yet to-day, 
 unsatisfactory as are both on the spiritual side, the majority of men 
 are either Shakespeareans in the practical conduct of life, or, if 
 their minds have a more philosophic cast, are Baconians. Yet, 
 strange to say, Shakespeare appears to have had no reverence for the 
 future, as Bacon had none for the past. 
 
 Bacon's attitude towards theology and psychology which he 
 left entirely out of his system of human knowledge is paralleled 
 by Shakespeare's inability to see any spiritual meaning or any 
 political possibility in the great Puritan movement which was 
 well under way in his time. He saw in the Puritans mere 
 objects for theatric mirth, just as Bacon saw in all churchmen 
 pci-sons unworthy the consideration of a philosopher. Of the popu- 
 lar trend of Puritanism (and faulty as it was, Puritanism was the 
 first political system which recognized the grandeur of the people 
 a a whole) Shakespeare knew nothing. Socially, the poet reflects 
 the aristocratic view of life and his philosophy is essentially 
 H oration: "(ret as much out of life as possible and laugh while 
 you live, for you may be along time dead." And yet the Puritan 
 movement despised by these men was the most vital and grandest 
 force that had appeared in the nation's development ; for, however 
 much we may abhor its modern displays of narrowness, it brought 
 into England a new conception of social equality. The common 
 brotherhood in Christ which it taught conspired to confound that 
 overwhelming sense of personal difference which feudalism had 
 established. It is true that even now there are very many 
 Englishmen of the middle and lower classes who cringe to anyone 
 that comes from the ancient gentry, whether he bears a title or 
 not, and who also cringe to any rich tradesman who has bought 
 a title either directly or by political service, as in the recent 
 case of sundry manufacturers of beer and porter. 
 
 But the leaven of Puritanism, though it works slowly, is

 
 518 THE STORY OF (iOVEUN.MKNT. 
 
 making over the entire lump, is working 1 surely, and the admira- 
 tion of royalty and of nobility j><>>- sr is on the wane never again to 
 wax. The intensity of this Puritan feeling when it first arose in 
 England can hardly be described, but must be left largely to the 
 imagination. It was like a new revelation from Him who 
 preached the Sermon on the Mount. It was Christianity speak- 
 ing again to all kinds and classes with the same freshness and 
 force with which this great religion spoke, when inspiring the 
 hearts of its earliest followers to (ling themselves into the arena 
 against the colossal power of the Roman Empire. Under the 
 teaching of Puritanism the meanest peasant felt himself ennobled, 
 and the proudest noble recognized that there might be between 
 himself and his lowest vassal such a thing as spiritual equal it}*. 
 Macaulay's flippant sneer to the effect that the Puritan objected 
 to the popular sport of bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to 
 the bear but because it gave pleasure to the spectators, is by no 
 means a just one. That Puritanism at times ran into excesses of 
 asceticism, is not to be denied, but a great popular movement, like 
 a great individual life, should be judged by its best, not by its 
 worst or by the excesses of its best. 
 
 A fact worthy of notice under the Tudors was the comparative 
 absence of rebellions. Only two great risings occurred against 
 the reform policy, the Pilgrimage of Grace, as it was called, 
 and the rebellion of the Nevilles and Percies in 1569. Each of 
 these was of the type usual under the Plantagenets, where the 
 great nobles raised the whole country-side against the policy of 
 the crown. The other insurrections during the Tudor dynasty, 
 such as those of Ket and Wyatt, were local and for special causes, 
 but the ease with which these risings were suppressed indicates 
 the general popularity of the government, or the acquiescence of 
 the majority of the people in a strong rule. 
 
 The reason of this is to be found, perhaps, partly in the exten- 
 sion of the commercial spirit. The rise of commercialism or the 
 increase of trade in a nation produces a class anxious to have a 
 steady government rather than one subject to political fluctuations, 
 and even if such a government does trench on the liberty of the 
 individual a general consent to the loss of some individuality for 
 the sake of security is one of the common compromises of a com-
 
 520 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 mercial civilization. Then, too, the necessity of self-preservation 
 as a nation had contributed to the maintenance of internal quiet, 
 for England had been under the shadow of great dangers from 
 European complications through the personal conduct of Henry 
 the Eighth, and this shadow hung over the land through the reign 
 of Elizabeth till the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587, 
 and the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. One of the 
 incidents most characteristic of the English temper at this time 
 is that shown in the illustration. When the Spanish Armada 
 hove in sight, Sir Francis Drake, Frobisher, Lord Howard and 
 other naval commanders were playing a game of nine-pins. The 
 picture tells the story. After the disastrous defeat of the 
 Spaniards, England, no longer breathlessly anxious for her own 
 national existence, was able to turn her attention from outsi (It- 
 security to the acquisition of internal or constitutional freedom, 
 and then it became evident that the calm which had prevailed 
 under the Tudors was merely the incubation of a tempest. 
 
 This effort of the people lasted exactly one hundred years, and 
 during that time the old liberties won under the Plantagenets were 
 regained with such certainty that they have never since then been 
 dangerously infringed. The change from the Tudors to the Stuarts 
 to be thoroughly understood necessitates a consideration of king- 
 si i i p in Europe. The conception of kingship was modified markedly 
 by the events of the sixteenth century ; the idea of a feudal sovereign 
 was replaced by that of a personal monarch and its opposite, a 
 constitutional king. As the clash of these ideas was the cause of 
 the struggle between the Stuarts and their parliaments, Avhich 
 culminated in the bringing of Charles to the block, and the estab- 
 lishment of a republic, perhaps it is well to examine rather closely 
 into the meaning of these modifications. In mediaeval times, 
 society was founded on the feudal system which we have outlined 
 in a previous note. It was a vast pyramid with serfdom at the foot, 
 and at the head an emperor, for Europe still accounted itself a 
 Iloman Empire of which the Emperor of Germany and the Pope 
 represented the chief temporal and spiritual authorities. Under 
 the Emperor were ranged the kings and their subjects; under 
 the Pope the archbishops and their clergv. 
 
 But this ideal of feudalism was not altogether realized. Eng-
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 
 
 521 
 
 land always claimed independence of the Holy Roman Empire, 
 and when the Emperor Sigismund visited Henry V. it was 
 expressly stipulated that he came as a visitor and not as one 
 claiming any authority over the island, or any allegiance from 
 the king of England. As the mistiness of the Middle Ages 
 melted away before the rising sun of reviving learning, the old 
 ideal began to 
 crumble rap id- 
 ly, the Emperors 
 losing their hold 
 on Italy and 
 Germany, a n d 
 becoming mere 
 German princes. 
 In like manner 
 the Reformation 
 broke up the ec- 
 clesiastical en- 
 tirety, and of 
 course when 
 England, Scot- 
 land, Holland, 
 and much of 
 Germany threw 
 over the papacy, 
 in this fresh 
 condition a 
 fresh theory of 
 kingship had to 
 
 be formed. From the standpoint of the king, therefore, the 
 theory was advanced that sovereigns derived their authority 
 directly from God himself without any intermediation of Km- 
 peror or Pope. This dogma of divine right made the sovereign 
 owner of all his dominions in a sense unknown to feudal time*. 
 and changed his relation to the law, for in old times a king had 
 been just as much bound by the customs of the realm as any 
 of his subjects. On the other hand an absolutely opposite view 
 of the king's position grew out of the Reformation, the central 
 
 DEATH OF 0,1-EKN KL1/A15KTH.
 
 522 THK STOKY OF < ;< >VKKXM KXT. 
 
 ideas of which agitation were the right of private judgment, and 
 the doctrine of justification by faith. These theories, leaving n<> 
 logical place for priestly or royal authority, carried with them 
 the claim that all men were equal before God, and, if before 
 God, much more so before men. 
 
 Such views were, of course, not formulated at the accession of 
 James I., whom Elizabeth on her death-bed vaguely named as her 
 successor, but they were in the air, and even if James had been a 
 
 'strong man he would have had to encounter them not once but 
 again and again. He was not a strong man, though perhaps the 
 most learned king in Europe, and he showed his weakness and 
 lack of judgment by pushing pretensions which even the Tudors 
 would not have dared to do, for no Tudor would have claimed to 
 be above the law. If laws stood in their way they had no scruple 
 about violating or circumventing them, but they never thought of 
 claiming to do so as a right. James did, and at the same time 
 the popular impression which he made when he arrived in his 
 new kingdom was not favorable, for he was followed by a train of 
 needy Scots who looked upon England as a place to be pillaged 
 politely. At Newark, the king caused a pickpocket -to be hung 
 on the spot without trial, and when some Puritan clergy pre- 
 sented a petition for certain alterations in the prayer-book, ten 
 of their leaders were thrown into prison by his majesty's orders. 
 Hence by the time he had reached London, England was well 
 assured that, to secure English liberty from further undermining, 
 and to prevent the manipulation of her politics by alien adven- 
 turers, a constant vigilance must be exerted. 
 
 The feeling in regard to the deluge of Scotchmen, which over- 
 whelmed England when the Stuarts came in, has been vented by 
 
 some celebrated Englishmen with a certain grim humor that is 
 delightful in itself, though any maintenance of national or pro- 
 vincial prejudice is utterly and intrinsically absurd. The first 
 to crack any historic joke on this point seems to have been Guy 
 Fawkes, who was the chief conspirator in an attempt to blow up 
 the Houses of Parliament, a plot partly political and partly re- 
 ligious. When Guy Fawkes, carefully guarded, just after his 
 arrest, was taken before the king who asked him some questions, 
 a little Scotch lord in attendance inquired why the conspirators
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 523 
 
 had put so very much gunpowder under Parliament, thirty->i\ 
 barrels seeming to his thrifty Scotch mind rather an extravagant 
 amount for the task. To this silly question, Fawkes replied with 
 extreme gravity, that he thought that amount necessary, as it was 
 his design not merely to blow up Parliament but to blow all the 
 Scotchmen back to Scotland. This, and in the next century Dr. 
 Johnson's definition in his dictionary of oats as a grain that in 
 England was food for horses and in Scotland food for men, and 
 in the next century Macaulay's lament over the lost glories of 
 Greece, "that her temples had been given up to the successive 
 depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen," show how 
 intense and deepseated a national prejudiee may sometimes grow. 
 
 At this time Parliament had the sole right of making laws, but 
 this right had been continually encroached on by the use of proc- 
 lamations from the king and his council, and Parliament had no 
 control over the appointment of the king's ministers from the 
 chancellor or the treasurer to the sheriffs and magistrates. The 
 judicial part of the kingdom was divided into two classes ; courts 
 of Star Chamber and High Commission and the ordinary courts of 
 the land. Over the first the nation had no control, the judges 
 being appointed by the king and acting without juries ; nor in the 
 ordinary jury courts were the rights of the subject safe, for the 
 king appointed and dismissed the judges and, as he indirectly 
 appointed the sheriffs, and the sheriff chose the jury, there was 
 ^H re to be a strong bias in the king's favor. Besides this, a man 
 accused of a criminal offence was not furnished with a copy of the 
 indictment or a list of the witnesses against him till the day of 
 trial ; nor was he permitted to examine witnesses upon oath, from 
 which it will be seen that the law courts originally intended for 
 the protection of the subject had become merely instruments for 
 his oppression. 
 
 The only hope, then, lay in Parliament, but there was now no 
 law compelling the king to summon one. Nor, so long as lie 
 could pay his way without additional taxes, or get money without 
 a parliamentary grant, was there any likelihood that he would sum- 
 mon an assembly which, when once convened, might make laws to 
 impede or entangle his future movements. It is therefore due in 
 .some degree to the bad economy of the Stuarts that they were
 
 524 THE STORY OF GOVKKN.MKNT. 
 
 brought face to face with the national assembly which finally 
 wiped them out. 
 
 During the reign of James I. Parliament was occupied only 
 with the assertion or reassertion of its former rights ; but from 1(514 
 to 1621 no Parliament met, and James had full chance to develop 
 his dogma of divine right or of governing the country as an abso- 
 lute sovereign. Now James I. had considerable ability of tbe 
 smooth intriguing kind, and only skirmishes occurred between 
 him and Parliament, preparations as it were, or trials of strength, 
 for the pitched battle of the reign of Charles. 
 
 Charles lacked his father's smoothness, and took his father's 
 theory of divine right still more seriously. Between 1625 and 
 1629 he had three parliaments. Between 1629 and 1640 he had 
 none at all. During that period he ruled with help of a few 
 advisers and made no endeavor to take into his confidence the 
 body of the nation. His queen, Henrietta Maria, was vain and 
 extravagant, and the example of economy in court expenses set 
 by Elizabeth became merely a tradition, for the cost of the royal 
 household rose to about ten times the Elizabethan amount, and 
 thus it became impossible for the king to live upon his ordinary 
 income. Therefore he began collecting taxes through the ser- 
 vility of judges in all sorts of illegal ways, and the people began 
 to resent it, at first individually, soon collectively. In 1628, 
 Robert Chambers, a London merchant who refused to pay the 
 unlawful taxes on trade, when summoned before the Court of 
 Exchequer, said there was no country in Europe where mer- 
 chants received so little encouragement, and that it was as bad as 
 living under Turkish tyranny, for which freedom of speech he was 
 tried before the Court of Star Chamber for "trying to make 
 people believe that Charles' happy government was a Turkish 
 tyranny." He was fined two thousand pounds and sent to tin- 
 tower where, refusing either to pay or to apologize, he was kept 
 until released by the Long Parliament. 
 
 Monopolies had long been made illegal, but Charles' attorney- 
 general, Noy, affirmed that though the law forbade the granting 
 of a monopoly to one person, it did not forbid the granting of the 
 same to two, and thus the sole right of selling various articles- 
 was granted by Charles to companies of individuals who paid a
 
 CHART.KS I.
 
 526 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 large sum on the spot, and a royalty on tlie amount. We have 
 here the germ of our trusts and syndicates, equally illegal in the 
 face of original law. These monopolies were granted for soap, 
 starch, gunpowder* and so many other things that it looked as if 
 in time every article in common use would be absorbed by some 
 company, and the general traders and merchants! became thoroughly 
 dismayed at the spread of a system so delightful to a few, so dis- 
 astrous to the many. 
 
 Not satisfied with cutting the ground from under the feet of 
 the merchants, Charles next proceeded to stamp on the toes of the 
 nobility by a new scheme to gain money. At the Conquest the 
 old-folk-land or common land of the people had been annexed by 
 the king under the name of the king's forest. This had been a 
 large source of revenue to the Plantagenet kings, but had dwindled 
 away partly in gifts to courtiers, and partly in encroachments bv 
 neighboring barons at times when the croAvn had been unable t<> 
 enforce its rights. In this way large tracts of forest land had 
 been lost; Rockingham forest, for instance, which had once been 
 sixty miles across now being reduced to six. 
 
 Suddenly Charles determined to reassert these rights which for 
 centuries had lain in abeyance, and he sent Lord Holland through- 
 out the realm to reclaim all the land within the old boundaries to 
 which its present holders could show no exact title, and to llnd in 
 addition those who were found to have thus trespassed on the 
 original royal domain. In Essex alone three hundred thousand 
 pounds was thus raised, and the Earl of Essex was nearly ruined. 
 Such distress caused to the nobility generally is the reason why 
 so many noble houses in the civil war that ensued were found on 
 the Republican side. 
 
 The next to suffer were the country gentry. By an old law 
 owners of land worth twenty pounds a year, that is, about two 
 hundred pounds at the present time, were to be knighted. This 
 practice had decayed, and Charles took advantage of the fnct to 
 send an inquisition into the country, and fine those gentry who 
 had not complied with the obsolete law. A statute of Queen 
 Elizabeth had ordered every cottage to have four acres of land 
 attached to it, and numerous proclamations had been made against 
 the building of more houses in London, but none of these had
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 527 
 
 been enforced till Charles sent another commission for twentv 
 miles around London to look into the matter. The poor, accord- 
 ing to the phrase of the time, were " mightily vexed," and one 
 builder was fined a thousand pounds and ordered to pull down 
 forty new houses or pay a thousand pounds more. Inn-keepers 
 were taxed on wine, and when they refused, forced into compliance 
 by a prohibition to cook any meat. The result was that in one 
 way or another beer, wine, tobacco, soap, etc., were all taxed, 
 and Charles raised his revenue from five hundred thousand pounds 
 to eight hundred thousand. 
 
 Still this was not enough for Charles, though the people were 
 beginning to consider Scotch kings a costly luxury. The sums 
 squandered on court festivities had left little for the ordinary 
 expenses of government. Salaries had fallen into arrears, and 
 the navy, England's protection against foreign invasion and 
 against pirates, had been totally neglected. To remedy this, 
 Charles decided to increase the navy and his own income at 
 the same time. English kings had been in the habit of collecting- 
 money from seaboard counties and towns in time of war to furnish 
 themselves with a navy, and Charles determined to extend this 
 tax to inland counties. This ship money, as it was called, 
 created an immensity of indignation because it was clearly seen 
 that under guise of providing a navy Charles was really attempt- 
 ing to establish a precedent for making himself independent of 
 Parliament. 
 
 The trial of Hampden, which occurred in 1637, for refusing to 
 pay the ship tax was the first declaration of independence on tin- 
 part of an English gentleman, and therefore attracted far more 
 attention than the protests or refusals of members of the mercan- 
 tile class. Hampden's resistance thrilled through England just at 
 the moment when men were being roused by the news that the 
 patience of Scotland had been at last exhausted, and that the 
 Scottish people and clergy did not intend to submit any longer to 
 clerical oppression, backed up by legal tyranny. 
 
 The king had ordered the clergy of Edinburgh to introduce the 
 prayer-book into their churches, but no sooner was it opened at 
 the church of St. Giles, July 23, 1630, than a murmur tu 
 among the congregation and swelled into such a formidable riot
 
 528 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 that the church had to be cleared by the officers of the law. The 
 judges, however, were so frightened by the rising wrath of the 
 people that they rendered a decision that the royal writ com- 
 manded only the purchase, and not the use of the prayer-book. 
 
 The trial of Hampden, as far as he was concerned personally, 
 was a farce, for the judges, being mere creatures of the king, with 
 two exceptions, decided that although Hampden' s lawyers had 
 shown by an unbroken series of evidence that taxation by the king 
 without consent of Parliament was illegal, nevertheless the king 
 was above all law. Out of the twelve judges two voted for 
 Hampden, one decided against the king on technical grounds, the 
 other nine decided for the king. Four years after this Charles, 
 not having money enough to carry on the war against Presby- 
 terianism in Scotland, by the advice of his chief counsellor, the 
 Earl of Straff ord, called a Parliament which, on account of its 
 brief duration, has been styled the Short Parliament. 
 
 Every member of the Commons knew that the battle for reli- 
 gious liberty in Scotland was a battle also for the political liberty 
 of every individual Englishman, and instead of voting money to 
 the king to prosecute his Scottish campaign, this Parliament 
 declared that no subsidy should be granted till security had been 
 given for religion, property, and parliamentary liberty. An offer 
 to give up the ship money tax failed to lure Parliament away 
 from this firm stand, and after three weeks' sitting the king exer- 
 cised his prerogative by dissolving it, and Strafford, his minister, 
 maintained that the refusal of Parliament to supply the king's 
 wants freed the king from all rule of government, and entitled 
 him to supply himself at his royal pleasure. Meantime so suc- 
 cessful were the Scots that Charles was forced to summon a great 
 council of the peers at York to help him. These nobles generally 
 repudiated his projects and again he was driven to summon a 
 Parliament which was called the Long Parliament. 
 
 The great light of this time now began to shine in the person 
 of John Pym, the finest as he was the first of parliamentary 
 leaders. Of the five hundred members he was the one who clearly 
 foresaw the certainty that Parliament and the crown had met for 
 a death struggle. He was the first English statesman who 
 discerned and tried to apply what may be called the doctrine of
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 5iO 
 
 constitutional proportion. Pym saw that, as an element of 
 national life, Parliament must outrank the crown, or else it was 
 of no consequence at all. He saw, too, that of Parliament tin- 
 
 
 THE TKIAL OK HA.MIMH.N . 
 
 essential part was the House of Commons. On these two points 
 he based his policy. When Charles refused to act with Parlia- 
 ment Pym treated such conduct as a temporary abdication which
 
 530 THE STORY OF (iOVKKNMENT. 
 
 \rsted the entire executive in the two Houses until new arrange- 
 ments were made. When the lords obstructed public business, 
 In- served warning upon them that such tactics would only force 
 the Commons "to save the kingdom alone." 
 
 Revolutionary principles these, but they have been recognized 
 as bases of the English constitution since the day when Pym 
 declared them. The first principle was established deep below 
 any future uprooting or shaking by the Convention and Parlia- 
 ment which followed on the departure of James II., in 1688. 
 The second principle was recognized and ratified by the acknowl- 
 edgment on all sides since the Reform Bill of 1832, that the 
 government of England is really in the hands of the House of 
 Commons, and can only be carried on by ministers who represent 
 the majority of that house. As Strafford, the chief minister of 
 Charles, represents royal tyranny and England at its lowest point 
 of national degradation, so John Pym stands out on the canvas 
 of history as the embodiment of law, a face looking always 
 towards the future. 
 
 This Long Parliament which Pym managed undid one by one 
 the lawless acts of Charles' government. Ship money was 
 declared illegal; the judgment in Hampden's case was annulled; 
 one of the judges committed to prison ; the statute declaring the 
 ancient right of the subject, that no subsidy, custom, impost, or 
 any charge whatsoever ought or may be laid or imposed upon any 
 merchandise exported or imported by subjects, denizens, or aliens, 
 irifhout common consent of Parliament end^d forever all preten- 
 sions of the crown to any right of arbitrary taxation; and a 
 triennial bill called for an assembly of the House every three 
 years, and bound the returning officers to proceed to election 
 even if the royal writ failed to summon them. 
 
 Not satisfied with this the Commons proceeded to impeach the 
 king's minister, Strafford, for high treason. Charles, always 
 plotting, apparently abandoned Strafford to his fate, and when it 
 was discovered that the king was listening to counsellors who 
 proposed that the army should march on London, seize the Tower, 
 free Strafford and do away with Parliament, Straff ord's doom 
 was sealed. The Londoners were roused to frenzy and as the 
 peers gathered at Westminster, crowds saluted them with hoarse
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 531 
 
 cries for "Justice." Yielding to this cry the House of Lords 
 passed the bill of attainder found against Straff ord by the Com- 
 mons to which two days later Charles gave his signature, thus 
 -a.-rificing perhaps one of the most faithful servants a bad king 
 ever possessed, and over this crowning act of royal meanness the 
 London streets blazed with bonfires, paid bells rang out from eveiy 
 steeple. 
 
 The courage of the two Houses of Parliament had now risen, 
 and it became evident to all that civil war was inevitable. 
 Charles dispatched one of his adherents, the Earl of Newcastle, 
 to muster an army in the north, raid both sides prepared for the 
 coming struggle. The queen sailed for the continent to pawn the 
 crown jewels and buy munitions of war. The cavaliers, as 
 the king's party were called, gathered round him and to the last 
 proposals of Parliament, demanding the power of appointing and 
 dismissing the royal ministers, of naming guardians for the royal 
 children, and of virtually controlling military, civil, and reli- 
 gious affairs, Charles retorted: "If I granted your demands, I 
 should be no more than the mere phantom of a king." 
 
 Then began the grandest era of English history with the battle 
 of Edge Hill, October 23, 1G42. This was a drawn battle, but 
 the moral advantage rested with the king, for it showed him to 
 be stronger than had been generally supposed, and many, there- 
 fore, nocked to his standard. It is almost impossible to state 
 briefly the rapid succession of striking events which mark this 
 period. The battles of Edge Hill, and Chalgrove Field where 
 Hampden fell, were not decisive, nor did the success of the par- 
 liamentary party become assured till the Commons made a covenant 
 with Scotland to bring the churches of God in the three king- 
 doms to the nearest uniformity in religion in form of church gov- 
 ernment, and incidentally, as they expressed it, "to extirpate 
 popery, prelacy, superstition, schism, and profaneness, and to 
 preserve the rights and privileges of Parliament, and to unite the 
 two kingdoms of Scotland and England in a firm peace and union 
 to all posterity." 
 
 In the next great batttt, that of Marston Moor, July 2, 1644, 
 there came into prominence for the first time a leader whose very 
 name even for a hundred years after his death sounded a menace
 
 532 THE STORY OF (JOVKKN.M liNT. 
 
 in the ears of kings, for it is a matter of record that in the last 
 century when an English gentleman who had married a descend- 
 ant of Oliver Cromwell petitioned that his name might, he 
 changed hy act of Parliament to that of his wife's family. King 
 George opposed the request. 
 
 But Oliver Cromwell, whose flank charge turned the tide of 
 battle at Marston Moor, is a man whose surpassing greatness can- 
 not be summarized in a brief sketch like this. He was the giant of 
 an age rich in Titans. During the civil war some of the parlia- 
 mentary leaders shrank from obtaining a complete victory over tlio 
 king; that is, after defeating his forces they would permit him to 
 retreat in good order instead of attempting to capture him and 
 summarily put an end to the war. The old superstition of loyalty 
 clogged their enterprise. They did not desire to crush him, but 
 to force him back to the position of a constitutional, instead of an 
 absolute, monarch, and they shrank from the taint of treason a 
 word which exercised still a tremendous influence over the Eng- 
 lish mind. 
 
 "If the king be beaten," argued Lord Manchester at Xewlmry, 
 "he will still be king; if he beat us, he will hang us all for 
 traitors." 
 
 "If I met the king in battle," retorted Cromwell, "I would lire 
 my pistol at him just the same as at another." 
 
 Furthermore, he declared that the parliamentary leaders were 
 "afraid to conquer," and that unless the whole force were new- 
 modeled, and more strictly disciplined, no settled success could 
 be expected. He saw that it was necessary for success to oppose 
 enthusiasm with enthusiasm. 
 
 "A set of poor tapsters and town apprentices," he said, "would 
 never fight against men of honor," or such as followed the banner 
 of Charles from a principle of devotion as intensely real as it was 
 immensely mistaken. Cromwell had early discerned that attach- 
 ment to a religious cause was the one weapon which could meet 
 and overthrow the chivalry of the cavalier. So he had gathered 
 about him as a nucleus a regiment of a thousand men, a "lovely 
 company " he called them. No blasphemy, drinking, disorder, or 
 impiety were allowed in these ranks. "Not a man swears but he 
 pays his twelve-pence." Nor was his choice of religious men his
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 533 
 
 only innovation on the military customs of the time. Social 
 tradition had limited command of regiments to men of birth, but 
 Cromwell said : " I had rather have a plain, russet-coated captain 
 that knows what lie fights for and loves what he knows than what 
 you call a gentleman and is nothing else, though I honor a gen- 
 tleman that is so indeed." 
 
 The civil war came to an end at the battle of Xaseby, June 14, 
 1645. Charles, indeed, went wandering helplessly along the bor- 
 ders of Wales in search of fresh forces, but the spring of 1646 
 saw the few troops that still clung to the king surrounded and 
 captured at Stow. " You have done your work now," said their 
 leader, Sir Jacob Astley, to his conquerors, "and may go to play, 
 unless you fall out among yourselves." 
 
 With the end of the civil war came a time of extreme confu- 
 sion but of greater interest than even the war itself iu itj bearing 
 on English history. Modern England, as apolitical entity, began 
 with the triumph of Cromwell at Xaseby. When Astley gave- up 
 liis sword a little later, the "work" of the generations that had 
 striven for public liberty in his own emphatic phrase was "done." 
 However the later Stuarts might struggle to revive their absolute 
 claims, England could safely "go to play." But a new work had 
 ( iminenced ; the constitutional and ecclesiastical problems that still 
 beset English politics in the shape of home rule and the national 
 church came to the front as subjects of debate in the years 
 between the close of the civil war and the deatli of Charles. 
 The great parties that have ever since divided the social, political, 
 and religious life of England, either as Independents and Presby- 
 terians, Whigs and Tories, Conservatives and Liberals, sprang 
 into organization from the contest between the army which the 
 civil war had created as an independent force and the Parliament 
 which had created the civil war. 
 
 Then began for the first time a conscious struggle, far from 
 ended yet, between political tradition and political pro^rr-. 
 between the principle of religious conformity and that of religions 
 freedom. From 1646 to 1640 England was a cauldron of con- 
 spiracy on the part of the defeated king, who had given himself 
 up to the army in Scotland in 1646, and with characteristic 
 kingly policy tried to play off the Scotch covenanters
 
 534 THE STORY' OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 their English allies, but the Scottish army, accepting four hun- 
 dred thousand pounds in discharge of its claims, surrendered 
 Charles to a committee of Parliament in January, 1047. Charles 
 spent the rest of his time on earth in intriguing to cause trouble 
 between the Parliament and the army. 
 
 There was still a curious reverence felt for him even by his 
 conquerors, and when the army demanded that "the capital and 
 grand author of our troubles, by whose commissions, commands 
 and procurements all our Avars and troubles have been, may be 
 specially brought to justice for the treason, blood, and mischief 
 he is guilty of," this demand drove the Houses to a sort of per- 
 plexed despair. They had been negotiating with the king for 
 certain concessions as a basis of return to something like the old 
 order, and their reply to this demand from the army was to accept 
 the king's so-called concessions. This act was construed by the 
 military party as a defiance, and Charles was seized and carried 
 off to Hurst Castle, the bulk of the army moving on London. 
 
 " We shall know now, " said Vane, as the troops surrounded the 
 Houses of Parliament, "who is on the side of the king, and who 
 on the side of the people." But fear of the army was weaker 
 among the members than the agonized loyalty that strove to save 
 the monarchy and the church. A large majority of both Houses 
 voted to have Charles back again on his own terms. 
 
 The next morning Colonel Pride appeared in behalf of the 
 Army's Council of Officers at the door of the House of Commons 
 with a list of forty members of the majority, and as each member 
 appeared he was arrested and put in confinement. "By what 
 right do you this? " asked one of the members. "By the right 
 of the sword," said Hugh Peters. The House still held out, but 
 the next morning forty more members were excluded and the rest 
 yielded. Then the two great powers which for five years had 
 waged this bitter conflict, the Parliament and the monarchy, 
 melted away; the remnant who remained to cooperate with, or 
 cany out the will of the a.rmy, was no longer a representative 
 body. In the coarse imagery of popular speech, they were but the 
 "rump" of a parliament, and by this name have passed into his- 
 tory. 
 
 The House of Lords at this time had practically vanished
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 535 
 
 and the next act of this revised House of Commons was a resolu- 
 tion for the trial of Charles, and a nomination of a court of a 
 hundred and fifty commissioners to conduct it, with John Brad- 
 shaw, a lawyer of eminence, at their head. The rejection of this 
 ordinance by the few peers who still remained brought out this 
 resolution from the lower House: "That the people are, under 
 (iod, the original of all just power; that the Commons of Eng- 
 land in Parliament assembled, being chosen by and representing 
 the people, have the supreme power in this nation, and that what- 
 soever is enacted and declared for law by the Commons in Parlia- 
 ment assembled hath the force of a law, and all the people of this 
 nation are concluded thereby, although the consent and concur- 
 rence of the king or House of Peers be not had thereunto." 
 
 Charles appeared before Bradshaw's court denying its com- 
 petence and refusing to plead. Thirty-two witnesses were 
 examined to satisfy the consciences of his judges, and on the fifth 
 day he was condemned to death as a "tyrant, traitor, murderer, 
 and enemy of his country." The dignity which he had failed to 
 show in his wrangling with Bradshaw and the judges returned to 
 him as death drew near. As Macaulay sap, : "lie went to the 
 block with a placid courage that has half redeemed his fame." 
 Two masked executioners waited on him as he mounted the scaf- 
 fold which had been built outside one of the windows of the 
 Banquetting House at Whitehall. Streets and roofs were 
 thronged with spectators, and a strong guard of soldiers stood 
 below. The king's head fell at the first blow, and as the execu- 
 tioner lifted it by its long locks to the sight of all, groans of pity 
 and horror mixed with the shouts of triumph from the populace 
 representing the nation he had misruled. 
 
 The news of Charles' death thrilled royal Europe with horror. 
 The Czar of Russia drove the English envoy from his court, 
 France withdrew her ambassador from England on the proclama- 
 tion of the Republic. The Protestant powers of the continent 
 were more anxious than any to disavow all connection with a 
 people who had killed their king. Holland took the lead in acts 
 of open hostility to the English Commonwealth, paying a solemn 
 ofncial visit to the Prince of Wales who took the title of Charles 
 IT., and refusing an audience to the English envoys. In Scotland
 
 536 TIU-: STOKV OK (JOVKKNMKNT. 
 
 the Duke >!' Argyle proclaimed Charles JI. kino-, and invited liim 
 1'roin Holland to ascend tlie throne. 
 
 Hesitation and delay marked the course of the Commons in 
 entering on their new task o!' reconstructing the government. 
 Six weeks passed before the monarchy was formally abolished, 
 and tire government of the nation provided for by the creation of 
 a council of state consisting of forty-one members selected from 
 the Commons who were entrusted with full executive power at 
 home or abroad. Two months more elapsed before the passing of 
 the memorable act of May 19, 1049, which declared "that the 
 people of England and of all the dominions and territories there- 
 unto belonging are, and shall be, and are hereby constituted, made, 
 established, and confirmed to be a commonwealth and free state, 
 and shall henceforward be governed as a commonwealth and free 
 state by the supreme authority of this nation, the representatives 
 of the people in Parliament, and by such as they shall appoint 
 and constitute officers and ministers for the good of the people, 
 and that without any king or House of Lord-i.'' 
 
 Trouble in Ireland, trouble' in Scotland, trouble with Holland 
 stared them in the face; but with Cromwell for their leader all 
 difficulties were transmuted into triumphs. Charles the Second 
 was in Scotland at this time, but to secure the support of the 
 Scotch he had been put to the greatest humiliations. lie had sub- 
 scribed to the Presbyterian covenant, he had listened to sermons 
 and scoldings from the ministers, he had been called on to sign 
 a declaration that, while it promised better behavior on his part. 
 acknowledged the tyranny of his father and the idolatrousness of 
 his mother, who was a Catholic. 
 
 Shameless as he was, the young king momentarily recoiled. 
 "I could never look my mother i:i the face again after signing 
 such a paper," he said; but he signed. He was a king, however. 
 only iir name, and after the battle of Worcester, September 3, 
 1651, in which Cromwell':* loss was little, and the Scots lost six- 
 thousand men, with all their baggage; a;:d artillery, Charles the 
 Second fled the field, and after months of wandering escaped to 
 France. 
 
 The conduct of Cromwell after these victories, in dissolving 
 the Parliament and taking for a while supreme command of the
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 537 
 
 nation. Avas a necessity of the times. lie looked on the legal 
 defects of his title to the office of protector as more than supplied by 
 the consent of the nation. "I called not myself to this place," he 
 urged; "(iod and the people of these kingdoms have borne testi- 
 mony to it." His rule had been acquiesced in by London, by the 
 army, by the solemn decision of the judges, by addresses from 
 every shire, by the appearance of members of the new Parliament 
 of 1'>">4 in answer to his writ of summons. "Why may I not 
 balance this providence," he asked, "with any hereditary inter- 
 est?" lie discerned in this national approval a call from God; 
 a divine right of a higher order than that of the kings who had 
 'one before. 
 
 O 
 
 But Avith the dissolution of this Parliament of 1654 ended all 
 show of constitutional rule. Cromwell's protectorate became a 
 simple tyranny. Cromwell, indeed, professed to be restrained by 
 an ordinance drawn up by one of the early Councils of State, 
 called tlu- Instrument of Government; but the one restraint on his 
 power Avhich this instrument provided, namely the inability to 
 levy taxes saA'e bv consent of Parliament, he set aside on the plea 
 of necessity. 
 
 "The people,'' said he, in words that Charles the First's great 
 minister Strafford might have used, "will prefer their real security 
 to mere forms." Fi'om this moment, White lock tells us, "many 
 sober and noble lovers of tliL-ir country, in despair of public 
 libertv. did begin to incline to the restoration of the Stuarts." If 
 tyranny could be pardoned, the Avisdom Avith which Cromwell 
 used the power he hid usurped, the grandeur of his rule, and the 
 vast extent reaching even to the present of the benefits Avhich 
 his management of her foreign affiirs gave to England, would 
 Aviii pardon for Cromwell. "We always reckon those eight years 
 of the usurpation," said the royalist Burnet afterwards, "a time 
 of great peace and prosperity." 
 
 It was not vulgar flattery Avhich influenced the Parliament of 
 his creation to offer Cromwell the title of king Avhich he refused, 
 as Caesar did on a similar occasion, for the experience of the 
 nation had taught these men to find a certain value in the tra- 
 ditional forms under which their liberties had developed. They 
 really wished Cromwell to become their king, for a king \\as
 
 538 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 limited to a certain degree by constitutional precedents. A pro- 
 tectorate, on the other hand, was apolitical novelty that afforded 
 no means of limiting its power. 
 
 But Cromwell knew that the army he had commanded would 
 not relish the title of king, and he was right, for a petition came 
 from the officers to Parliament demanding a withdrawal of their 
 proposal "in the name of the old cause for which they had bled," 
 and Cromwell at once headed off a debate which mi^ht have 
 
 D 
 
 led to a breach between the army and the Commons by refusing 
 the crown May 8, 1657. He was then formally inaugurated as 
 Protector by the Parliament, the speaker investing him with a 
 mantle of state, placing the sceptre in his hand and girding the 
 sword of justice to his side. By this act of Parliament Cromwell 
 was allowed to name his own successor, but in all after cases tin- 
 office was to be elective. The forms of the older constitution 
 were carefully restored, Parliament re-established its two houses, 
 the seventy members of the Upper House to be named by the pr< >- 
 tector; a fixed revenue was voted to him; it was provided that 
 no moneys should be raised but by assent of Parliament, and 
 liberty of worship was secured for all but Papists, Prelatists, 
 Socinians, or those who denied the inspiration of the Scriptures, 
 and liberty of conscience was secured for all. This was in 
 June, 1657. 
 
 But the hand of death was on him and, though never had the 
 fame of an English ruler stood higher, in the midst of his glory 
 he was weary of his task. "God knows," he had cried out to Par- 
 liament a year before, "I would have been glad to have lived 
 under my woodside, and to have kept a flock of sheep than to 
 have undertaken this government." And now to the weariness of 
 power was added the feverish impatience of disease. The Parlia- 
 ment that opposed him in his plans he dismissed in an aiigrv 
 speech closing with the words : "I dissolve this Parliament, and 
 let God judge between you and me." Yet he had hardly dissolved 
 it before he was planning the summons of another, but before his 
 plans could be realized his strength gave way. Prayer arose on 
 every side for his recovery, and with characteristic energy he w;i< 
 the last to be convinced that his hour was come. A tremendous 
 August storm which tore roofs from houses and overthrew hn^e
 
 B9
 
 540 THK STOIIY OF (JOVKKNMKNT. 
 
 trees in every forest seemed to the popular mind an omen and a 
 fit prelude to the passing of this mighty spirit. Three days after, 
 on the 3d of September, IG.Vs. tin- day which had witnessed his 
 victories of Worcester and of Dun bar, Cromwell quietly breathed 
 his last. 
 
 So mighty even in death was his sway over the minds of men 
 that to the wonder of the hopefully excited royalists even a doubt- 
 ful nomination from his deathbed was sufficient to secure the 
 peaceful succession of his son, Richard Cromwell, to the pro- 
 tectorate. Many, in fact, who denied the authority of the father 
 acquiesced cheerfully in that of the new protector. Richard, 
 however, was a weak and worthless man who, conscious of his 
 inferiority, soon resigned the government, and a new House of 
 Commons began to draAV up terms for a restoration of the Stuart 
 race in the person of Charles the Second. Charles, with whom 
 General Monk of the army had been in communication, sent over 
 a promise of general pardon and religious toleration which Avas 
 received with a burst of enthusiasm, and the old constitution was 
 restored by a solemn vote that, according to the ancient and fun- 
 damental laws of the kingdom, the government is and ought to be 
 by king, lords, and commons. 
 
 Charles at once hastened to return, landed at Dover and made 
 his Avay amid the shouts of the multitude to Whitehall Avliere his 
 father had lost his head. Puritanism, so men believed, had fallen 
 never to rise again. As a political experiment it had en.l.-d 
 apparently an utter 'failure. As a religious system of national 
 life it brought about the wildest outbreak of moral revolt i:i the 
 reign of Charles II. that England had ever witnessed; and yet 
 Puritanism was not dead, but was drawing in silence a nobler life 
 from suffering and defeat. For the whole history of English 
 progress since the restoration on its moral and spiritual sides lias 
 been the history of Puritanism. Eager royalists Avere greatly- 
 disappointed with the reign of Charles II., for they beheld the 
 id. -as they had bled for steadily sinking into the background, but 
 Charles himself Avas clever enough to realize that the England 
 Avhich had called him back was a IICAV England and the monarc In- 
 having p issed through the crucible of Cronrvvell, an entirely new 
 monarchy. The Parliament proceeded to limit the king's powei
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 541 
 
 by chains much stronger though less tangible than un\- that had 
 bound his predecessors, for in this reign it secured the power of 
 controlling the king's policy through a complete and specific con- 
 trol of the national purse. 
 
 Charles II. was by far the cleverest of the Stuarts, and at the 
 end of his reign found himself more popular and practically more 
 absolute than any member of his family, but it was in reality by 
 yielding points of government that hc> had gained his ends. Xot 
 since the days of Richard II. had Parliament voted supplies for 
 special purposes, and when they voted taxes of tonnage and 
 poundage or subsidies, the king got a large sum of money to 
 apply as he chose. This plan, however, was far from satis- 
 factory, for no check could be kept on a king's extravagance, 
 nor could Parliament have any security that money designed for 
 a special purpose would be spent for that purpose. In 1665, how- 
 ever, Parliament voted one million two hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand pounds, declaring that it was to be applied only to the war 
 with the Dutch. Charles' chief minister, Clarendon, opposed 
 this specific limitation as an innovation on royal custom; but 
 Charles favored it, because he thought it would lure Parliament 
 into voting supplies more readily, and that he could get hold of 
 the money for his special purposes just as easily. He was right, as 
 far as he was concerned, but his successors found that bonds which 
 he was able to slip through were chains of a heavier kind upon 
 their movements, and this was obviously an enormous gain for the 
 people, since it made the control over the purse far more strict, and 
 the Commons followed it up by inquiring how the money thus 
 voted was spent, and as a result of this inquiry the treasurer of 
 the navy was dismissed from his post. 
 
 The impeachment ot Dauby precipitated a crisis between the 
 king and Parliament which hitherto Charles had endured, deem- 
 ing it the most pliant he was likely to get. But losing patience, 
 when it again impeached his first minister, he decided to risk a 
 "cueral election. The new Parliament was no better than the 
 
 o 
 
 last. Besides impeaching Danby, it tried to exclude the Duke of 
 York, the king's brother, from any possible succession to the 
 throne on account of his Catholicism, and was in its turn dis- 
 solved.
 
 642 THK STOKV OF GOVEUNMKNT. 
 
 At this period Charles showed his good sense by consenting to 
 the Habeas Corpus Act, which again asserted the principle that 
 any unconvicted prisoner, unless accused of treason or felony, 
 might call upon the lord chancellor or any judge, under penalty 
 of ;i tine of five hundred pounds, to issue a writ of habeas corpus 1 
 t<> the gaoler, ordering him under penalty o a fine of one hundred 
 pounds to bring up the body of the prisoner within not more than 
 twentv davs, and that the judge on his appearance should release 
 him on bail. In the case of treason or felony, if a prisoner was 
 not tried in the next term or next sessions of gaol delivery after 
 his commitment, he could, on petition to the court, be released on 
 bail, unless it appeared that the crown's witnesses could not be 
 produced at that time. 
 
 This Act contained no new principle, but it gave greater 
 facility for the assertion of an ancient right, and henceforth the 
 ei-own ceased to be able to imprison its enemies in defiance of the 
 principles of the security of the person. 
 
 Charles' attempt to improve his position by an election failed: 
 again he dissolved Parliament, but its successor only continued 
 its course, and again an election occurred. Two years the strug- 
 gle raged; thrice the king exercised his prerogative of dissolving 
 Parliament; once the Commons exercised theirs of refusing sup- 
 plies; once the Exclusion Bill in regard to the Duke of York, 
 
 A O 
 
 afterwards James II., passed the Commons, only to be rejected 
 by the Lords. At length, the violence of tho Commons over- 
 leaped itself, Charles found that the nation was with him, and 
 having secured a permanent income from Louis XIV., the king of 
 France, he dissolved the Oxford Parliament and determined to 
 dispense with the services of Parliament, until one could be 
 elected that suited him better. Of this he had some hopes, for 
 the struggle had shown that there was a party in the kingdom 
 upon whom the king, so long as he was moderate, could rely, and 
 the violence of the Commons, who had endeavored to exclude 
 James, not for what he hud done, but for what he might do, had 
 frightened many men of moderate views and caused a reaction in 
 Charles' favor. This reaction took the form of the rise of a new 
 parly, and from henceforth the country party, as the opposition 
 
 i " Thou shalt have (or take) the body."
 
 WILLIAM EWAKT GLADSTONE. 
 
 543
 
 544 THK ST()i;V I )K (iOVKIJNMKNT. 
 
 was called, took the name of Whigs, and the court party, which 
 yet contained many men who wen- not courtiers, took the name of 
 Tories. 
 
 The rise of organ i/ed parties in Parliament is the m^st impor- 
 tant event which has taken place since the Restoration; for it lias 
 established the only conditions on which it seems possible that 
 constitutional government can be worked with success or promise 
 of permanency, and happily, at their lirst rise, the principles they 
 followed, though vague, were roughly distinguishable, so that 
 almost every man was able to range himself under the banner of 
 one or the other. Thus at the very moment when party govern- 
 ment was coining into existence there was no conflict of small 
 cliques, Avhich might have hampered its working. 
 
 Generally speaking, the Tories were such as thought that, if 
 England was to be governed by king and Parliament, greater 
 advantage was likely to ba gained by upholding the prerogative 
 of the king than by extending the rights of Parliament, and since 
 the men who thought thus were almost invariably churchmen, 
 they adopted as their watchword, "King and Church." The 
 Whigs, on the other hand, were those who believed that the safety 
 of the country lay in giving prominence to the powers of Parlia- 
 ment, and that the ancient prerogative of the crown should be 
 restrained in its exercise, whenever at variance with the interests 
 of the subject. 
 
 Contrasted with the Tory gentry, the mass of the Whi^- party 
 naturally came from the cities and boroughs, for it was in the 
 small manufacturing towns that the Puritans had been strong. T< > 
 reduce the tide that was running against him, Charles had to play 
 the part of a politician, and this was one of his acts. The cor- 
 porate towns held their privileges by virtue of charters which 
 had been granted at one time or another by the sovereign, 
 and many of them bore a very ancient date. By these charteis 
 certain privileges, including the right of self-government, were 
 granted to the burgesses, who purchased the charter either by the 
 payment of a sum of money or by the performance of certain 
 duties. Many of these duties, dating far back into feudalism, had 
 been quite neglected, and few towns could be found which had not, 
 in one way or another, infringed some article of their charter.
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 
 
 545 
 
 Charles, therefore, had a legal shadow of right to call in the 
 charter, find the flaw, condemn as forfeit the privileges of the 
 corporation, and to return the charter with a new list of aldermen 
 and a new mayor named from the Tory party. This was what 
 Charles did, and in this way he spent the last three years of his 
 life, remodelling the constituencies and providing for the elec- 
 tion of a Tory Parliament. But death has no respect for politi- 
 cians and Charles II., who was the best and worst of his race, 
 died suddenly, asking forgiveness of his injured queen, not of his 
 << irrupted country. 
 
 James II.. his brother, completely deceived by the calm that had 
 
 WESTMINSTER IX IfrlT. 
 From a rare old print. 
 
 followed the dissolution of the last Parliament, fancied the nation 
 had outgrown its fit of dislike to a popish sovereign. Perhaps he 
 gave too much weight to a decree passed by the Tory University 
 of Oxford, condemning the doctrine that resistance to a king is 
 lawful under certain circumstances. At any rate, within three 
 years he had more than shown himself shorn of any popularity he 
 might have had. The nation had become utterly sick of him. 
 The story of his mistakes is well known; ho\v lie used his dispens- 
 ing power to give Roman Catholics not only toleration, but even 
 ascendency in the kingdom; how he turned out experienced offi- 
 cials, incivlv because they were Protestants; ho\v lie set up a new
 
 546 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Court of High Commission and attacked the Universities of Ox- 
 ford and Cambridge ; how the non-conformists refused to join him 
 in his attacks upon the Church; how even the Church was driven 
 to give up her doctrine of passive resistance by the prosecution of 
 the seven bishops; and how the nation was finally driven to 
 despair by the birth of a prince who would be educated as a 
 Roman Catholic, and who supplanted the popular Princess Mary. 
 
 In the time of Edward II., or of Richard II., such conduct 
 would have been equivalent to his deposition, for in those times 
 the nation could at a week's notice have marched upon London an 
 overwhelming force to which the king could oppose nothing but 
 his own personal adherents. Now, however, times had changed ; 
 the retention of those five thousand old army men at the Restora- 
 tion had given to the king the nucleus of a trained force, against 
 which untrained levies, however valiant, could not easily hold 
 their ground, and it was absolutely necessary, if the nation was 
 to have a fair chance of declaring its will, for some force to be 
 found that should balance the thirteen thousand men whom James 
 had established as his guard on Hounslow Heath. 
 
 Such a force was found in the army of William of Orange, 
 who came over from Holland to give the nation an opportunity 
 of declaring its will in a free Parliament. Happily no battle was 
 fought. Deserted by their leaders and disheartened by their 
 unpopularity, James' soldiers struck no blow in his defence, and 
 James sought refuge in flight. A convention was summoned 
 which, taking into account the double flight of James, declared in 
 a somewhat wordy document that "King James II., having 
 endeavored to subvert the constitution of the kingdom by break- 
 ing the original contract between king and people, and by the 
 advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons having violated the 
 fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of the king- 
 dom, had abdicated the government, and that the crown had 
 thereby become vacant." 
 
 Many schemes were proposed for filling up the vacancy; but 
 finally the throne was offered to and accepted by William of 
 Orange, the son of James' sister, and Mary his wife, James' 
 daughter, and so not only was James himself removed from the 
 throne, but also his lately born son, whom the majority believed
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 547 
 
 to be supposititious, was excluded from the succession. But tin- 
 convention did more than merely transfer the crown from one 
 member of the royal family to another; they reasserted in the most 
 positive terms the chief points upon which the constitution rested, 
 and the way in which they had been violated by the late king. 
 For this purpose they drew up the Bill of Rights, whose chief 
 declarations were: "Whereas the late King James II., by the 
 assistance of diverse evil counsellors, judges, and ministers 
 employed by him, did endeavor to subvert and extirpate the 
 Protestant religion, and the laws and liberties of this kingdom, 
 etc., etc., therefore the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the 
 Commons declare : 
 
 I. "That the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the 
 execution of laws by regal authority, without consent of Parlia- 
 ment, is illegal. 
 
 II. "That the pretended power of dispensing with laws, or the 
 execution of laws by regal authority, as it hath been assumed and 
 exercised of late, is illegal. 
 
 III. " That the commission for erecting the late Court of Com- 
 missioners for Ecclesiastical Causes, and all other commissions and 
 courts of like nature, are illegal and pernicious. 
 
 IV. "That levying money for or to the use of the crown by 
 pretence of prerogative, without grant of Parliament, for longer 
 time or in other manner than the same is or shall be granted, is 
 illegal. 
 
 V. "That the raising or keeping a standing army within the 
 kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parlia- 
 ment, is against law. 
 
 VI. "That the election of members of Parliament ought to be 
 free." 
 
 VII. " Thai the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings 
 in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any 
 court or place out of Parliament. 
 
 VIII. "That for the redress of all grievances, and for the 
 amending, strengthening and preserving of laws, government 
 ought to be held frequently." 
 
 In this document also the crown was settled on William a;.- 1 . 
 Mary for life, then on Mary's children, and in their default on
 
 548 THK STOKY <>F ( i( >V KU N M KNT. 
 
 tlie Princess Anne of Denmark and her children; and in their 
 default on the children of William by any other wife. 
 
 Here we find again laid down the old principles of English 
 government, no changes in the law or levying of taxation without 
 the consent of Parliament, the freedom of election, freedom of 
 speech and frequency of meeting of that b:>dy, and there is added to 
 these the statement that without consent of Parliament no sover- 
 eign may keep an army in time of peace. That is all ; but that 
 in 1GH8 a standing army should still be an anomaly in England 
 marks the difference between the development of government in 
 England and on the continent. 
 
 To the many the revolution meant merely the expulsion of 
 James II. and his- male descendants from the throne; to the few 
 it meant besides this the substitution of the Parliament for the 
 king as the really supreme power in the country. The first of 
 these changes absorbed all interest; the second was hardly noticed 
 at all. 
 
 We have noted how king after king had tried to evade calling 
 Parliament, and how the enactments under the Plantagenets and 
 the Triennial Bill under the Stuarts had alike been ineffective to 
 secure its regular meeting. This difficulty at once vanished, for 
 no sooner were supplies granted, not for life, but for one year, than 
 the whole fabric of government would have melted away, had not 
 Parliament been summoned year by year to Westminster to renew 
 the grants. Instead of the old difficulty a new one was intro- 
 duced. The Long Parliament had passed a Triennial Act mainly 
 to iorce the king to summon Parliament every three years; 
 William II I. 's Parliament passed their Triennial Act mainly to 
 prevent the king, when he got a Parliament to his mind, from 
 keeping it permanently as Charles II. had done, instead of appeal- 
 ing to the people in a fresh election. 
 
 In this way Parliament secured a most effective control over 
 the expenditure and military establishments of the country. It 
 yet remained for them to secure a similar control over the law 
 courts. Though the removal of the Courts of Star Chamber and 
 High Commission had got rid of two great engines of oppression, 
 the ordinary law courts of the country had, under the later Stuarts, 
 and indeed in earlier times in cases where the crown was a party,
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. .">4 ( .t 
 
 been scenes of gross injustice. This was due to three causes: 1, 
 the unfair appointment of jurymen ; 2, the unfairness of the pro- 
 cedure of the court to the accused; 3, the partiality of the judges 
 who were appointed or removed by the king's pleasure. All these 
 points had been brought into question at various times, but the}' 
 were for the most part removed under William III. 1. In the 
 Bill of Rights it was enacted "that jurors ought to be duly im- 
 panelled and returned, and jurors which pass upon men in trials 
 for high treason ought to be freeholders." 2. By the Treasons 
 Act of William III. it was ordered that the accused should have, 
 five days before his trial, a list of the witnesses and a copy of the 
 indictment, and be allowed to examine his own witnesses upon 
 oath. 3. In the Act of Settlement which arranged that, as 
 Anne's children were all dead the succession should pass from her 
 to the Electress Sophia, it was enacted that the judges should 
 hold their offices for life, should receive fixed salaries, and should 
 only !>; removable on the petition of both Houses of Parliament. 
 
 But this new freedom of Parliament at first came near falling 
 to pieces by its own newness, for it showed a strong tendency 
 during the reign of William and his successors to degenerate into 
 license. Bribery became the first step of public business. The 
 great Whig minister, Sir Robert Walpole, gave vent to the cynical 
 axiom, "Everyman has his price," which indeed began to seem 
 a universal truth during the beginning of Parliamentary freedom. 
 The consolidation of party government was immensely helped 
 by the personal character of the four sovereigns who followed the 
 Revolution, William III., Anne, George I., and George II., for 
 tlu-y were, especially the last three, content with the show of 
 royalty without troubling themselves about the substance, and 
 slimving little disposition to interfere in political affairs. 
 
 Meanwhile the character of the ministry itself was changing. 
 Originally the Cabinet was composed of those members of the 
 Privy Council to whom the king's special confidence was given. 
 As a inlc. l)ui not invariably, they held some special office under 
 the crown. But it did not follow that all officials were members 
 of the Cabinet or even of the Privy Council; nor even was the 
 Cabinet always composed of holders of the same offices. By 
 degrees, however, certain customs sprang up. First, the holders
 
 550 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 of certain offices came to be regarded as the government; second, 
 the most important members of the government attained a certain 
 recognized position as members of the Cabinet; and thirdly, the 
 holder of a particular office became recognized as the head of both 
 ( 'abinet and government. This office was that of first lord of 
 the treasury. Ever since the Norman. Conquest, some minister 
 has been recognized as in some way the king's chief adviser. 
 First, it was the justiciar or lord chief justice; then it was the 
 lord chancellor who remained most prominent under the Plan- 
 tagents. Under the Tmlors it was sometimes the chancellor, 
 sometimes the treasurer; NVolsey was chancellor, Burleigh was 
 treasurer. Under the Stuarts the chancellor again came to the 
 front, and Lord Chancellor Clarendon was the last great chan- 
 cellor. After his fall the minister who presided over the public 
 purse was the most important, and Lord Treasurer Danby was 
 distinctly the leading minister of his day. It is curious to note 
 how justice, law, finance became in turn the most important 
 things in the country, marking the epoch of the nation to a com- 
 mercial entity. 
 
 The care of the purse was, however, too responsible a Avork to 
 be often entrusted to one person, and as early as the reign <>!' 
 James I. the office had been put in commission. This was often 
 done under Charles I. and Charles II., and since the fall of Danby 
 in 1679, it has been the invariable rule, the commissioners being 
 called lords of the treasury, and their chairman being- styled 
 first lord. It was not long, however, before the first lord 
 acquired all the importance that was formally possessed by the 
 single treasurer. For a time his preeminence was disputed by 
 the secretaries of state, but he finally triumphed, and .since the 
 time of Walpole the first lord of the treasury has invariablv 
 been the head of the government, a fact which is recogni/ed by 
 the popular title, unknown to law, of Premier. 
 
 While this was going on another change of great importance 
 was progressing. The government was acquiring a corporate 
 character. The process by Avhich it did this was very slow. 
 Originally the king's ministers were completely independent of 
 one another. Each was appointed or dismissed solely with refer- 
 ence to the conduct of his mvn office; but by degrees, mainly
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 551 
 
 because the ministry was more and more composed of members 
 who thought alike, a feeling of solidarity grew up, and it came 
 to be understood that ministers stood by one another and that an 
 attack upon one was an attack upon all. During the reigns of 
 George I. and George II. this could hardly be regarded as more 
 than a tendency; there were numerous instances of ministers vot- 
 ing against their fellows, and even in the reign of George III. 
 Lord Thurlow never considered himself bound either to support 
 a measure or to resign because his colleagues were agreed upon it. 
 
 Meanwhile the new importance which the House of Commons 
 had gained resulted in differences between it and the Hereditary 
 House. At the accession of Anne the lay peers numbered one 
 hundred and sixty-two. A majority of these were Whigs and no 
 sooner did the election of 1710 return a Tory majority in the 
 Commons than the two Houses were at a deadlock. To get over 
 the difficulty Haiiey used the prerogative of the crown by per- 
 suading Anne to create twelve new Tory peel's who forthwith 
 altered the balance of parties. But this summary process was not 
 relished by the lords, and in 1719 they made a determined effort 
 to prevent a repetition of such a political trick which they 
 regarded as a social insult. With this view they passed a bill 
 that the House of Lords, which then numbered one hundred and 
 seventy-eight, should never be raised to a higher number than one 
 hundred and eighty-four. Had this bill passed the Commons 
 likewise there would have been two most important results. It 
 would have completely taken it out of the power of the minister 
 of the day to make the lords give way to the House of Commons 
 when the views of the two differed, or in brief, the Hereditary and 
 not the Elective Chamber would have had the dominant voice in 
 all affairs. Secondly, the rule which had always obtained in Eng- 
 land, that no bar existed to prevent a commoner from rising to the 
 peerage, would have been done away with, and the lords would have 
 become an exclusive body. But the Commons fully appreciated 
 the danger to their own prospects, and that made them save the 
 constitution as well, and thus the leading voice in the State was 
 preserved to the representatives of the people. 
 
 But this expression, "representatives of the people," brings us 
 to a new inquiry. The House of Commons was the leading
 
 552 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 power in the nation. It und not the king determined the policy 
 of the State. But did the House of Commons represent the 
 nation, and if not, whom did it represent? 
 
 It is very doubtful whether the English nobility ever exercised 
 such a decisive influence over the politics of the country for so 
 long a period as they did from the accession of George I. to tin- 
 acceptance of the premiership by William Pitt, the great Com- 
 moner, as he was called. No doubt there were many times when 
 the nobles upset the government, as under Henry III. or Richard 
 II., but they had never before swayed the destinies of the country 
 as they did between 1714 and 1783. It was distinctly the period 
 when the government approached nearer to an oligarchy than at 
 any time before or since. Political power always tends to gravi- 
 tate into the hands of the most powerful, and in the eighteenth 
 century the Whig nobles were, without doubt, the most powerful 
 class in the kingdom. In point of wealth none could com- 
 pare with them. They had broad acres which yielded regular 
 rents; their earliest rivals, the wealthy nabobs from India, 
 were as yet very rare; while the millionnaire manufacturer was 
 unknown. 
 
 Now, the nobility are not as a class the wealthiest subjects, 
 for manufacturers vie with them in individual wealth, and far 
 outnumber them collectively. Nor was there in those days an 
 inclination to rivalry between nobility and wealth. It was one of 
 the strongest bulwarks of the Hanoverian throne that there was 
 the closest alliance between the titled Whigs and the wealthy 
 merchants of the city, and one of the first symptoms of the fall of 
 the nobles was the rupture between the House of Commons and the 
 corporation of London. In political intelligence, too, the nobility 
 were far in advance of the rest of the nation. They were the 
 only class who constantly visited the metropolis and London was 
 then, infinitely more than it is now, the centre of the British 
 kingdom. 
 
 If to do what one likes without gainsayal is to be an absolute 
 ruler, the nobility of this period as a whole were far more the 
 absolute rulers of England than any king had ever been. They 
 ruled the king, for they kept all confidential offices about the 
 court for themselves, their wives, or their families. They directed
 
 AX AMKIIICAN BELL
 
 TO T1IK O.UKKX.
 
 N6 \ ; v \ , 
 
 the {H>licy of the country, for i'. \ed to \\. - all the 
 
 most influential places in the ministry. Pitt only forced himself 
 into this charmed circle by the strength of his ivrsoual character, 
 and Burke, the champion of the Whigs, \\a^ never admitted into 
 the Cabinet at all. 
 
 These Whig nobles ruled the House of Common*; for there 
 were t'ew couuru \\iiet-. had a chanee, and none where 
 
 a man unconnected with the aristoc: likely to U eleeted, 
 
 while of the Kmwghs a large pro)>ortion were* in the gift, to all 
 pmctical purjKvtes, of one nobleman or another. They ruled 
 Mviety ; for the word of a nobleman \vas- law, and the manners of 
 the nobility ^ave the tone. They ruled litemtuif, t\r no writer 
 could hoj>e to live by the sjle of his \vork >, and the \Vln^ nobilitv 
 alone could JMV for the luxury of leini praised. They had no 
 rivals in the rniyersitie-. > '\fo\l and ("ambrid^ were asleep; 
 nor in the eler^y, \\ ho wev gixen over either to hoping for pre- 
 ferment, or to making life pleasant; nor in the gentry, who \\ 
 UH> mueh of the Squire Western stamp to tnmble themsel\> 
 hng as they \\eiv let alone; while the common people, rarely 
 able to read, course in their pleasures and ideas, and as yet 
 thoroughly loyal to the jHwers that l>e, ivpivsented by the great 
 men of the country, took no interest in politics, if they had no 
 . and, if they had, regarded an election chiefly as a UH> nuvly 
 a ring ejHH-h of five, unlimited beer. 
 
 In a nation such as this, and the Knglish nation of the lirst half 
 of the eighteenth century was a still worse subject for contem- 
 plation than it is now, the nobility reigned supreme. But theirs 
 , on the whole, a beneficent despotism. They secured the 
 l*ersosis and pockets of the subject by the revolution of li>88, and 
 his creed by the Toleration Act of KSl, and the rv|H.nd of the 
 .NUMutl (\>nformity and Schism Acts in 17 Iv 
 
 But it was inevitable that a waking up should take place, and 
 presently the nobility found themselves attacked on Uth si 
 by the ieople, who demanded a U-tter representation in the Com- 
 mons; by the king, who demanded to have a larger share in the 
 rament of the country. tieo-.-ge 111. wished to le a j>ersonal 
 king, not a royal automaton, ami he cleverly fomented the dissen- 
 sions which a long lease of jn\ver had caused among the great
 
 558 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Whig families. The prosecution of Wilkes l had begun to open 
 men's minds to the fact that parliamentary privileges were not 
 an end but a means. Parliament is no more a sacred institution 
 than royalty, and if it abuses its power there is a force beyond 
 and above it. 
 
 Now the chief privileges of Parliament were, as we have seen 
 before, control over their own elections, freedom from arrest and 
 freedom of speech. But if the right to control their own elec- 
 tions was used to keep out members duly elected by the people ; 
 if the right of freedom from arrest was used to save the members 
 from paying their just debts, or was extended to their servants 
 and dependents to the injury of their fellow-subjects; and it' 
 freedom of speech was interpreted as the right of using their 
 privilege to prevent the nation from knowing what was done by 
 its representatives, then these privileges had outlived their time, 
 and had been turned into abuses. And there was no doubt that 
 this was the case. The treatment of Wilkes, the notorious abuse 
 of freedom from arrest, the strenuous attempts of Parliament to 
 prevent their debates from being published, all showed that Par- 
 liament, which was in former times the bulwark of the people 
 against the sovereign, had in the moment of victory forgotten its 
 obligations and mistaken the object of its own existence. To 
 put a stop to these evils two parties arose ; the watchword of one 
 was the abolition of influence; the cry of the other was reform. 
 
 Gray, the poet, writing at Cambridge, said that he could 
 remember nothing like the rapid changes of government, and the 
 fluctuations in policy since the early years of Charles I. The 
 virulent letters of Junius overwhelmed the ministry with scorn. 
 The publication of debates, which after a violent struggle with 
 Parliament was finally yielded to the printers in 1771, threw 
 light on the proceedings of the Houses and helped to form public 
 opinion. Still more, the disastrous results of King George's 
 policy toward the American colonies roused popular indignation, 
 and by degrees Burke and his friends, so long in an unsuccessful 
 opposition, found themselves supported by popular opinion. In 
 
 'John Wilkes was four times elected by Middlesex electors, and three times the Commons, 
 in defiance of the Bill of Rights, declared him incapable of representing the men who had 
 chosen him. The fourth time they declared his opponent, Colonel Luttrell, who only received 
 296 votes to Wilkes' 1143, to be duly elected.
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 559 
 
 1780, backed by a large petition from the freeholders of York- 
 shire, they won their first parliamentary triumph, for in that year 
 Dvmning's motion, "that the power of the crown has increased, 
 is increasing, and ought to be diminished," was carried by two 
 hundred and thirty-three to two hundred and fifteen. 
 
 The next year Lord North resigned, and Rockingham, at the 
 head of the most united Whig ministry of the reign, came into 
 power. They did not expect to stay in long, but they determined 
 before they fell "to strike a good stout blow " at the king's influ- 
 ence both in and out of Parliament. To do this they took in 
 hand the king's civil list, and divided it into eight classes, 
 abolished an immense number of useless offices, such as that of 
 king's turnspit, whose occupant had a seat in the House of Com- 
 mons, abolished secret pensions, and curtailed the expenses of the 
 court to such an extent that, without in the least interfering with 
 the comfort or splendor of the royal family, they diminished its 
 expenditure by seventy-two thousand pounds a year. 
 
 Haphazard is a word almost too feeble to describe the method, 
 or absence of method, by which the English House of Commons 
 gradually assumed the form which it exhibited in the days of 
 George III. The return of members, the selection of boroughs, 
 the distribution of the franchise, were all equally anomalous. 
 Yorkshire and Rutland alike returned two members each; Old 
 Sarum, where not a vestige of a house was to be seen, sent two 
 representatives, while Birmingham, whose vast area of thriving 
 workshops and forges was densely crowded with human beings, 
 had no representation at all. At Preston every householder had 
 a vote, and at the election of 1830, 7,122 persons actually polled; 
 at London the largest number recorded was at the election of 1826 
 and only amounted to 8,631. But if the result was anomalous, its 
 history is perhaps still more surprising. Anyone who now notes 
 the eagerness of English towns to send members, and the anxiety 
 of gentlemen to get seats, and is led to imagine by this that the 
 same eagerness was shown in former times, and that a desire to 
 have a share in the national assembly, either personally or 
 through a representative, had always been one of the character- 
 istics of Englishmen, and that to this patriotic feeling is due the 
 great success of parliamentary institutions in England for so long
 
 560 THH STOKY <>K ( JUVKKX.M KNT. 
 
 a time, would be .sadly mistaken, and would be picturing to him- 
 self a condition of things, tin; exact contrary of \vliat was tin- 
 case. 
 
 Reformation in the representative system was sorely needed as 
 well as economical reform, but the manoeuvring of George- III. 
 and his supporters had so divided reformers into cliques, that 
 headway was exceedingly slow. 
 
 In 1792 a society called the "Friends of the People" was 
 formed for the purpose of collecting statistics on the subject, and 
 in May, 1793, Mr. Grey, who had already made one unsuccessful 
 motion on the subject, presented to the Commons a petition of 
 the society in which they demonstrated that the representation 
 was in great need of reform. They showed (1) that the majority 
 of the House was elected by fifteen thousand electors, only one two 
 hundredth part of the adult males of the kingdom; (2) that Corn- 
 wall returned more members, county and borough, than York- 
 shire, Middlesex, and Rutland together; (3) that Cornwall sent 
 more borough members than Yorkshire, Lancashire, Warwick- 
 shire, Middlesex, Worcestershire, and Somersetshire united; (4) 
 that eighty-four individuals did of their own authority send 157 
 members to Parliament, that seventy other individuals practi- 
 cally nominated 150 more, so that 154 persons returned 311 
 members, a majority of the whole House, which then numbered 
 558. Besides these points the petition complained of the irregu- 
 larities of the franchise. From that time to this the pressure 
 from below for a juster distribution of political power has been 
 constant and through many defeats has evolved lasting and valua- 
 ble victories. It remains now to consider in its entirety the 
 English government as it exists to-day. 
 
 Montesquieu declared that it was essential to the well-being of 
 every state that the legislative, executive, and judicial functions 
 should be absolutely separate. In England they are appaivntly 
 hopelessly entangled. While by one enactment, Parliament lor- 
 bids the sovereign to keep a standing army in peace, by another 
 it votes money annually for the support of just such a thing. 
 According to law, the sovereign may declare Avar, make treaties, 
 appoint and dismiss his ministers. In point of fact, he can do 
 nothing without the advice of his ministers who are responsible to
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 501 
 
 Parliament. "With prerogative so clipped, what does a king 
 amount to, what purpose does he serve? Chiefly this: that he is 
 the living- symbol of racial unity round whom history gathers, 
 and on whom, as a personal object, the feeling of patriotism, so 
 vague in a large state, can concentrate itself in the form of loyalty. 
 The height which the sovereign occupies is extreme; but the 
 descent is broken by the existence round the throne of the nobility. 
 The nobles depend for honor either on ancient lineage or recent 
 merit; on the one hand they approach the crown, on the other 
 they touch society; and as the nobility in England have never 
 been a distinct caste, they serve as a link in the chain which 
 
 THE GREAT SEAT, OF ENGLAND. 
 
 binds the palace to the cottage. With the sovereign, they share 
 many of the functions which belong to the existence of a mon- 
 archy, and of a nobility which depends neither on political power 
 nor on commercial success; and in a country like England where 
 both political and commercial ambition run very high, it is a 
 great advantage that these potencies and potentialities should be 
 balanced by the existence of honors which neither votes nor money 
 can purchase. 
 
 Again, so long as they command respect, the nobility help 
 to teach respect and a higher average of human conduct, and 
 happily the nobility of England in this century have, as an 
 order/ been tolerably free from the vices which abroad have 
 often secured so evil a name for the aristocracy, although it must 
 be admitted that signs of decay are becoming rather frequent 
 during the last two decades. As to the constitutional maxim that 
 the sovereign reigns but does not govern, while it is true in the
 
 562 THE STOEY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 main in England, *till the present ruler has shown a woman's 
 Determination to know at least what her ministers are doing, as 
 this note from Victoria to one of her ministers clearly proves. 
 
 " The queen requires, first, thnt Lord Palmerston ?//// 
 state what lie proposes in a given case in order that the queen 
 knotc as distinctly to what she is giving her royal sanction. Secondly^ 
 having once given In r * action to a measure, that it he not arbitrarily 
 altered or modijnd In/ the minister. Such an act she muxf <-<>n*ider as 
 failing in sincerity to the crown, and justly to be visited by her consti- 
 tutional right of dismissing that minister. She expect* to he kej>t 
 informed ofichnt passes between him and the foreign ministers /"_/'"/' 
 important decisions are taken, based upon, that intercourse; t<> receive 
 the foreign despatches in good time, and to have the draft, for //// 
 approval sent to her in sufficient time to make herself acquainted fifJi, 
 their contents before they must be sent off" 
 
 From which it appears that Queen Victoria wishes t<> be some- 
 thing more than merely a high-salaried executive clerk, signing 
 documents devised by others. But in reality the Queen is only 
 an ornament, a figurehead to the ship of state, for the ministry 
 form the larger part of the executive. They consist of t\vo bodies. 
 a large one comprising those officers who hold political office 1 under 
 the crown, and who, according to custom, all belong to that party 
 which has the majority in the House of Commons, and an inner 
 council or Cabinet which is made up of the chief officers, and who 
 discuss in secret the most important matters of State. The Cabi- 
 net and the ministry are terms unknown to the law, but are con- 
 veniences of popular parlance. Of the ministers, some are and 
 some are not members of the Privy Council, but the Cabinet are, 
 as we have seen, all members of that body, and have developed 
 out of a small irregular committee, meeting for the transaction of 
 the highest state business. 
 
 The offices held by the members of the Cabinet are not fixed. 
 They vary in number from time to time. Though its members 
 are an important part of the executive, they are all of them mem- 
 bers of the legislative body. The whole system is the result of 
 no law, and it is fettered in its operation by no enactments. 
 
 Now, without going into detail, the great merit of the English 
 plan is, that if the English ministers cannot get their measures 
 passed by the House of Commons, they can advise the king to dis-
 
 THK CABINET BOOM IN DOWNING STKEKT. 
 
 563
 
 564 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 solve the House and see whether the nation in a new election 
 will give them more support; or if the House is dissatisfied with 
 the ministry it can refuse to order supplies, or pass the Mutiny 
 Bill, in which case, as supplies are only voted for one year and 
 the Mutiny Bill is only in force for the same length of time, the 
 ministry is in its turn forced to dissolve, and hence the ministry, 
 the Commons, and the nation can never be out of accord for any 
 very long time together. Again, when an English minister wants 
 a tax granted or a bill passed, he can go down to the House and 
 explain it and use his personal influence to carry it through. 
 Moreover, no bill has a chance which is not supported by minis- 
 ters, or at any rate not opposed by them, and therefore they never 
 wish to advise the sovereign to exercise his prerogative of refus- 
 ing his consent. 
 
 Now the American Constitution fails in all these points. The 
 President, if he disagrees with his House of Congress, cannot 
 dissolve them ; on the other hand, they cannot make him dissolve. 
 He cannot go down to the House; he can only write a letter; 
 and the ill working of the American system is shown by the 
 fact that the right of veto has again and again to be used, 
 because the executive is continually out of accord with the 
 legislative department. Again, there are other points of dif- 
 ference. In England immense interest is taken in politics; 
 indeed, a too keen excitement is felt, while in America, except 
 at election times, the masses take little interest in politics. In 
 England the system of practically plitting the executive into the 
 hands of that party which has the majority has created a consti- 
 tutional opposition ever ready to show the nation that it is more 
 fit than the men in power to manage the nation's affairs. Thus a 
 regular battle is always going on, and at any moment a grand 
 catastrophe may occur, and the ministry and opposition may have 
 to change sides, or an appeal be made to the country. It lias all 
 the excitement of a fight. In America there is nothing of 
 this. No debate can turn out a ministry 01 produce a general 
 election, and the consequence is that little interest is taken in 
 congressional matters, except on rare occasions. 
 
 But does the English system secure the great aim of all govern- 
 ment that is personal, namely, the getting the best persons for
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 
 
 565 
 
 rulers? At any rate, it seems to work as well as any other 
 plan yet devised. The qualities needful to enable any man to 
 hold his own as a minister in England seem to be these : He 
 must be capable of an immense amount of hard work, or he would 
 never for a moment be able to stand the strain both in his office 
 and in the House of Parliament, particularly in the Commons. 
 He must have been so many years in the House that he has con- 
 vinced it that lie is a capable man. He must almost necessarily 
 be a good speaker to 
 explain or defend 
 li i s policy. He 
 must have by per- 
 sonal character the 
 respect of the House 
 and of the nation. 
 But it does not 
 necessarily follow 
 that even men such 
 as these are invari- 
 ably able to manage 
 such varied depart- 
 ments as war, the 
 home office, the navy. 
 This difficulty is met, 
 however, by arran- 
 ging that the detail 
 ivork of each depart- 
 ment shall be done 
 ly permanent officials 
 who do not change 
 ivith the ministry, and have no politics, so that the heads of depart- 
 ments are merely thoroughly able men, who come into each 
 department with a desire to make it work well, and who by their 
 general knowledge of affairs are often able to give an impetus 
 to public business, to excite energy, and declare fresh war against 
 the great danger of permanent officialism red-tapeism. 
 
 We may then sunimari/e the development of English govern- 
 ment thus': Thmiighout the Middle Ages the House of Lords was 
 
 V1CT01UA.
 
 566 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the predominant House, because the strength of the nation lay in 
 the lords and their retainers. Slowly the power, following the 
 change outside, passed to the House of Commons, but even then 
 only to the House of Commons as dominated by the same class to 
 which belonged the House of Lords. Then the great Reform 
 Bill of 1832 upset this arrangement and gave power into the hands 
 of the now all-powerful middle class; and finally, in 1867, Lord 
 Beaconsfield, a Tory minister whose Toryism has been called 
 Radicalism in masquerade, decided to shift the centre of gravity 
 still lower, and place the arbitrament of the destinies of the 
 nation in the hands of the working classes. 
 
 Each of these changes has produced a corresponding change in 
 the members of the ministry and the Commons. So long as the 
 peers held sway the sovereigns had difficulty in keeping as their 
 counsellors any men who were not of noble birth, and even after 
 the revolution, when power passed from the hands of the king to 
 the Houses of Parliament, dukes and earls still formed the pre- 
 dominant element in every ministry. It was only by degrees that 
 commoners such as the Pitts gained a footing. With 1832 came 
 a change. Since that date the ministries have been less aristo- 
 cratic, when reflecting the character of the new House of Com- 
 mons, and there is some evidence to show that since 1867 a 
 further change is in progress.
 
 XII. 
 
 Fraternity* 
 
 aE VERAL years ago, when the writer was standing on the 
 deck of a steamer just arrived from Europe, close up to 
 the wharf, while the gang-plank was lowering, he hap- 
 pened to notice a fellow-passenger, a tallish, elderly 
 man with a look of much travel, of travail, too, perhaps, for his 
 gray eyes had a tired, far-away appearance, as if scanning the 
 cloudy horizon for the vanishing gleams of a fond heart's lost 
 illusions. All at once the man stretched both arms over his head 
 in a peculiar way that seemed to his observer on the deck to be- 
 token extreme bodily as well as mental weariness, though, per- 
 haps, it was only the bodily symbol of the spiritual fact. 
 
 The man's attitude that moment was very strange and calcu- 
 lated to attract attention. He brought his arms up slowly above 
 and then down towards his head, as if to clasp them back of it, then 
 -li-nclied his fists, and then let his arms out slowly their full 
 length, at the same time tilting his head back and seeming for a 
 second as if he were being nailed to a cross. The supremacy of 
 sadness or of weariness reigned in face and attitude, and then 
 In' subsided into commonplaceness. 
 
 Suddenly, however, the observer became aware that others had 
 marked the odd action, and had translated it into speech, for, 
 rushing up the now adjusted gang-plank from the waiting throng 
 
 567
 
 568 THE STOKY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 (two, in fact, not heeding the plank, but, boylike, clambering 
 over the side-rails of the steamer), a dozen men crowded round 
 the tired traveller, seized him by the hands and shoulders and, 
 as with one voice, begged to know what was the matter and what 
 they could do to help him. 
 
 A more surprised gentleman it would be hard to find. "I've 
 heard it said," he exclaimed, " that New Yorkers were the kindest. 
 most hospitable people on earth, but this beats the Dutch." 
 
 Then he proceeded to say that he needed nothing in the world 
 that he knew of except a good wife and a good digestion, and 
 would like to know why his kindly assailants had singled him out 
 as especially worthy of their cooperative courtesy. They began 
 to apologize awkwardly, saying that they had mistaken him, and 
 things of that kind, but I heard one murmur to another, "Did 
 you ever see the sign made more perfectly? " 
 
 The fact was, this stranger had accidentally made in all its 
 details that secret sign of Masonry which indicates supreme dis- 
 tress and calls for instant help from all worthy brothers. Pon- 
 dering on this incident the writer was led to a close study of 
 Masonry and other secret orders, some of which he has since 
 joined and he has the audacity to believe that the condensed 
 results of his study as presented in this comparatively brief 
 chapter will give some surprises in the way of new and novel 
 Masonic information, even to Masons themselves who have not 
 mastered many degrees. 
 
 Legendary Masonry (which is closely joined with Operative 
 Masonry, or that shown in the actual building of many of the 
 world's most famous castles, cathedrals, and palaces, and which 
 is distinct, except in certain dim possible connections, from 
 Speculative Masonry which rose to the surface in the first quarter 
 of the last century,) has all the fascination of fable and is of pro- 
 found ethical interest to Christian and Jew and Mohammedan, 
 as well as to the Pagan student who is outside of all, yet looking 
 sympathetically into all the student, 
 
 Whose calmly comprehensive mind 
 
 Embraces every creed, 
 And sees in each some well-designed 
 Expression of man's need."
 
 A COVEUNMKNT OF MYSTERY AND FJI ATKIJNITV. 
 
 To all .such the Legend of the Temple must he attractive, 
 whether considered as the fabulous foundation of modern Masonry, 
 or as a majestic myth standing alone and having no relation to the 
 present invisible temple, more glorious and more full of wisdom 
 than the one which the dreaming monarch, Solomon, tried to 
 make "a joy forever,"- that temple of Human Brotherhood 
 which Masonry tries to build in every land and every heart. 
 
 This, then, is the story of that temple of the Wise King. 
 Solomon, having determined on building the grandest temple 
 ever beheld of men, collected artificers, divided them into com- 
 panies, and put them under the command of Adoniram or Hiram 
 Abiff, an architect sent to him by his friend and ally, Hiram, 
 King of Tyre. 
 
 According to one Jewish tradition, the ancestry of the builders 
 of the mystical temple was as follows: One of the Elohim, or 
 primitive genii (and this word in the Hebrew Scriptures means 
 gods), married Eve and had a son called Cain; whilst Jehovah or 
 Adonai, another of the Elohim, created Adam and united him 
 with Eve to bring forth the family of Abel, to whom were sub- 
 jected the sons of Cain, as a punishment for the transgression of 
 Eve. Cain, though industriously cultivating the soil, yet derived 
 little produce from it, whilst Abel leisurely tended his flock. 
 
 Adonai rejected the gifts and sacrifices of Cain, and stirred up 
 strife between the sons of the Elohim, who had l>een generated 
 out of fire, and the sons who were formed out of the earth only. 
 Cain killed Abel, and Adonai, pursuing his sons with a series of 
 humiliations, subjected them to the sons of Abel, thus making 
 servants and sufferers of the noble family who invented the arts 
 and diffused science. This is clearly another version of the 
 Greek myth of Prometheus, punished by Jupiter for having 
 given fire to men. 
 
 Enoch, a son of Cain, taught men to hew stones, raise build- 
 ings, and form civil societies. Iracl and Mehujael, his son and 
 grandson, set boundaries to the waters and fashioned cedars into 
 l>eams. Methusael, another of his descendants, invented the 
 sacred characters, the books of Tau and the symbolic T, by which 
 the workers descended from the genii of fire recognized each other 
 a sort of masonic family tree.
 
 570 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Lamech, whose prophecies are inexplicable to the profane, was 
 the father of Jabel, who first taught men how to dress camel 
 skins; of Jubal, who discovered the harp; of Naamah, who dis- 
 covered the art of spinning and weaving; of Tubal-Cain, who 
 first constructed a furnace, worked in metals, and dug deep caves, 
 subterranean corridors in the mountains, to save his race during 
 the deluge. 
 
 But that brave, inventive race perished nevertheless, and only 
 Tubal-Cain and his son, the sole survivors of the glorious and 
 gigantic family, came out alive. Then the wife of Ham, second 
 son of Noah, thought the son of Tubal-Cain fitter to mate with 
 than the sons of men, and he, through her favor, became progenitor 
 of Nimrod, called the Mighty Hunter, who taught his brethren 
 the arts of the chase, and founded Babylon. Thus Adoniram, 
 or Hiram Abiff, a lineal descendant of Tubal-Cain, seemed called 
 by destiny to lead the militia of free me, connecting the sons of 
 fire with the sons of thought, progress, and truth. 
 
 And this Hiram fashioned that marvellous building, the temple 
 of Solomon. He built also the golden throne of Solomon, most 
 beautifully wrought, and many glorious edifices. But, melan- 
 choly amidst all his greatness, he lived alone, understood and 
 loved by few, hated by many, and ampng others by Solomon, 
 who was envious of his genius and his glory. 
 
 Now the fame of the wisdom of Solomon had spread to the ends 
 of the earth; and Balkis, the Queen of Sheba, came to Jeru- 
 salem to greet the great king and behold the marvels of his 
 reign. She found Solomon seated on a throne of gilt cedar wood, 
 arrayed in cloth of gold, so that at first she fancied him a statue 
 of gold with hands of ivory. Solomon received her with festal 
 pomp, and led her by the hand all over his palace and then to see 
 the grand works of the temple ; and the queen was lost in wonder. 
 
 Solomon, the wise, except in women, was captivated by her 
 beauty and soon offered her his hand, which the queen, pleased 
 at having conquered this proud heart, accepted. But every time 
 they visited the temple, she repeatedly desired to see the archi- 
 tect who had wrought such marvels. Solomon delayed as long 
 as possible presenting Hiram Abiff to the queen, but at last his 
 fund of excuses failed.
 
 ? 
 
 LATE GRAND COMMANDER SUPREME COUNCIL OF THIRTY-TU1RD DEQKEB 
 
 SOUTHERN JURISDICTION OF UNITED STATES. 
 
 571
 
 fiiJ THK S'l.'ollV OK <;oYKi;NMKNT. 
 
 Tlic mysterious artificer, Adoniram, was brought before Builds, 
 and he cast OH the queen a look that penetrated her heart. Hav- 
 ing recovered her composure, Balkis questioned him closely, 
 despite the rising jealousy of the king. When she wished to see 
 the countless host of workmen that had wrought the temple, and 
 were still engaged in some parts of its vastness, completing the 
 inside works, Solomon protested the impossibility of assembling 
 them all at once; but A don i rum, leaping on a stone, to be better 
 seen, with his right hand wrote in the air the mystic symbol, 
 Tan, and immediately the men hastened from all parts into the 
 presence of their master; whereat the queen wondered greatly, and 
 secretly repented of the promise she had given the king, for she 
 felt herself in love with the mighty architect. 
 
 Solomon set himself to destroy this affection, and to prepare 
 his rival's humiliation and ruin. For this purpose, he employed 
 three fellow-crafts, who were envious of Hiram, because he had 
 refused to raise them to the degree of masters, on account of their 
 wunt of knowledge and their idleness. They were Funor, a 
 Syrian and a mason; Amiu, a Phoenician and a carpenter; 
 Metusael, a Hebrew and a miner. The envy of these three 
 plotted that the brazen casting which was intended to resemble 
 the ocean, and which was to raise the glory of Hiram to its utmost 
 height, should turn out a failure. A young workman, Benoni, 
 discovered the plan, and revealed it to Solomon, thinking that 
 sufficient. 
 
 The day for the casting came, and Balkis was present. The 
 doors that restrained the molten metal were thrown open, and tor- 
 rents of liquid fire poured into the vast mould wherein the bra/en 
 sea was to ussume its form. But the burning muss ran over the 
 edges of the mould, and flowed like lava into the adjacent places. 
 The terrified crowd fled from the stream of fire. 
 
 Hiram, calm as a god, endeavored to arrest its advance with 
 ponderous columns of water, but without success. The water and 
 the fire mixed, and the struggle was terrible ; the water rose in 
 dense steam and fell down in the shape of scalding rain, spread- 
 ing terror and death. The dishonored artificer needed the sym- 
 pathy of a faithful heart; he sought Benoni, but in vain; the 
 proud youth had perished in endeavoring to prevent the horrible
 
 A (iOVKKNMKNT OF MYSTEIJV AND FUATKKNITY. 573 
 
 catastrophe, when lie found that Solomon had done nothing to 
 hinder it. 
 
 Hiram could not withdraw himself from the scene of his dis- 
 comfiture. Oppressed with grief, he heeded not the danger, he 
 remembered not that this ocean of fire might speedily engulf him ; 
 lie thought of the Queen of Sheba, who came to admire and con- 
 gratulate him on a great triumph, and who saw nothing but a 
 deadly disaster. Suddenly he heard a strange voice coming from 
 above and crying, "Hiram, Hiram, Hiram! " He raised his eyes 
 and beheld a gigantic figure. The Apparition continued : "Come, 
 my son, be without fear, I have rendered thee incombustible; cast 
 thyself into the flames." 
 
 Full of the faith of genius and of love, Hiram threw himself 
 into the furnace, and where others would have found death, he 
 tasted ineffable delights; nor could he, drawn by an irresistible 
 force, leave it, and he asked the Spirit tint drew him into the 
 abyss: " Whither dost them take me ?" "Into the centre of the 
 earth, into the soul of the workl, into the kingdom of great Cain, 
 where liberty reigns with him. There the tyrannous envy of 
 Adonai ceases; there can we, despising his. anger, taste the fruit 
 of the tree of knowledge; there u the home of thy fathers." 
 "AVho then am 1, and who art thou?" "I am the father of thy 
 fathers, I am the son of Lamech, I am Tubal-Cain." 
 
 Then Tubal-Cain introduced Hiram into the secret sanctuary 
 ot' the Inmost Fire, where he expounded to him the weakness of 
 Adonai and the base passions of that god, the enemy of his own 
 creature, whom he. condemned to the inexorable law of death, to 
 offset the benefits which the genii of fire had bestowed on him. 
 II i ram was thus led into the presence of his ancestor, Cain, and 
 the Angel of Light that begat Cain was reflected in the beauty of 
 this son of love, Avhose noble and generous mind had roused the 
 envy of Adonai. 
 
 Cain related to Hiram all the experiences, sufferings, and mis- 
 fortunes, brought upon him by the implacable Adonai. Presently 
 he heard the voice of him who was the offspring of Tubal-Cain 
 and his sister Naamah, saying: "A son shall be born unto thee 
 whom thou shalt, indeed, not see, but whose numerous descend- 
 ants shall perpetuate thy nice, which, superior to that of Adam,
 
 574 TIIK STOKY OF flOVEHNMENT. 
 
 shall acquire the empire of the world; for many centuries they 
 shall consecrate their courage and genius to the service of the 
 ever ungrateful race of Adam, but at last lowest shall become 
 highest, the gentlest shall become the strongest, and restore on the 
 earth the worship of fire. Thy sons, invincible in thy name, shall 
 destroy the power of kings and of all tyrants, of the rich who arc 
 kings of the poor, yea, and all the ministers of Adonai's tyranny. 
 Go, my son, the Spirits of Fire are with thee ! " 
 
 Then Hiram was returned to the earth; and Tubal-Cain before 
 quitting him gave him the hammer with which he himself had 
 wrought great things, saying : " Thanks to this hammer and the 
 help of the genii of fire, thou shalt speedily accomplish the work 
 left unfinished through man's stupidity and malignity." Hiram 
 did not hesitate to test at once the wonderful efficacy of the precious 
 instrument, and the new dawn beheld that great mass of bronze 
 cast in a shape like unto the sea when it laughs up at the moon. 
 The artist felt a most lively joy; the queen exulted; the people 
 came running up, astounded at tliis secret power which in one 
 night had repaired everything; and Solomon in silence ate his 
 heart. 
 
 One day, not long after, the queen, accompanied by her maids, 
 went beyond the walls of Jerusalem, and there encountered Hiram, 
 alone and thoughtful. The encounter was decisive; they con- 
 fessed their love. Had-Had, the bird who filled with the queen 
 the office of messenger from the Genii of Fire, seeing Hiram in 
 the air make the sign of the mystic T, flew around his head and 
 settled on his wrist. At this Sarahil, the nurse of the queen, 
 exclaimed: "The oracle is fulfilled. Had-Had recognizes the 
 husband which the Genii of Fire destined for Balkis, whose love 
 alone she dare accept I " 
 
 Whereupon the lovers hesitated no longer, but plighted their 
 troth, and deliberated how Balkis could escape fulfilling t he- 
 promise given to the king. Hiram was to be the first to quit 
 Jerusalem ; the queen, impatient to rejoin him in Arabia, was to 
 elude the vigilance of the king, which she accomplished by with- 
 drawing from his finger, while he was overcome with wine, the 
 ring wherewith she had pledged herself to him. 
 
 But meanwhile Solomon had hinted to the envious fellow-crafts
 
 CiKAXI) MAST Kit OF THK UXITKII (JKAXI) J.OIXiK OK KX(il.AM).
 
 576 THE STORV OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 that the removal of his rival, who had refused to give them the 
 master's word, would be acceptable unto himself; so, when the 
 architect came into the temple to look at his great work for the 
 last time, he was assailed and slain by them. Before his death, 
 however, he had time to throw the golden triangle which he wore 
 round his neck, and on which was engraven the master's word, 
 into a deep well. They wrapped up his body, carried it to a soli- 
 tary hill, and buried it, planting over the grave a sprig of acacia. 
 
 Hiram, not having been seen for seven days, Solomon, against 
 his inclination, but to satisfy the clamor of the people, was 
 forced to have a search made. The body was found by three 
 masters, and they, suspecting that he had been slain by the three 
 fellow-crafts for refusing them the master's word, determined, 
 nevertheless, for greater security, to change the word, and that 
 the first word accidentally uttered on raising the body should 
 thenceforth be the word. 
 
 In the act of raising it, the skin came off the body, so that one 
 of the masters exclaimed, - (meaning the flesh is off the 
 
 ) and this word, never to be uttered aloud, and only whispered 
 
 in syllables under certain conditions, then became the sacred word 
 of the master's degree. The three fellow-crafts were traced, but 
 rather than fall into the hands of their pursuers, they committed 
 suicide, and their heads were brought to Solomon. 
 
 The triangle, not having been found 011 the body of Hiram, was 
 sought for and at last discovered in the well into which he had 
 cast it. The king caused it to be placed on a triangular altar 
 erected in a secret vault, built under the most retired part of the 
 temple. The triangle was further concealed by a cubical stone, 
 on which had been inscribed the sacred law. The vault, the 
 existence of which was only known to the twenty-seven elect, 
 was then walled up. 
 
 Such is the Legend of the Temple to which for many years 
 .Masonry used to point as the first material work of its mystical, 
 ancient order, for Masonry has always, until recently, laid claim to 
 extreme ancientness as one of its many marks of augustness. 
 Indeed, all nations, all states, all corporations, to increase their 
 power and deduce from above their excuse for existence, attribute 
 to themselves a very early origin.
 
 A GOVERNMENT OF MYSTERY AND FRATERNITY. 577 
 
 This wish must be all the stronger in a society altogether ideal 
 and moral, living a life of principles, which needs rather to seem, 
 not coeval with, but anterior and superior to, all others. Hence 
 the curious, fantastic claim set up by Freemasonry of being, not 
 contemporary with the creation of man, but with that of the 
 world ; because light was before man, and prepared for him a 
 suitable habitation, and light is the scope and symbol of Free- 
 masonry. 
 
 Now it has been believed by some dreamers that there was from 
 the very first appearance of man on the earth a highly favored and 
 civilized race, possessing a full knowledge of the laws and proper- 
 ties of nature, which knowledge was embodied in mystical figures 
 and schemes such as were deemed appropriate and necessary for 
 its preservation and propagation. 
 
 These figures and schemes were supposedly discovered by 
 magi, or wise men, in different ages, and are partially preserved 
 in Masonry, though their meaning is no longer understood by the 
 fraternity. Granting for the sake of argument, or of art, or of 
 mere picturesqueness, that there have been and still are beings of 
 that ancient, more fiery race, still wandering on earth, trying to 
 help men, yet constantly hindered and misunderstood by men, 
 what are the real truths or doctrines hidden under the symbols 
 and enigmatical forms of their mystic science, forms and sym- 
 bols, which without a key appear but as absurd and debasing rites 
 and ceremonies? 
 
 The aim of all the secret societies of the past, except those 
 which were purely predatory, or political, was to preserve such 
 knowledge as still survived, or to recover what had been lost. 
 And since Freemasonry is, so to speak, the resumt of the teachings 
 of all those societies, dogmas in accordance with one or more of 
 those taught in the ancient mysteries and other associations are 
 to be found in Masonry; hence also it is impossible to attribute 
 its origin to one or other specific society preceding it. Free- 
 masonry is or rather ought to be the compendium of all 
 primitive accumulated human knowledge. 
 
 Masonic writers generally divide the history of the Order into 
 two periods, the first comprising the time from its assumed foun- 
 dation to the beginning of the last century, during which the
 
 578 THK STOKY OF (JOVKUNMKNT. 
 
 Order admitted only masons, i. e., operative masons and artificers 
 in some way connected with architecture. During the earlier 
 period the Operative Brotherhood built most of those marvellous 
 structures which delight the eye of the traveller in Europe. Of 
 these tlr.; Cathedral of Ivheims and the Cathedral, Baptistry and 
 Leaning Tower of Pisa of which we give pictures are shining 
 examples. 
 
 The second or present period, they denominate, the period of 
 Speculative Masonry, when the Order no longer chooses its mem- 
 l>ers only amongst men engaged in the raising of material struc- 
 tures, but receives into its ranks all who are willing to assist in 
 building a spiritual temple, the temple of universal harmony and 
 knowledge. Yet persons who were not working masons had 
 before the last century been admitted, for the records of a lodge 
 at Warington, as old as 1648, note the admission of Colonel 
 Mainwaring, and the great antiquary, Ashmole. Charles I., 
 Charles II., and James II. also were initiated. 
 
 Still, from what has been said above, does it not follow that true 
 Masonry always was speculative^ and that to deduce any specific 
 origin from the ancient Dionysiac mysteries or any other kindred 
 college is sheer nonsense ? The name "masonic " was adopted by 
 the society on its reconstruction in the last century, because the 
 brotherhood of builders who erected the magnificent cathedrals 
 and other buildings that arose during the Middle Ages had 
 lodges, degrees, landmarks, secret signs, and passwords, such as 
 the builders of the temple of Solomon are said to have had. 
 But of a perfect, unbroken connection absolute historic proof is 
 still lacking. 
 
 Yet, considering that Freemasonry is a tree, the roots of which 
 are spread through so many soils, it follows that traces of many 
 things must be found in its fruit; or that its language and ritual 
 should retain much of the various sects and institutions it has 
 passed through before arriving at their present state, and accord- 
 ingly in Masonry we meet with Indian, Egyptian, Jewish, and 
 Christian ideas, terms, and symbols. 
 
 For instance, the Masonic alphabet preserves the angular 
 character of primitive alphabets. Thirteen characters (9 + 4) 
 << impose the Masonic system of writing. Hence all the sounds
 
 
 B7P
 
 580 
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 can only be represented by means of points, in the following 1 
 manner : 
 
 A-B 
 
 G-H 
 
 O-P 
 
 C-D 
 
 I- L 
 Q-R 
 
 E-F 
 
 M-N 
 
 S-T 
 
 The letter, a, is written _J ; the same sign with a dot in it, _1J, 
 means b; the sign > means u, and with a dot >-, v. Masonic 
 abbreviations are always indicated by three dots, placed triangu- 
 larly. Thus, brother is abbreviated B.. Lodge is written L.-. 
 or 0. in the plural LL.-. or ["51 V Our common alphabet has an 
 equally simple origin, as well as the Arabic numerals; they are 
 all contained in combinations of the lines of this figure : 
 
 A, b,~U, C cUD, E, F, C, H, I, 
 
 J, K, L, M, N, ID, R q, P, X, T, 
 
 U, V, X, Y, Z, D, I, Z, 2, 4 b, 
 
 A. 7, z, 1, 
 
 The general reader who is not a Mason may be interested in a 
 brief description of various lodges and of various modern cere- 
 monies in the making of an apprentice, a fellow-craft, and a mas- 
 ter. The arrangement of the lodge varies and will vary according 
 to periods and degrees, but certain general rules are always followed 
 in its construction. According to the most ancient French cate- 
 chism the lodge must have a vaulted ceiling, painted blue and 
 covered with golden stars to represent the heavens. 
 
 The floor is called a mosaic floor; the term "mosaic" being 
 derived from Moses; i. e., "drawn from the water," because by
 
 A GOVERNMENT OF, MYSTERY AND FRATERNITY. 581 
 
 its variegated colors it represents the earth as covered with flowers 
 again after the withdrawal of the waters of the Nile. There are 
 three windows, one east, one west, and a third south. There 
 must also be two or three ante-chambers, so that the profane, 
 which is the technical term for outsiders, may catch no glimpse 
 of what is going on in the lodge. If, by accident, some stranger 
 should nevertheless intrude, the master exclaims, "It rains!" 
 and the lodge is ipso facto dissolved. 
 
 The lodge should be always hung with black ; the brethren 
 taking their places according to their rank ; the Grand Master in 
 the east, the Master in the south, and the novices at the north. 
 When an apprentice is made, the lodge is brightly illuminated. 
 The Grand Master, seated in his place, wears on his neck, 
 appended to a large ribbon, a small square and compasses. Before 
 him stands a table on which lie the Gospel of St. John and a 
 small hammer. At his side are the two stewards, the first of 
 whom wetirs a level and the second a plumb of gold or silver. 
 The masters and fellow-crafts stand around with the apprentices, 
 all wearing white aprons of lamb skin, and each carrying a naked 
 sword. 
 
 On the floor are peculiar patterns, representing the steps that 
 led to Solomon's temple, and the two pillars, Jachin and Boaz, 
 but which in reality symbolize the summer and winter solstices, 
 the pillars of Hercules, the two pillars of Seth. Above are seen 
 the sun, moon, and a large star. 
 
 A coffin covers the centre of the floor, in which lies a man 
 apparently dead, with his face turned upward and shrouded with 
 his white apron smeared with blood, one hand resting on his 
 breast and the other extended towards the knee. In the corners 
 of the room are substances easily combustible, such as sulphur, 
 to kindle a fire instantaneously. This apparatus is somewhat 
 altered when a fellow-craft or a master is to be made. Such was 
 the old French lodge of which two pictures are given. 
 
 The modern lodge is a large square hall, always, if possible, 
 situated due east and west. Upon a dais, ascended by three steps 
 opposite the door of ingress, sits the Worshipful Master. Instead 
 of the coffin an altar is placed in the centre on four steps. A 
 sky-blue canopy dotted with stare, and having above it the shin-
 
 582 THK STOKY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 ing triangle with the sacred name inscribed therein, covers the 
 throne. 
 
 To the left of the canopy is a symbol of the sun, and to the 
 right of the moon. Another ornament is the blazing star, and 
 the point within a circle, symbolizing the sun in the universe. 
 A chest or ark also forms part of the Masonic furniture. To the 
 west, at the sides of the door of ingress, stand two pillars of 
 bronze, whose capitals represent pomegranates, bearing on their 
 fronts the initials J. and B. (Jachin and Boaz). 
 
 The senior and junior wardens sit near thase two columns, 
 having before them a triangular table, covered with masonic 
 emblems. Around the lodge there are ten other pillars connected 
 by an architrave with the two pillars above mentioned. 
 
 On the altar rest a Bible, a square, a pair of compasses and 
 swords, and three candelabra with long tapers are placed, one at 
 the east at the foot of the steps, the second at the west, near the 
 first warden, and the third at the south. The room is surrounded 
 with benches for the members. 
 
 In the lodges called Scotch, and in English and American 
 lodges, the canopy that covers the master's throne is of crimson 
 silk. In the United States, the Worshipful Muster wears a cap 
 adorned with black feathers and a large cockade of the same color. 
 The senior and junior wardens are seated in niches with fringed 
 drapery, and wear, like heralds, staves of ebony sculptured like 
 pillars. 
 
 Besides the master and the wardens, who are figuratively called 
 the three lights, the lodge has other officers the orator, secre- 
 tary, treasurer, master of the ceremonies, keeper of the seals. 
 architect, steward, captain of the host, principal sojourner, inner 
 and outer guard or tyler, and others. Every official occupies a 
 place assigned to him, and has his proper jewels and badges, just 
 as was the case with the Egyptian, Hebrew, and Greek priests in 
 the antique mysteries. 
 
 The meetings are generally held at night. The Worshipful 
 Master, striking the altar with his mallet, " opens the labors, " and 
 after having ascertained that the lodge is tyled, i. e., covered 
 over or guarded well, he turns to the junior warden and says : 
 " Brother junior warden, your constant place in the lodge ? "
 
 584 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 "In the south." 
 
 " Why are you placed there ? " 
 
 " To mark the sun at its meridian, to call the brethren from 
 labor to refreshment, and from refreshment to labor, that profit 
 and pleasure may be the result." 
 
 "Brother senior warden, your constant place in the lodge?" 
 
 " In the west." 
 
 " Why are you placed there ? " 
 
 " To mark the setting sun ; to close the lodge by the command 
 of the Worshipful Master, after seeing that every one has his just 
 clues." 
 
 "Why is the master placed in the east? 
 
 "As the sun rises in the east to open and enliven the day, so 
 the Worshipful Master is placed in the east to open and enlighten 
 his lodge, to employ and instruct the brethren." 
 
 "At what hour are Masons accustomed to begin their labors? " 
 
 "At mid-day." 
 
 " What hour is it, brother junior warden ? " 
 
 "It is mid-day." 
 
 "Since this is the hour, and all is proved right and just, I 
 declare the lodge open." 
 
 The purely astronomical bearing of all this is self-evident to 
 any student of Chaldean lore, of the pyramids, or of the ruins of 
 Yucatan. It is a relic of astrology, the science or superstition of 
 the stars. 
 
 When a novice in some societies, but not in all (for initiations 
 differ in different places) is to be initiated into the first or appren- 
 tice degree, he is led into the lodge building by a stranger to him, 
 and introduced into a remote chamber, where he is left alone 
 for a few minutes. 
 
 He is then deprived of all metal he may have about him ; his 
 right knee, and in some lodges his left side, are uncovered, and 
 the heel of his left shoe, if he wears a low one, is trodden down. 
 His eyes are bandaged, and he is led into the closet of reflec- 
 tion where he is told to stay without taking off the bandage, until 
 he hears three knocks. 
 
 At the signal, on uncovering his eyes, he beholds on the walls 
 hung with black a variety of inscriptions like the following: "If
 
 A GOVERNMENT OF MYSTERY AND FRATERNITY. 585 
 
 idle curiosity draw thee hither, depart! " "If them be afraid of 
 being enlightened concerning thine errors, it profits thee not to 
 stay here." "If thou value human distinctions, go hence ; here 
 they are not known." 
 
 After a palaver between the brother who introduces the novice 
 .and the master, the candidate, having his eyes again bandaged 
 and a rope passed round his neck, is introduced into the middle 
 of the brethren, his guide pointing a naked sword to his breast. 
 
 He is then keenly questioned as to his object in coming there, 
 and on answering that he comes to be initiated into the secrets 
 of Masonry, he is led out of the lodge and back again several 
 times to confuse him on the perception of distances. 
 
 A large square frame covered with paper, such as circus riders 
 use, is then brought forward and held by two brethren. The guide 
 then asks the master : " What shall we do with the profane ? " 
 To which the master replies: "Shut him up in the cave." 
 
 T\vo brethren seize the postulant and throw him through the 
 paper screen into the arms of two other brethren who stand ready 
 to receive him. The folding doors, hitherto left open, are then 
 .shut with noise, and by means of an iron ring and bar the closing 
 of massive locks is imitated, so that the candidate fancies himself 
 shut up in a dungeon. Some time then passes in sepulchral 
 silence. 
 
 All at once the master strikes a quick blow, and orders the 
 candidate to be placed beside the junior warden in a kneeling 
 position. The master then addresses several questions to him, and 
 informs him of his duties towards the Order. Next a beverage is 
 offered to the candidate with the intimation that, if any treason 
 lurks in his heart, the drink will turn to poison. 
 
 The bowl containing this dangerous drink has two compart- 
 ments, the one holding sweet, the other bitter water, such as that 
 in a cup of quassia wood. The candidate is then made to repeat: 
 "I bind myself to the strict and rigorous observance of the duties 
 prescribed to Freemasons, and if ever I violate my oath " - (here 
 his guide puts the sweet water to his lips, and having drunk 
 some, the candidate continues) " I consent that the sweetness of 
 this drink be turned into bitterness, and that its salutary effect 
 become for me that of a subtle poison."
 
 586 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The candidate is then made to drink of the bitter water, where- 
 upon the master exclaims: " What do I see? What means the 
 sudden alteration of your features? Perhaps your conscience 
 belies your words? Has the sweet drink already turned bitter? 
 Away with the profane one ! This oath is only a test; the true 
 one comes after." 
 
 The candidate being then asked if lie persists in his determina- 
 tion, and generally answering yes, as his curiosity is now well 
 whetted, he is led a number of times round the lodge ; then he is 
 dragged over broken chairs, stools, and blocks of wood. This 
 trial over, he is told to mount the "endless stairs," and having, 
 as he supposes, attained a great height, he is ordered to cast 
 himself down, in which act he only falls a few feet. 
 
 This ordeal, which is imitated in other secret orders, and in 
 some with an elaborate cleverness well calculated to delude and 
 scare the average candidate, is accompanied by much noise, the 
 brethren striking on the attributes of the order they carry in their 
 hands, and uttering all kinds of dismal shouts. 
 
 As a further trial, he is then passed through fire, which is 
 rendered harmless by well-known conjuring tricks. Then his 
 arm is slightly pricked, and a gurgling noise being produced by 
 one of the brethren, the novice sometimes fancies that he is losing 
 much blood. 
 
 Finally, he takes the oath, the brethren standing around him 
 with drawn swords. The candidate is then led between the two 
 pillars, and the brethren place their swords against his breast. 
 The master of the ceremonies loosens the bandage without taking 
 it off. Another brother holds before him a lamp that sheds a 
 brilliant light. 
 
 The master speaks: "Brother senior warden, deem you the 
 candidate worthy of forming part of our society? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "What do you ask for him? " 
 
 "Light." 
 
 "Then let there be light! " 
 
 Three blows with a mallet the master gives, and at the third 
 the bandage is taken off, and the candidate beholds ihe light, 
 symbolizing that which is to fill his understanding.
 
 f>SS THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The brethren drop their swords, and the candidate is conducted 
 to the altar, where he kneels, whilst the master says: "In the 
 name of the Grand Architect of the Universe, and by virtue of 
 the powers vested in me, I create and constitute thee a masonic 
 apprentice and member of this lodge." 
 
 Then striking three more blows with his mallet on the blade of 
 the sword, he raises the new brother, girds him with the apron 
 of white lambskin, gives him a pair of white gloves to be worn 
 in the lodge, and another to be given to the lady lie esteems 
 best. He is then again led between the two pillars, and received 
 by the brethren as one of them. 
 
 The second degree of symbolic Freemasonry is that of Fellow- 
 Craft. The apprentice, who comes asking for an increase of 
 salary, a veiy natural formula for an apprentice is not con- 
 ducted like the novice by an unknown brother, nor are his eyes 
 bandaged, because the light was made for him, but he moves 
 towards the lodge holding in his hand a rule, one of whose ends 
 he rests on the left shoulder. 
 
 Having reached the door, he gives the apprentice's knock, and 
 having been admitted and declared the purpose for which he 
 comes, he walks five times round the lodge, whereupon he is told 
 by the master to perform his last apprentice's work. He then 
 pretends to square the rough ashlar. After a deal of instruction, 
 he takes the oath in which he swears to keep the secrets entrusted 
 to him. 
 
 Then there follows more lecturing on the part of the master, 
 chiefly on geometry, a science which Masons profess to consider 
 very precious but of which they know precious little, and t<> 
 which the letter G seen in the lodge within an irradiation or 
 star is supposed to refer, but it more likely is a relic of geo- 
 mancy, an odd business practised by Chinese Masons, especially 
 as to the proper places in which to build a house. 
 
 The degree of Master Mason is more interesting. At the 
 reception of a master, the lodge or "middle chamber" is draped 
 with black, with death's heads, skeletons, and cross-bones, and 
 other cheerful welcomes painted on the walls. A taper of yellow 
 wax, placed in the east, and a dark lantern, formed of a skull 
 Laving a light within, which shines forth, through the eye-holes,
 
 A GOVERNMENT OF MYSTERY AND FRATERNITY. 589 
 
 placed on the altar of the most Worshipful Master, gives just 
 sufficient light to reveal a coffin, wherein the corpse is represented 
 either by a lay-figure, a serving brother, or by the brother last 
 made a master. 
 
 On the coffin is a sprig of acacia, at its head is a square, and 
 at its foot, towards the east, an open compass. The masters are 
 clothed in black, 1 and wear large azure sashes, on which are 
 represented Masonic emblems, the sun, moon, and seven stars. 
 The object of the meeting is said to be the finding of the word of 
 the master, Hiram Abiff, who was slain. 
 
 The postulant for admission is introduced after some prelimi- 
 nary ceremonies, having his two arms, breasts, and knees bare, and 
 both heels slip-shod. He is told that the brethren assembled arc 
 mourning the death of their Grand Master, and asked whether 
 perhaps he was one of the murderers, and at the same time he is 
 shown the body or figure in the coffin. 
 
 Having declared his innocence of any share in that crime, he is 
 informed that he will on this occasion have to enact the part of 
 Hiram, who was slain at the building of Solomon's temple, and 
 whose history he is about to be told. 
 
 The brother, or figure in the coffin, has in the meantime been 
 removed, so that when the aspirant looks at it again, much to his 
 surprise he finds it empty. The story of the murder of Hiram is 
 then told in a very impressive fashion. The deed is not, how- 
 ever, as in the Legend of the Temple previously given, attributed 
 to Solomon's jealousy, but simply to Hiram's refusal to com- 
 municate the master's word to three fellow-crafts. The various 
 incidents of this story are scenically enacted on the postulant by 
 the brother Masons, for in every lodge there are generally some 
 very fair actors. 
 
 "Hiram," the master continues, "having entered the temple at 
 noon, the three assassins placed themselves at the east, west, and 
 south doors, and Hiram refusing to reveal the word, he who stood 
 at the east door cut Hiram across the throat with a twenty-four 
 inch gauge. Hiram flew to the south door, where he received 
 
 tin New Yo^liJlodgT7om~po8ed entirely of actors who once a year meet an.l go through 
 all the Masonic cereraonie 8 attired in gorgeous costumes of truly or.ental ami Solomonic 
 magnificence. This drama, all Masonic witnesses agree, is equal in impre^iveness to the 
 celebrated 1'assion Play at Ol>erammergau.
 
 590 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 similar treatment, and thence to the west door, where he was 
 struck on the head with a gavel which occasioned his death." 
 
 The applicant, at this part of the recital, is informed that he, 
 too, must undergo trials, and must not sink under the influence 
 
 O 
 
 of terror, though the hand of death be upon him. He is .then 
 struck on the forehead and thrown down. 
 
 The master continues: "The ruffians carried the body out at 
 the west door, and buried it at the side of a hill " here the 
 postulant is placed in the coffin " in a grave, on which they 
 stuck a sprig of acacia to mark the spot. Hiram not making his 
 appearance as usual, Solomon caused search to be made for him by 
 twelve trusty fellow-crafts that were sent out, three east, three 
 Avest, three south, and three north. Of the three who went east, 
 one being weary, sat down on the brow of a hill to rest himself, 
 and in rising caught hold of a twig " - here a twig of that plant 
 is put into the hand of the aspirant lying in the coffin " which 
 coming up easily, showed that the ground had been recently 
 disturbed, and on digging he and his companions found the body 
 of Hiram. It was in a mangled condition, having lain fourteen 
 lays, whereupon one of those present exclaimed - - which 
 
 means and this became the master's word, as the former 
 
 one was lost through Hiram's death; for though the other two 
 masters, Solomon, and Hiram, king of Tyre, knew it, it could 
 only be communicated by the three Grand Masters conjointly. 
 The covering of the grave being green moss and turf, other 
 bystanders exclaimed, 'Musciis domus domino, del gratia /' which 
 means, 'Thanks be unto God, our master hath got . a mossy 
 house ! ' " 
 
 This exclamation shows that the Hebrew builders of Solomon's 
 temple possessed a prophetic knowledge of the Latin tongue! 
 The body of Hiram could not be raised by the apprentice's or fel- 
 low-craft's grip, but only by the master's, or the lion's grip, as 
 it is called. All this is then imitated by the master raising the 
 uspirant in the coffin, who is then told the word, signs and grips, 
 and takes the oath. 
 
 Taken literally, the story of Hiram would offer nothing so 
 extraordinary as to deserve to be commemorated after three thou- 
 sand years throughout the world by solemn rites and ceremonies.
 
 TUB CATHEDltAt, AT KUKIM-. 
 
 591
 
 592 THE STOUY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The death of an architect is not so important a matter as to have 
 more honor paid to it than is shown to the memory of so many 
 philosophers and learned men who have lost their lives in the 
 cause of human progress. History knows nothing of him. His 
 name, to be sure, is mentioned in the Bible, but it is simply said 
 that he was a man of understanding and cunning in brass. I It- 
 is remembered nowhere except in Freemasonry; the legend, in 
 fact, is purely allegorical, and may bear a twofold interpreta- 
 tion cosmological and astronomical. 
 
 Cosmologically, w r e find represented therein the dualism of 
 two antagonistic powers, Good and Evil, God and Devil, 
 which is the leading feature of all Eastern initiations. The dra- 
 matic portion of the Mysteries of antiquity is always sustained 
 by a deity or man who perishes as the victim of an evil power, 
 and rises again into a more glorious existence. In the ancient 
 Mysteries, i. e., the Priestly Plays, or the dramatic ceremonies of 
 all nations, we constant^ meet with the record of a sad event, a 
 crime which plunges nations into strife and grief, succeeded by 
 joy and exultation. 
 
 Astronomically, again, the parallel is perfect, and is, in fact, 
 only another version of the legend of Osiris. Hiram represents 
 Osiris, i. e., the sun. The assassins place themselves at the 
 west, south, and east doors, that is, the regions illuminated by 
 the sun; they bury the body, and mark the spot with a sprig of 
 acacia. Twelve persons play an important part in the tragedy, 
 viz., the three murderers (fellow-crafts), and nine masters. This 
 number is a plain allusion to the twelve signs of the zodiac, and 
 the three inferior signs of winter, Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius. 
 
 Hiram falls dead at the west door, i. e., the sun descends in the 
 west. The acacia, of Freemasonry is the plant found in all tin- 
 ancient solar allegories, symbolizing the new vegetation to be 
 anticipated by the sun's resurrection. The acacia being looked 
 upon by the ancients as incorruptible, its twigs were preferred fnr 
 covering the body of the god-man to the myrtle, laurel, and other 
 plants also mentioned in the ancient Mysteries. 
 
 Hiram's body is in a state of decay, having lain fourteen days. 
 according to one legend ; the body of Osiris w r as cut into fourteen 
 pieces. But, according to other statements, the body was found
 
 A GOVERNMENT OF MYSTERY AND FRATERNITY. 593 
 
 on the seventh, day; this would allude to the resurrection of the 
 sun, which actually takes place in the seventh month after his 
 passage through the inferior signs, that passage which is called 
 his descent into hell. 
 
 Hi ram can only be raised by the lion's grip. It is through the 
 instrumentality of Leo, 1 the sign of the lion, that Osiris is raised; 
 it is when the sun re-enters that sign that he regains his former 
 strength, that his restoration to full life takes place. Masons in 
 tliis degree call themselves the "children of the widow," the sun 
 on descending into his tomb leaving nature of whom Masons 
 consider themselves the pupils a widow; yet this appellation 
 may also have its origin in some reminiscence of the Manichean 
 .sect, whose followers were known as the "sons of the widow." 
 
 The degree of the Holy Royal Arch is also worthy of attention. 
 The members of this are denominated "companions/' There are 
 nine officers, the chief of whom (in England) is Zerubbabel, a 
 compound word, meaning "the bright lor*d, the sun." He 
 rebuilds the temple, and therefore represents the sun risen again. 
 The next officer is Jeshua, the high priest; the third, Haggai, 
 the prophet. 
 
 These three compose the grand council. Principals and senior 
 and junior scribes, one on each side, janitor or tyler without the 
 door, these companions assembled make up the sides of the arch, 
 representing the pillars Jachin and Boaz. In front of the princi- 
 pals stands an altar, inscribed with the names of Solomon, Hiram, 
 King of Tyre, and Hiram Abiff. 
 
 On entering the chapter, the companions give the sign of sor- 
 row, in imitation of the ancients mourning for the loss of Osiris. 
 Nine companions must be present at the opening of a Royal Arch 
 chapter; not more nor less than three are permitted to take this 
 degree at the same time, the two numbers making up the twelve, 
 the number of zodiacal signs. The candidates are prepared by 
 tving a bandage over their eyes, and coiling a rope seven times 
 round the body of each, which unites them together, with three 
 feet of slack between them. 
 
 Edgar Foe, tip most mysteriouT^Tmoderns, who dabbled in all occultisms, and whose 
 writings are full of astrological references, in his weird Ulalume has similar hi 
 Came up through the lair of the Lion 
 With love in her luminous eyes.
 
 594 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 They then pass under the living arch, which is made by the 
 companions either joining their hands and holding them up, or 
 by holding their rods or swords so as to resemble a gothic arch. 
 This part of the ceremony used to be attended in some lodges 
 with much tomfoolery and rough horse play. The companions 
 would drop down on the candidates, Avho were obliged to support 
 themselves on their hands and knees ; and if they went too slowly, 
 it was not unusual for one or more of the companions to apply a 
 sharp point to their bodies to urge them on. 
 
 Trials, such as the candidates for initiation into the ancient 
 mysteries had to go through, were also imitated in the royal arch. 
 But few, if any, lodges now practise these tricks, fit only for 
 clowns in vul'gar pantomimes. The candidates, after tak ; ng the 
 oath, declare that they come in order to assist at the rebuilding 
 of Solomon's temple, whereupon they are furnished with pickaxes, 
 shovels, and crowbars, and retire. 
 
 After awhile, during which they are supposed to have been at 
 work and to have made a discovery, they return, and state, that 
 on digging for the new foundation they discovered an under- 
 ground vault, into which one of them was let down, where he 
 found a scroll, which on examination turns out to be the long- 
 lost book of the law. 
 
 They set to work again, and discover another vault, and under 
 that a third. The sun having now gained his meridian height, 
 darts his rays to the centre, and shines on a white marble pedestal, 
 on which is a plate of gold. On this plate is a double triangle, 
 and within the triangle some words they cannot understand ; they 
 therefore take the plate to Zerubbabel. 
 
 There the whole mystery of Masonry as far as known to 
 Masons is unveiled; what the Masons have long been in search 
 of is found, for the mysterious writing in a triangular form is the 
 long lost sacred word of the Master Mason which Solomon and 
 King Hiram deposited there, as we have seen in the master's 
 degree. 
 
 This was no other than the logos of Plato and Saint John, the 
 jewel in the bosom of the lotos of Buddha, Anm, the onmific 
 word; but another compound name, intended to bear the same 
 import, is substituted by modern Masons, and is communicated to
 
 596 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the candidates in this way : The three principals and each three 
 companions form the triangles; each of the three takes his left 
 hand companion by the right-hand wrist, and his right-hand com- 
 panion by the left-hand wrist, forming two distinct triangles with 
 the hands, and a triangle with their right feet, amounting to a 
 triple triangle ; then they pronounce the following words : 
 
 As we three did agree, 
 In peace, love, and unity, 
 The sacred word to keep, 
 So we three do agree, 
 In peace, love, and unity, 
 
 , The sacred word to search, 
 
 Until we three, 
 
 Or three such as we, shall agree 
 This royal arch chapter to close. 
 
 The right hands, still joined as a triangle, are raised as high as 
 possible, and the word given at low breath in syllables, so that 
 each companion has to pronounce the whole word. It is not per- 
 mitted to utter this omnific word above the breath. Zerubbabel 
 next makes the new companions acquainted with the five signs 
 used in this degree, and invests them with the badges of Royal 
 Arch Masonry, the apron, sash, and jewel. 
 
 The character on the apron is the triple Tan, one of the most 
 ancieot of emblems, and Masons call it the emblem of emblems, 
 "wit* a depth that reaches to the creation of the world and all 
 that is therein." This triple Tau is a compound figure of three 
 T's, called Tau in Greek. Now this Tau or T is the figure of 
 the old Egyptian Kilometer, which was a pole crossed with one 
 or more transverse pieces, used to ascertain the height of the 
 inundation. 
 
 As on the Nile's overflow depended the harvest, the life of 
 the inhabitants, the Nilometer thus became the symbol of life, 
 health and prosperity, was accounted a talisman against evil, 
 and thus, as an amulet, was introduced among Masonic emblems. 
 Herein lies the grand secret of Masonry which passes by symbols 
 from superstitions to science. 
 
 The influence of Masonry or the bearing of the Order on great 
 events in modern times will be found worthy of study by the 
 curious both in and out of the fold. A few points only can be
 
 A GOVERNMENT OF MYSTERY AND FRATERNITY. 597 
 
 noted in one chapter. Masonry was at its height in France just 
 before, during, and after the Revolution, and part of the immense 
 popularity of our agent, Benjamin Franklin, at the French court, 
 is supposed to be due to his high Masonic rank and intense 
 interest in the societ}'. 
 
 Napoleon at first meant to suppress Masonry. The representa- 
 tive system of the Grand Orient clashed with his monarchical prin- 
 ciples, and the oligarchic spirit of the Scotch rite aroused his 
 suspicions. The Parisian lodges, however, practised in the art of 
 flattery, humbled themselves before the first consul, prostrated 
 themselves l>efore the emperor, and sued for grace. The suspicions 
 of Napoleon were not dissipated; but he perceived the policy of 
 avoiding violent measures, and of controlling a body that might 
 turn against him. 
 
 After considerable hesitation, he declared in favor of the Grand 
 Orient, and the Scotch rite had to assume the second place. A 
 single word of Xapoleon had done more to establish peace between 
 these rivals than all former machinations. The Grand Orient 
 became a court office, and Masonry an army of employees. 
 
 The Grand Mastership was offered to Joseph Xapoleon, who 
 accepted it, though never initiated into Freemasonry, with the 
 consent of his brother, but Napoleon, for greater security, insisted 
 on having his trusty arch-chancellor Cambaeeres appointed Grand 
 Master Adjunct, to be in reality the only head of the order. 
 
 Gradually all the various branches existing in France gave in 
 their adhesion to the imperial policy, electing Cambaceres as 
 their chief dignitary, so that he eventually possessed more 
 Masonic titles than any other man before or after him. In 1805, 
 lie was made Grand Master Adjunct of the Grand Orient; in 
 1806, Sovereign Grand Master of the Supreme Grand Council; in 
 the same year, Grand Master of the rite of Heroden of Kihvin- 
 ning; in 1807, Supreme head of the French rite; in the same 
 year, Grand Master of the Philosophic Scotch rite; in 1808, 
 Grand Master of the Order of Christ; in 1809, National Grand 
 Master of the Knights of the Holy City; in the same year. Pro- 
 tector of the High Philosophic Degrees. 
 
 But soon Masonic disputes among the branches again ran high, 
 arch-chancellor, accustomed and attached to the nsa-cs and
 
 598 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 pomps of courts, secretly gave preference to the Scotch rite 
 with its high sounding titles and gorgeous ceremonies. The 
 Grand Orient then carried its complaints to Napoleon, who grew 
 weary of such farces, he who planned grand national dramas 
 and at one time he determined on abolishing the Order altogether, 
 but Cambace're's succeeded in arresting his purpose, showing him 
 the dangers that might ensue from its suppression dangers 
 which must have appeared great, since Napoleon, who had never 
 hesitated, hesitated then, and allowed another to alter his views. 
 
 Possibly the despot recognized the necessity in French society 
 of a body of men who were free, at least in appearance, as a kind 
 o political safety valve. The French had taken a liking to their 
 lodges, where they found a phantom of independence, and might 
 consider themselves on neutral ground, for as a Masonic writer of 
 that era remarked: "In the bosom of Masonry there circulates a 
 little of that vital air so necessary to generous minds." 
 
 In 1812, there existed in France one thousand and eighty-nine 
 lodges, all depending on the Grand Orient ; the army had sixty- 
 nine, and the lodge was opened and closed with the cry, Vive 
 r Empereur ! Long live the emperor, apiece of obsequiousness 
 of which, never since that day, has Freemasonry been guilty. 
 
 Napoleon, from merely tolerating it and keeping it well in hand, 
 at last employed it in the army, in the newly occupied territories, 
 and in such as he intended to occupy. Imperial proselytism 
 turned the lodges into schools of Napoleonism. So that it 
 becomes probable, if not certain, that Napoleon, by means of the 
 Masonic society, facilitated or secured his conquests. 
 
 Spain, Germany, and Italy were covered with lodges ante- 
 chambers, more than anything else, of prefectures and military 
 commands presided over and governed by soldiers. The highest 
 dignitaries of Masonry at that period were marshals, knights of 
 the Legion of Honor, nobles of ancient descent, senators, coun- 
 cillors, all safe and trusty persons; a state that obeyed the orders 
 of Cambace'res, as he obeyed the orders of Napoleon. 
 
 Obsequiousness then verged on the ridiculous. The half yearly 
 words of command of the Grand Orient Lodge of that era retrace 
 the history of Napoleonic progress. In 1800, the lodge words 
 were, "Science and Peace " ; in 1802, after the battle of Marengo,
 
 N S
 
 FJJU.M LE1PSIC. 
 
 5W -
 
 A GOVERNMENT OF MYSTERY AND FRATERNITY. 603 
 
 " Unity and Success "; in 1804, after the coronation, "Content- 
 ment and Greatness " ; after the battle of Friedland, " Emperor 
 and Confidence ; " after the suppression of the tribune, " Fidelity " ; 
 at the birth of Napoleon's son, styled the King of Rome, "Pos- 
 terity and Joy " ; at the departure of the army of Russia, 
 "Victory and Return." 
 
 Frightful victory! Melancholy return! Napoleon fell and 
 Masonry rose again from the dust of servility to her true stature 
 and proper attitude. Some scholars incline to the opinion that 
 in spite of the truckling of French Masons to Napoleon, Masons 
 elsewhere were so active against him that his fall should be ac- 
 credited more to Masonry than to Muscovite weather and his own 
 headlong confidence in his "star." They claim that, dating 
 from his retreat at Leipsic, of which a picture photographic in its 
 realism is given here, the influence of Masonry was thrown 
 against him into that scale of Destiny in which he was weighed 
 and found human. ' 
 
 Of course, Masonry offered an excellent field to adventurers 
 and skilful impostors to cultivate a crop of credulity by professing 
 to introduce new rites discovered or recovered by themselves from 
 the dusty crypts of tradition. It would take up too much space 
 to recount all the impostures which in the name of Masonry have 
 been foisted on the public. Let Cagliostro, with his Egyptian 
 Masonry, suffice as a specimen. 
 
 Joseph Balsamo, the disciple and successor of Saint Germain, 
 who pretended at the court of Louis XV. to have been the con- 
 temporary of Charles V., Francis I., and Christ, and to possess 
 the elixir of life and many other secrets, had vaster designs and a 
 loftier ambition than his teacher, and was one of the most active 
 agents of Freemasonry in France and the rest of Europe. 
 
 Balsamo was born at Palermo in 1743, and educated at two 
 convents in that city, where he acquired some chemical knowl- 
 edge. As a young man, he fell in with an Armenian, or Greek, 
 or Spaniard, called Althotas, a kind of adventurer who professed 
 to possess the philosopher's stone, with whom he led a roving 
 life for a number of years. What finally became of Althotas is 
 not positively known, but Balsamo found his way to Rome, 
 where he married the beautiful Lorenza Feliciana, whom he
 
 604 THK STORY OF G( > YKKN M KNT. 
 
 treated so badly that she ran away from him; but lie recovered 
 her and acquired still greater influence over her by magnetically 
 operating upon her. There seems to be no doubt that lie was a 
 remarkable magnetizer. 
 
 Visiting Germany, he was initiated into Freemasonry in which 
 he soon began to take a prominent part. He also assume;! differ- 
 ent titles, such as that of Marquis of Pellegrini, but the one he is 
 l)est known by is that of Count Cagliostro; and by his astuteness, 
 impudence, and some lucky hits at prophesying, lie acquired a 
 European notoriety and made many dupes, including persons of 
 the highest rank, especially in France, where he founded many 
 new Masonic lodges. 
 
 He was the author of a book called "The Kite of Egyptian 
 Masonry," Avhich rite he established first in Coin-land, and after- 
 wards in Germany, France, and England. After having been 
 banished from France, in consequence of his implication in a 
 matter concerning the queen, and driven from England by his 
 creditors, he was induced by his wife, who was weary of her wan- 
 dering life, and anxious once more to see her relations, to visit 
 Rome, where he was arrested on the charge of attempting to found 
 a Masonic lodge, against which a papal bull had recently been 
 promulgated, and was thrown into the castle of Saint Angelo, in 
 1789. He was condemned to death, but the punishment was 
 commuted to perpetual imprisonment. His wife was shut up in 
 a convent, and died soon after. Having been transferred to the 
 Castle of San Leo, he attempted to strangle the monk who had 
 been sent to confess him, in the hope of escaping in his gown; 
 but the attempt failed, and it is supposed he died, a prisoner, in 
 1795. 
 
 The Egyptian rite invented by Cagliostro is a mixture of the 
 sacred and profane, of the serious and laughable; charlatanism is 
 its prevailing feature. Having discovered a MS. of George 
 Cofton, in which was propounded a singular scheme for the reform 
 of Freemasonry in an alchymistic and fantastic sense, Cagliostro 
 succeeded in gaining many followers and much Avealth, by means 
 of this rite which he appears to have borrowed from Cofton. 
 He gave his dupes to understand that the scope of Egyptian 
 Masonry was to conduct men to perfection by means of physical
 
 A GOVERNMENT OF MYSTERY AND FRATERNITY. 605 
 
 and moral regeneration; asserting that the former was certain 
 through the use of prima materia l and the philosopher's stone, 
 which assured to man the strength of youth and immortality, and 
 that the second was to be achieved by the discovery of a pentagon 
 that would restore man to his primitive innocence. 
 
 This rite indeed is a tissue of fatuities it would not be worth 
 while to allude to, did it not offer matter for study to the philoso- 
 pher and moralist. Cagliostro pretended that the rite had been 
 first founded by Enoch, remodelled by Elias, and finally restored 
 by the Grand Copt. Both men and women this latter an 
 exception to Masonic customs were admitted, though the cere- 
 monies for each were slightly different, and the lodges for their 
 reception entirely distinct. 
 
 In the reception of women, among other formalities then- \v;is 
 that of breathing into the face of the neophyte, saying, " I breathe 
 upon you this breath to cause to germinate in you and grow in 
 your heart the truth we possess; I breathe it into you to 
 strengthen in you good intentions, and to confirm you in the 
 faith of your brothers and sisters. We constitute you a legiti- 
 mate daughter of true Egyptian adoption and of this worshipful 
 lodge." 
 
 One of the lodges was called "Sinai," where the most secret 
 rites were performed; another "Ararat," to symbolize the rest 
 reserved for Masons only. Concerning the pentagon, Cagliostro 
 taught that it would be given to the masters after forty days of 
 intercourse with the seven primitive angels, and that its possessors 
 would enjoy a physical regeneration for 5557 years, after which 
 they would, through gentle sleep, pass into heaven. 
 
 The pentagon had as much success with the upper ten thousand 
 of London, Paris, and St. Petersburg, as the philosopher's stone 
 ever enjoyed; and large sums were given for a few grains of the 
 rejuvenating prima materia. There exists yet between Basle and 
 Strasburg a sumptuous Chinese temple, where the famous penta- 
 gon was worshipped; and the lodge "Sinai" at Lyons was as 
 gorgeous as a palace. 
 
 But besides Masonic delusions, Cagliostro made use of the 
 
 i Prima materia- Primal (or original) matter, supposed to contain a condensation of 
 vital force.
 
 606 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 then little understood wonders of magnetism to attract adherents; 
 and, as many persons arc wrecked by the wine cup, so he made 
 dupes of many by means of the water bottle, which trick, as 
 might be shown, was very ancient, and consisted in divination 
 by hydromancy. 
 
 A child, generally a little girl, was made to look into a bottle 
 of water, and see therein events, past, present, and to come, the 
 child having, of course, been well tutored beforehand; and, as 
 Cagliostro was really a man of observation, he made many shrewd 
 guesses as to the future, and sometimes fortune favored him as 
 in the case of Schieffort, one of the leaders of the Illuminati, who . 
 refused to join the Egyptian rite, at which Cagliostro was so 
 incensed that he caused the little girl to see in the decanter the 
 exterminating angel, who declared that in less than a month 
 Schieffort would be punished. 
 
 Now it so happened that within that period Schieffort committed 
 suicide, which, of course, gave an immense lift to Cagliostro and 
 his bottle. In this respect indeed, Cagliostro was a forerunner 
 of some of our modern spiritualists ; and as he did not keep his 
 occult power a secret from all, but freely communicated it, magical 
 practices were thus introduced into the lodges, which well served 
 the purposes of the astute, and brought discredit on the institu- 
 tion. 
 
 According to one of the fundamental laws of Masonry and 
 a rule prevailing in the greater mysteries of antiquity women, 
 cannot be received into the order. Women cannot keep secrets, 
 at least so Milton says through the mouth of Dalila. But we 
 have already seen that Cagliostro admitted women to the 
 Egyptian rite ; and when at the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury similar associations sprang up in France, which in their 
 external aspect resembled Freemasonry, but did not exclude 
 women, the ladies naturally were loud in their praise of such 
 institutions, so that the Masonic brotherhood, seeing it was 
 becoming popular, had recourse to the stratagem of establishing 
 " adoptive " lodges of women, so called because every such lodge 
 had finally to be adopted by some regular Masonic lodge. 
 
 The Grand Orient of France framed laws for their government, 
 and the first lodge of adoption was opened in Paris, in 1775, in
 
 607
 
 608 THE STOKY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 which the Duchess of Bourbon presided, and was initiated as 
 Grand Mistress of the rite. The Revolution checked the progress 
 of this rite, but it AVJIS revived in 1805, when the Empress Jose- 
 phine presided over the " Loge Imperiale cT Adoption des Francs- 
 Chevaliers," at Strasburg. Similar lodges spread over Europe, 
 Great Britain excepted; but they soon declined and are at present 
 confined to the place of their origin, except that lately in America 
 there has been instituted for women the Adoptive Masonic Order 
 of the Eastern Star. 
 
 The adoptive rite consists of the same degrees as those of 
 genuine Masonry. Every sister being a dignitary has beside her 
 a Masonic brother holding the corresponding rank. Hence the 
 officers are a Grand Master and a Grand Mistress, an Inspector 
 and Inspectress, a Depositor and a Depositrix, a Conductor and a 
 Conductress. The business of the lodge is managed by the sis- 
 terhood, the brethren only acting as their assistants ; but the 
 Grand Mistress has very little to say or to do, she being only an 
 honorary companion to the Grand Master. 
 
 The first, or apprentice's degree, is only introductory; in the 
 second, or companion, the scene of the temptation in Eden is 
 emblematically represented : the building of the Tower of Babel 
 is the subject of the mistress' degree ; and in the fourth, or that 
 of perfect mistress, the officers represent Moses, Aaron, and their 
 wives, and the ceremonies refer to the passage of the Israelites 
 through the wilderness, as a symbol of the passage of men and 
 women through this to another and better life. 
 
 The lodge room is tastefully decorated, and divided by cur- 
 tains into four compartments, each representing one of the four 
 quarters of the globe, the eastern, or furthermost, representing 
 Asia, where there are two splendid thrones, decorated with gold 
 fringe for the Grand Master and the Grand Mistress. The mem- 
 bers sit on each side in straight lines, the sisters in front, and the 
 brothers behind them, the latter having swords in their hands. 
 
 All this pretty playing at Masonry is naturally followed in 
 France by a banquet, and on many occasions by a ball, very proper 
 sequels to private theatricals ! At the banquets the members use 
 a symbolical language; thus the lodge room is called "Eden," 
 the doors "barriers," a glass is called a "lamp," water "white
 
 A GOVERNMENT OF MYSTERY AND FRATERNITY. 609 
 
 oil," wine "red oil"; to fill your glass is "to trim your lamp," 
 etc. 
 
 The Jesuits, who according to the French proverb have to poke 
 their nose into all things, soon poked it into Adoptive Masonry 
 and so they founded new lodges, or modified existing ones of 
 that rite to further their own purposes. Thus it was that a truly 
 monkish asceticism was introduced into some of these lodges, which 
 by the Jesuits were divided into ten degrees ; and we find such 
 passages in the catechism as these : " Are you prepared, sister, to 
 sacrifice life for the good of the Catholic, Apostolic Roman 
 Church?" The tenth or last degree was called the "Princess of 
 the Crown," and a great portion of the ritual treats of the Queen 
 of Sheba. This rite was established in Saxony in 1779. 
 
 But whether or not Masonry descended from the ancient reli- 
 gious mysteries, its modern and practical value, from a religious 
 point of view, can hardly be doubted by a candid mind, for what- 
 ever tends to break down the barriers of national and racial 
 antipathy, and to produce unity and a sense of essential oneness 
 among men, paves the way for a just appreciation of human life 
 as a whole, and hastens the coming of a true civilization. An 
 excellent example of that joint inculcation of the Fatherhood 
 of God and the Brotherhood of man which is the distinctive mark 
 of the teaching of Masoniy, is furnished by the following 
 anecdote : - 
 
 A Jew entered a Parsee temple and beheld the sacred fire. 
 "What! " said he to the priest, "do you worship the fire? " 
 
 "Not the fire," answered the priest, "it is to us only an emblem 
 of the sun and of his genial heat." 
 
 " Do you then worship the sun as your God ? " asked the Jew. 
 " Know ye not that this luminary also is but a work of the 
 Almighty Creator?" 
 
 "We know it," replied the priest, "but the uncultivated man 
 requires a sensible sign in order to form a conception of the Most 
 High, and is not the sun, the incomprehensible source of light, 
 an image of that invisible being who blesses and preserves all 
 things ? " 
 
 "Do your people, then," rejoined the Israelite, "distinguish 
 the type from the original? They call the sun their God, and,
 
 610 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 descending even from this to a baser object, they kneel before an 
 earthly flame ! Ye amuse the outward, but blind the inward eye ; 
 and while ye hold to them the earthly, ye draw from them the 
 heavenly light! Thou shalt not make unto thyself any image or 
 likeness." 
 
 " How do you designate the Supreme Being ? " asked the 
 Parsee. 
 
 " We call him Jehovah Adonai ; that is, the Lord who is, 
 who was, and who will be," answered the Jew. 
 
 "Your appellation is grand and sublime," said the Parsee, 
 "but it is too awful and far away." 
 
 A Mason then drew nigh and said, " We call him Father ! " 
 The Parsee and the Jew looked at each other and exclaimed, " Here 
 is at once an image and a reality; it is a word of the heart." 
 
 Therefore they all raised their eyes to heaven, and said, with 
 reverence and love, " Our Father, " and they took each other by 
 the hand, and all three called one another "brother." 
 
 At the same time that recent research by Masonic students 
 compels us to doubt any absolute, direct connection between 
 modern Masonry and the ancient attempts at fraternal alliance, 
 the idea that Philosophical, Ritualistic Masonry sprang from that 
 great craft of Operative Masonry which built so many wonderful 
 edifices in the Middle Ages all over Europe, must also be aban- 
 doned. The history of these guilds and great mediaeval corpora- 
 tions has been repeatedly published, and all that can be safely 
 said is that the present Masonic lodge system is perhaps due to 
 these corporations, but that Speculative or Philosophical Masonry, 
 as it has been developed since 1725, when ritualism commenced, 
 derived any of its principles from Operative Masonry, is inadmis- 
 sible. 
 
 It has never been demonstrated that in all the guilds, cor- 
 porations, and other associations of the eighteenth, seventeenth, 
 and precedent centuries, there was anything whatever that could 
 serve as a foundation for the philosophy of Masonry, as it has 
 since been understood. For it has been well settled by such 
 famous writers on Masonry as W. J. Hughan, A. F. A. Woodforcl, 
 R. F. Gould, in England, and D. Murray Lyon, in Scotland, that 
 as early as 1725 there was no ritual of the degrees; nor is there
 
 A GOVERNMENT OF MYSTERY AND FRATERNITY. 611 
 
 any reliable evidence that in 1717 there was anything more than 
 a " Mason word " whereby Masons could recognize one another. 
 The Master Mason was so called after he became the presiding 
 officer of his lodge ; l and when an apprentice was to be " Crafted, " 
 two apprentices should be present to witness the ceremony. 
 
 George Eliot, the famous English novelist, whom some critics 
 consider to have sounded the deeps of the human heart and brain 
 more profoundly and truly than any other English writer, makes 
 one of her humorous characters remark that the Masons are mad, 
 because they haven't more to conceal, and it is, indeed, true that 
 the mystery of Masonry is rather the mist which envelops its origin 
 and its spread than anything else, since a few secret forms of initia- 
 tion and communication can hardly be deemed of much moment, 
 inasmuch as numerous other organizations have similar character- 
 istics. What chiefly strikes the general student who, like the 
 present writer, does not happen to be a Mason, is the historic uncer- 
 tainty in which Masonry has been enshrouded; perhaps the devout 
 Mason would add enshrined. For no man can tell whence it 
 originated, nor can any man trace accurately the manner in which 
 it was transmitted from one to the other, until it has reached all 
 parts of the civilized world. How came it to America? Who 
 brought it here ? The brother who did must have found here, or 
 brought with him, a kindred spirit ready to give and likewise to 
 receive. 
 
 There is no need to reiterate what has already been written as 
 to its early history in the old country. There were, no doubt, 
 many Freemasons among the early immigrants from England. 
 Prior to the formation of the first Grand Lodge at London, in 
 1717, Masons assembled annually, at least, at some central point, 
 
 'The city of York, in the north of England, is celebrated for its traditional connection with 
 Masonry in that kingdom. No topic in the history of Freemasonry has so much engaged the 
 attention of modern Masonic scholars, or given occasion to more discussion, than the alleged 
 fact of the existence of Masonry in the tenth century at the city of York as a prominent 
 point, of the calling of a congregation of the craft there in the year A. D. 926, of the organiza- 
 tion of a general assembly and the adoption of a constitution. During the whole of the last 
 and the greater part of the present century, the Fraternity in general have accepted all of 
 these Etatements as genuine portions of authentic history ; and the adversaries of the Order 
 have, with the same want of discrimination, rejected them all as myths ; while a few earnest 
 seekers after truth have been at a loss to determine what part was historical and what part 
 legendary. Recently, the discovery of many old manuscripts has directed the labors of such 
 scholars as Hughan, Woodford, Lyon, and others, to the critical examination of the early 
 history of Masonry, and that of York has particularly engaged their attention.
 
 612 THE STORY OIT GOVERXMENT. 
 
 and met in lodge, selecting the oldest master present as Chief 
 Master to preside over their deliberations. There were different 
 classes of Masons, the Operative Mason, the Speculative Mason 
 who was free of the craft, the Apprentice, the Fellow or Crafts- 
 man, the Masters, the Wardens, and the Masters of the Work. 
 Each one had his allotted task to do, and all disputes were settled, 
 intricate problems solved, and the designs on the trestle board 
 were studied with advantage to all. 
 
 History is silent as to what led to the coming together of the 
 Masons of the four lodges or assemblies in London, at the Apple 
 Tree Tavern. It may have been that the Operative brethren were 
 tired of their wandering life, and wanted a fixed place of meeting. 
 It may have been that a lull had come in the building of old 
 minsters, cathedrals, and abbeys, and that a period of idleness 
 was upon the craft. Or it may have been that the sun shone 
 brightly on the fame of the great architect, Sir Christopher Wren, 
 whose sole monument is St. Paul's Cathedral in London, and 
 like our hero worshippers of the present time, they selected him 
 as the Grand Master of the craft. 
 
 Suffice it to say that a wonderful change came over Freemasonry 
 in 1717, and the spinning-wheel of fancy then began the gathering 
 together of the fibres of old Masonic history ; and as it turned 
 slowly at first, these fibres were wound and twisted together, 
 making a homely thread, and these, gathered by cunning hands 
 and constantly expanding minds, in time formed that which now 
 forms the basis of a beautiful piece of work, the Masonic history 
 of the nineteenth century. 
 
 These old Masons were not warranted to meet by any legal 
 paper; they were never duly constituted into a lodge. We can 
 imagine them meeting on the highest hill or in the deepest valley, 
 where eavesdroppers could not intrude, and note the crude work 
 of the Master, with the roll of the Old Charges of Freemasons in 
 his hand, reading therefrom to the candidate, and his affirmation 
 thereto, and the vow, "So help me God and halidom," Avhich 
 made him a Freemason. 
 
 The name "Freemason" appears for the first time in Statute 
 2o, of Edward I., of England, A. D. 1350. " Le statute ffarti- 
 ficer et servants," and from the original French text of the statute
 
 "A GOVERNMENT OF MYSTERY AND FRATERNITY. 
 
 613 
 
 the word signifies a "Free-stone Mason," one who works in free- 
 stone, as distinguished from the rough mason who merely built 
 
 wall of rough stones. The modern acceptation of the word gives 
 it as one who is "Free of the Guilds of the Craft," i. e., endowed
 
 614 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 with the freedom of these bodies. In the beginning of the seven- 
 teenth century, persons who were not Operative Masons began to 
 unite with the Freemasons, and were distinguished from the 
 regular working Masons by the denomination of "Accepted." 
 
 It is certain that many noblemen, gentlemen, military officers, 
 clergymen, and others, attracted by the moral principles of the 
 Fraternity, joined the existing lodges, and to them may be 
 ascribed the radical changes that afterward took place in the 
 reconstruction of the Order. It is well known that some of those 
 earlier and most prominent Masons were men of learning, and 
 prone to push forward abstract theories, as well as to mix them- 
 selves up with matters philosophical. It is, therefore, easy to 
 suppose that to such minds the dogmas of the ruling church would 
 be distasteful. 
 
 By the year 1702, the Speculative lodges in England began to 
 decay and fall into oblivion, becoming so degenerated as to be 
 applied to purposes of gain and self-interest; appearing to the 
 minds of the credulous and superstitious merely as a mysterious 
 secret society, useful to mariners and travellers visiting different 
 parts of the world, as a safe introduction among strangers. It is 
 recorded in the publications of that day, that it was a common 
 thing, when passing along the streets of London and Liverpool, 
 particularly by the riverside, to see large painted signs over the 
 doors of ale houses and sailors' lodgings: "Masons made here for 
 12s." 
 
 It was when the ancient forms had commenced to decay and the 
 true comprehension of the meaning of ceremonials, usages, and 
 discipline was dying out, that the Fraternity felt the necessity of 
 preventing its total extinction by re-establishing the Ancient 
 Landmarks and reinstating the Order. The year 1717 saw a 
 complete change, at the hands of James Anderson, D. I)., born 
 in Edinburg at the close of the seventeenth century, a minister of 
 the Scottish Presbyterian Church, in Piccadilly, London, and John 
 Theophilus Desaguliers, LL. D., of Christ Church, Oxford, the 
 son of a French Protestant clergyman, who came to England after 
 the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, assisted by other old mem- 
 bers chosen for their ability and knowledge of the Fraternity. 
 
 They were desired, by the rulers of the Order, to peruse and
 
 A GOVERNMENT OF MYSTERY AND FRATERNITY. 
 
 615 
 
 digest into a new and better method "The History, Charges, and 
 Regulations of the Ancient Fraternity." This was accordingly 
 done, which points distinctly to the fact that the true character of 
 Freemasonry is only the history of the operative sodalities and 
 successive ages of architects. 
 
 These clergymen were, no doubt, actuated by a spirit of toler- 
 ation, and desirous of introducing a code of morals without the 
 aid of theology, and they therefore eradicated the sectarian ele- 
 ment of Christianity, substituting the apocryphal legend of 
 "Hiram" and "Symbolism 
 of Solomon's Temple," trans- 
 forming it into what we now 
 find "Free and Accepted 
 Masonry," by converting the 
 old Stone-masons' allegory, 
 upon which the legend of the 
 third degree and death of 
 Hiram Abiff is founded, into 
 what anciently was the expo- 
 sition of the story of the fall 
 of mankind, the sacrificial 
 redemption of the human 
 race, and the doctrine of the 
 resurrection. 
 
 It would seem that Doctor 
 Anderson and his colleagues, 
 in fulfilling the duty con- 
 fided to them, may have exceeded their authority and made radi- 
 cal changes quite unknown before, in reorganizing the institution, 
 which, after some amendments, was formally approved and accepted 
 A. D. 1723, which became known as the "New Constitution," and 
 is the Freemasonry of the present day. 
 
 They adopted a universal creed to suit the ideas of such mem- 
 bers as preferred a philosophical interpretation of Christianity 
 rather than one that inculcated the tenets of a particular form of 
 religious belief inconsistent with toleration and universality. 
 The adoption of a universal creed, on the plan of the Fatherhood 
 of God and the Brotherhood of Mankind, was to admit men of all 
 
 BROTHER GEORGE WASHINGTON'S 
 MASONIC APRON.
 
 616 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 religions, nationalities, and stations in life, not to lay the foun- 
 dation of an English, Scottish, Irish, or Protestant philosophy, 
 but a philosophy of the world. 
 
 There does not seem to exist a doubt that Doctor Anderson, as 
 a Christian minister of the Gospel, was faithful to his trust. He 
 was actuated only by a desire to correct existing abuses, by 
 changing the system of Freemasonry, as he found it, into a cos- 
 mopolitan philosophical society. But although the teachings of 
 Ancient Freemasonry, formerly distinctly Christian, are now cos- 
 mopolitan, it does not prevent or interfere with the right of pri- 
 vate judgment and conviction, there being room for the admission 
 of the Christian, as well as the universal, exposition of the symbols 
 and ritual, which, in the true spirit of the liberal and broad prin- 
 ciples of the craft, should never be made the subject of strife, 
 but held in fraternal peace and good-will by all. 
 
 It was years before the authority or prerogative of a Grand 
 Lodge was understood or recognized. How all is changed ! A 
 lodge cannot be lawful now, unless duly warranted and consti- 
 tuted. At first, the brethen met and agreed to form a lodge, then 
 the power of assembling the brethren as a lodge was vested in 
 a Grand Master, who authorized the meeting ; afterward, the 
 Grand Master deputed this power to his Deputy or Provincial 
 Grand Master, and he authorized or recognized the meeting of a 
 lodge. First a deputation, afterward a warrant; and this Mas 
 followed by the solemn ceremonies of constituting into a regular 
 lodge. 
 
 During all the time from 1717 to the Revolution, Masonry was 
 spreading in the colonies of England, perhaps as rapidly in pro- 
 portion to population as in the British Isles, and nearly all the 
 prominent men who wrote their names large on the early history 
 of this country were members of the craft. And in the mother 
 country the adherents of the four Grand Lodges, viz. : England, 
 "Modern" and "Ancient," Scotland, and Ireland, were active 
 workers, in the various questions then agitating the colonies, 
 which brought with them unrest and discord. 
 
 The craft was divided between their loyalty to the king, and 
 their sympathy for and fidelity to the colonies. The suggestions 
 made by Daniel Coxe, in his plan for a union of the colonies,
 
 A GOVERNMENT OF MYSTERY AND FRATERNITY. 617 
 
 which were advocated afterward by Franklin, and which finally 
 led to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, were gradually 
 permeating the craft. The feelings of the Fraternity had never 
 been taken on this subject, but it is safe to say that the colonies' 
 friends were found in the greatest numbers in the lodges under the 
 44 Ancients " and the Grand Lodges of Scotland and Ireland, 
 while a large percentage of the Royalists or Tories were to be 
 found in the adherents of the old Grand Lodge or " Moderns." 
 
 The Revolution came with all its bitterness, its devastation, its 
 bloodshed, its sufferings, its sorrows. Brother was truly in arms 
 against brother: but, amid the most terrible scenes of the strife, 
 the touch of Masonry was felt to penetrate through the picket- 
 line, past the sentinels, the guards, the camps of the privates, to 
 the marque-tents of the commanding officers, and the exemplifica- 
 tion of Masonic teachings was the one bright and redeeming star 
 of that war. In adversity, in sorrow, it was Masonry; in pros- 
 perity, in happiness, it was Masonry still. 
 
 With the ending of the war and the return of peace came to 
 Americans the longing for independence in all matters. The 
 independence of the colonies must be followed closely by that of 
 the Masonic Fraternity. In this the Grand Lodge of Massachu- 
 setts took the lead, followed closely by Pennsylvania and others. 
 Then came the attempt, which was repeated more than once, to 
 make Freemasonry like unto the government, a union of States 
 and a union of Grand Lodges. Brother Gen. George Washington 
 was the first and only one suggested for Grand Master ; but the 
 action taken, by the several Grand Lodges, adverse thereto, 
 resulted in its abandoment before much progress had been made. 
 
 The following facsimile of Washington's reply to a farewell 
 address of Brother Masons on his retirement to private life will 
 be read with profound interest and reverential regard by all 
 patriotic Americans. 
 
 With the death of Washington the proposed General Grand 
 Lodge fell through, only to be revived a few years later, with 
 still less chance of success, and Grand Lodges became more 
 jealous of their jurisdictional rights, which are now, happily, so 
 strong that they are respected over the length and breadth of our 
 land. A Grand Lodge territory is sacred from invasion. Within
 
 618 THK STOKY ()K GOVERNMENT. 
 
 its limits it is supreme. The State can do no wrong, neither can 
 a Grand Lodge. Its authority is respected by political power, 
 and civil law finds no cause for interference. It judges it by its 
 own constitution and landmarks which are unchangeable and 
 which are founded on equal justice to all. 
 
 Freemasonry contains within itself the divine law of doing unto 
 others as people would that others should do unto them. In peace 
 it is prosperous, in strife it is sympathetic, in adversity it is sub- 
 missive. In this country it has had its times of prosperity and 
 adversity. The ending of the Revolution marked a period of 
 thankfulness for delivery from bondage and an almost worship for 
 the deliverer, Gen. George Washington, whose death was mourned 
 as none other but Lincoln's has been mourned in this country. 
 Then came the mysterious disappearance of Morgan and the 
 attack upon the institution, by some fanatics and politicians, 
 which gave a temporary setback to Masonry, and which to this 
 day still raises in some minds an unwarrantable prejudice 
 against the Order. 
 
 Then followed the cruel Civil War, or that of the Rebellion, 
 the most unfortunate and sorrowful of all, in which attempts 
 were made to involve Masonry; but the wise counsel of the 
 leaders of the craft in the several States prevented the mixing up 
 of Masonry and the State, and while Masonry did not go forth 
 in the advance with the flag to avert the blow, it was found 
 among the sick and wounded, the suffering and the dying, and it 
 planted the sprig of acacia at the head of many a brother's grave, 
 on both sides of the lines. 
 
 Then came another and better era, purely Masonic, that in 
 which we are now living. The care of the aged brother, his wife, 
 widow, and orphans, enlists the sympathies of the craft even-- 
 where. Throughout the land there are springing up the homcs^ 
 the asylums, and Masonic establishments for the care of poor and 
 needy. This may be termed the golden era of Freemasonry. 
 
 A few notes of the most important Masonic events in American 
 history will be of interest to any reader Avho desires to be well 
 informed, whether approving of Masonry or not. On June 
 27, 1835, Masonry laid the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill 
 Monument. General Lafayette was present, and assisted at the
 
 A GOVERNMENT OF MYSTERY AND FRATERNITY. 
 
 619 
 
 special convocation of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts and the 
 ceremonies of laying the corner-stone. The monument was dedi- 
 cated with Masonic ceremonies, in 1845. 
 
 -E OF AVASIIINGTON'S 
 
 The Anti-Masonic excitement, caused by the mysterious dis- 
 apDearance of Morgan, raged long and bitterly in Massachusetts. 
 Many of the smaller lodges suspended work until the storm wsis
 
 620 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 spent, while a few surrendered their warrants. In the midst of 
 the excitement, the Grand Lodge, finding itself without a home, 
 purchased, in 1830, a lot of ground, and arranged to lay the 
 corner-stone of a new hall. Amid the hooting and yelling of 
 :: crazy crowd, the Grand Lodge and brethren, numbering two 
 thousand, with Boston Encampment of Knights Templars at their 
 head, marched from Faneuil Hall to the place where the corner- 
 stone was duly and truly laid. 
 
 On December 31, 1831, the Masons of Boston published the 
 famous "Declaration," prepared by Charles W. Moore, which did 
 more to halt the public excitement, cool off the hot-headed, and 
 restore reason to the doubting, than any other document issued in 
 this country. This declaration was affirmed and re-affirmed by all 
 the Grand Lodges of the New England States. But the legislature, 
 this same year, led by the Anti-Masons, had notified the Grand 
 Lodge to appear and show cause why the act of incorporation 
 granted in 1817 should not be repealed, and the Grand Lodge, on 
 December 27, 1833, placing all its property in the hands of 
 trustees, surrendered in a formal and legal manner, through its 
 committee, the said act of incorporation to the legislature, 
 together with a "Memorial" setting forth their action in surren- 
 dering their charter. Seventeen years after, this Grand Lodge 
 was incorporated a second time by the legislature, in an act which 
 allows the holding of real estate not exceeding the value of 
 $500,000, and personal estate not exceeding the value of 
 $50,000. 
 
 The legislature of Massachusetts has also incorporated the 
 "Masonic Education and Charity Trust," the whole amount of 
 funds and property authorized to be held by the corporation not 
 to exceed $1,000,000. While the Grand Lodge is itself incor- 
 porated, it has prohibited its subordinate lodges from accepting 
 a charter, under an act of incorporation, from " any legislature or 
 political government." 
 
 The Temple is situated in the heart of Boston facing the 
 Common, on the corner of Boylston and Tremont Streets, half 
 a stone's throw from the old Public Library. Large, com- 
 modious, built of gray granite, it has ample accommodations 
 for the Grand and subordinate lodges, the officers of the Grand
 
 A GOVERNMENT OF MYSTERY AND FRATERNITY. 621 
 
 Lodge, and the library of the Grand Lodge. The property is 
 valued at about half a million. The Grand Charity Fund 
 amounts to about $60,000. A temporary appropriation of $2,000 
 annually is made from the general funds of the Grand Lodge, 
 until the income of the Grand Charity Fund shall be available. 
 Relief is granted by a committee of three, to worthy brethren, 
 their widows and orphans in distress. 
 
 This Grand Lodge retains in activity many of its oldest lodges. 
 The first lodge, Saint John's, July 30, 1733, is the oldest on 
 this continent; Saint Andrew's, 1756, Boston, is the oldest 
 under Scottish constitution, and there are thirty-three others, 
 all dating prior to 1799. The minimum fee for the degree is 
 $25; the annual dues generally from $2 to $3, with some lodges 
 at $10 and $15. In this temple is a fine and valuable library, 
 rich in rare Masonic books, proceedings, and magazines. It has 
 been fortunate in those who have been called to preside over 
 it, many of whom have been distinguished above their brethren, 
 in public and political life, local, State, and National. 
 
 The Masonic Temple in Philadelphia, the finest and largest 
 Masonic building in the world, is devoted exclusively to Free- 
 masonry. One of its halls, the Egyptian Hall, lately decorated 
 by "the Art Association of the Masonic Temple," is unique in 
 ornamentation and is said to be the finest specimen of Egyptian 
 decoration outside of Egypt. This room is known as the " Wil- 
 liam J. Kelly testimonial to his brother, Thomas R. Patton," 
 and was paid for by Brother Kelly as a testimony of a brother's 
 regard for a brother. 
 
 In 1890 there was laid the foundation stone in Chicago of an 
 immense building eighteen stories high, the upper portion of 
 which (the seventeenth and eighteenth stories), is to be used by 
 the Fraternity. The grounds cost $1,100,000, and the structure 
 when completed, not less than $2,000,000. It is to be fire-proof 
 throughout and finished in marble, alabaster, and onyx, with 
 mosaic floors. The principal entrance to the building will be 
 through an archway opening forty-two feet high and twenty-eight 
 feet wide. The main rotunda will occupy 3,700 square feet. 
 This court will be supplied with fourteen elevators in a semi- 
 circle facing the main entrance. These will have facilities for
 
 622 THE STOEY OP GOVERNMENT. 
 
 lifting between 30,000 and 36,000 people per day. Instead of 
 numbering the different stories 1, 2, 3, 4, etc, they will be 
 called by names as of streets This order of affairs continues 
 until the seventeenth story, when the Masonic apartments are 
 reached. The roof is to be laid out like a garden, with plants 
 and flowers during the summer, and the view from this point 
 will be unquestionably the finest in Chicago. 
 
 But these local and national demonstrations of Masonic glory 
 in a material way are but symbols of its nobler and larger life, 
 for Masonry may be considered to have developed from a simple 
 secret society into a great international bond a means to 
 mitigate the jealousy of nations, soften the asperities of war, and 
 hasten the day when the Laureate Tennyson's dream shall be 
 realized by "a parliament of man a federation of the world." 
 
 Yet Masonry may also be called a government within govern- 
 ment, for it takes cognizance of certain acts of its .members in a 
 fashion supplementary to the action of the State authority. For 
 instance, in a Southern State where duelling was countenanced to 
 a great degree by public opinion, in 1814, the bearer of a chal- 
 lenge, that passed between two Master Masons, to fight a duel, 
 was tried and suspended for one year by his lodge. On appeal to 
 the Grand Lodge, at the recommendation of the committee, to 
 whom the matter was referred, the sentence was set aside, and 
 that of reprimand substituted. Some few years later the Grand 
 Master, William H. Richardson, emboldened, doubtless, by this 
 leniency, fought a duel with a member of his own lodge. At the 
 1818 communication, the Grand Master and his opponent, Ben- 
 jamin W. Dudley, were cited to appear before the Grand Lodge 
 for having engaged in a duel. It was then resolved that the 
 Grand Lodge had jurisdiction to inquire into the charge, and 
 on motion of Brother Henry Clay, a committee was appointed 
 "to produce a reconciliation between them." The next day the 
 committee reported, recommending, as a substitute for the resolu- 
 tion of expulsion then pending, suspension from the privileges of 
 Masonry for one year: which recommendation was adopted. 
 
 The real glory of Masonry lies in its being a pure democracy. 
 In the lodge all men are one. The emperor and the peasant 
 meet with that perfect equality in which men are born and in which
 
 A GOVERNMENT OF MYSTERY AND FRATERNITY. 623 
 
 they die. More than this, if a Mason were passing by the Prince 
 of Wales, or Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, for instance, who are two 
 of the highest Masons in the world, and should make the sign of 
 distress, and these high dignitaries should pay no heed to the 
 appeal, they could be and would be summoned before their lodges 
 on information of the same, and unless they could give a satisfac- 
 tory reason for their neglect, they would be punished therefor. 
 
 Another great point of the Masonic Fraternity is that one of 
 its most binding oaths and obligations is to watch over and guard 
 the chastity of the women of Masonic brothers. It might be 
 objected, possibly, by some doubter of the value of Masonry, that 
 it is just as much a man's duty, as a member of the brotherhood 
 of humanity, to protect a woman's chastity and to preserve his 
 own for the one to whom he should belong in that ideal govern- 
 ment, which goes under the triune name of home, wife, and chil- 
 dren, and therefore that Masonry can lay no special claim to 
 honor on this score. 
 
 But it may be answered that whatever tends to emphasize in 
 men's minds the value as well as the beauty of chastity is a great 
 help in hastening that day when the social evil shall no longer 
 show its sorrowful, hideous, pestilential, unnecessary face in this 
 bright world, which men and women could make still brighter, if 
 they would only listen more faithfully to the voice of their 
 higher self. 
 
 Up to the year 1826, the growth of Masonry in this country 
 had been very rapid, and lodges had been instituted rather care- 
 lessly without that regard for perpetuity and solidity which is a 
 vital element in the welfare of an institution. Nor this alone, 
 but there was a laxity in regard to the material accepted and, at 
 the first reverse in the onward march of Masonry, the ranks were 
 largely depleted in certain sections. This reverse was of so 
 remarkable a character that it bade fair to destroy the institution 
 in this country. Its effects were felt in the New England States, 
 Pennsylvania, and more particularly in the State of New York, 
 where the trouble arose. 
 
 In reviewing the history of those times, and weighing the 
 cause, a candid conclusion would seem to be that, in a large 
 ciegree, its effects were attributable to the lack of judgment and
 
 624 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 unnecessary alarm on the part of a few over-zealous members of 
 the craft, which, combined with other causes, notably of a 
 political character, fanned the flame into a raging fire. 
 
 The various accounts published at the time are so colored by 
 the personal interest of the writers that, as in many matters of 
 history, certainty is out of the question and a reasonable proba- 
 bility is all that any student can expect to evolve. It would 
 seem that the supposed mystery of Masonry tempted one William 
 Morgan (who had deceitfully entered a lodge and obtained some 
 degrees, and who felt vindictive for some rebuffs he had received 
 among his associates) to believe that if he published an exposure 
 of the secrets of Masonry, he could count on the curiosity of the 
 public to buy his publication and thus lay the foundation of a 
 fortune. We have the same kind of people to-day in the shape 
 of " escaped nuns " and "reformed monks," detailing in lurid and 
 lugubrious lectures to empty-headed people the imaginary horrors 
 of the religious institutions in which they have been living. 
 
 The politicians who engineered the crusade against Free- 
 masonry in this country, boasted that they had not left one stone 
 above another in the walls of the Masonic temples, and that they 
 had driven the plow-share of ruin through the foundations, so 
 destroying the mystic keystones that the inscriptions on them 
 could not be deciphered. But the "ancient landmarks" re- 
 mained; the time-honored temples were again gradually re-dedi- 
 cated ; good and true men were initiated, and Freemasonry, with 
 recruited ranks, resumed the discharge of its duties. There is 
 now a Grand Lodge of Masons in every State of the Union, each 
 with its subordinate lodges, having 593,164 regularly affiliated 
 Master Masons on their rolls. 
 
 Royal Arch Masonry, which exists in English-speaking coun- 
 tries, is supplementary to the universal three first degrees 
 Entered Apprentice, Fellow-craft, and Master-mason. The 
 degrees of Mark Master, Past Master, Most Excellent Master, 
 and Royal Arch Mason, are conferred in Chapters. Delegates 
 from the Chapters in each State constitute a Grand Chapter, and 
 the representatives of the Grand Chapter constitute the General 
 Grand Chapter of the United States, which was organized in 1816. 
 There are now in the different States forty-four Grand Chapters,
 
 WASHINGTON ON HORSEBACK.
 
 626 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 with 140,960 regularly affiliated companions on the rolls of sub- 
 ordinate chapters. 
 
 Templar Masonry is a semi-military organization, based on the 
 "valiant and magnanimous order" of the Knights Templar, who 
 are believed to have been initiated into the mysteries of Free- 
 masonry. The Templar degrees are only conferred upon Master 
 Masons who have also taken the Royal Arch degrees, and Templar 
 Masonry is affiliated with, although totally independent of, those 
 organizations. The only distinction is, that while Hebrews can 
 take those degrees, Knights Templar must believe in the divinity 
 of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Does it not strike the thoughtful reader as a rather curious 
 thing that the only affiliated order of modern Masonry which is 
 sacred to Christians alone is the one which is warlike in its origin 
 and reminiscence and which in its ceremonial is almost as much 
 military as Masonic ? Strange illustration at this late day of the 
 truth contained in the words, " I come not to bring peace but a 
 sword," uttered by the Galilean Dreamer and Disturber, 1 nearly 
 nineteen hundred years ago ! 
 
 Yet when we reflect how many roses of romance have clustered 
 around the shining arms of the Knights Templar since those 
 days in the close of the eleventh century, when Godfrey de 
 Bouillon rescued the Holy Sepulchre from the Turks, we cannot 
 wonder much that men in whom the religious and militant in- 
 stincts are still strong should take delight in belonging to such an 
 organization. 
 
 The age of chivalry unquestionably tended to foster the Masonic 
 spirit and to color with it the conduct of men, especially such as 
 had enrolled themselves Knights of the Temple, with a strange 
 mixture of monasticism, mysticism, and ultra-philosophic freedom 
 of thought. 
 
 Walter Scott, a more profound, because more sympathetic, stu- 
 dent of life than either Carlyle or Buckle (one of whom thought 
 that the currents of history were determined by the lives of single 
 great men, or the other that they were determined by the courses 
 of single great rivers), shows in his character of Brian de Bois 
 
 1 " Disturber and Dreamer* the Philistines cried, when he preached an ideal creed, 
 
 Knowing not that the men who have changed the world with the world have disagreed." 
 
 Jioyte O'Jleilly'spoemon Wendell Phillips.
 
 A FEMALE CRUSADEB SAVING A KNIGHT-TEMPLAB. 627
 
 628 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Guilbert in Ivanhoe what was probably a typical Knight Templar 
 of the early period, when individualism was at a premium, and 
 before the Masonic spirit of true fraternity had begun to permeate 
 the mass of that fanatic soldiery who called themselves Templars. 
 
 It is likely, however, that their constant contact through conflict 
 with the Saracens acquainted them finally with the broader ideas of 
 that civilization, and it is not improbable that thence were derived 
 many of the rites, customs, and oddly astrologic ceremonies which 
 afterwards produced or were grafted upon the Speculative Masonry, 
 whose authentic origin is apparently so recent. 
 
 The Crusades, after a loss of six million lives and incalculable 
 treasure, failed in the original aim of dislodging the infidel pos- 
 sessors of 'Palestine. But what the Crusaders failed to gain in 
 the way of gratifying their religious instincts was, perhaps, more 
 than compensated by the advance in science which came to Europe 
 from contact with the Saracens. 
 
 The cross is embroidered on the banners of Knights Templar, 
 and under that "sign " they march shoulder to shoulder, to com- 
 bat intolerance, error, and infidelity. The local commanderies of 
 Knights Templar are dedicated to Saint John the Almoner, and 
 in them are conferred the orders of Knight of the Red Cross, 
 Knight Templar, and Knight of Malta. There is a Grand Com- 
 mandery in almost every State, and its delegates form the Grand 
 Encampment, originally organized in 1816, which meets every 
 three years. The Knights Templar always appear in public, 
 either mounted or on foot, in uniform and armed. They have 
 a distinctive system of tactics, and since the war of 1861 6;~> they 
 have received into their ranks so many old soldiers that they 
 march and drill like veterans. There are in the United States ~-2 "> 
 commanderies, with 68,226 regularly affiliated Sir Knights. 
 
 The Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, which is 
 entirely independent of the organizations of the York rite already 
 mentioned, consists of thirty-three degrees, commencing with the 
 Entered Apprentice, and ending with that of Sovereign Grand 
 Inspector-General. In some countries a Supreme Council, 
 formed of nine Inspectors General, constitute the Grand Masonic 
 Tribunal of the rite, and there are two Supreme Councils. That 
 of the Southern Jurisdiction, the "Mother Council of the
 
 A GOVERNMENT OF MYSTERY AND FRATERNITY. 629 
 
 World," established in 1801, which has its see at Washington, 
 exercises jurisdiction over the States south of Mason and Dixon's 
 line, and the states and territories west of the Mississippi River. 
 We presented at the beginning of this chapter a likeness of the 
 late Albert Pike for many years the head of this Council and 
 one of the most august Masons in the world. 
 
 The other States are under the Supreme Council of the Northern 
 Jurisdiction, organized in 1807, which has its see at New York. 
 There have been several schisms in the Northern Supreme Council 
 at different times, and there is now a Supreme Council which 
 claims authority from a body organized by Joseph Cerneau, in 
 1813, as "the Supreme Council for the United States of America, 
 its Territories and Dependencies." The number of Scottish Rite 
 bodies is about 13,000, of whom about 10,000 are included in 
 the northern jurisdiction. 
 
 In addition to the degrees and rites above mentioned there have 
 l^een others invented from time to time to gratify those who have 
 desired Masonic novelties. Among these have been the " Rite of 
 Memphis," with ninety-five degrees, the "Rite of Misraim," with 
 over one hundred degrees, and a variety of offshoots from the 
 Scottish Rite. There is also a Supreme Council, a Grand 
 Encampment, and a Grand Lodge of Freemasons of African 
 Descent, claiming to derive legitimate authority from grand 
 bodies in Great Britain and France. 
 
 What, then, in its true essence is this order which has survived 
 so great a storm brought upon it by its own indiscreet champions, 
 and which flourishes to-day in spite of the hostility of an organi- 
 zation far greater in extent, and a power which may be called the 
 accumulation of ages, namely, the Catholic Church, which has 
 ever been the foe of secrecy? This Order of Freemasonry is a 
 comprehensive system of government founded upon the rights of 
 man, and exercised and enjoyed in the perfection of loyalty, 
 union, efficiency, and harmony. 
 
 Its mission is peace, progress, and prosperity. It contains the 
 antecedent ideals, the germs and models of the best forms of 
 human government. It demonstrates the unnumbered mutual 
 benefits and blessings flowing from the alliance of sovereignties 
 co-equal in status, rights, privileges, and prerogatives; and it
 
 630 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 points out, and leads the way among free, enlightened, and pro- 
 gressive peoples, to the friendly federation of the world. 
 
 Not a religion or a system of religion, it is the handmaid of 
 all seeking truth, and light, and right. A centre of union for 
 good and true men of every race and tongue, who believe in God 
 and practise morality, it knows no politics, no sect, no hierarch, 
 no Caesar. Without claiming total exemption from the errors 
 and frailties incident to all things human, or the entire absence 
 of Iscariot betrayers, or of emissaries seeking to destroy, and 
 without pretensions to unattainable perfection, it ever strives, by 
 spreading the light of science and moral truth, by increasing the 
 power of knowledge, to make the whole realm of nature subser- 
 vient to the best interests, the highest hopes, and the loftiest 
 aims of man. 
 
 Freemasonry is a system of human philosophy, a school of 
 learning, a college of builders, a home of brethren. To the 
 artist and the artisan; to the poet and the philosopher; to the 
 theorist and the utilitarian ; to the speculative and the operative ; 
 to the man of business and the sage ; to the prince and the peas- 
 ant; to the old, the middle-aged, and the youth, Freemasonry is 
 alike congenial, instructive, and beneficent. Therein all meet 
 upon the Level, work by the Plumb, and part upon the Square. 
 
 Freemasonry is based upon immutable truth and right. It 
 knows not the changes and shifts of expediency and opportunism. 
 It is as moveless as the silent rock on which the storm-tossed ocean 
 rolls in wrath. Firm as the mystic pyramids, it stands, benign 
 and placid as the musing Sphinx. It survives the commotions 
 and downfall of empires ; and of it, in substance and essence, the 
 truth proclaims, semper eadem. It lacks only one element to 
 make it a true fraternity : it does not admit women into its magic 
 circle.
 
 XIII. 
 
 Experimental 
 
 THE French republic, like that of the United States, is 
 the offspring of revolution. It was born towards the 
 close of the last century amid the wildest social con- 
 vulsions which the world has ever witnessed. Like 
 Pallas Athene, the fabled Goddess of Wisdom, from the brain of 
 Jove it sprang, armed and equipped, into the arena of conflict 
 with the allied monarchs of Europe, who joined their forces to 
 stamp out the young giant that was proclaiming Liberty, Equality, 
 and Fraternity to all the people. In place of the ancient super- 
 stition of the divine right of kings to rule, France promulgated 
 the doctrine of popular sovereignty and maintained it success- 
 fully against the royal coalition in a desperate struggle lasting 
 many years and only now appearing to have achieved a per- 
 manent victory. 
 
 The causes which produced the French Revolution of 1789 
 were manifold, but they may be summed up in a simple state- 
 ment: long continued oppression of the masses of the French 
 people. A brief epitome of the condition of the people prior to 
 the Revolution will be necessary in order to understand the cause 
 of the great upheaval. The peasantry who constituted the great 
 mass had no voice in either the local or national government from 
 the time of Louis XIV., or for more than a century prior to the 
 Revolution. They were merely beasts of burden, producers of 
 wealth for the king, nobility and aristocratic clergy. 
 
 631
 
 632 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Louis XIV. had absorbed in his own person all the powers of 
 government; he became the absolute master of France; he made 
 and annulled laws and levied taxes at his pleasure. His cele- 
 brated declaration, "I am the State," made in reply to the request 
 that he should call the States-General or ancient parliament 
 together, summarizes his ideas of the rights of sovereigns; ideas 
 not peculiar to him alone, but which at the time prevailed gen- 
 erally throughout Europe. 
 
 Louis XIV. appointed eighteen councillors of State to assist 
 him in governing the kingdom and its dependencies, and his 
 successors continued this form of government until Louis XVI., 
 through necessity, found it indispensable to convoke the States- 
 General in 1789. During this period liberty of speech and 
 liberty of the press did not exist. 
 
 The penal law allowed the application of torture before trial, 
 permitted the most atrocious punishments, mutilations, and 
 death without according to the accused the right of having a 
 lawyer to manage his case and plead for him, and the judge who 
 imposed sentence was not even required to state a reason for the 
 sentence which he pronounced. The criminal code did not press 
 on all persons alike. A noble was not punished as severely as 
 a peasant for a similar offence. 
 
 There were three general classes or orders of beings in the 
 kingdom: the nobility, clergy and plebeians. These were again 
 divided into other distinct classes. Among the nobility there 
 were the greater and the lesser; the former living at the court in 
 splendor on the taxes which came into the national treasury, the 
 latter in the provinces on their estates on the rents and services 
 wrung from their tenants. 
 
 There were also among the clergy the very rich who enjoyed 
 the wealthy benefices, and the very poor who ministered to the 
 spiritual wants of the masses. Among the plebeians the commer- 
 cial and professional class looked down with contempt upon 
 the artisan, and the latter scorned the peasant who lay at the 
 bottom of the ladder in poverty and ignorance supporting the 
 whole social superstructure. 
 
 There was inequality in the family itself; the custom of primo- 
 geniture gave to the younger sons of the nobles only an oppor-
 
 NAPOLEON CK088ING THE ALPS.
 
 634 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 tunity to enter the church or army, and to many of the daughters 
 the only refuge was the convent. In addition to these general 
 classes were the serfs bound to certain estates, the Jews and the 
 Protestants, who had no civil rights whatever until after the 
 death of Louis XIV., which occurred in 1715. 
 
 The taxes which were levied by the king and his eighteen royal 
 councillors were placed in such a way that they were practically 
 all paid by the peasantry and artisans. According to the official 
 report of M. Bailly, Inspector-General of Finance under Louis 
 XVI., in 1786, there was paid into the treasury for the benefit of 
 the king the sum of 558,172,000 livres; for the benefit of indi- 
 viduals, corporations, and communities 280,395,000 livres; for the 
 benefit of the provinces 41,448,000, making a total of 880,015,- 
 000 livres. 1 
 
 Of this enormous sum the clergy who, besides the revenue 
 derived from their immense property, received tithes of the prod- 
 ucts of the lands, paid little or nothing; they were expected to 
 make " gratuitous donations " to the national exchequer. The 
 nobility were subject to the payment of a poll tax and one 
 twentieth of their income, but they generally found means to 
 evade the payment of the latter. They owned nearly all the land 
 of France, but paid none of the land tax or taille, as it was 
 termed. 
 
 The common people who possessed only a very small portion of 
 the soil paid the whole land tax amounting to 91,000,000 livres; 
 also the tithe, which in one portion of the kingdom was one 
 fortieth and in another was one fourth of the gross product, and 
 cost the agricultural portion of the inhabitants the sum of 133,- 
 000,000, the seigniorial dues amounting to 35,000,000 and the 
 corvees or manual service due the lords estimated at 20,000,000 
 livres. In addition to this gigantic burden the peasants were sub- 
 ject to multifarious restrictions for the benefit of the owners of 
 the soil. 
 
 Under these crushing burdens the people of France groaned for 
 more than a century. The misery of the. common people during 
 the reign of Louis XIV. was frightful. In years of fair harvests 
 they had barely sufficient to keep body and soul together; in 
 
 1 A livre is'equal to 18^ cents.
 
 EXPERIMENTAL REPUBLICANISM. 635 
 
 years of scarcity they were destitute and died of starvation by 
 thousands. In many places there was almost a relapse to sav- 
 agery. The peasants of fertile Normandy lived chiefly on oats, and 
 dressed in the skins of beasts. In Beauce, the very granary of 
 Paris, the farmers lived by begging during a portion of the year. 
 In a large number of the provinces most of the people did not 
 know the taste of animal food. 
 
 Vauban informs us that in the whole of France not more than 
 ten thousand families were in comfortable circumstances. The 
 amount of articles of food consumed was between two and three 
 times less per head of the population than at the present time. 
 La Bruyere, writing in the time of Louis XIV., calls these 
 peasants "Certain ferocious animals, male and female, scattered 
 over the country, black, livid, and burned by the sun, attached 
 to the land which they dig and work upon with incomprehensible 
 obstinacy ; they have an articulate voice, and when they rise on 
 their feet they exhibit a human face ; and in fact they are men. 
 At night they retire to their dens where they live upon black 
 bread, water, and roots ; they spare other men the trouble of sow- 
 ing, cultivating and gathering articles of food." 
 
 In the midst of this horrible suffering the king, nobility, and 
 aristocratic clergy rioted and revelled at the expense of the 
 plundered masses. In debauchery and licentiousness the plun- 
 derers dissipated the wealth produced by the workers. Immorality 
 became the prevailing fashion radiating from the royal court out- 
 ward. Moral ideas had lost all practical force among the upper 
 classes. 
 
 As an illustration of the depth to which morality had fallen 
 the Marquis d'Argenson, a very estimable man, considering the 
 times, and one of the royal ministers, writing in a matter-of-fact 
 wav regarding marriage, said: "Marriage, that monstrous obliga- 
 tion which will surely go out of fashion ! " And continuing he 
 declared that the proper marriage contract should be " like a lease 
 contract which could be entered into in October and given up in 
 January, free unions being much more favorable to the race." 
 
 This was the view of marriage entertained and acted upon by 
 the leaders of society, from the king downward, as the contem- 
 porary writers abundantly show. Never since the time of Nero,
 
 636 THE STOllY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Caligula, and the other monsters of the Roman empire had 
 morality fallen so low, or had corruption become so general and 
 brazen as in the kingdom of France before the Revolution. 
 
 But, while this long-continued Belshazzar orgy proceeded, new 
 forces antagonistic to this unnatural order of things entered the 
 field. The frightful abuses, the gross inequality among men, and 
 the great disorder and intense poverty, provoked criticism among 
 the few who had not lost every spark of decency and honesty. 
 Fe"nelon demanded reform from a religious and political point of 
 view, while Vauban and others, confronted by a constantly 
 increasing national debt, demanded it from an economic. 
 
 The Marquis d'Argenson, in his work "Considerations on the 
 Government of France," declared for municipal and cantonal 
 self-government, freedom of trade at home and abroad, the election 
 .of royal officers by ballot, and fearlessly asserted that "Two things 
 were chiefly to be desired for the good of the State : one that all 
 citizens should be equal, and the other that each should be the 
 son of his own works." 
 
 The men of letters, generally the children of the middle class, 
 or bourgeois, assailed with wit, ridicule and satire the foibles and 
 vices of the aristocrats. The former were warmly Avelcomed to 
 the salons of the great, for, singular as it may seem, the frivolous, 
 sensual, egoistic society of the eighteenth century carried on even 
 amid its vices the cult of ideas. 
 
 It laughed at a well-polished Ion mot even at its own expense. 
 Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and the Encyclopedists, philoso- 
 phized on government and flung their multifarious shafts at the 
 existing order in Church and State with a skill and force which 
 attracted the attention of a multitude of minds, and their ideas 
 even found their way among the dense mass which lived but to 
 furnish wealth for the frivolous and vicious. 
 
 The tremendous political influence of these three men on the 
 thought of their age can be clearly traced in the three great 
 epochs which made up the Revolution; that of Voltaire wide- 
 spread and general in the universal enthusiasm of 1789; that of 
 Montesquieu, calm and statesmanlike in the attempts of the 
 National Assembly to devise and perpetuate a constitutional gov- 
 ernment, and of Rousseau in the thought and action of the savage
 
 EXPERIMENTAL REPUBLICANISM. 637 
 
 leaders who took the helm in the Reign of Terror until they were 
 themselves swallowed up in the maelstrom which they helped to 
 create. 
 
 Many strange stories are told of the era just preceding this 
 Revolution in France, stories which the sober historian is perhaps 
 too ready to reject, forgetting the wisdom embodied in Hamlet's 
 speech: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
 than are dreamt of in your philosophy." One of these legends is 
 that just before the crash in a gay salon the aged poet and 
 humorist, Cazotte, had a vision. The polished company had 
 been talking with volubility and eloquence of the wonderful 
 change which was going to be wrought in the condition of the 
 common people by the educational force of the fraternal doctrines 
 which Diderot, Voltaire, and the other social philosophers who 
 were styled Encyclopaedists had been industriously disseminating. 
 
 In the midst of this brilliant company who were discussing all 
 sorts of condescending schemes for the improvement of the masses, 
 plans which might have been well enough, had they not been too 
 late, the old poet Cazotte was smitten with clairvoyance. The 
 room swam red around him, and in a voice that seemed to labor 
 up from a vast distance, but which every one heard with thrilling 
 distinctness, he cried aloud: "I see the end. The Revolution, 
 whose advent you so joyously prophesy, will come; but it will 
 come, not as a feast of roses, but a flood of blood." 
 
 The lords and ladies, wits and philosophers, laughed loudly 
 and one gay dame exclaimed: "Bravo! How humorous the 
 dear old Cazotte is to-night; how well he acts it, like the 
 Jew before Belshazzar!" Then the Marquis de Condorcet spoke 
 up : " Why not tell us our separate fates, Cazotte ? Can you not 
 prophesy by retail as well as by wholesale ? " And the ancient 
 poet answered: "Many lovely women and many brilliant and 
 noble men in the days of the impending Revolution will come 
 under the hands of the headsman, but you, Marquis de Condorcet, 
 though perishing in prison, will not be profaned by the vile fingers 
 of the executioner, for in those days wise men like you will carry 
 poison about them as a preventive. And you," he continued, 
 pointing from one to another in rapid succession, "your virtues 
 will not help you then, fair dame. And you, your venerable
 
 638 TMK STOUV OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 age will be no safeguard. And you your learning and your 
 genius will not save. Your trunkless heads now stare me in the 
 face." 
 
 Such was the restrained and evidently repressed intensity of 
 the speaker that an uncanny thrill ran through the crowd, but La 
 Harpe, the disciple of Voltaire, La Harpe, the aggressive atheist, 
 feeling his neck with his taper fingers, as if fearful that his head 
 was already going, said quizzically: "Cazotte, what about me? 
 This gory drama of your dream, why am I not in it ? I want to 
 be a star!" "And so you shall," Cazotte replied, "for you shall 
 live through that tempest and, strangest of all, when the calm 
 has come, you, yes, you, La Harpe, shall become a Christian." 
 
 How they roared at this! It seemed the crowning joke. 
 Cazotte in all his life, some said, had never been so finely fan- 
 tastic as that night. Then one in the crowd cried out: "O 
 prophet, prophesy of thyself," and in the hush that followed 
 Cazotte said: "It is writ in history that for seven days prior to 
 the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans, a man ran about the walls 
 of that city whereof not one stone was to be left upon another, 
 rending his garments and crying aloud: 'Woe unto thee, Jeru- 
 salem! Woe unto thee and me!' and on the seventh day, at the 
 very beginning of the siege, a stone from a Roman catapult made 
 that man the first of the dead." Cazotte bowed his head and left 
 the gay salon. Some shivered a little but most of them tried to 
 laugh it away. 
 
 A similar story is told of the wizard Cagliostro mention of 
 whose remarkable powers has been made in our chapter on 
 Masonry. It is said that Cagliostro, sitting at dinner with ;i 
 number of prominent nobles and foreign ambassadors just on tl it- 
 eve of the French Revolution, was asked to look into the future. 
 Shading his eyes with his heavily jeweled hand, he spoke in a 
 strange voice full of fearful intonations, giving a similar picture 
 of the horrors to come, and prophesying that certain Frenchmen 
 in the company would meet with sudden and frightful ends. 
 
 One man, a foreign nobleman, asked laughingly if there were 
 no special dish for him at such a feast of horrors; and the wizard, 
 leaning forward and looking deep into his eyes, answered : " Not 
 here in France, dear Count, but further on. I do not see quite
 
 


 
 EXPERIMENTAL REPUBLICANISM. 043 
 
 how; the scene is dim, as if clouded with smoke, but beware of 
 masks ! " One of the wits present exclaimed : " A very safe and 
 sage advice, for behind them is often some face too fair for a 
 man's peace." The foreign count replied that he did not fear; he 
 was too old a soldier in that kind of warfare to do aught but love 
 the danger. Some years afterwards this prophecy or guess of 
 ( 'agliostro was startlingly verified. The foreign nobleman had 
 become Gustavus III. of Sweden, and he was assassinated from 
 behind with a pistol at a masked ball as is faithfully portrayed in 
 our illustration. 
 
 The taxes had more than doubled during the reign of Louis 
 XV., who died in 1774, and yet there was a large annual deficit. 
 Louis XV. foresaw quite clearly that a day of terrible reckoning 
 was close at hand, but in his utter selfishness and moral degrada- 
 tion he consoled himself with the reflection that the storm would 
 descend upon another head than his own. On one occasion he 
 said: "Matters will go on as they are as long as I live; my suc- 
 cessor may get out of the difficulty as well as he can." And his 
 favorite, Madame de Pompadour, who ruled France through her 
 turpitude, repeated with him "After us the deluge." 
 
 When Louis XVI. ascended the throne, on the death of his 
 grandfather, he was only twenty years of age. He was a young 
 man of excellent morals, loving the right, and desirous of doing 
 justice to all. He immediately commenced to abolish the abuses 
 that surrounded him, beginning with the royal residence, entrance 
 to which was denied to the titled courtesans who had frequented 
 its corridors and occupied the highest places at the fetes in its 
 apartments during the reign of his predecessor. 
 
 He called to his aid as advisers two of the best and most 
 eminent Frenchmen living, Malesherbes and Turgot, making the 
 former minister of the royal household, and the latter minister of 
 finance. Turgot, from the very moment of his appointment, in 
 1774, the year preceding the opening of the American Revolu- 
 tion, urged upon Louis XVI. "Xo bankruptcy, no increase of 
 taxation, no borrowing." 
 
 He planned extensive reforms in various directions, a gradual 
 development of the principle of local self-government in the 
 municipalities and communes, the abolition of the corvee or
 
 644 THE ST01JY OF COVKIIN M KXT. 
 
 manual service tax on the peasantry, the imposition of a land 
 tax on the clergy and nobility, the suppression of the greater part 
 of the monasteries, the equalization of the land tax by a national 
 land survey, liberty of conscience including the abolition of the 
 penal code against Protestants, a national code of laws, and a 
 uniform system of weights and measures for the whole kingdom, 
 with several other beneficent measures which, could they ha vi- 
 be en carried out, might have averted the awful catastrophe which 
 some years later burst like a cyclone over France, astounding the 
 world with its destructive violence. 
 
 But the privileged classes, the nobility and many of the clergy 
 whose selfish interests were threatened by Turgot's propositions 
 made bitter war on the minister, and opposed his every effort to 
 carry his reforms into practical operation. His progress was slow 
 and partial. Almost the entire nobilitj opposed the removal of 
 the corvee tax on the peasants for a sum equivalent to it laid on 
 the landowners, but the minister, backed up by the king, suc- 
 ceeded in abolishing this hoary wrong. 
 
 He also freed industries from the control of the seigneurs or 
 landlords on whose estates they were carried on, and by so doing- 
 increased the number of his enemies. All the selfishness of the 
 ancient regime formed a conspiracy against him. The young 
 king was beleaguered by his enemies and finally, growing weary 
 of the mental strain to which he was subjected by Turgot on the 
 one side holding up to his view vast designs which were beyond 
 his capacity, and the importunities and whispered suspicions of 
 the conspirators on the other, he asked the minister to resign. 
 
 In May, 1776, after two years of service, Turgot sent in his 
 resignation in writing, saying: "My only desire is that you will 
 always be able to believe that I have been mistaken, and that I 
 have warned you of fancied dangers. I hope that time will not 
 justify my fears and that your reign may be as happy and as 
 peaceful as your people have expected from your principles of 
 justice and benevolence." 
 
 Malesherbes, the other upright minister, was also forced to 
 resign. Thirteen years later he volunteered to defend ids royal 
 master before the National Convention which thirsted for his 
 blood. Both ministers were succeeded by temporizing and incom-
 
 EXPERIMENTAL REPUBLICANISM 645 
 
 petent men. Four months afterwards all the reform measures 
 had been repealed, and the privileged classes reinstated in wrong- 
 doing. But France had now assumed a new financial burden by 
 her war with England, as an ally of our colonies during the war 
 for independence. In order to meet this great emergency it was 
 necessary to call to the assistance of the incompetent minister of 
 finance some one capable of devising ways and means to support 
 the army and navy. 
 
 This person was found in a celebrated Geneva banker named 
 Xeckar, who acquitted himself with honor in a position made 
 difficult by the jealousy of the ministers, and the ill-concealed 
 hostility of the courtiers. He, too, was forced to resign after 
 live years of arduous service. 
 
 The cause of his fall was the publication of his famous 
 "Account Rendered," or report on the state of the French 
 finances, which he gave to the public in 1781. In this report 
 the receipts as set forth appeared to be 10,000,000 livres more 
 than the expenses, but there was no account of the money bor- 
 n>\ved, nor of the total expenditures for war purposes. The 
 public applauded the financier and his report, and the capitalists, 
 on the strength of it, lent the minister of finance an additional 
 236,000,000 livres. 
 
 The court, however, and all the noble placemen and pensioners 
 decried the publication as a monstrous innovation, a decided 
 breach of privilege. It was an appeal to the public opinion of 
 France, something hitherto unheard of and not to be tolerated. 
 What would become of the pensions and the customary robbery 
 carried on in secret, if the national accounts were to be submitted 
 to the public scrutiny ? 
 
 Neckar's fate was decided by his celebrated Compte Rendu. 
 Maurepas, the first minister of the king, engineered the attack, 
 and the assault which had been successful against Turgot proved 
 successful against his successor. Louis gave way to the clamor 
 of the courtiers, and Neckar was deposed for daring to lay before 
 the people even & partial report of the amount of money which 
 they paid into the royal treasury, and the purposes for which it 
 was expended. 
 
 Thus tilings drifted from year to year, the treasury becoming
 
 646 TIIK ST()i;V OF (;<>YKI:NMI:NT. 
 
 more deeply involved in debt ;it enormous rates of interest, desti- 
 ; ut ion among the masses growing more intense, while profound 
 fermentation of thought gained in power among the middle 
 classes, permeating even to the peasantry, who growled like 
 Caliban in restlessness and misery. Calonne, who was appointed 
 Comptroller-General of Finance in 1783, had little or no ability 
 for the difficult position which he occupied, but he managed to 
 borrow and expend 500,000,000 francs over and above the 
 ordinary taxes in three years with the country at peace. 
 
 On his disclosing to the king this state of affairs it was deter- 
 mined to stop further borrowing and to reform the whole system 
 of taxation. Calonne now proposed to adopt in great part the 
 plan laid down by Turgot ; he would subject the privileged 
 classes to a tax and the payment of a subsidy based on land: he 
 would diminish the land tax and thus lighten the burden of the 
 peasants; grant freedom of trade in grain, and abolish other 
 annoying restrictions which the common people were loudly cry- 
 ing out against. 
 
 To effect these popular reforms it was necessary to have recourse 
 to the nation. The king and Calonne were in favor of summon- 
 ing the States-General, or parliament, of all France, which had 
 not been convened for over a century. But the very name of the 
 States-General excited alarm in the breast of every pensioner and 
 courtier, and the king did not venture to do more than convene 
 a meeting of the notables. 
 
 They met on February 12, 1787, to the number of one hundred 
 and forty-four members, of whom twenty-seven were set down as 
 representing the third estate or bourgeois, although in fact there 
 were only six or seven of the latter among them. The repre- 
 sentatives of the Third Estate approved the plans of reform set 
 forth by Calonne, but the nobles refused their assent to burden 
 their class with a tax on land which they preferred should con- 
 tinue to be paid by the peasantry. 
 
 The discussion on this point waxed warm; the king took a 
 leading part in it, growing angry at the stolid opposition to the 
 measures which he endorsed, and he informed them that they 
 should confine their deliberation to the manner in which the taxes 
 should be laid, and not to the principle of them. But the nobles
 
 EXPERIMENTAL REPUBLICANISM. 
 
 647 
 
 were almost unanimously adverse, and finally the king was forced 
 to give way and send Calonne into exile in Lorraine. 
 
 A year later Neckar was recalled to office as first minister 'by 
 the king. His return to power was hailed by acclamations of 
 welcome. Confidence revived and the public securities immedi- 
 ately advanced thirty 
 per cent. He found 
 only 500,000 livres 
 in the treasury, while 
 the claims upon it 
 were very large and 
 urgent. No trivial 
 remedy would meet 
 the requirements of 
 the situation. Neckar 
 proposed, and the 
 king sanctioned the 
 convocation of the 
 States-General ; the 
 nobility strenuously 
 resisted, but the king, 
 backed up by his able 
 minister, was inflexi- 
 ble, and the States- 
 General was ordered 
 to assemble at Ver- 
 sailles on the first day 
 of May, 1789. Pro- 
 f o u n d excitement 
 prevailed throughout 
 the country among 
 all classes on receipt 
 of this news. 
 
 Democratic clubs sprang into existence in all the cities and 
 towns, which were harangued nightly by impassioned orators who 
 declaimed against the wrongs the people suffered. The follow- 
 ing platform of principles was adopted by the Third Estate 
 which the deputies to the States-General were instructed to support. 
 
 TURGOT PAVILION OF THE LOUVRE.
 
 048 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 1. Political: that sovereignty emanating from the people 
 should be exercised only by the agreement of the national repre- 
 sentatives with the hereditary chief of the state; the urgency of. 
 establishing a constitution for France ; the exclusive right of the 
 States-General to make the laws which, before being promulgated, 
 should obtain the royal sanction, to control public expenses and 
 to vote taxes. The abolition of financial immunities and per- 
 sonal privileges of the clergy and the nobility ; the suppression of 
 the last remnants of serfdom; the admissibility of all citizens to 
 public employment; the responsibility of the agents of executive 
 power. 
 
 2. Moral: liberty of worship and of the press; education of poor 
 and abandoned children by the state. 
 
 3. Judicial: uniformity of legislation and of jurisprudence; the 
 suppression of exceptional jurisdictions; the publicit}^ of debates; 
 the amelioration of penal laws; the reform of procedure. 
 
 4. Administrative : the creation of provincial assemblies ; unity 
 of weights and measures ; a re-division of the kingdom according 
 to population and revenue. 
 
 5. Economic: liberty of industries; the suppression of internal 
 customs duties; the replacing of the various taxes by a real 
 estate and personal tax which would reach the products but never 
 the capital. 
 
 On the second of May all the deputies were assembled and 
 formally presented to the king. On the fifth day Louis opened 
 the proceedings, seated on his throne surrounded by the princes 
 of the blood royal. The court occupied the steps of the throne. 
 On the right of the king sat the clergy numbering 291 members, 
 comprising 48 archbishops and bishops, 35 abbe's or canons, 204 
 curates, and 3 monks. On the left were seated the nobility 
 numbering 270 members, consisting of one prince of the blood, 
 the Duke of Orleans, 240 gentlemen, and 28 magistrates of the 
 superior courts ; while directly in front of the king at the lower 
 end of the hall sat the Third Estate consisting of 584 members, 
 of whom 12 were gentlemen, 2 priests, 18 mayors or consuls of 
 large cities, 162 magistrates, 212 lawyers, 16 physicians, 162 
 merchants or land-owners and farmers. 
 
 The king addressed the assemblage in a brief speech which was
 
 EXPERIMENTAL REPUBLICANISM. 649 
 
 warmly applauded. Neckar presented an extensive report on the 
 state of the treasury, in which he showed that there existed an 
 annual deficit of 56,000,000 livres and 260,000,000 of anticipated 
 receipts, and he declared that the king desired the states to assist 
 him i;i developing the industries of the kingdom and placing its 
 prosperity upon a lasting basis. 
 
 The assemblage on proceeding to organize for business encoun- 
 tered the first difficulty on the question of who should be entitled 
 to pronounce judgment on the credentials of the members. The 
 clergy and nobility claimed that each order should pass upon its 
 own members, while the members of the Third Estate unani- 
 mously insisted that the verification of the credentials of each 
 member to the States-General should be by the vote of all taken 
 together. 
 
 Inasmuch as the future method of voting upon all questions 
 depended on this matter as a precedent, a bitter struggle ensued 
 which continued for five weeks. If the vote was to be taken by 
 orders or classes the clergy and nobility were certain of a majority 
 as against the Third Estate or plebeian order, while if it was taken 
 by members the latter had a good working majority. Hence the 
 Importance of the contest. 
 
 A number of democratic priests from among the clergy joined 
 the Third Estate in a separate hall which they occupied. At 
 length, on the 17th of June, 1789, the Abbe* Sieyes arose among 
 the benches of the Third Estate and moved that it resolve itself 
 into a national assembly, " inasmuch as this assembly is already 
 composed of representatives sent directly by at least ninety-six 
 hundredths of the nation," etc. ; and afterwards, by another reso- 
 lution, the word " constituent " was added, thus giving to the 
 assemblage its official designation "National Constituent Assem- 
 bly " of France. 
 
 The order of the clergy by a small majority voted on the 19th 
 of June to act with the assembly. The court, the nobility, and 
 some of the aristocratic clergy pressed the king to disperse the 
 Assembly by force. On the 20th of June soldiers patrolled the 
 vicinage of their place of meeting and guarded the doors of their 
 hall, keeping them closed, whereupon the president of the Assem- 
 bly, M. Bailly, convened the members in a tennis court where
 
 G50 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 they took a solemn oath before God and their fellow members not 
 to separate, whatever the consequences, until they had adopted a 
 written constitution for the people of France. 
 
 The majority of the clergy now joined the Third Estate, and 
 on June 21st, in the Church of Saint Louis, the Assembly pro- 
 ceeded formally to hold its first session. The king held a royal 
 sitting on the following day, June 22d, and lie warned the 
 deputies to refrain from laying violent hands on the ancient and 
 constitutional rights of the three orders of the States-General. 
 
 "I \vill work out the welfare of my people alone if you abandon 
 me," continued the king. He then requested the three orders to 
 retire to the respective places of meeting assigned them. The 
 nobility and some of the clergy obeyed, but the deputies of the 
 Third Estate remained in their seats. The Marquis de Breze, 
 the king's high chamberlain, returned to the hall and addressed 
 them, sa}*ing, "Gentlemen, you have heard the orders of the king." 
 The Count dc Mirabeau, one of the popular deputies from Pro- 
 vence, rebuked the king's messenger for daring to intimidate the 
 representatives of the people in the performance of their duty, 
 and told him amid the plaudits of his colleagues, "Go and tell 
 your master that we are here by the will of the people, and that 
 we Avill be sent away only at the point of the bayonet." 
 
 On the next day the Assembly solemnly proclaimed the inviola- 
 bility of its members. Forty-seven members of the nobility and 
 a majority of the clergy now united with the members of the 
 Third Estate and finally the king deemed it the wisest course to 
 persuade all of the two orders to join the third, which they did 
 on June 27th. The Assembly then organized its committees for 
 business. 
 
 Meantime it was generally believed that the court was prepar- 
 ing to use force against the National Assembly. Thirty thou- 
 sand troops were drawn around Paris, among them some foreign 
 regiments in the king's pay, on the pretext of protecting the 
 representatives during their deliberations. The people of Paris 
 were much excited, over this uncalled-for military display, and 
 the Assembly, by a large majority, demanded that the soldiers be 
 removed from the city. 
 
 The royal reply to this demand was the dismissal and exile of
 
 IIOTK.I. DKS I. \VAI.IDKS.
 
 052 THE STORY OK GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Neckar on July lltli. The anger of the populace became un- 
 bounded. Several collisions between groups of citizens and sol- 
 diers immediately took place. The people turned out into the 
 streets en masse, selected their officers, made fifty thousand pikes 
 in thirty-six hours, seized thirty thousand muskets with cannon 
 and sabres which were stored in the Hotel des Invalided, of which 
 historic place we present a picture, and on the 13th of July 
 marched upon the Bastile which they stormed after severe loss. 
 and put to death every one of its garrison, refusing quarter to 
 any. The Revolution was thus baptized in blood, the forerunner 
 of rivers yet to flow. 
 
 The Revolutionary flani3 spread to the remote country districts. 
 Within a few weeks after the storming of the Bastile the peas- 
 antry arose in many places armed with scythes, axes, and other 
 instruments of husbandry, and set fire to castles and convents, to 
 destroy the old title deeds to the soil, believing that by their destruc- 
 tion they would become the owners of the land which they and 
 their fathers had cultivated for the benefit of the lords. 
 
 Lives were lost in the conflict which took place between the 
 retainers of the castles and the ignorant, maddened peasants who, 
 just aroused to a dim realization of their position and strength, 
 struck out blindly and brutally. It was Caliban awakening. 
 To meet the threatening storm which lowered all round the hori- 
 zon, wholesale reforms became urgent even in the mind of the 
 nobility. The nobles in the Assembly, therefore, moved to 
 abolish all the exclusive privileges which they had hitherto 
 possessed, and also ecclesiastical tithes, municipal and provincial 
 privileges. Thus feudalism was abolished in the nation, and 
 the first plank in the platform of the Third Estate the equality 
 of man had become a reality. 
 
 Lafayette, the friend of Washington, was appointed general of 
 the citizen militia of Paris. The prestige which he had gained in 
 the war for American independence led to his selection by the 
 king with the assent of the Assembly. He endeavored to control 
 the eddies and whirlpools of passion that seethed and foamed 
 along the revolutionary current, and for a time he partially suc- 
 ceeded, but eventually was forced to retire, impotent in the face 
 of the gigantic upheaval which flung to the surface of society
 
 EXPERIMENTAL REPUBLICANISM. 653 
 
 conflicting elements inflamed with passion and filled with vanity 
 at their suddenly acquired power. The conservative leaders 
 were gradually pushed aside by the more radical and violent as 
 the Revolution progressed. Many of the nobility and clergy 
 fled the country. 
 
 Meantime the National Constituent Assembly passed many 
 beneficent laws. It adopted a constitution which among other 
 things decreed absolute toleration in matters of religious faith, 
 liberty of speech, press, industry and commerce. It abolished 
 the feudal laws of primogeniture and entail of estates and confis- 
 cation of property, and decreed the division of property among all 
 the children of a deceased person. Protestants and Jews were 
 admitted to all civil rights, the former were reinstated in such 
 portions of their estates as has been added to the property of the 
 state, and the colored people of the French colonies acquired all the 
 civil rit/htx of the whites. All titles of nobility were abolished; 
 all the people without distinction were simply citizens of France, 
 and the king was declared chief officer of the state for life. 
 
 From the opening of the Assembly in 1789, to the day of its 
 dissolution on September 30, 1791, two powerful opposing forces 
 battled for supremacy, not only in the hall of the Assembly, 
 but throughout France; the one desirous of seeing the country 
 governed by a constitutional monarch under a written constitu- 
 tion, after the British plan, the other intolerant of any govern- 
 ment save that of a republican form, which they purposed to 
 model in their own way. 
 
 The constitution which had been adopted also provided that 
 the legislative power of the nation should be exercised by one 
 permanent chamber, the members of which should be elected 
 'very two years. It alone possessed the right to initiate laws 
 and to declare war. A limited veto power was allowed the king and 
 the light to vote was conferred on two millions of Frenchmen, a 
 MTV radical innovation in those days of limited suffrage. The 
 Assembly, before closing its two years term of office as prescribed 
 l>y the constitution, passed a general amnesty law, pardoning all 
 political offenders with the view of recalling all those who had 
 fled the country. It then dissolved. 
 
 The Legislative Assembly that succeeded had new and for-
 
 (I."). 1 Till-: STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 midable difficulties to meet. The monarch* of Europe boldly 
 announced that they purposed by force of arms to restore Louis 
 XVL to all Ins former rights, and the Emperor Leopold of 
 Austria and the King of Prussia published a declaration to that 
 effect on August 27, 1791. To this threat the Assembly replied 
 on Xovember 20, 1701, saying: "That if the princes of Germany 
 continued to favor preparations directed against France, the French 
 would carry into their lamh, not fire and xword, but liberty. It 
 was for them to estimate what would be the consequences of this 
 awakening of the nations." The kings, however, perfected their 
 coalition, moved their armies towards the French frontier, and 
 a war commenced which continued for twenty-three years. 
 
 The radical element now assumed the direction of affairs. 
 Lafayette was proscribed and forced to leave France. There was 
 no longer room for such republicans. The mob of Paris dictated 
 terms both to the king and the Assembly. Jt attacked and sacked 
 the Tuileries, after murdering the Swiss guards and nobles. The 
 king took refuge in the midst of the Assembly, but the mob 
 marched into the members' hall demanding that the king should 
 be deposed, and that a national convention should he convoked 
 immediately. 
 
 The Assembly was powerless in the presence of armed men 
 fresh from the sacking of the Tuileries; it ordered the king to be 
 imprisoned and authorized a call for a national convention. In 
 September, 1792, the mob broke open the prisons and murdered 
 about one thousand prisoners chiefly confined for political offences. 
 The helpless Assembly looked on in terror, but was powerless, 
 even if it desired, to offer effective opposition. The Reign of 
 Terror had begun. 
 
 While these sanguinary deeds were occurring in Paris, the 
 Duke of Brunswick, at the head of a Prussian and Imperialist 
 army of one hundred and sixty thousand men, invaded France. 
 He proclaimed that he came to reinstate Louis XVL, and to visit 
 with condign punishment all who offered opposition. These 
 threats of the invader brought the French masses to .their feet 
 almost as one man. 
 
 Their undisciplined levies marched to the frontier singing the 
 famous Oa Ira, and on the hill of Valmy, with vastly inferior
 
 EXPERIMENTAL REPUBLICANISM. 655 
 
 force in point of numbers, in a battle which raged for several 
 hours, they taught the Prussians a lesson which dampened the 
 ardor of the Duke of Brunswick. . The latter offered to negotiate, 
 but the National Convention which had assembled on the very- 
 next day (September 21) after the victory at Valmy and pro- 
 claimed the republic, refused to listen to any of his propositions 
 under the circumstances, resolving "that the French Republic can 
 listen to no proposition until the Prussian troops have entirely 
 evacuated the French territory." The Prussians retreated across 
 the frontier on October 1. On the 6th of November an Aus- 
 trian army of the coalition was defeated at Jemmapes with great 
 loss, which gave the -republican forces possession of the Nether- 
 lands with Brussels as headquarters. On the southeastern fron- 
 tier other decisive victories were won by the French. 
 
 The bitterness against royalty and all its surroundings increased 
 in the convention. The radicals were growing more radical day 
 by day, and the direction of everything passed into the control of 
 the most violent among them. Louis XVI. was led from prison 
 to be tried for his life, notwithstanding that the constitution 
 declared him inviolable, and that no penalty could be legally pro- 
 nounced against him save deposition, which had already taken 
 place. 
 
 But he was tried, sentenced, and guillotined within twenty- 
 four hours after sentence was pronounced, January 21, 1793. 
 This unfortunate monarch, courageous, just and generous, suf- 
 fered for the crimes of his predecessors. "After us the deluge," 
 Madame de Pompadour had said, laughing, to show her pearly 
 teeth, and shrugging her nacreous shoulders. The deluge had 
 come. The king's accusers who were his judges put him to 
 death, they said, to ensure the public safety. It was a huge, 
 political blunder, for his death aroused all the kings to a new 
 coalition against the republic. England with her money and 
 navy, and Spain with her army now joined the other nations. 
 
 It was a royal crusade against the principles of Liberty, 
 Equality, and Fraternity which the republic had proclaimed in 
 the face of Europe. The convention appointed a committee of 
 public safety, consisting of nine persons, who controlled all 
 public authority to render it more effective in defence against
 
 656 THE STORY OF GOVEKNMKNT. 
 
 external enemies. It also appointed a committee of public se- 
 curity to ferret out all persons suspected of disaffection, and a 
 revolutionary tribunal to punish them, as a means of protection 
 against domestic enemies. The Reign of Terror was thus legal- 
 ized, and the guillotine commenced its sanguinary work, first 
 with the nobility and clergy, and a little later with members of 
 the convention itself who had rendered themselves obnoxious to 
 the faction in power for the time being. 
 
 A murderous mania seemed to have seized France. As the 
 marvellous revolutionary poet of the age, Byron, wrote, with ;i 
 sort of sublime coarseness, " So France got drunk with blood to 
 vomit crime." To be suspected was to be sentenced and exe- 
 .cuted by the revolutionary committee. Hundreds of the best 
 citizens in all the cities were put to death as "suspects" without 
 any evidence adduced against them 'other than that of the basest 
 wretches. 
 
 In Paris, the Queen, M. Bailly, the first president of the Third 
 Estate, Lavoisier, the famous chemist, Malesherbes, the octogena- 
 rian advocate and ex-minister who defended Louis XVI., Gen- 
 eral Custine, the Duke of Orleans, and over a thousand others, 
 notable in the literary or professional world, were executed in 
 the month of October, 1793. 
 
 At length, fortunately for the lives of many others, the blood- 
 thirsty extremists in the convention, the faction designated as 
 the Mountain, commenced to quarrel among themselves. The 
 quarrel developed into a trial of strength, with the result that the 
 defeated parties were ordered to the guillotine by Robespierre 
 and his associates on the pretext that the public safety was endan- 
 gered by their existence. In forty-seven days of May and June, 
 1794, fourteen hundred persons were executed in the city of Paris 
 alone under the rule of Robespierre. 
 
 Another turn of the wheel and Robespierre and his confreres 
 were sent to the scaffold, July 28, 1794, amid the jeers of a 
 mob which had become satiated with blood. Thus culminated 
 the period known as the Reign of Terror, which had lasted for 
 four hundred and twenty days; during which time 2,669 
 sentences of death had been carried out in Paris, without speak- 
 ing of the much larger number put to death in the provinces.
 
 EXPEBIMENTAL REPUBLICANISM. 
 
 65T 
 
 The outrages and oppression of the French kings and nobility had 
 brought forth a bloody issue in which the innocent suffered as 
 well as the guilty. 
 
 The clergy of that time shared with the nobility the bitter har- 
 vest of popular hate which they had helped to sow, and in some 
 parts of France it was as unsafe to be a priest or be connected 
 with a monastery in any way as it was to be suspected of aristo- 
 cratic blood or royalist tendencies. Yet some of the monastic 
 
 A FRENCH MONASTERY DURING THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 houses survived the storm, by bending to it gracefully, like the 
 humble lily of the meadow, instead of trying to brave it off, like 
 the haughty oak of the mountain. Our illustration shows the 
 head of a monastery calmly receiving orders from a republican 
 general to disperse his brotherhood and close his gates. 
 
 The imagination of those in power grew prodigal of horrors. 
 It seemed as if the ingenuity of hate sought to surpass all pre- 
 vious exhibitions of fiendishness in celebrating the revenge of the
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 common people on the aristocrats, who for so many years had 
 trampled them in the dust and reduced them to a condition really 
 worse than that of animals; for horses and dogs and the game 
 creatures of the forest were treated with an amount of attention 
 to which the men, women-, and children of the lower classes of 
 France were strangers. And yet, the infliction of these horrors 
 produced at times scenes of dramatic beauty that brought out the 
 finer and tenderer sides of French human nature in colors as clear 
 as its fiercer passions were showing themselves. 
 
 One of the most striking incidents, and an excellent example 
 of the times, occurred when Carrier, a republican general, arrived 
 at a small place on the River Loire which was strongly suspected 
 of having royalist sympathies. Here in his lust for vengeance 
 he seized young men and maidens, and stripping them stark, tied 
 them together in pairs, attaching to each pair a cannon ball, and 
 then flung them into the river, which he called instituting the 
 ceremony of republican marriage. 
 
 As one of these young men and a beautiful girl were brought 
 before him, and sentenced to this dreadful end, the man ex- 
 claimed : " O Judge, I thank thee ! and at the day of judgment, 
 when thy sins shriek against thee, if I were in the deepest deep of 
 hell, I would spring to thy side and plead thy cause with the Most 
 High; for this doom to which thou hast adjudged me is most 
 sweet, since I have loved this woman all my life, and as there 
 was no chance of her becoming my wife, next to the sweetness of 
 living with her is the bliss of dying with her." 
 
 Such is the story, a legend possibly, yet probably having some 
 foundation in fact, since there is no doubt that the ruthless Car- 
 rier did throw young men and maidens into the river in the 
 manner mentioned. 
 
 While this carnival of blood was going on within the republic-, 
 its frontier was defended by the bravest armies that ever marched 
 to battle. The disciplined forces of the allied kings were con- 
 fronted by twelve hundred thousand fresh-levied republican 
 recruits, officered by men who knew little or nothing of military 
 manoeuvres, and yet the latter, in almost every instance, defeated 
 their opponents. Carnot, the head of the French military office, 
 " the organizer of victory, " as he was flatteringly styled, instructed
 
 EXPERIMENTAL REPUBLICANISM. 
 
 659 
 
 his newly made generals to strike the enemy rapid blows, to march 
 their troops right on with the bayonet, regardless of the number 
 opposed to them, and these tactics were carried out to the letter 
 successfully. They exactly suited the raw but enthusiastic 
 republican soldiers who sung their celebrated Cairo, at the open- 
 ing of the battles, and then rushed impetuously to close quarters 
 with the hirelings of Europe's kings. 
 
 But in spite of repeated victories of such headlong valor, at the 
 
 ASSASSINATION OF JULIUS CJCSAK. 
 
 end of August, 1793, France was invaded by still larger armies 
 from every direction, while its coast line was blockaded by the 
 British fleet. The situation looked desperate, but within four 
 months the republican soldiers had stemmed the assault, beaten 
 tin- English and Dutch in the north, hurled the Austrians across 
 the Rhine, compelled the Prussians to retreat, held the Pied- 
 montese along the line of the Alps and fallen back slowly before 
 the Spaniards from the base of the Pyrenees. Lyons and Toulon 
 in the south were recaptured by the republicans, the latter city
 
 660 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 in December, 17i' :> >, chiefly through the skill of a certain Captain 
 Bonaparte of the artillery. 
 
 Tin- conflict with the kings continued during 1794-5. The 
 republican generals and their troops, growing inured to warfare, 
 now began to take the initiative and carried the Avar into the 
 enemies' countries. They established the Batavian Republic in 
 Holland, invaded Spain, and prepared to enter Prussia and Aus- 
 tria. Prussia and Spain, fearful of the result, asked for peace. 
 This was granted on certain terms favorable to the Republic, 
 which was thus officially recognized for the first time by two of 
 the monarchs of Europe. 
 
 The Republic was now definitively established, and the princi- 
 ples of the Revolution vindicated by the French people against the 
 roval conspirators. Those principles have never since been forgotten 
 li/ the French masses, whatever temporary aberrations have occurred 
 in their governmental forms. Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity 
 have been more than glittering generalities to the Gallic mind 
 since the fateful period when they first rang out over Europe 
 like a trumpet blast, calling the people to arms against the divine 
 pretensions of the kings. 
 
 The military dictatorship of the successful general, Napoleon 
 Bonaparte, succeeded the Revolution. It was inevitable under 
 the circumstances, just as inevitable as was the assumption by 
 Julius Csesar of the supreme power in Rome, when the patricians 
 had begun to quarrel over their prey, the people. 
 
 And just as Csesar was assassinated by patrician conspirators 
 in an actual way, so was Napoleon assassinated metaphorically 
 by the conspiracy of kings against him. Yet, had he not been 
 overcome from without, it is probable that he would have perished 
 in the same physical way as did the greater Roman whose fall 
 at the foot of the statue of his rival, Pompey, is one of the large 
 pictures of history, second only, perhaps, in its importance and 
 influence on that epoch to the nobler death-scene which we have 
 shown in our chapter on Theocracy. 
 
 Napoleon was a necessity to France just then. Chaos demands 
 a creator. Royal enemies threatened France from the outside, 
 and internal disorders prevailed. The country, to secure the 
 social equality which the Revolution had won, threw herself at
 
 A WOODMAN'S HUT AT ARDENNES ON TUB WAY TO WATERLOO, 1815. wi
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the feet of the man. who wielded the conquering sword. She 
 postponed political liberty for a time to preserve equality. The 
 Revolution abdicated in favor of the military power but its prin- 
 ciples lived on in the hearts of the people, and were spread over 
 Europe with the victories of the French armies under the con- 
 sulate and the empire. 
 
 The faults of the French Revolution were many; they have 
 been vividly blazoned in the pages of history by worshippers of 
 kingly power, but the American student should give due con- 
 sideration to the other side of the picture so truthfully sketched 
 by the Abbe* Mignet, a broad-minded Catholic scholar, where he 
 says : " In moral affairs it secured tolerance, sought for justice, 
 proclaimed rights, demanded civil equality, recommended human 
 fraternity, abolished cruelty in penal institutions, did away with 
 the arbitrary administration of public affairs, endeavored to make 
 reason the guide of intellect, liberty the guide of governments, 
 progress the ambition of peoples, and law the sovereign of the 
 whole world." 
 
 The history of France from 1799 until the fall of the Emperor 
 at Waterloo is the history of Napoleon Bonaparte, first the victor 
 at Rivoli and Areole, then first consul for ten years, next first 
 consul for life, and finally emperor. It should not be Jorgotten, 
 however, that these titles with the powers given him were the expressed 
 will of the nation. After the French Senate proclaimed him 
 emperor the voters of the country ratified the choice by 3,572,329 
 votes against 2,569. They chose him as their leader at the ballot 
 box. On his defeat in 1815, the monarchs of Europe re-estab- 
 lished Louis XVIII. on the throne without consulting the voters 
 of France. Individual liberty was curtailed, a rigid censorship 
 of the press put into operation, and the political powers of the 
 great landed proprietors were increased. The republicans con- 
 spired in secret to overthrow the rule imposed upon them with- 
 out their consent, but failed. 
 
 Charles X., who succeeded to the throne in 1824, was a true 
 type of the Bourbon prince. He was one of the first emigrants 
 who fled the country during the Revolution of 1793. He had 
 learned nothing and forgotten nothing. He believed he was in 
 duty bound to restore the ancient monarchy in all its ancient pre-
 
 EXPERIMENTAL REPUBLICANISM. 663 
 
 rogatives, notwithstanding the constitution and the people who 
 elected the Chamber of Deputies. 
 
 On the 26th of June, 1830, he issued a series of ordinances 
 suppressing the liberty of the press, annulling the elections of all 
 the members to the legislature which had just been held, and 
 creating a new method of election. The people flew to arms, 
 defeated the royal guards, and in a conflict lasting three days 
 drove Charles from the throne. 
 
 The Chamber of Deputies then selected Louis Philippe as king, 
 who reigned until 1848, when his ministry, attempting to sup- 
 press political meetings in the February of that year, were 
 opposed by force ; an insurrection broke out, the national guards 
 sympathized with the insurgents, and Louis abdicated the throne, 
 whereupon the Republic was proclaimed and re-established after 
 the lapse of half a century. 
 
 Universal suffrage was immediately decreed by the National 
 Assembly. The electorate of France numbered nine millions of 
 citizens. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was elected president for 
 four years, but afterwards by cunning, duplicity, and gross viola- 
 tion of the laws which he had solemnly sworn to observe, he suc- 
 ceeded in having himself proposed as Emperor of the French by 
 his adherents, which proposition he submitted to the voters, who 
 adopted it by 7,839,552 affirmative votes against 254,501 in the 
 negative. 
 
 He took the title of Napoleon III., and governed France with 
 considerable discretion until his downfall and capture by the 
 Prussians, which occurred at the disastrous battle of Sedan, 
 September 2, 1870. When the news from Sedan reached Paris, 
 the Chamber of Deputies formally deposed the Emperor and pro- 
 claimed the Republic, which has existed since and gives fair 
 promise of continuance as the permanent form of government in 
 that country. 
 
 The constitution of France differs in many particulars from 
 that of the United States. The following are its outlines : The 
 legislative power is exercised by two assemblies, the Senate and 
 the Chamber of Deputies. The Senate consists of three hundred 
 members, each of whom must be at least forty years old. They 
 are elected by the departments, the electoral body in eacli depart-
 
 664 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 nient for that purpose consisting of its deputies, the general 
 council, the councils of the arrondissements or subdivisions, and 
 delegates elected by each commune. The senators serve for ;i 
 term of nine years, one third retiring by rotation every three 
 years. 
 
 The Chamber of Deputies consists of members chosen for a term 
 of four years by universal suffrage under the arrangement called 
 the scrutin de liste, which means that each department being- 
 entitled to a number of deputies proportioned to the number of its 
 citizens, the deputies for each are voted for on a general or 
 departmental ticket. 
 
 The executive, or president of the republic, is elected for a 
 term of seven years by the Senate and Chamber of Deputies 
 united in a single body called the National Assembly. The 
 president is eligible for re-election; he has the initiative of legis- 
 lation concurrently with the two chambers, the execution of the 
 laws, control of the army and navy, and the power of appoint- 
 ment to all civil and military offices. With the assent of the 
 Senate he can dissolve the Chamber of Deputies before the end of 
 its four years' term and order a new general election of members 
 of the lower house. A law has been passed declaring ineligible 
 to the office of president any prince of the families formerly 
 reigning in France. 
 
 The present Republic, the offspring of 1793, appears to rest on 
 a solid "basis. The recent conciliatory attitude of Pope Leo XIII. 
 towards it, as evidenced by his advice to the French bishops to 
 cordially accept and work with it in all things which do not 
 conflict with their spiritual jurisdiction, is a harbinger of great 
 promise. The standing aloof of French Catholics in opposition, 
 aj many have stood in the past, had weakened the Republic ma- 
 terially. All signs point now to a new era of better feeling in 
 this respect. The Republic deserves well of France. 
 perpetua /
 
 XIV. 
 
 /Vnjorjg 
 
 Secret Orders* 
 
 nVERY secret society of a political character which has 
 appeared in history may be regarded as an act of re- 
 flection, therefore of conscience. For is not conscience 
 in the individual generally a cumulation and crystalli- 
 zation of reflection? 
 
 A something alive and vivid in nearly every thinking self, yet 
 outside of self, Conscience is the true tyrant of the world. 
 Intangible, no stiletto can touch it, no axe behead it. The 
 charms of woman cannot lull it long, no prayers can mollify, no 
 menace fright it. 
 
 Remorse makes us feel within ourselves the constant duel of 
 a dualism. There are two selves within us one accusing, the 
 other defending. Virtue or soundness is peaceful, at one with 
 itself, a calm unit, a healthy atom adjusted to the harmony of the 
 universe, making and feeling music in the soul. 
 
 Yet there may be such a thing as a collective conscience, and 
 cverv secret society with a political aim may be called the 
 expression on a grand scale of the reflection and remorse of the 
 governed an avenging and purifying remorse which moves 
 (inward through destruction and death to regeneration and a saner 
 life. 
 
 But the collective conscience which has its expression in secret 
 orders for the promotion of change differs from personal rancor,
 
 666 THK STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 or from the action of individual conscience, in that it wishes to 
 punish institutions, not persons, to decapitate ideas, not men. 
 
 Such organizations, when they apparently perish, nevertheless 
 leave a pious legacy of hate, a superb malediction of indormant 
 and indomitable justice which enlarges the responsibility and 
 character of the man or the people that inherit the reforming or 
 rebellious impulse. A legitimate hatred of evil is the salvation 
 of nations. Woe to a race that knows not how to hate ! 
 
 It must be admitted, however, that some of the secret govern- 
 ments within government which have been and still flourish in 
 the world, while having a scientific excuse for existence by force 
 of the social conditions that have produced them, are nevertheless, 
 in their general scope, simply a brigandage, such as might more 
 fitly, perhaps, have been classified under our third chapter of Gyp- 
 sies, Brigands, and Thieves. 
 
 We shall begin, therefore, by depicting briefly a secret society 
 of murder, torture, and robbery, called the Chauffeurs, which 
 flourished in France at the beginning of this century, and we 
 shall close by giving an account of the famous Tammany Society 
 of New York, whose methods are regarded by its opponents 
 as exemplifying the art of political brigandage on a colossal 
 scale. Between these two we shall consider the Carbonari of 
 Italy, the Fenians,' and the Nihilists. 
 
 The Chauffeurs or Burners, so-called on account of their apply- 
 ing fire to their victims to wring revelations of the hiding-places 
 of secret treasure, were a secret society existing in France 
 before and during the Revolution, and they were only finally 
 extinguished in the beginning of this century. 
 
 The Chauffeurs constituted a compact body, governed by a sin- 
 gle head. They had their own religion, and a code of civil and 
 criminal laws, which, though only handed down orally, was none 
 the less observed and respected. They received into their frater- 
 nity all who chose to claim admission, but preferred to enroll such 
 as had already distinguished themselves by criminal deeds. 
 
 Whole families belonged to this Order of Disorder, and the 
 children were early taught how to act as spies, commit small thefts, 
 and similar crimes, which were rewarded more or less liberally, as 
 they were executed with more or less daring or adroitness. Want
 
 Wi7
 
 Oti.X THK STOKY OF (JOVKKNMKNT. 
 
 of success brought proportionate punishment with it, very severe 
 corporeal castigation, which was administered not merely as pun- 
 ishment, but also to teach the young members to bear bodily pain 
 with fortitude. 
 
 At the age of fourteen or fifteen the boy was initiated into the 
 first degree of the society. At a kind of religious consecration 
 he took an oath, calling down on his own head the lightning and 
 wrath of heaven, if ever he failed in his duty towards the 
 order. The initiation of a grown-up candidate into this curious 
 company was, according to one writer, a most singular combina- 
 tion of a monkish penance by flagellation, and an orgy afterwards 
 such as the wildest of wild Indians might have envied. 
 
 Our illustration of this whip dance by torch-light in the face of 
 a rude cross is, perhaps, a fair picture of the beginning, the pri- 
 mary object being, no doubt, to see if the candidate for danger 
 could bear pain, and to show off the endurance of the past-masters 
 in iniquity. The orgy that followed can be easily imagined by 
 anyone who has ever witnessed a Commencement Day at some of 
 our leading colleges. 
 
 The master had almost unbounded authority ; he kept the com- 
 mon purse, and distributed the booty according to his own discre- 
 tion. Theft from the profane, as outsiders were called, was the 
 fundamental law, and, indeed the support of the society, but theft 
 from a brother was punished, the first time, by a fine three times 
 the amount stolen. When repeated, the fine was heavier, and 
 sometimes the thief was put to death. 
 
 Each brother was bound to come to the assistance of another 
 when in danger. Their mode of administering justice was 
 rational, i. e., summary. The accused person was called before 
 the general assembly of the members, informed of the charge 
 against him, confronted with the witnesses and, if found innocent, 
 acquitted ; but if guilty he had either at once to pay the fine 
 imposed, receive the number of blows allotted, or submit to hang- 
 ing on the nearest tree, according to the tenor of the sentence. 
 
 The religious worship of the Chauffeurs Avas a parody on that of 
 the church. The sermons of their preachers were chiefly directed 
 to instructing them how most profitably to pursue their profession, 
 and how to evade the pursuit of the profane. On fete-days the
 
 GOVERNMENT AMONd .SECRET ORDERS. 669 
 
 priest celebrated Mass, and especially invoked the heavenly bless- 
 ing on the object and designs of the society. 
 
 Their marriage ceremony was unique. On the wedding-day 
 the bridegroom and bride, accompanied by the best man and chief 
 bridesmaid, presented themselves before the priest who, after 
 having read some ribald nonsense from a dirty old book, took a 
 stick, which he sprinkled with holy water, and after having 
 placed it in the hands of the two chief witnesses, who held it up 
 between them, he invited the bridegroom to leap over it, while 
 the bride stood on the other side awaiting him. 
 
 She received him in her arms, and held him up for a few mo- 
 ments before setting him down on the ground. The bride then 
 went in front of the stick, and took her leap over it into the 
 bridegroom's arms, whose pride it was to hold her up in the air as 
 long as possible, before letting her down. Both seated them- 
 selves on the stick, and the priest put on the bride's finger the 
 wedding-ring. 
 
 Divorces were granted not only for proved or suspected infidel- 
 ity, but also on account of incompatibility of temper which 
 proves the Chauffeurs to have been, in this respect at least, very 
 sensible people. The divorce was pronounced in public, and its 
 principal feature was the breaking of the stick on which the pair 
 had been married, over the wife's head. After that, each was ai 
 liberty to marry again. 
 
 This sect was spread over a large part of northwestern 
 France ; made use of a peculiar patois, understood by the initiated 
 only, and had its signs, grips, and passwords like all other secret 
 societies. It comprised many thousand members. Its existence 
 and history first became publicly known through the judicial 
 proceedings taken against it by the courts of Chartres, during the 
 last decade of the last century. Many mysterious robberies, fires, 
 and murders were then brought home to the Chauffeurs. Its Grand 
 Master at the time was Francis the Fair, so called on account of 
 his singular personal beauty. 
 
 But it was chiefly during the Reign of Terror that the Chauffeurs 
 committed their greatest ravages. At night large bands of them 
 invaded isolated houses and the castles of the nobility, robbing 
 the rich and poor alike. During the day children and old Avomen,
 
 670 THE STOKY OF <i( >Y KKN.M KXT. 
 
 under various disguises and pretences, penetrated into places 
 where property worth carrying off might be expected to exist, and 
 on their reports as a basis the society laid its plans. 
 
 Sometimes disguised as national guards, they demanded and 
 obtained admission in the name of the law. Sometimes disguised 
 as wandering musicians, as represented in our illustration, they 
 sought information from servants. If they met with resistance 
 they employed violence ; if not, they contented themselves with 
 robbery. But sometimes they suspected that the inmates of the 
 dwelling they had invaded concealed valuables ; in which case they 
 would tie their hands behind their backs, and casting them on 
 the ground apply fire to their feet whence the name chauffeurs, 
 " burners," until they revealed the hiding-places of their treas- 
 ures, or died in frightful agony. Such as survived this treatment 
 were generally crippled for life. 
 
 A young man, who had suffered from some of the members of 
 the society, determined to be revenged on them by betraying 
 them into the hands of justice. He revealed his plan, which was 
 very simple, to the authorities of Chartres, and then set about its 
 execution. In broad daylight in the market-place of Chartres he 
 picked the pocket of a gendarme or policeman. The gendarme, 
 having his instructions, of course, saw nothing, but a chauffeur, 
 some of whom were always prowling about, noticed the apparently 
 daring deed, and reported it to his fellows and to his chief. That 
 so clever and bold a thief should not belong to the brotherhood 
 seemed unnatural ; very soon, therefore, he was sought out and 
 very advantageous offers were made to him if he would join them. 
 At first, he seemed disinclined to do so, but eventually yielded, 
 and then showed all the zeal usual with neophytes. He attended 
 all the meetings of the society, and speedily made himself ac- 
 quainted with all their secrets, their signs, passwords, modes of 
 action, hiding-places, etc. 
 
 Their safest retreat and great depot, where the booty was 
 stored, was a wildwood in the neighborhood of Chartres. When 
 the false brother had made these discoveries, and had also ascertained 
 a day when nearly all the chief members of the society would be 
 assembled on the spot for planning an expedition, he managed to 
 evade their vigilance, and hastened to the authorities, who had held
 
 GOVERNMENT AMONG SECRET ORDERS. 675 
 
 a large force of men ready in the expectation of this chance. 
 These were at once despatched to the locality indicated by the 
 guide, the wood was surrounded and the Chauffeurs, being taken 
 unawares, either perished fighting or were taken prisoners. After 
 this blow, which was the almost total extinction of their leaders, 
 the common herd of Chauffeurs either dispersed, or emigrated. 
 
 The Society of the Carbonari, which came to light about the 
 same epoch, was much more powerful and equally picturesque. It 
 would seem in some parts of its career like an odd blend of 
 Masonry and Catholicism fermenting into political action. Piet- 
 ism appeared as the base, but patriotism grew to be the bulk of the 
 building. Some of its ceremonies may be of interest, especially 
 to compare with those described in our Masonry chapter. 
 
 The Lodge of the Carbonari, or Good Cousins, as they were 
 called, was a room of wood shaped like a barn, the pavement of 
 brick, the interior furnished with benches without backs. At the 
 end was a three-legged block where sat the Grand Master; on 
 each side was a block of similar size for the orator and secretary. 
 
 On the Grand Master's seat were the following symbols: a 
 linen cloth, water, salt, a cross, leaves, sticks, fire, earth, a crown 
 of white thorns, a ladder, a ball of thread, and three ribbons, one 
 blue, one red, and one black; an illuminated triangle with 
 the initial letters of the password of the second rank in the mid- 
 dle ; on the left hand a triangle, with the arms of the lodge 
 painted, and on the right three transparent triangles, each with 
 the initial letters of the sacred words of the first rank. 
 
 The Grand Master, and first and second assistants, who also sat 
 before a large wooden block, held hatchets in their hands. The 
 masters were ranged along the wall of one side of the lodge, the 
 apprentices on the other. The Grand Master, having opened the 
 lodge, spoke as follows : 
 
 " First Assistant, where is the first degree conferred ? " 
 
 A. In the hut of a Good Cousin, in the lodge of the Carbonari. 
 
 G. M. How is the first degree conferred? 
 
 A. A cloth is stretched over a block of wood, on which are 
 arranged the bases ; firstly, the cloth itself, water, fire, salt, the 
 crucifix, a dry sprig, a green sprig. At least three Good Cousins
 
 T>76 THK STORY OF GOVKKN M KN'T. 
 
 must l>e present for an initiation; the introducer, always accom- 
 panied by a master, who remain outside the place where are the 
 liases and the Good Cousins." 
 
 The master who accompanied the introducer then gave three 
 taps with his foot and cried: "Masters, Good Cousins, I need 
 succor." The Good Cousins surrounded the block of wood, 
 against which they struck their waist cords and made the sign, 
 carrying the right hand from the left shoulder to the right side, 
 one of them exclaiming, "I have heard the voice of a Good 
 Cousin who needs help. Perhaps he brings wood to feed the fur- 
 naces." The introducer was then brought in. The assistant 
 became silent, and the Grand Master addressed the new-comer : 
 
 " My Good Cousin, whence come you ? *' 
 
 I. From the wood. 
 
 G. M. Whither go you ? 
 
 I. Into the Chamber of Honor, to conquer my passions, submit 
 my will, and be instructed in Carbonarism. 
 
 G. M. What have you brought from the wood? 
 
 I. Wood, leaves, earth. 
 
 G. M. Do you bring anything else? 
 
 I. Yes; faith, hope, and charity. 
 
 G. M. Who is he whom you bring hither? 
 
 I. A man lost in the wood. 
 
 G. M. What does he seek? 
 
 I. To enter our order. 
 
 G. M. Introduce him. 
 
 The neophyte was then brought in. The Grand Master put 
 several questions to him regarding his morals and religion, and 
 then bade him kneel, holding the crucifix, and pronounce the 
 oath, repeating it with solemn slowness after the Grand Master : 
 "I promise and bind myself on my honor not to reveal the secrets 
 of the Good Cousins; not to attack the virtue of their wives or 
 daughters, and to afford all the help in my power to every Good 
 Cousin needing it. So help me God ! " 
 
 After some preliminary questioning the Grand Master then 
 addressed the novice who had been drilled beforehand : "What 
 means the block of wood ? " 
 
 N. Heaven and the roundness of the earth.
 
 GOVERNMENT AMONG SECRET ORDERS. t>77 
 
 G. M. What means the cloth 
 
 X. That which hides itself on being born. 
 
 G. M. The water? 
 
 X. That which serves to wash and purify from original sin. 
 
 G. M. The fire? 
 
 X. To show us our highest duties. 
 
 G. M. The salt? 
 
 X. That we are Christians. 
 
 G. M. The crucifix? 
 
 X. It reminds us of our redemption. 
 
 G. M. What does the thread commemorate? 
 
 X. The Mother of God that spun it. 
 
 G. M. What means the crown of white thorns? 
 
 X. The troubles and struggles of Good Cousins,, 
 
 G. M. What is the furnace? 
 
 X. The school of Good Cousins. 
 
 G. M. What means the tree with its roots up in the air? 
 
 X. If all the trees were like that, the work of the Good 
 Cousins would not be needed. 
 
 This catechism is much longer, but enough has been given to 
 show its quality. Lacking explanations, one would be tempted 
 to fancy that this were modelled after, if it were not the prototype 
 of the forms used to-day by many secret societies in America that 
 seek by their fantasy to stir from the start the imagination of the 
 aspirant for secret degrees. 
 
 But, as in other societies, like that of the Illuminati, the object 
 was not at the outset to alarm the neophyte, for his disposi- 
 tion had first to be tested before the real meaning of the ritual 
 was revealed to him. Still, some of the figures betray themselves, 
 though studiously concealed. 
 
 The furnace Avas the collective work at which the Carbonari 
 labored. The sacred fire they kept alive was Liberty's flame with 
 which they aspired to illumine 'the world. They did not care- 
 lessly choose coal for their symbol; for coal is the dark fountain 
 of light and warmth that purifies the air. The forest represented 
 Italy, the wild wood of Dante, infested with wild beasts, that is at 
 that time thronged with foreign oppressors. The tree witli the 
 roots in the air typified kingdoms destroyed and thrones overthrown.
 
 678 THE STOItV OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Catholic mysticism constantly came to the surface through 
 these ceremonies, the highest honors being given to Christ, who 
 was indeed the Good Cousin of all men. Carbonarism did not in 
 its infancy openly assail religious belief, but made use of it, en- 
 deavoring to simplify and reduce it to first principles, just as 
 Freemasonry does. The candidate, as in the last-named order, was 
 supposed to perform journeys through the forest and through fire, 
 to each of which a mystical meaning was attached. 
 
 But the true meaning was not told in this degree. In fact, for 
 all who wished to gain an insight into the real objects of Car- 
 bonarism, this degree could not suffice. It was necessary to pro- 
 ceed to the second degree, nearly the whole of which was occupied 
 with the martyrdom of Christ, imparting to the catechism a 
 tristful character, calculated to surprise and terrify the candidate. 
 
 The former figures were here invested with new and unexpected 
 meanings, touching the minutest points of the crucifixion of the 
 Good Cousin Jesus, which more and more led the initiated to 
 believe that the unusual and whimsical forms were simply stu- 
 pendous artifices framed to confound the ideas and suspicions of 
 their enemies, and cause them to lose the traces of the funda- 
 mental idea. 
 
 In this constant Carbonarian recurrence to the martyrdom of 
 Christ two aims are discernible, the one essentially educational, 
 to familiarize the new Cousin with the idea of sacrifice, even of 
 life, if necessary; the other, chiefly political, intended to gain 
 proselytes among the superstitious, the mystics, the souls loving 
 Christianity the souls fundamentally good, however prejudiced, 
 because loving who constituted the greater number in a Roman 
 Catholic country like Italy. 
 
 Thus, the furnace signified the Holy Sepulchre ; the rustling of 
 the leaves symbolized the flagellation of the Good Cousin, the 
 Grand Master of the Universe, and so on. The candidate for 
 initiation into this degree had to undergo further trials. He 
 represented Christ, while the Grand Master took the name of 
 Pilate; the first councillor that of Caiaphas; the second that of 
 Herod; the Good Cousins generally were called the people. 
 
 The candidate was led bound from one officer to the other, and 
 finally condemned to be crucified ; but he was pardoned on taking
 
 680 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 a second oath, more binding than the first, consenting to have his 
 body cut in pieces and burnt, as in the former degree. But still 
 even then the true secret of the order was not revealed till the 
 degree of Grand Elect, which degree was only conferred with the 
 greatest precautions, secretly, and to Carbonari known for their 
 prudence, zeal, courage, and devotion to the order. 
 
 Besides, the candidates introduced into the grotto of reception 
 had to be true friends of popular liberty, and ready to fight against 
 tyrannical governments. The admission of the candidate took 
 place by voting, and three black balls sufficed for his rejection. 
 He had to be thirty-three years and three months old, the sup- 
 posed age of Christ on the day of his death. 
 
 The religious drama now merged into a political one. The 
 lodge was held in a remoter and more secret place, only known to 
 the Grand Masters already received into the degree of Grand 
 Elect. The lodge was triangular, truncated at the eastern end. 
 The Grand Master Grand Elect was seated upon a throne. Two 
 guards, from the shape of their swords called Flames, stood at the 
 entrance. The assistants were named Sun and Moon. Three 
 lamps, in the shape of sun, moon, and stars hung at the three 
 angles of the grotto or lodge. 
 
 The cathechism now revealed to the candidate that the real 
 object of the association was politicial, and aimed at the overthrow 
 of all tyrants, and the establishment of universal liberty, the time 
 for which, according to their dreams, had arrived. To each 
 prominent member a station and duties in the coming conflict 
 were assigned, and the ceremony concluded by all present kneel- 
 ing and pointing their sword at their breast, while the Grand 
 Elect pronounced the following formula : 
 
 "I, a free citizen of Ausonia, 1 swear before the Grand Master 
 of the Universe, and the Grand Elect Good Cousin, to devote my 
 whole life to the triumph of the principles of Liberty, Equality, 
 and Progress, which are the soul of all the secret and public acts 
 of Carbonarism. I promise that, if it be impossible to restore 
 the reign of Liberty without a struggle, I will fight to the death. 
 I consent, should I prove false to my oath, to be slain by my 
 Good Cousins Grand Elect: to be fastened to the cross in a 
 
 1 Ausonia was the ancient name for Italy.
 
 GOVERNMENT AMONG SECRET ORDERS. 681 
 
 lodge, naked, crowned with thorns ; to have my belly torn open, the 
 entrails and heart taken out and scattered to the winds. Such are our 
 conditions. SWEAR!" The Good Cousins replied: "We swear." 
 
 This degree of Grand Master Grand Elect, the highest of Car- 
 bonarism, was only accessible to those who had given proofs of 
 great intelligence and resolution. The Good Cousins being 
 assembled in the lodge, the candidate was brought in blindfold. 
 Two members, representing the two thieves, carried a cross, which 
 was firmly planted in the ground. One of the two pretended 
 thieves was then addressed as a traitor to the cause, and con- 
 demned to die on the cross. 
 
 He resigned himself to his fate, as fully deserved, and was tied 
 to the cross with silken cords; and, to delude the candidate, 
 whose eyes were still bandaged, he uttered loud groans. The 
 Grand Master pronounced the same doom on the other robber, but 
 he, representing the non-repentant one, exclaimed: "I shall 
 undergo my fate, cursing you, and consoling myself with the 
 thought that I shall be avenged, and that strangers shall exter- 
 minate you to the last Carbonaro. Know that I have pointed out 
 your retreat to the chiefs of the hostile army, and that within a 
 short time you shall fall into their hands. Do your worst." 
 
 The Grand Elect then turned to the candidate and, alluding to 
 the punishment awarded to traitors as shown on the present occa- 
 sion, informed him that he also must be fastened to the cross, if 
 he persisted in his intention to proceed, and must receive on his 
 body the sacred marks, whereby the Grand Masters Grand Elect 
 of all the lodges are known to each other, and must also pronounce 
 the oath, whereupon the bandage would be removed, he would 
 descend from the cross, and be clothed with the insignia of the 
 Grand Master Elect. 
 
 He was then firmly tied to .the cross, and pricked three times 
 on the right arm, seven times on the left, and three times under 
 the left breast. The cross being erected in the middle of the 
 cave, that the' members might see the marks on the body, on a 
 given sign, the bandage being removed, the Cousins encircled the 
 candidate, pointing their swords and daggers at his breast, and 
 threatening him with even a worse death, should he turn traitor. 
 They also watched his demeanor to see if he betrayed any fear.
 
 682 THE STORY OP GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Seven 1 toasts in his honor were then drunk, and the Grand 
 Elect explained the real meaning of the symbols, which were 
 never printed, but were only written down and jealously guarded, 
 the owner promising to burn or swallow them, rather than let 
 them fall into other hands. The Grand Master concluded by 
 speaking in praise of the revolution which had then begun, and 
 exclaimed : i; Very soon the nations, weary of tyranny, shall cele- 
 brate a victory over the tyrants; very soon. ..." 
 
 Here the wicked thief exclaimed: '"'Very soon all ye shall 
 perish ! " and suddenly was heard outside the grotto the clash of 
 weapons and shouts of struggling men. One of the doorkeepers 
 cried out that the door was on the point of being broken through, 
 and a battering on it was heard directly after. The Good Cousins 
 rushed to another door which was behind the crosses, and there- 
 fore unseen by the candidate ; the noise then grew louder, and 
 the cries of Austrian soldiery nearer. The Cousins returned in 
 great disorder, as if overpowered by superior numbers, said a few 
 words of encouragement to the candidate fastened to the cross, and 
 disappeared through the floor, which opened beneath them. 
 
 Cousins, dressed in the hated uniform of the foreigner, entered 
 and expressed wonder at the mysterious disappearance of the Car- 
 bonari. Perceiving the persons on the crosses and finding them 
 still alive, they proposed to put an end to their misery. They 
 charged their guns and prepared to shoot, when suddenly a num- 
 ber of balls rattled into the cave, the soldiers fell as if struck, 
 and the Cousins re-entered through many openings, closing at 
 once behind them, while they shouted: "Victory! Death to 
 tyranny! Long live the republic of Ausonia! Long live liberty! 
 Long live the government established by the brave Carbonari ! " 
 
 In an instant the apparently dead soldiers and the two thieves 
 were carried out of the cave; and the candidate having been 
 helped down from the cross, was proclaimed by the Grand Master, 
 who struck seven blows with his axe, a Grand Master Grand 
 Elect. 
 
 The Carbonari played no small par-t in general European poli- 
 tics outside of Italy, and when the lurid star of the Corsican was 
 
 1 Seven is the mystic number and seems to rule very strongly through men's most practi- 
 cal associations as it does in their most fantastic speculations.
 
 GOVERNMENT AMONG SECRET ORDERS. 683 
 
 declining they were bargaining with England for a guaranty of 
 the complete independence of Italy, with Rome for its capital, 
 and for its boundaries the three seas and the Alps ; Corsica, Sar- 
 dinia, Sicily, the seven islands and those on the coasts of the Med- 
 iterranean, Adriatic, and Ionian Seas to be integral portions of the 
 new Roman Empire a superb dream of nationality which has 
 now partially materialized. 
 
 This project, however, fell through at the time, although the 
 bait held out to England was exceedingly tempting. But the 
 ambition of the Carbonari to obtain a constitutional government 
 for their country began to bear fruit in other countries which, of 
 course, by reaction stirred up the original society. 
 
 In 1819 took place the rising at Cadiz, by which the King of 
 Spain, Ferdinand VII., was compelled to give Spain constitu- 
 tional privileges. This aroused the enthusiasm of the Carbonari 
 to the point of ardency, but there was no unanimity in their 
 counsels, and their intrigues only led to many being imprisoned 
 and others banished. 
 
 An attempt made in 1820, however, with the Abbe Menichini 
 for their leader, extorted a constitution. The influence of the Car- 
 bonari no\v increased; lodges were established everywhere. Even 
 women now became connected with the sect, and female lodges 
 with the title of "the Garden Women" (le Criardiniere) were 
 formed, each sister taking the name of a flower. The secrets of 
 Carbonarism, its signs, words, and symbols were openly pro- 
 claimed, and blessed in the churches. But the triumph did not 
 last long. Austrian influence, the disloyalty of the king, and 
 treason in the sect itself, put an end to it in 1821. 
 
 The Carbonari in the Roman States about this time aimed at 
 the overthrow of the papal power, and chose the moment when 
 the Pope was expected to die to carry out their scheme. They 
 had collected large forces and provisions at Macerata, but the 
 sudden recovery of the Pope put a stop to the enterprise. The 
 leaders Avere betrayed into the hands of the government, and some 
 of them condemned to death and others to perpetual imprisonment; 
 though the Pope afterwards commuted the sentences. Up to this 
 point Carbonarism had been an ally of Catholicism, but afterwards, 
 as Carbonarism degenerated in its power, its memberage grew
 
 684 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 vicious and its methods so unholy, that even a travelling cardinal 
 in some parts of Italy, if his horses shied at the lightning of a 
 summer storm, would fancy at first that the stopping of his car- 
 riage might be due to the Carbonari, and that he would be robbed. 
 
 Carbonarism was introduced into France in 1820 by Joubert 
 and Dugier, who had taken part in revolutionary movements in 
 their own country, and after having for some time found refuge 
 in Italy, where they had joined the Carbonari, brought their prin- 
 ciples to France on their return from exile. The sect made 
 rapid progress among the French; all the students at the different 
 universities became members, and Lafayette was chosen its chief. 
 Lodges existed at La Rochelle, Poitiers, Niort, Bordeaux, Colmar, 
 Neuf-Brisach, and Belfort, where in 1821 an unsuccessful rise 
 took place against the government. 
 
 The insurrections fomented by this order in other places were 
 surface failures; still, though they missed their mark temporarily, 
 it is clear that they caused subsequent concessions on the part of 
 politic rulers to the principles they promulgated. But, apart from 
 any specific results, Carbonarism is of special historic interest, for 
 it marks a transition period in the evolution of secret societies. 
 
 From secret societies occupied with religion, philosophy, and 
 politics in the abstract, it led up to the secret societies whose 
 objects were more immediately and practically political. And 
 thus in France, Italy, and other states, it gave rise to numerous 
 and various sects, wherein we find the men of thought and men 
 of action, dreamers and doers, combining for one common object 
 ths progress, as they understand it, of human society. 
 
 Carbonarism, in fact, was revived about the year 1825, and 
 some ten years after combined, or rather coalesced, with the 
 society known as Young Italy, whose aims were identical with 
 those of the Carbonari the expulsion of the foreigner from 
 Italian soil, and the unification of Italy. The Carbonari suc- 
 ceeded, in 1831, in driving the Duchess of Parma, Maria Louise, 
 into exile. One of her most trusted councillors was a Carbonaro, 
 who, when she entered her carriage, coolly wished her a happy 
 journey, to which she replied by saying to the lady of honor who 
 accompanied her, " What a Judas ! " This triumph of the Car- 
 bonari, however, lasted only twenty -eight days; for the duchess
 
 KUSSIAX POL1TK
 
 IN SI1SKKIA.
 
 GOVERNMENT AMONG SECRET ORDKRS. 689 
 
 at the end of that period re-entered her capital, Austria, having 
 by force of arms effected her restoration. 
 
 Another Italian society merits a passing word from its singular 
 name and the singular man whom gossip connected with it, and 
 that is the society of the "American Hunters," which was founded 
 at Ravenna shortly after the prosecution at Macerata, and the 
 measures taken by the Austrians in 1818, against the Carbonari. 
 
 The famous poet, Lord Byron, whose love of Italy seems to 
 have been a genuine passion, was said to be at the head of 
 this, and his absence from Italy was ardently desired by the 
 Austrian authorities, who on one occasion tried to provoke a per- 
 sonal encounter with the poet. Then was witnessed the beautiful 
 scene of his brother poet, the incomparable Shelley, throwing 
 himself between the Austrian officer and the haughty Byron to 
 receive the swordstroke himself. How far Byron was mixed up 
 in the subterranean politics of that epoch is a conundrum that 
 has never been guessed, but his vast popularity to this day among 
 the common people of Italy is a fact that seems more traceable to 
 his personality and his deep-felt sympathy with Italian wrongs 
 than to the tragic magic of his verse. 
 
 This Society of American Hunters was said to be extremely 
 ethical as well as practical, and to have some intention of attempt- 
 ing to revive the Delphic mysteries. They expected a sort of 
 Saviour who was to come from America. It was asserted at one 
 time that Joseph Bonaparte, the ex-King of Spain, was a member 
 of the American Hunters, and it is not improbable that the Italian 
 partisans of Napoleon, of whom there were many, gathered new 
 hopes after the events of 1815. A sonnet, of which the first 
 quatrain is here given, was at that time very popular in Central 
 Italy, and shows the direction of the political wind : 
 
 " Scandalized by groaning under kings so fell, 
 Filling Europe with dismay in cv'ry part, 
 We are driven to solicit Bonaparte 
 To return from Saint Helena or from hell." 
 
 The secret revolutionary society of Nihilists, discovered in 
 Russia about a generation ago, so many members of which have
 
 690 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 been seized and condemned to various horrible punishments, is 
 stronger now than ever, and will unquestionably succeed before 
 long, at least, in part of its aims. It has for its object the over- 
 throw of Imperialism and the establishment of universal philo- 
 sophic Anarchism. The following articles, taken from a document 
 produced at an early trial, and containing the programme of what 
 these root-and-branch reformers intend, will show that they belong 
 to the most advanced school of revolutionism : 
 
 1. The revolutionist is a man condemned. He can have no inter- 
 ests, nor business, nor feelings, nor attachments, nor property, nor even 
 a name. Everything in him is absorbed in one sole and exclusive 
 interest, in one single idea, in one solitary passion the Revolution 
 
 3. The Revolutionist despises all doctrines, and has renounced all 
 science of this world, which he leaves to future generations, lie knows 
 but one science, that of destruction. 
 
 6. Severe towards himself, he must be severe towards others. All 
 tender feelings of family, friendship, love, gratitude, and even of honor, 
 must often be stifled in his breast by the one cold passion of Revolution. 
 For him there is but one repose, but one consolation, but one recom- 
 pense, but one satisfaction, the success of the Revolution. 
 
 This society, at its beginning, as it does now, embraced men 
 of every rank of life, the leading spirit being Netchaiev, who 
 escaped. Dolgow, the next in importance, was the son of a 
 councillor, and these two succeeded in enlightening with their 
 opinions the minds of many of the students at the Petrovsky 
 University. They were seconded in their efforts by Rippona, 
 the son of a military officer, and Prince Cherke'soff, who on 
 several occasions supplied the funds required. Their plans were 
 secretly made known to the friends of the movement by means 
 of a paper entitled " From the United to the Isolated," which 
 called on the Russians to revolt against the government. 
 
 The sentences on these early prisoners, who were all found 
 guilty, were comparatively mild, the severest being that on Prince 
 Cherke'soff, who was deprived of his rights and privileges and 
 ordered to take up his abode in the province of Towsk for the 
 space of five years. The other conspirators were condemned to pe- 
 riods of imprisonment varying from a year and a half to three weeks. 
 
 Since then, however, the sufferings of political prisoners amid
 
 GOVERNMENT AMONG SECRET ORDERS. 691 
 
 the mines of Siberia have been so frightful that English and 
 American civilization, forgetting the more frequent slow and in- 
 sidious murders perpetrated by cunning corporations under forms 
 of English and American law, has often of late cried out aghast 
 and held public meetings of protestation against Russian enormities. 
 
 Our picture of political exiles in Siberia is one that will appeal 
 to every heart with any throb of humanity, for it tells the story 
 of tyranny more vividly than any printed words could do. It is 
 not merely life-like, it is life, life-in-death, which many generous- 
 hearted Russians are enduring to-day for the sake of the men, 
 and women, and children of the future unto whom shall belong 
 the earth and the fulness thereof. For the old superstition that 
 the many were created for the use and benefit of the few the 
 divine right of Dives to be rich by reason of the labors of Lazarus 
 - is beginning to die out of the minds of men, though, like all 
 things of darkness, it dies hard. 
 
 It is greatly to be feared, however, that this old fetish, so fatal 
 to human happiness, will not utterly perish and be happily buried 
 until a few cities like Boston, New York, Chicago, Paris, or 
 London have been burned to the ground as warnings to the world 
 at large, or to serve as torches that shall light man's onward 
 steps a little faster to that true state of progress in which the 
 wealth of a nation shall be found to consist in an even distribu- 
 tion of all its products, based on equal efforts demanded of all 
 able-bodied men and women in an industrial republic of organized 
 common-sense- 
 
 One of the most active of political secret societies of recent 
 times was that of the Fenians, and there are indications, every 
 now and then, that this association is not extinct, but is only 
 a slumbering volcano, waiting for a chance, when England shall 
 be involved in some war of magnitude (say with the Russians in 
 Europe and in India simultaneously) to pour forth such a flood of 
 lava as would drive the last Englishman out of Ireland and possi- 
 bly cause some of the Australian colonies, where Irish blood is 
 thick, to declare themselves independent republics. 
 
 Fifteen years ago, the writer of this history was living in Mel- 
 bourne, which is one of the handsomest and most civilized cities
 
 692 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 in the world, and, happening to render some slight but deeply 
 appreciated service to an Irish gentleman, was introduced as an 
 honorary -or courtesy member to an Irish Musical Club. 
 
 The members all had music in their souls, but, contrary to the 
 often quoted lines of Shakespeare, they were fit, or were fitting 
 themselves, for " treasons, stratagems and spoils " against the 
 English Government. Their music was merely a veil to hide 
 their real purposes, which the writer soon discovered to be the 
 gradual dissemination of democratic doctrines throughout Aus- 
 tralia, leading up to the idea of complete political independence. 
 
 Several of the members were brilliant writers, and they never 
 missed a chance, even in their lightest newspaper articles, of 
 stimulating the Australian's local pride and proclaiming Aus- 
 tralian ability to govern Australia. A war with Russia then 
 seemed imminent, and when the writer left Australia, some of the 
 politicians were ready in that event to spring on the world the 
 Australian Republic. It was even hinted, outside of Fenian 
 circles, that England would acquiesce readily, because such a 
 move would save her the trouble and expense of defending her 
 Australian possessions and permit her to utilize her navy else- 
 where. 
 
 The founders of Fenianism in America were two exiles of the 
 famous year 1848, Col. John O'Mahoney and Michael Doheny. 
 It was, at first, a semi-secret association; that is, its meetings 
 were secret, though its chief officers were publicly known as such. 
 But the operations of the brotherhood were hidden from the pub- 
 lic view. It rapidly increased in numbers, spreading through 
 every State of the American Union, through Canada and the 
 British Provinces. 
 
 In November, 1863, the organization assumed a new character. 
 A grand national convention of delegates met at Chicago, and 
 avowed the object of the Brotherhood, namely, the separation of 
 Ireland from England, and the establishment of an Irish republic, 
 the same changes being first to be effected in Canada. 
 
 Another grand convention was held in 1864 at Cincinnati, the 
 delegates at which represented some 250,000 members, and each 
 member was called upon for a contribution of five dollars, 
 which call was promptly met. At that period the Fenians con-
 
 JOHN liOYLK O'KEILLY.
 
 694 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 fidently^relied on the assistance of the American government, 
 which was justly indignant with England for her conduct in the 
 Civil War, and the press of New York City rather favored tins 
 notion which, however, soon proved itself unfounded or at least 
 premature. 
 
 In Ireland the Brotherhood never attained the dimensions it 
 reached in the United States, and without the assistance of the 
 latter could do nothing. Still, the Irish, as well as the American 
 Fenian Association, had its chiefs, officers, both civil and mili- 
 tary, its common fund and financial agencies, its secret oaths, 
 passwords and emblems, its laws and penalties, its concealed 
 stores of arms, its nightly drills, its correspondents and agents, 
 its journals, and even its popular songs and ballads. 
 
 But traitors soon set to work to destroy the organization from 
 within. The head centre, CTMahoney, who was in receipt of an 
 official salary of $2,000, is thus mentioned in the official report 
 of the Investigating Committee of the Fenian Brotherhood of 
 America (1866): 
 
 After a careful examination of the affairs of the Brotherhood your 
 Committee finds in almost every instance the cause of Ireland made 
 subservient to individual gain ; men who were lauded as patriots sought 
 every opportunity to plunder the treasury of the Brotherhood, but 
 legalized their attacks by securing the endorsement of John O'Mahoney 
 ... In John O'Mahoney's integrity the confidence of the Brother- 
 hood was boundless, and the betrayal of that confidence, whether 
 through incapacity or premeditation, is not a question for us to deter- 
 mine . . . Sufficient that he has proved recreant to the trust . . . 
 Never in the history of the Irish people did they repose so much confi- 
 dence in their leaders ; never before were they so basely deceived and 
 treacherously dealt with. In fact, the Moffat mansion (the head- 
 quarters of the American Fenians) was not only an almshouse for 
 pauper officials and hungry adventurers, but a general telegraph office 
 for the Canadian authorities and Sir Frederick Bruce, the British 
 minister at Washington. These paid patriots and professional martyrs 
 not satisfied with emptying our treasury, connived at posting the Eng- 
 lish authorities in advance of our movement. 
 
 From this report it further appears that in 1866 the Fenian 
 treasury in the States contained the sum of $185,000; that the 
 expense of the Moffat mansion and the parasites who flocked
 
 GOVERNMENT AMONG SECRET ORDERS. 695 
 
 thither in three months amounted to -$104,000 ; and that Stephens, 
 the Irish head centre in the same space of time received from 
 America, in money sent to Paris, the sum of nearly $106,000, 
 though John O'Mahoney in many of his letters expressed the 
 greatest mistrust of Stephens. 
 
 Possibly lie looked upon the latter as a more clever and 
 daring rogue, who materially diminished his own share of the 
 spoil. Stephens' career in Ireland is sufficiently well known, 
 and there is scarcely any doubt that while he was leading his 
 associates to their ruin, he acted as a spy upon them, and that 
 there existed some understanding batween him and the English 
 authorities. 
 
 Another man of note among the Fenians was John Mitchell, 
 who had been implicated in the troubles of 1848, was transported, 
 escaped, and made his way to the United States. During the 
 Civil War which raged in this country, he was a supporter of the 
 Southern cause, was taken prisoner by the North, but liberated by 
 the President at the request of the Fenians in America. One of 
 the ablest and noblest of this band was John Boyle O'Reilly, the 
 poet, whose songs and whose life have endeared him to every warm 
 American heart. 
 
 The Fenians, to raise money, issued bonds to be redeemed by 
 the future Irish Republic, of which the following is a specimen : 
 
 HARP. 
 
 GODDESS OF LIBEUTY. 
 
 SHAMROCK. 
 
 Ninety days after the establishment of 
 
 T H E IRISH R E P U B L I C. 
 
 Redeemable by Hoard of 
 
 Finance. 
 
 SUNBURST. 
 
 Obscurity envelops the origin of the word, Fenian, just as 
 obscurity now enwraps the operations of the society. Irish tradi- 
 tion says that the Fenians were an ancient militia employed on
 
 696 
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 home service for protecting the coasts from invasion. Each of 
 the four provinces had its band, that of Leinster, to which Fionn 
 and his family belonged, being at the head of the others. This 
 Fionn is the Fingal of MacPherson, and the leaders of the move- 
 ment, no doubt, saw an advantage in connecting their party with 
 the historic and traditionary glories of Ireland. 
 
 Many curious documents and songs, some replete with grim 
 humor, come to light from time to time concerning Fenianism, 
 of which oddities or odd ditties the following extracts from 
 the Patriotic Litany of Saint Lawrence O'Toole, published for 
 the use of the Fenian Brotherhood, may suffice as a specimen. 
 This litany was actually sung in recitative by some of the brother- 
 hoods, and the effect was unique. 
 
 Call to thine aid, most liberty-loving O* Toole, those Christian 
 auxiliaries of power and glory the soul-inspiring cannon, the meek 
 and faithful musket, the pious rifle, and the conscience-examining 
 pike, which, tempered by a martyr's faith, a Fenian's hope, and a 
 rebeTs charity, will triumph over the devil, and restore to us our own 
 in our own land forever. Amen. 
 
 O 1 Toole hear us. 
 
 From E>+glish civilization, 
 
 From .British law and order, 
 
 From Anglo- Saxon cant and free- 
 dom, 
 
 From the hest of the English 
 queen, 
 
 From ride Britannia, 
 
 From the cloven hoof r 
 
 From the necessity of annual re- 
 bellion, 
 
 From billeted soldiery, 
 
 From a pious church establish- 
 ment, 
 
 From the slavery of praying for 
 crowned heads, 
 
 From royal anniversaries, 
 
 From mock trials, 
 
 From all other things purely 
 English, 
 
 Fenianism the salvation of our race f 
 
 Record it above, O 1 Toole. 
 
 Fenianism to be stamped out like the cattle plague ! 
 
 We will prove them false prophets, O 1 Toole. 
 
 O 1 Toole deliver us .'
 
 GOVERNMENT AMONG SECRET ORDERS. 697 
 
 It is a 
 
 Ireland reduced to obedience, 
 
 Ireland loyal to the crown, 
 
 Ireland pacified with concessions, 
 
 Ireland to recruit the British \ falsehood, 
 
 arm;/, W Toole. 
 
 Ireland not united in effort, 
 
 Ireland never again to be dragged at the tail of any other nation! 
 Proclaim it on high, O 1 Toole. 
 
 The term Tammany was first applied to the Columbian order, 
 an association for fraternal and political purposes in New York 
 City which took form in the year 1789, and which, when incor- 
 porated in the year 1805, assumed the additional appellation, 
 Tammany, and also gave this odd name to the place of meeting 
 which was owned or leased by the society. In this Tammany 
 Hall the regular Democratic organization of the city and county 
 of Xew York assembled up to the year 1879. Thus the name 
 Tammany grew to be applied as a rule to the political organiza- 
 tion which met in Tammany Hall whether it was the regular 
 Democratic organization or not. 
 
 This would seem to prove that nowadays there may be much 
 in a name, for this name has been applied indiscriminately for 
 eighty years. First freely used for a secret benevolent society, 
 next given to the regular political city and county organization of 
 a national party assembling in the hall of that society, and in its 
 third and last evolution of meaning, the title, Tammany, has come 
 to be attached especially to the Democratic faction which assembles 
 in Tammany Hall, and which is sometimes regular and sometimes 
 refractory or boltish. 
 
 Not for forty years has Tammany commanded the unquestioned 
 allegiance of the voters of the Democratic party, but has played 
 the part, if not of dog-in-the-manger, at least of a most deter- 
 mined growler on several occasions. One of its most striking 
 characteristics is that it has preserved to a large extent the 
 features of a secret society and applied them to a political action. 
 Most of its councils are confidential, and its leaders have worked 
 for the success of the society first, as a rule, and for the Demo- 
 cratic party second. They claim, however, that the success of 
 the Democratic party and the society are identical, although Tarn-
 
 698 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 many in its present stage of development has been described, even 
 by Democrats, as "a well-disciplined body of predatory politi- 
 cians." 
 
 The history of Tammany for the last fifty or sixty years, as it 
 looks to an outsider, has been the record of an organization shar- 
 ing the principles of a National party, but bent first and fore- 
 most on controlling the government of the city iu which it exists. 
 Or, in plainer words, it has been a highly successful scheme to 
 govern a huge, overgrown, unwieldy eity by organizing its pur- 
 chasable vote, by confining in one black-magic circle of self- 
 interest the day-laborer who desires steady employment on the 
 public roads, and the learned lawyer solicitous for a judgeship of 
 $15,000 a year, with its additional refereeships and wide influ- 
 ence. Tammany keeps an eye wide open for smart young law- 
 yers likely to become distinguished at the bar, and throws its coils 
 around them. 
 
 The early history of Tammany is exceedingly curious, and fur-, 
 nishes a suggestive contrast with its later political performances. 
 It seems that there was an obscure Indian chief called Tain.- 
 mamend, who signed his mark to one of the treaties with William 
 Penn concerning the lands of the Delawares. An attempt was 
 made at one time to connect this legendary gentleman with an 
 equally obscure Saint Tammany, whose festival on the 12th of 
 May came in the closing days of the Revolution to replace Saint 
 George's day. 
 
 After William Mooney had organized the Columbian order 
 with its thirteen tribes, its twelve sachems or directors, its saga- 
 more or master of ceremonies, and its wiskinski or door-keeper, 
 the secondary name of Tammany society was adopted, and in the 
 processions of the day its members wore the garb of Indians. In 
 1790 they even entertained an embassy from the Creek Nation, 
 going about for several days together in Indian costume, a compli- 
 ment, no doubt, highly relished by those sagacious savages. 
 
 In reports of these meetings nowadays the New York papers 
 still use the odd, old Indian phraseology referring to " the season 
 of flowers, council fires, and great wigwams," just as they were 
 used in the days of Washington. But Time, that grotesque 
 alchemist, that mocking transmuter of fine things into base, of
 
 GOVERNMENT AMONG SECRET ORDERS. 
 
 699 
 
 gold into brass, has changed the great sachem of Tammany into 
 a mere political boss, and the chief business of its present 
 wiskinski, who once gathered at the door the dollars of the 
 faithful, has become simply the prompt collection of political 
 
 RICHARD CHOKER, THE PRESENT CHIEF OF TAMMANY. 
 
 assessments levied on Tammany office-holders to perpetuate the 
 power of the machine in New York City. 
 
 But it must not be imagined that its power has been confined 
 to local politics. Since its beginning it has played no small 
 part in national affairs. Its strong grip on the country at large 
 was demonstrated in 1801, and the result of its local success at 
 the polls was the cause, the following winter, of the nomination 
 of Aaron Burr as vice-president in the congressional caucus at 
 Washington on the strength of Tammany's victory, and from that
 
 700 THE STOIIY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 day to this there have been very few national elections in which 
 the power of Tammany has not been manifested. 
 
 It would, however, tire the general reader to pursue step by 
 step the political growth of this faction, for its intricate relations 
 with New York politics have sometimes been a puzzle even to 
 special students. Yet a few things should be noted as indicative 
 of its power. Just as a man's strength of character is sometimes 
 to be measured not so much by his successes as by his recovery 
 from defeats and his attitude of mind in adversity, so the strength 
 of an organization may be estimated at times by its setbacks. 
 Tammany has survived several. Chief of these was its connec- 
 tion with the Tweed ring, which connection and the loss of 
 power, after the plunder of the Tweed ring was stopped, are 
 things still fresh in the public mind. It shows the inherent 
 power of organization that, even in spite of some severe defeats in 
 recent times, Tammany has regained and still retains its potency 
 in New York politics, and is to-day perhaps stronger than ever, 
 having a leader in Richard Croker far the superior of Tweed in 
 ability to manipulate men, and the equal, if not the superior, of 
 John Kelly in honesty. 
 
 The Tammany legend to which we have referred has been 
 hinted at by New York papers but has never, so far as we know, 
 been fully presented since the year 1795, when S. L. Mitchill, 
 Professor of chemistry, natural history, and agriculture in the 
 College of New York, delivered an oration before the Columbian 
 order on the life, exploits, and precepts of Tammany, the famous 
 Indian chief. This oration is so curious that the reader will 
 thank us for reproducing the substance of it, and in some places 
 the exact language. 
 
 The Professor begins with the solemn adjuration : " Brothers, 
 possess your minds ! Peace!" After an allusion to the council 
 fire and the women and children present, and after stating that 
 certain archaeological monuments, found west of the Alleghanies 
 and northward from the Ohio River, are silent witnesses of the 
 hero, Tammany, and his people, Professor Mitchill plunges into 
 a description of various battles or rather hand-to-hand duels 
 which the great Indian chief had with Hobbamock, the Evil 
 Spirit, or in plain American, the Devil himself.
 
 GOVERNMENT AMONG SECRET ORDERS. 701 
 
 According to this New York historian the Devil was much 
 troubled at the prosperity which the people were enjoying under 
 the rule of Tammany, and so in their pastures His Satanic Majesty 
 secretly planted poison-sumachs and stinging nettles whu-h, 
 upspringing in profusion, gave the people no end of trouble. 
 Tammany, after studying the situation, and after cutting down 
 the trees, and uprooting the nettles, only to find that they grew 
 all the faster, discovered that the soil was of such a peculiar 
 character that he could set fire to it. 
 
 In doing this Tammany not only reduced the sumachs and net- 
 tles from a multitudinous majority among the flora to an easily 
 endured minority; but, in the conflagration of the pastures, the 
 Arch Fiend, who happened to be skulking about, gloating over 
 his evil work, got sorely singed by the flames. In revenge for 
 this roasting Hobbamock invented the rattle-snake, and sent 
 innumerable specimens of his invention into the realm of Tam- 
 many ; but the clever chief not only showed his people how to 
 make life unpleasant for the rattle-snake by sowing the seeds of 
 the ash tree, but discovered also the virtues of seneca root and 
 the use of plantain leaves for his people to apply to the snake- 
 bites. 
 
 Old Nick, however, was full of schemes and showed a patience 
 and fertility of invention worthy of a better cause, suggesting the 
 idea that if the Devil could have been, or could be, reformed by 
 Tammany what a valuable citizen he might become. His next 
 move, s-ays our Professor of natural history, was to send alarming 
 droves of mammoths from the other side of Lake Superior, which 
 ferocious animals, when turned loose on the Tammanial territory, 
 did incredible mischief. 
 
 Their hides, like those of modern politicians, were so thick 
 that the light arrows of the followers of Tammany rattled off them 
 like hailstones from a tin roof, and Tammany was put to his wits' 
 end to discover a way of ridding his people of these pests. 
 
 Tammany had noticed, however, in the days when, like the 
 eloquent Professor, he had studied natural history, that animals 
 were fond of salt ; so he sent to the ocean and got a large quan- 
 tity of it. Digging some deep pits, he set firmly at the bottom 
 of these pits an array of tough spears, covered the holes with
 
 702 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 a light network of interlaced saplings and turf, to imitate solid 
 ground, and then sprinkled his huge traps all over with heaps of 
 salt. 
 
 The mammoths soon got wind of this salt, and came to the 
 conclusion that they had found their earthly paradise. They 
 made an indiscriminate rush for the salt beds, crashed through the 
 light flooring, fell into the pits, and were by their own weight 
 spitted on the solid spears waiting to receive them. "Then," 
 adds the Professor, "the country was cleared of these monsters 
 whose bones, discovered to this day at the Licks, confirm the reality 
 of the story." 
 
 Satan now tried to drown Tammany and his tribe by a flood, 
 and to do this he cunningly raised a dam of rock above Ontario, 
 and caused the rise of Lake Erie ; he made another dam above 
 Detroit, confining Lakes Huron and Michigan, and presently the 
 country to the south began to be inundated. Tammany, learning 
 of this plot in time, opened the drains or courses in which the 
 Alleghany, Miamis, and "Wabash Rivers now run, cut the ditch 
 which forms the channel of the Ohio through a bed of solid lime- 
 stone, and thus, giving an easy vent to the dangerous body of 
 waters impending, turned an imminent colossal calamity into a 
 broad and brilliant blessing; for which fine example of mechanical 
 engineering he was rightly hailed as the saviour of his country. 
 "The lakes," remarks the profound college Professor, "subsided, 
 but the rapids of Detroit and Niagara remain to this day monu- 
 ments to the astonishing event ! " 
 
 But the Enemy of souls, though baffled, was not beaten. Soon 
 after he managed to stir up the red men of the east and north, and 
 they descended in great numbers on the land of the peaceful Tam- 
 many and his people. Yet, though fond of peace, Tammany was 
 always ready for war, and with his devoted army he defeated the 
 invaders and took a multitude of their best men prisoners. To 
 be taken prisoner among the Indians then was accounted very dis- 
 graceful, and the captives not only expected but hoped for a sud- 
 den execution. 
 
 Tammany, however, did not torture them as was their custom, 
 nor allow his people to insult them in any Avay, but on the con- 
 trary, after keeping them in quiet seclusion for a while began to
 
 GOVERNMENT AMONG SECRET ORDERS. 703 
 
 treat them as though they were honored guests, invited them to 
 live among his people, and so conciliated them that they became 
 stanch admirers of his policy and, when offered their entire 
 freedom, some of them staid, and others went home and brought 
 back their wives and children, to live under the benign influence 
 of Tammany. 
 
 The Devil now decided that the only way to conquer the gentle 
 savage was to take him off his guard and kill him personally, 
 after which perhaps it would be easy to get the best of his 
 people. "Herein," suggests the Professor, "the Devil's meanness 
 was amply demonstrated, for, instead of sending an open chal- 
 lenge to Tammany, he hid in a bush to waylay him, but by the 
 peculiar smell which evil spirits emit, Tammany, coming along, 
 knew him at once, and when he sprang out was ready to grasp 
 him." 
 
 A terrible tussle it was, and appears to have been a sort of 
 Grceco-Roman-American-Indian-Xew-York-Ward-politician-up-and- 
 down wrestle, since, according to the historian, "for more than a 
 league the trees and bushes were smashed up, and the contest 
 lasted for fifty days, until Tammany, by a hiplock, threw the 
 Devil head and shoulders to the ground, and then tried to roll 
 him along, 'intending to drown him in the Ohio River; but a 
 huge rock stood in the way, and Tammany was so tired with his 
 tremendous exertions that he could not roll the Devil round the 
 rock." 
 
 Relaxing his arm grip on the hips, the chief took Lucifer by the 
 throat, but his wrists and thumb had been so weakened that he 
 could not stop the enemy's weasand, and with a few wriggles the 
 Devil slipped through his fingers. Tammany shouted after him, 
 however, as he sneaked away that he had better confine himself 
 to the cold regions of Labrador and Hudson's Bay, and not be 
 caught showing his face again on this side of the " Many Waters " 
 or Great Lakes. 
 
 After this more than Homeric battle the Indian hero and 
 statesman turned his attention to the arts of peace. He was very 
 fond of watching the habits of animals in order to get hints from 
 them for the improvement of his followers, and in his rambles 
 he noticed a plant much piized by the crows and raccoons which
 
 704 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 grew rather abundantly in some places, bearing a silken tassel, 
 and with yellowish seeds. 
 
 Taking some of the seeds of this wild plant he. put them in 
 richer soil, cultivated them carefully, and in this way produced 
 corn, which he taught his people to roast, grind, and make up 
 into bread, but not, so far as history goes, to convert into 
 whiskey. Tammany also discovered how to improve to a high 
 degree of excellence wild pulse, or beans, "thus annexing," says 
 the Professor, "another ingredient to his bill of fare" and 
 "thus," a modern humorist might be tempted to add, "probably 
 anticipating the glory of Boston." 
 
 Tobacco, according to Professor Mitchill, was another of the 
 discoveries of Tammany, who did not recommend his followers to 
 use it in the modern method, but to prepare an infusion of it for 
 the dispersion of fleas, and to smoke it occasionally as a deterrent 
 to mosquitoes. The wild plum, mandrake, and onion Tammany 
 also civilized ; the crab tree, by his careful attention, was per- 
 suaded into bearing apples, and he also improved the canoes, and 
 bows, and arrows of his people. 
 
 In all his endeavors to ameliorate and beautify human life his 
 daughters assiduously helped him, and were rewarded with a 
 sweet success, for, in the language of Mitchill, "The wild lilies 
 quitted their abode in the valleys, and the roses forsook their 
 habitations on the hills for the pleasure of being tended by these 
 lovely damsels, and of occasionally furnishing a nosegay for their 
 bosoms and a garland for their temples." 
 
 But the supreme trait of Tammany's character was that ho was 
 gentle; even improvements he never tried to force upon his peo- 
 ple, but simply suggested them, as it were, for he "disdained 
 usurpation, and would sooner have been bound, loaded with 
 weights, and cast headlong into the lake than attempt any inva- 
 sion of the people's rights." In this respect what a remarkable 
 resemblance he bears to the Tammany of to-day ! 
 
 About this time a deputation came to him from Manco Capac, 
 the famous original Inca of Peru, asking Tammany to meet him 
 half way in the neighborhood of the city of Mexico to take measures 
 for the improvement of the world. Tammany wanted to meet the 
 Inca, yet did not wish to go unless it was the desire of his people,
 
 GOVERNMENT AMONG SECRET ORDERS. 
 
 705 
 
 and so at first he refused the invitation, but the people coming 
 together spontaneously' to a huge council fire, urged their great 
 leader to leave them and confer with the " Illustrious Sachem of 
 the Andes." 
 
 Before departing, however, Tammany divided his people into 
 thirteen tribes, giving to each a symbol and a sermon of specially 
 valuable advice connected with that symbol. The symbols were 
 to be the special belong- 
 ing of each tribe, but the 
 advice was to be their 
 general property. It is 
 noteworthy in this con- 
 nection that in the organ- 
 ization, of the Tammany 
 
 societ} r of modern 
 this division 
 into thirteen 
 tribes was re- 
 ligiously ad- 
 hered to, for 
 the addition- 
 al reason, it 
 is said, that 
 there were 
 originally 
 thirteen states 
 composing 
 the American 
 IT n i o n. At 
 
 day 
 
 MKKTING OF TAMMANY AND MAN' CO CAPAC. 
 
 any rate, this 
 
 is one of the curious coincidences of history, and should for- 
 ever disprove the absurd superstition that there is any ill luck 
 connected with the number thirteen. 
 
 "Children of the First tribe," said Tammany, "let the Eagle be 
 your model ! Learn from him to devote your mind to lofty objects, 
 and never be caught sleeping in the sun. As he rises on the winds 
 of morning far above the mountain peaks where he builds his eyry, 
 so you should rise superior to the fogs of prejudice and passion.
 
 70t> THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 "The symbol of the Second tribe is the Tiger, who affords a 
 useful lesson to you by his extraordinary agility when roused to 
 action, and by his power of seeing, when all light is withdrawn save 
 that of the stars, in short, by his discrimination in the dark. 
 
 " The symbol of the Third tribe is the Deer, from whom you 
 should learn to avoid difficulties and dangers, and to escape grace- 
 fully from the toils of those who would entrap you. 
 
 "Of the Fourth tribe let the symbol be the Wolf! Notice his 
 wide nostrils which catch every atom that floats on the air invisi- 
 ble as the air itself. As is the vigilance of the wolf, so should 
 be the vigilance of the myrmidons of Tammany. They should 
 be the first to rouse and turn their heads to snuff oppression in 
 every tainted breeze. 
 
 " You of the Fifth tribe, my children, are to take useful hints 
 from the Buffalo ; though strong, he likes the company of his 
 kind. From him comes this message : ' Operate in concert ; stand 
 together and you will be a mountain that no one can move. 
 Fritter down your strength by division, let wigwam be divided 
 against wigwam, and you will be an anthill which a baby can 
 kick over.' 
 
 "Let the symbol of the Sixth tribe be the Dog, who by his 
 affection, even when ill or carelessly treated by his master, brings 
 finally his master to a. kinder and better way. 
 
 " Of the Seventh tribe let the symbol be the Beaver, who by his 
 industry can build firm houses even in running waters. 
 
 "Let the Eighth tribe take the Squirrel, from whom we can all 
 learn foresight; who, not satisfied with merely living in the 
 present, takes up a collection against the storms of winter. 
 
 "For the Ninth tribe the symbol is the Fox, whose caution is 
 shown by the fact that he always reconnoitres before starting on 
 any journey, and even when started never goes headlong, but 
 winds his ways so as to get sight or scent of any possible ambush. 
 
 " Let the Tenth tribe take the Tortoise, that remarkable animal, 
 one of whom, according to ancient tradition, supports on his back 
 the world we inhabit. Benevolence and moderation are charac- 
 teristics of the tortoise. Sometimes that tortoise who supports 
 the world is disgusted at the conduct of its people. By turning 
 his shell suddenly he could cause the waters to flow over the land
 
 GOVERNMENT AMONG SECRET ORDERS. 707 
 
 in floods, but such is his benevolence generally, that he only 
 shakes his shell a little, thus causing a few earthquakes, to 
 admonish mankind of their evil deeds. The result of his modera- 
 tion and temperance is such that his vital power is distributed 
 almost equally all over his body and throughout his shell, so that 
 on account of this distribution of vital force he is difficult to 
 kill. 
 
 "Of the Eleventh tribe the symbol is the Eel, a creature of 
 gentleness and grace, who slips through life in silence, and 
 teaches us to eschew unnecessary noise. Though cast an orphan 
 on creation, knowing neither his parents nor his origin, by his 
 gentleness and his co-operativeness he makes life a valuable 
 thing. 
 
 " Let the Twelfth tribe take the Bear who leads a life of patient 
 endurance, sleeping calmly through the adversities of winter, 
 confident of the return of spring. 
 
 " The model of the Thirteenth tribe shall be the Bee, whose life 
 furnishes a lesson of order, economy, and discipline which con- 
 duces to the general good. Nor this alone, for we find in the 
 world the bees' maxim pretty well established and illustrated, 
 ' that he who works not shall have nothing to eat. ' Learn also, as 
 the bee extracts honey from faded flowers, to have that alchemy 
 of mind which can transmute troubles into triumphs." 
 
 Having delivered to his people this singularly sensible sermon, 
 Tammany departed southward to have his interview with Manco 
 Capac. For this celebrated Peruvian Tammany drew the outlines 
 of that happy government of Peru which the reader has found 
 described in the eighth chapter, and which the eloquent orator 
 and historian of 1795 thinks would have been flourishing to-day, 
 had it not been for "the cursed enterprise of Pizarro." Accord- 
 ing to Professor Mitchill, Tammany also mapped out a plan to 
 civilize the Aztecs of Mexico, which plan in the course of time 
 would unquestionably have succeeded, had it not been overthrown 
 by what Professor Mitchill styles "the hellish crusade of 
 Cortez." 
 
 Tammany then returned to find that the Devil during his 
 absence had been doing much mischief in the Tammanial terri- 
 tory ; had intercepted the courses of the rivers and turned them
 
 708 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 in some places into pestiferous swamps whose miasma had pro- 
 duced fever and sickness among the people. Finding that in 
 many ways they were sick or were going to the dogs, Tammany 
 at once treated them with Peruvian bark, a medicine which he 
 had received from the Incas, and when his supply of Peruvian 
 bark gave out he tried as a substitute the bark of the dogwood or 
 tulip tree; and another disease rather worse than swamp fever 
 Tammany succeeded in mitigating by discovering the medicinal 
 properties of the lobelia. 
 
 But at last this royal benefactor died and to him was given 
 by a grateful people a most royal burial place. This place curious 
 antiquarians have detected; he lies interred within the great 
 Indian mound and fort of Muskingum, a monument second to 
 nothing in symmetry and impressive solemnity except the Cheops 
 pyramid of Egypt, which is the tomb, not of a great benefactor, 
 but of a great oppressor of mankind. Singular contrast between 
 Africa and America, between Pharaoh and Tammany! 
 
 The Professor then concludes his oration with this burst of 
 eighteenth century eloquence : " You may consider the talk you 
 have now heard as an effort to rescue a curious portion of un- 
 written history from oblivion. The Eastern world has long boasted 
 of the superiority of its people, and the inhabitants of the Western 
 Continent have been spoken of as a feeble or degraded race of men. 
 Let Asia extol her Zamolxis, Confucius, and Zoroaster; let 
 Africa be proud of her Dido, Ptolemy, and Barbarossa; let Europe 
 applaud her numberless worthies, who from Romulus to Charle- 
 magne and from Charlemagne down to the present day have founded, 
 conquered, inherited, or governed states, but where, among them 
 all, will you find coercion so tempered by gentleness, influence 
 so co-operative with legal authority, and speculation so happily 
 connected with practice, as in the institutions of Tammany? 
 
 " Avaunt then, ye boasters ! Cease, too, your prating about your 
 Saint Patrick, Saint George, and Saint Louis, and be silent con- 
 cerning your Saint Andrew and Saint David. Tammany, though 
 no saint, was, you see, as valorous, intrepid, and heroic as the best 
 of them, and besides that did a thousand times more good Let 
 us then imitate Tammany; let us get his precepts by heart; let 
 us, like him, wage perpetual war against the Evil Spirit."
 
 GOVERNMENT AMONG SECRET ORDERS. 
 
 709 
 
 From fantasies to figures is almost like a plunge from the 
 sublime to the ridiculous, but violent contrasts are sometimes 
 very profitable to impress the mind with the full extent of a mis- 
 chief or danger. An examination, therefore, of the following 
 statistics will convince the casual reader that the followers of 
 Tammany have followed the closing advice given by Professor 
 Mitchill nearly a hundred years, by "waging so parpetual and suc- 
 cessful a war against the Evil Spirit " that they have gotten under 
 their control a large amount of that yellow stuff which is called 
 the root of all evil. 
 
 Tammany Hall monopolizes all the best offices in the city of 
 New York, and the society entered the year 1892 with a longer 
 pay-roll than ever before. It is as follows : 
 
 THOS. C. T. GRAIN, Chamberlain $25,000 
 
 WM. H. CLARK, Corporation Counsel 12,000 
 
 DAVID J. DEAX, Assistant Corporation Counsel .... 10,000 
 
 HUGH J. GRANT, Mayor . 10,000 
 
 THEO. W. MYERS, Comptroller 10,000 
 
 Of the subordinate officials we need not give the names ; the 
 salaries are sufficient. 
 
 1 at 
 2 
 2 
 4 , 
 27 , 
 1 , 
 6 , 
 5 , 
 20 , 
 24 , 
 1 , 
 1 , 
 39 , 
 3 , 
 49 , 
 14 , 
 3 , 
 25 , 
 12 , 
 3 , 
 23 , 
 5 , 
 15 . 
 
 $8 000 
 
 . $ 8000 
 
 256 at 
 1 
 4 , 
 6 , 
 125 , 
 2 , 
 H , 
 3 , 
 
 9 , 
 2 
 
 251 , 
 152 , 
 3 , 
 5 , 
 186 , 
 2 , 
 27 , 
 
 1 , 
 3,430 
 9 , 
 618 , 
 20 , 
 6 , 
 
 $2,000 . . 
 
 . . . $512,000 
 
 7 500 
 
 . . 15,000 
 
 1,980 . . 
 
 . . . 1,980 
 
 7 000 
 
 14 000 
 
 1,900 . . 
 
 . . . 7,600 
 
 6 000 
 
 24 000 
 
 1,850 . . 
 
 . . . 11,100 
 
 5 000 
 
 135 000 
 
 1,800 . . 
 
 . . . 225,000 
 
 4 900 
 
 4900 
 
 1,750 . . 
 
 . . . 3,500 
 
 4 800 
 
 28 800 
 
 1,700 . . 
 
 . . . 18,700 
 
 4 500 
 
 22 500 
 
 1,680 . . 
 
 . . . 5,040 
 
 4 000 
 
 80 000 
 
 1,600 . . 
 
 . . . 14,400 
 
 3 500 
 
 84 000 
 
 1,550 . . 
 
 . . . 3,100 
 
 3 250 
 
 3,250 
 
 1,500 . . 
 
 . . . 376,500 
 
 3 200 
 
 3200 
 
 1,400 . . 
 
 . . . 212,800 
 
 3 000 
 
 117000 
 
 1,380 . . 
 
 . . . 4,140 
 
 2 800 
 
 84,000 
 
 1,350 . . 
 
 . . . 6,750 
 
 2 750 
 
 134 750 
 
 1,300 . . 
 
 . . . 241,800 
 
 2 700 
 
 37 800 
 
 1,260 
 
 . . . 2,520 
 
 9 AOO 
 
 7 800 
 
 1,250 . . 
 
 . . . 33,750 
 
 2 500 
 
 62 500 
 
 1,248 . . 
 
 . . . 1,:24S 
 
 2 400 
 
 28 300 
 
 , 1,200 
 
 . . . 4,116,000 
 
 Qf)0 
 
 6 900 
 
 1,150 . . 
 
 . . . 10,350 
 
 O O^A 
 
 51 750 
 
 1,110 . . 
 
 . . . 679,800 
 
 29ftO 
 
 11 000 
 
 1,080 . . 
 
 . . . 21,600 
 
 2.100 
 
 31,500 
 
 1,050 . . 
 
 . . . 6,300
 
 710 
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 566 at $ 
 
 1,000 . . 
 
 . . . $566,000 
 
 .->7 at $192 *10.944 
 
 22 , 
 
 950 . . 
 
 . . . 20,900 
 
 89 180 10,020 
 
 167 , 
 
 900 . . 
 
 150 300 
 
 23 , 108 3,864 
 
 1 
 
 880 . . 
 
 . . . 880 
 
 77 , 144 11,088 
 
 2 , 
 
 850 . . 
 
 . . . 1,700 
 
 129 , 120 15,480 
 
 7 , 
 
 840 . . 
 
 . . . 5,880 
 
 5 , 96 480 
 
 1 , 
 
 820 
 
 820 
 
 5 , 72 360 
 
 4!) ,, 
 
 800 . . 
 
 . . . 39,200 
 
 22 , 60 1,320 
 
 20 , 
 
 780 . . 
 
 . . . 15,600 
 
 1 , 20 20 
 
 4 , 
 
 760 . . 
 
 . . . 3,040 
 
 20 laborers at 5 a. day 250 days 
 
 35 , 
 
 750 . . 
 
 . . . 26,250 
 
 a year (estimated) ... 25,000 
 
 52 , 
 
 720 . . 
 
 . . . 37,440 
 
 17 laborers at 4.50 ;i day, 250 
 
 29 
 
 700 . . 
 
 . . . 19,600 
 
 days a year 19,125 
 
 4 , 
 
 660 . . 
 
 . . . 2,040 
 
 103 laborers at 4 a day, 250 days 
 
 6 , 
 
 650 . . 
 
 . . . 3,900 
 
 a year 103,000 
 
 73 , 
 
 600 . . 
 
 . . . 43,800 
 
 119 laborers at 3 50 a day, 250 
 
 31 , 
 
 572 . . 
 
 . . . 17,732 
 
 days a year . . 104 125 
 
 26 , 
 
 540 . . 
 
 ... 14 040 
 
 235 laborers at 3 ;i day 250 days 
 
 53 , 
 
 500 . . 
 
 . . . 26,500 
 
 a year .... 176 250 
 
 13 , 
 
 480 . . 
 
 . . . 6,240 
 
 243 laborers at 2 50 a day 250 
 
 17 , 
 
 450 . . 
 
 . . . 7,050 
 
 days a vear . . 301,500 
 
 1 , 
 
 436 . . 
 
 . . . 436 
 
 35 laborers at 50 cents an hour 
 
 65 , 
 
 420 . . 
 
 . . . 27,300 
 
 9 liours a day 250 days (esti- 
 
 25 , 
 
 400 . . 
 
 . . . 10,000 
 
 mated) ... 39 375 
 
 5 
 
 364 . . 
 
 . . . 1,820 
 
 38 laborers at 39 cents an liour 
 
 304 , 
 
 360 . . 
 
 . . . 109,440 
 
 9 hours a day 250 days 33 345 
 
 1 , 
 
 348 . . 
 
 . . . 348 
 
 
 31 , 
 
 300 . . 
 
 . . . 9,300 
 
 9 hours a day 250 days . 33 862 
 
 5 , 
 
 264 . . 
 
 . . . 1,320 
 
 
 2 ,. 
 
 252 . . 
 
 . . . 504 
 
 9 hours a day 250 days . 227 812 
 
 230 , 
 
 240 . . 
 
 . . . 55,200 
 
 9 laborers at 16 cents an hour 
 
 10 ., 
 
 228 . . 
 
 . . . 2 280 
 
 9 liours a day . . . 3 '240 
 
 
 91ft 
 
 OQ aaA 
 
 
 11 
 
 o 
 
 ooec 
 
 4rA 
 
 Total $10,123,887 
 
 * 
 1 , 
 
 200 
 
 200 
 
 
 This table is compiled from the Official Record, which gives the 
 names and salary of every employee under the Tammany city gov- 
 ernment. As between two and three per cent, of all salaries are 
 collected by Tammany for political purposes, the campaign fund 
 this year must be at least $250,000, exclusive of the special assess- 
 ments levied upon those seeking nominations for office. 
 
 Go into the " Wigwam " - Tammany Hall any afternoon at 
 three o'clock, and you will find seated behind a great flat topped 
 desk Richard Croker, the leader of the Tammany forces. Under 
 his guidance and tutelage Tammany has been more successful
 
 ' 'SjiSQS VV ' 
 
 

 
 mm 
 Rfl 
 
 ONASTEltY CKLLAU. 
 
 711-14
 
 GOVERNMENT AMONG SECRET ORDERS. 715 
 
 than at any time since Tweed's downfall, and his friends boast 
 that he has never managed a campaign which resulted in a defeat. 
 The organization of Tammany was cut out and planned before 
 Croker became a leader, but he has perfected it in such a way 
 that to-day the composition and discipline of an army is not more 
 accurate or severe. While the Tammany leader occupies a prom- 
 inent position in the community, and is constantly before the 
 public, the popular idea of him and his personality is entirely 
 erroneous. Mr. Croker's beginning was at the foot of the ladder. 
 He arose literally from the ashes, having been in his early youth 
 an engineer on the New York Central Railroad. 
 
 Instead of being a loud blatherskite and a man who dresses 
 flashily, he is precisely the opposite. He is quiet and reserved, 
 and wears the plainest and severest black clothes. He is a strong 
 lover of home and, except when a political campaign is in 
 progress, can always be found there. He is short and stout, 
 wears a thick stubby black beard, and has between his teeth at all 
 times a. cigar. Under the most trying circumstances he is calm. 
 Croker used to be city chamberlain, but he resigned this place 
 the most lucrative in the borough >and went to Europe on ac- 
 count of ill health. Young Crain was appointed to his place, 
 but the general belief is that Croker has yet an interest in the 
 salary. 
 
 There is no doubt that he could obtain any position he desires, 
 but he has since his retirement from public office devoted himself 
 to the management of the political organization of which he is the 
 acknowledged chief. Being the supreme authority, quite natur- 
 ally Croker is the head of the Finance Committee, and to him 
 come all the contributions levied upon office-holders. For his 
 management of the organization it is a matter of common talk 
 that he receives $15,000 a year. 
 
 Yet while Tammany is managed by this one man, Richard 
 Croker, the machinery he uses is complicated and interesting. 
 First there is the General Committee. This is composed of the 
 active workers in every voting district in New York City. It 
 has about four thousand members. Next in size and importance 
 is the committee in each election district, which is called the Com- 
 mittee on Organization. This committee is composed of only
 
 716 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the leading or most active men of the General Committee of each 
 district. 
 
 The General Committee of each district elect a district leader, 
 and these leaders, with the addition of Richard Croker, Bonrke 
 Cockran, and Thomas F. Gilroy, compose the Executive Com- 
 mittee. The routine is that Croker and his chief lieutenants, 
 Cockran, Gilroy, Grant, and James F. Martin decide on what to 
 do. Croker tells the Executive Committee, and straightway it 
 is done, and woe to the man who objects. 
 
 In other political organizations one hears of unexpected out- 
 breaks at meetings, but not so in Tammany. A leader like 
 Croker, Gilroy, or Martin can easily tell in the afternoon what 
 a Tammany meeting will do at night, or how a Tammany Assem- 
 bly man will vote next month. The chairman of a Tammany 
 committee becomes "deaf, dumb, and blind," if a man unknown 
 to him arises to offer a resolution. 
 
 Mr. Donegan, an official who draws a $1,200 salary, collects 
 money for the Tammany organization. Mr. Donegan has no 
 trouble. The office-holders understand, and the schedules are 
 fixed. The amounts to be contributed are about as follows : 
 
 $1,200 salaries $25.00 
 
 1,500 30.00 
 
 1,800 35.00 
 
 2,000 40.00 
 
 2,500 50.00 
 
 The collector does not bother with small fry who get under 
 $1,200, nor does he collect from the big fellows, the heads of 
 departments, etc. The little fellows pay to the district leaders, 
 and the big ones pay direct. Judge Pryor, for instance, drew his 
 check for $ 10, 000 to the Tammany chief last fall. The bankers 
 and business men who are in sj-mpathy with the organization are 
 attended to by Edward Kearney, and the gamblers and other 
 "sports" by John J. Scannel and Al Adams. The contractors 
 contribute direct and handsomely, actuated either by hope of 
 reward or fear of punishment. The General Committee men pay 
 $5 a year, which alone is $20,000. The organization men puy 
 $15 a year, which is another $12,000. Donegan collects fully
 
 GOVERNMENT AMONG SECRET ORDERS. 717 
 
 ),000 a year, and the old historic opponent of Tammany only 
 knows what Scannel, Kearney, and the others turn in. 
 
 The following is an outline of the plan of organization on 
 which Tammany Hall's power has been built up. The unit of 
 organization in Tammany Hall is the General Committee. This 
 is made up on a basis of one member for each fifty Democratic 
 votes cast at the preceding national or State election within the 
 city and county of New York. The representation upon this com- 
 mittee for 1892 by assembly districts was as follows: 
 
 DISTRICTS. 
 
 
 DISTRICTS. 
 
 
 1 
 
 , ... 86 
 
 14 
 
 .... 88 
 
 2 
 
 . ... 98 
 
 15 
 
 .... 122 
 
 3 
 
 ... 88 
 
 16 
 
 .... 110 
 
 4 
 
 , . . . 120 
 
 17 
 
 .... 150 
 
 5 
 
 . ... 84 
 
 18 
 
 .... 124 
 
 6 
 
 . . .102 
 
 19 
 
 . . . .264 
 
 7 
 
 ... 82 
 
 20 
 
 .... 120 
 
 8 
 
 ... 98 
 
 21 
 
 .... 90 
 
 9 
 
 . . .102 
 
 22 
 
 . . . .252 
 
 10 
 
 . . .110 
 
 23 
 
 . . . .292 
 
 11 
 
 ... 62 
 
 24 
 
 .... 168 
 
 1 
 
 94 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 ... 94 
 
 Total .... 
 
 . . . 3,000 
 
 This, however, does not mean that the General Committee shall 
 not exceed three thousand men. On the contrary the committee 
 for the present year has over eight thousand members. The dis- 
 trict leader may put as many men on his district delegation as he 
 sees fit, but, no matter how large the delegation may be, at all 
 meetings of the committee it can only cast the number of votes 
 given above. One absolute rule of the General Committee is that 
 it must have at least one member from each election district in the 
 city, but it may have as many more as the district leader sees fit. 
 
 Next in order comes the Committee on Organization. This is 
 a sub-committee of the General Committee, and consists of 
 thirty-two men from each assembly district, total 768. Last year 
 the representation on this committee was twenty-seven from eacli 
 assembly district, but for this year the number has been increased 
 as above.
 
 718 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 As will be observed, the assembly district representation upon 
 this committee is not, like the general committee, based upon the 
 Democratic vote. Every assembly district is treated alike, the 
 one idea being to bring into this committee the best workers, 
 the pick and choice of the organization. The result is that the 
 Committee on Organization is made up largely, though not 
 wholly, of the election district captains, the men who have charge 
 of the election districts and are responsible for the organization 
 thereof. 
 
 The Executive Committee, or Committee of Twenty-four, as it 
 is sometimes called, though the name is a misnomer, consists of 
 the twenty-four assembly district leaders, the leader or head of 
 the organization, Mr. Croker, Thomas F. Gilroy, Chairman of the 
 Organization Committee, and Bourke Cockran who is not a dis- 
 trict leader, but holds a prominent position in the organization 
 as the Chairman of the Committee on Resolutions and Corre- 
 spondence. 
 
 Each of these committees has its officers, of course, and its 
 standing committees. The standing committees of the General 
 Committee are Committees on Finance, Correspondence, Naturali- 
 zation, and Printing, each consisting of seven members. The 
 Naturalization Committee is the only one of the four concerning 
 which any explanation is necessary. The duties of this com- 
 mittee are to look after aliens, who having lived long enough in 
 the country to comply with the law in that regard are desirous of 
 being naturalized and thus becoming voters. 
 
 The work of the committee is confined mainly to the month or 
 six weeks just before election. It then opens an office or bureau 
 convenient to the courts to which are sent, by the district leader 
 and his lieutenants, all persons wishing to be naturalized. The 
 district leader, before sending such persons to the Naturalization 
 Committee, is supposed to know that they will "be all right on 
 election day, " that is, that they will vote the ticket of the organi- 
 zation after being made citizens. When such an alien, properly 
 certified to, arrives at the bureau, he is taken in charge by a 
 clerk, who conducts him before a judge of the proper court, and 
 sees him through the case without cost to him, all the expenses 
 and court fees being paid by the Tammany organization.
 
 GOVERNMENT AMONG SECRET ORDERS. 719 
 
 The sub-committees of the Committee on Organization in addi- 
 tion to the Executive Committee already mentioned, are commit- 
 tees on expenditures, resolutions, and legislation, of six members 
 each. 
 
 The Committee on Organization is charged with the considera- 
 tion of all matters relating to the organization of the Democratic 
 party, the call of primary elections, and the conducting of primary, 
 general, special, and charter elections; and, in their discretion, 
 have power of revision and substitution of all nominations made 
 by conventions called by the General Committee, or any District 
 or Ward Committee of the organization. The committee 
 authorizes all necessary disbursements and appropriations. This 
 committee possesses very extensive power over the General Com- 
 mittee, but at the samo time it is in its turn subject to the con- 
 trol of the Executive Committee, and that committee again is 
 supposed to be subject to Mr. Croker. 
 
 Assembly district organizations are little machines in them- 
 selves. At the head of each assembly district is a district leader, 
 who ordinarily has absolute charge of the district, and is accounta- 
 ble for it to the organization. If his district makes a bad showing 
 in any election he is called to account, and at a meeting of the 
 Executive Committee must explain the trouble. If his explana- 
 tion is unsatisfactory, that is, if there is evidence of lack of 
 organization and proper work .in the district, or a suspicion of 
 "trading" on his part, his head rolls in the basket, and his 
 organization is invited to select a new leader, and, it may be 
 added, is also instructed whom to select. 
 
 To be a district leader a man must have years of experience, 
 must be able to lead and control men, and his fealty to the organi- 
 zation must be above suspicion. He must also be willing to spend 
 money and to give up a large part of his time to the duties of his 
 position. 
 
 To assist him in handling his district the district leader has a 
 district committee, which is entirely separate and distinct from 
 the district delegation to the General Committee. The District 
 Committee is made up of at least five voters, and as many more 
 as may be from each election district in the assembly district. 
 Over the men in each election district is placed a captain, who is
 
 720 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 responsible for the conduct of the election therein. To him on 
 election eve, or early orl election morning, the assembly district 
 leader delivers the ballots and pasters, and "boodle "for that 
 election district, and if he fails to prove worthy of the confidence 
 placed in him, his political days are numbered. 
 
 But election results are not all that are required of him, 
 although that, of course, is the main thing. If he is not in har- 
 mony with his fellow members in his election district, he must 
 retire and make room for somebody who can compel harmony. 
 
 The captain must see to it that the vote of Tammany Hall is 
 increased. If it is decreased he is called to account, and if his 
 explanation is not satisfactory he is suspended. At the meeting 
 of the assembly district organization once in each month, the cap- 
 tains report the condition of their several election districts and, 
 if there is a break or weakening in any, the district leader imme- 
 diately sets to work to repair the fence. In this way the organi- 
 zation is kept up, and the district leader has his finger constantly 
 on the political pulse of his district. 
 
 This intimate knowledge of his district is necessary to the 
 leader, as he must in his turn make a report of the general condi- 
 tion of the district at each of the monthly meetings of the Com- 
 mittee on Organization, and must also report, whenever called on, 
 by the Executive Committee or by the leader. 
 
 It is in this way that Mr. Croker is kept in constant knowledge 
 of the condition of affairs in every part of the city, almost in 
 every house. It might be added that just before an election 
 these reports are made much more frequently, and it would not 
 be well for any district leader to make rose-tinted reports which 
 the after-election results failed to justify. They do not chase 
 rainbows or " talk through their hats " at such times in Tam- 
 many Hall. 
 
 How is this strict discipline maintained ? Mainly through the 
 knowledge possessed by all that without it no political organiza- 
 tion can hope to succeed. Hence, the short, sharp shock that 
 waits those who ill any way prove untrue to the organization.
 
 XV. 
 
 THE French Revolution was the sad mother of many 
 noble and beautiful dreams some of which are slowly 
 ripening into realities. Then, for the first time, was 
 the demand fairly and squarely made in a national way 
 for equal citizenship. Each man's highest title was " Gitoyen^ 
 Citizen ; each woman was called " Citoyenne" citizeness. 
 
 Yet partial citizenship the right to cast votes, though proba- 
 bly not to hold office was recognized before that glorious dawn of 
 better things, that Revolution, so misunderstood in its day by the 
 average English and American mind. 
 
 Women in New Jersey voted for the adoption of the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States, which it is claimed does not allow 
 women to vote, though it once did. Under it women voted twice 
 for President Washington, once for John Adams, and twice for 
 Thomas Jefferson, and exercised this right for more than thirty 
 years, from 1776 to 1807, when they were unjustly deprived of 
 the right, because the dominant party in New Jersey did not like 
 the way that many women voted. Women submitted to the 
 unjust legislation, as they are obliged to do now, but in no true 
 sense or proper use of language, did they " concur " in being 
 deprived of their rights. 
 
 721
 
 722 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The first formal demands in this country for perfect equality 
 for woman's natural right to a fair share in the practical every-day 
 story of government were made at Seneca Falls, N. Y., in 1848, 
 and at Worcester, Mass., in 1850. 
 
 These conventions accomplished little, but showed what was in 
 the air, the first blowing of a breeze that will some day be 
 the very breath of the nostrils of good government. 
 
 Twenty years later, 1870, the effect of this persistent breeze 
 began to be shown in New England, for the Massachusetts Repub- 
 lican Convention admitted Lucy Stone and Mary A. Livermore as 
 accredited delegates, and later they were admitted to the second 
 one held when Garfield lay dead. 
 
 A year before this, 1869, in Wyoming, full political rights were 
 given to women, and for a long time they exercised the right of 
 suffrage in Utah, thus making a curious graft of the extremest 
 modern democracy on an old religious and patriarchal form of 
 government. 
 
 Wyoming was raised to the rank of a State in 1889, and this 
 act marked the maturity of the first real political democracy of 
 large area in modern times because Wyoming came into the Union 
 with a constitution conferring equal political rights on citizens 
 regardless of sex. 
 
 Next to Wyoming in American civilization stands Kansas, where 
 women have municipal suffrage throughout the State, and in some 
 towns women mayors have shown themselves able to administer 
 affairs as wisely as they did their own households. 
 
 On this royal road to reform, England, it must be grievously 
 admitted, has moved faster than our own country, which no longer 
 with grace can boast of progressiveness, as compared with Europe. 
 For England and Wales, in 1869, and Scotland, in 1881, yielded 
 to women the right of municipal suffrage ; limiting it, however, to 
 unmarried women and widows, and this right prevails in nearly 
 all the American and Australian provinces. 
 
 The little kingdom called the Isle of Man, in 1881, went a step 
 further, following the lead of Wyoming, and making all women 
 with certain property qualifications the, political -equals of men. 
 Iceland, likewise, lias done the same. In England a curious 
 spectacle has recently been attracting attention and compelling
 
 724 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 consideration, namely, the Conservative or Tory party officially 
 endorsing the proposal that parliamentary suffrage should be con- 
 ferred on women. The so-called Liberal party must eventually 
 come up to this and go beyond it. Indeed, an American who has 
 carefully studied the situation there says that, had it not been for 
 the personal opposition of Gladstone, this reform would have been 
 an established fact long ago. 
 
 To descend from generals to particulars, some of which are 
 highly curious and worthy of note, we can say in summary that 
 twenty-eight States and Territories* have conceded the right of 
 suffrage to women in some form. As an example of the interest 
 intelligent women take in the exercise of a right long denied, we 
 may cite the fact that at Binghamton, in New York, three thou- 
 sand women voted in 1890, and in Kansas, where women have 
 equal suffrage with men at all municipal elections, fifty thousand 
 women cast ballots in 1890. These and a host of similar facts 
 give the lie to the foolish statement that intelligent women do not 
 care to vote and prefer to leave all politics to men. 
 
 In Washington, when it was a territory, women voted generally 
 for five years, and one year as many as fourteen thousand. Then 
 they were excluded by a decision of the Territorial Supreme Court 
 on a mere technicality. They were mostly debarred from voting 
 on the State Constitution, and as a result the Constitutional provi- 
 sion guaranteeing suffrage to women was voted down by the men. 
 
 It is said on authority that seems ungainsayable that, when 
 these equal rights were taken away in Washington, the saloons 
 were thrown open for a day of free drinking in celebration of 
 Washington's relapse towards barbarism. If this be true, the 
 inference will be that the saloon element in American life and 
 politics regards woman as its most dangerous enemy. 
 
 The question how women have voted and how they are likely 
 to vote is, of course, of immense interest, but no wizard, since 
 
 Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michi- 
 gan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, South 
 Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin grant women various degrees of school 
 suffrage. In Arkansas and Missouri women can, by petition, vote on liquor licenses in many 
 cases. Several municipalities in Delaware have yielded municipal suffrage to women. 
 Montana declares them capable of voting on questions of local taxation. Women vote in 
 New York at school elections and on local improvements such as gas and electric street 
 lighting, paving, sewerage, and municipal bonds. In Pennsylvania women vote, by signing 
 or refusing to sign petitions, on paving and other local improvements.
 
 WOMAN IN GOVERNMENT. 725 
 
 Virgil, would hazard a positive answer to this, conundrum of the 
 modern Sphinx. Suffice it to say that we are justified in believing 
 that in the future day of freedom, now dimly dawning for them, 
 they will soon learn to exercise their late-gained rights with as 
 much and possibly more wisdom than the majority of men. In 
 the Western States where women have had wider degrees of liberty 
 cheerfully conceded by sensible men in practical matters, such as 
 voting, they have generally voted the Republican ticket, since that 
 party was mainly instrumental in enfranchising them. 
 
 Gratitude is one of the strongest virtues of good women, but, as 
 women study more deeply into politics, they will see that voters 
 owe never so much a debt to the past, as they do a duty to the 
 future. And probably the good and intelligent women voters of 
 this country will cast their ballots before many years for that party 
 which does not inscribe on its banners any stale economic plati- 
 tudes about free trade and protection, but which fearlessly strikes 
 at the root of all the material and many of the mental evils in our 
 American life, namely, the present industrial system, that means a 
 constantly increasing centralization of capital and a constantly 
 more and more enslaving exploitation of the patient many by a 
 greedy and conceited few. 
 
 For the sake of an instructive contrast with the political condi- 
 tion of women in free republican America, let us glance at her 
 political status all over the world. Every province in Australia 
 has municipal woman suffrage. So has Cape Colony, an area of a 
 million square miles. Australia, it should be remembered, is ter- 
 ritorially about as large as the American Union not including 
 Alaska ; and Australia, besides being at present the land of prom- 
 ise for women, has been called the paradise of the workingman, 
 because there by law a day's labor is limited to eight hours, and 
 capital is prevented in various ways from developing to full extent 
 its inherent tendency to enslave and oppress mankind. 
 
 Asia, too, is ahead of the United States in this matter of real 
 progress. All the Russian colonies in Siberia have woman muni- 
 cipal suffrage for heads of households, and women taxpayers in 
 British Burmah and in the Madras and Bombay presidencies have 
 the same political rank. 
 
 Europe shows a similar superiority to " the land of the free and
 
 726 THK STOKY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the home of the brave." In Sweden women vote for all elective 
 officers except representatives, and they vote indirectly for mem- 
 bers of the Swedish House of Lords. In Norway they have the 
 school suffrage. In downtrodden Ireland they vote for harbor- 
 boards, poor-law guardians, and in the city of Belfast for municipal 
 officers. In Russia women vote for all elective officers and on all 
 local matters. In Finland, for all elective officers. In Austria- 
 Hungary they vote, by proxy, for all elective officers. In Croatia 
 and Dalmatia they do so at local elections in person. Italy has 
 gone a step further in the right direction, for there widows are 
 entitled to vote for Members of Parliament. 
 
 Iceland, the Isle of Man and Pitcairn Island have full woman 
 suffrage, and nearly two thousand islands have it in some degree. 
 The area of countries where woman has a suffrage of some kind is 
 more than 18,000,000 square miles, or larger than Asia, and con- 
 taining a population of about 350,000,000, or nearly that of Europe. 
 
 Summarizing the situation, then, we may say that four political 
 divisions of the world Iceland, the Isle of Man, Pitcairn Island, 
 and the State of Wyoming furnish illustrations of the only real 
 complete democracies of modern times, that is, complete political 
 democracies. The next step above that will be unless human 
 nature retrogrades, unless common sense evaporates, unless evolu- 
 tion on its practical side is a scientific lie an industrial democracy 
 where no "loafing" and living on others on the part of monopo- 
 lists will be permitted, and where all able-bodied men and women 
 will do their share of the world's necessary work and have plenty 
 of time left for healthy individual development. 
 
 Such, briefly put, is the present condition of woman's direct par- 
 ticipation in human government. That she has, when at or near 
 her best, a greater share in that divine government that subtends 
 human affairs, a fact apparently symboled or signalized by the 
 position of Mary in the Catholic Church, can hardly be gainsaid 
 by any observer who is really unbiased and anxious to be ail- 
 roundly scientific. 
 
 If, in truth, as Richelieu says, in Bulwer-Lytton's noble drama, 
 
 " Through loss and gain, 
 Through glory and disgrace the holy stream 
 Of human happiness glides on,''
 
 728 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 and if that stream ever widens as it flows, we must thank not 
 merely some great men, but women also who have left a legacy of 
 beauty more real and royal than what they wore when robed in 
 breathing flesh. 
 
 Nor is it alone to the confessedly great women of history that 
 this glad debt of thanks should be paid. The general stream of 
 human happiness has been increased more, perhaps, by women of 
 simple and obscure lives, who have helped to make beautiful 
 homes, and have ruled with a sceptre of softness over the hearts 
 of their husbands and children. Happiness, true happiness that 
 is, has a persistent, a creative, an eternal quality about it. Evil is 
 destructive in nature, so destructive that it must finally, like the 
 present industrial tyranny, destroy itself. 
 
 The superficial historian who considers chiefly the lives of 
 such mischievous women as Cleopatra, or the corrupt court 
 dames who played with power in France, would deny the state- 
 ment that, as a rule in the past, the women who have really 
 wielded the most power and produced the most lasting impression 
 for the development of the world, have been those who have 
 bloomed in quiet rather than those who have dazzled the imagina- 
 tions of poets and novelists, and amazed the average thinker by 
 the ravage they have wrought in the affairs of their time. Yet 
 such a statement will stand all the more firmly for assaults on its 
 soundness. 
 
 Still it must be admitted that the story of woman in government, 
 up to the present century, is rather a painful perplexity, a tangle 
 of vanities more cruel, perhaps, than the deeds of empty-headed, 
 masculine rulers. 
 
 Yet we must remember that women have been chiefly in the 
 past, not as God made them, but as men unmade them ; that they 
 have rarely had a fair, free chance, and that, when they obtained 
 pre-eminence by the accident of beauty or of cleverness, it would 
 be also an accident if, with the sudden acquisition of power, an 
 accession of knowledge how best to use such a force came like- 
 wise. 
 
 Indeed, considering this point, may it not be taken as an axiom 
 that the sudden possession of excessive power by either man or 
 woman is likely to produce those excesses of power by which man,
 
 HETAIKAE
 
 WOMAN IX GOVERNMENT. 733 
 
 the unit, as well as man the mass, has suffered miseries but faintly 
 pictured by historian, or novelist, or poet ? 
 
 As one of the world's most brilliant women says : " Woman has 
 had very little direct participation in government. She has been 
 a political non-existent, almost always, even when the wife or mis- 
 tress of a king. She has worked in secret by indirection. Women 
 have had power in the past, as women always will, but it has been 
 irresponsible power, which is very dangerous in the hands of an 
 unrepresented class. It seems to me that women were not so 
 much the cause of the corruption of the Middle Ages, as the result 
 of it and, as I have read history, they were, in the main, better 
 than men." 
 
 This question of the way in which women of the past have 
 used or abused governmental power is one of extreme interest to 
 which an entire large book might well be devoted, instead of merely 
 a brief chapter. We shall touch upon it later, and shall now 
 proceed to consider historically the fundamental question of sex 
 equality. 
 
 Historically, then, we find that woman's right to share with 
 man the councils of government as well as those of home is not a 
 new doctrine or a new practice, by any means. Sex-equality 
 has prevailed among primitive races, and probably to a larger ex- 
 tent than science has yet proved. Among the American Indians, 
 notably the Seneca-Iroquois, women of ripe years had a voice, 
 though not a vote ; and that certain New England tribes had femi- 
 nine chiefs, or queens, is in evidence ; while, stronger than isolated 
 instances of feminine leadership, in proof of sex-equality among 
 the New England Indians at the time their country was seized by 
 the English in the name of the God who said, " Thou shalt not 
 steal, and thou shalt not kill," was the general showing of respect 
 towards women, and of tender consideration on the part of the 
 ancient inhabitants of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Con- 
 necticut. 
 
 This fact, established by the records of their bitterest enemies, 
 the predatory English, or Anglo-Americans of those days appears 
 to be one whose historical value is not yet fully understood. 
 Probably the same, or possibly in some cases a greater degree of 
 sex-equality prevailed among a majority of the American Indian
 
 734 THK STORY OF ( iOVKII N.M KXT. 
 
 tribes, and at the councils of the sachems, not merely as deputies, 
 but as voting equals, the squaws were heard with that profound 
 attention which the Indian race always accords to speakers. 
 
 To-day, when an unfit, or perhaps one should say as regards 
 them, a misfit civilization, combined with rum, lias produced such 
 a chaos in Indian habits and customs that it is difficult to decide 
 what is purely aboriginal and what is modified by contact with the 
 .while man's commercial ways, the direct participation of Indian 
 women in the tribal government is at a minimum. 
 
 Still, it is clear that Indian women to-day are not merely beasts 
 of burden or passive instruments in the hands of men. Our pic- 
 ture of the head-dance among squaws after the battle, horrible tind 
 repulsive as it is, nevertheless indicates the influence of the squaws 
 in stimulating among the men that wild, ferocious valor necessary 
 for their preservation in the struggle for existence. Yet, repul- 
 sive and horrible as this photographic picture unquestionably 
 seems, is it so truly cruel as the way in which modern feminine 
 society stamps on the heads of those weaker sisters who have fallen 
 victims to the savagery or selfishness of men ? 
 
 Even in Africa, where women are more harshly treated as a rule 
 than anywhere else, accidents of birth among certain tribes may 
 give women the leadership, and in the kingdom of Dahomey, as 
 we noted in our fourth chapter, the army is entirely composed of 
 women, who, as the special guardians of the king, may be thus con- 
 sidered to be directly concerned in the administration of government. 
 
 Our illustration is taken from a photograph made in their recent 
 war with the French, who found in these dusky Amazons such 
 desperate fighters that French gallantry was for a long time non- 
 plussed. Some have suggested that it was French gallantry of 
 another kind which made the European invaders loath to fight 
 against and kill women. 
 
 Whatever may have been the case, it is beyond question that 
 the French soldiers did not relish their campaign against Behanzin, 
 the King of Dahomey, and his ferociously valorous army. Some 
 recent writers estimate that this curious collection of pugnacious 
 women numbers as many as fourteen thousand, but we believe 
 these figures inaccurate, and think the old statistics, which put the 
 number at four thousand, are probably nearer right.
 
 THE PKESKNT KMI'HESM OF Kl'SSlA. 
 
 735
 
 736 THE STORV OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 That there have been women warriors in all ages, not merely 
 single examples like Joan d'Arc, but regular cohorts of fighting 
 girls, is it possible to doubt, when we have such instances as 
 Dahomey still extant? The Amazons referred to by Homer may, 
 indeed, have been but a figment of the poet's flashing fancy ; but 
 they are as likely to have been creatures actually seen by the poet 
 in his rambles before blindness overtook him, as any of the historic 
 facts that shine like solemn stars in his two vast palaces of human 
 picture set in song, " The Iliad and the Odyssey." 
 
 Even more strongly than in Africa and in Polynesia does sex- 
 equality assert itself in certain parts of Asia. Among the polyan- 
 drous races on the eastern coast of Hindostan property and rank 
 are derived through the mother only, for the simple reason that 
 custom renders paternity uncertain. 
 
 Indeed, it is a fact that in this corner of the world the term, 
 husband, carries an idea of inferiority. Victoria, Empress of 
 India, is regarded by her loyal polyandrous subjects as the daughter 
 of the Old East India Company, and is popularly supposed to 
 reside in London with a multitude of husbands, as becomes her 
 exalted station. 
 
 An odd incident indicative of the working of the Eastern poly- 
 androus mind was the announcement made by the Sultan of the 
 Laccadive Islands to his subjects, in 1887. Up to that date this 
 potentate had been the vassal of the Bibi of Canrianor, but through 
 the negotiations of the Governor of Ceylon he became a direct 
 tributary to the English crown ; whereupon his oriental majesty 
 announced this political change to his subjects in the way it 
 appeared to him namely, that he had been divorced from the 
 Bibi of Cannanor and had become one of the husbands of Queen 
 Victoria. 
 
 Minicoy, in these very same waters, presents a perfect picture 
 of primitive feminine rule. The men are absent most of the year 
 on fishing expeditions, and the women manage everything, the 
 fishers, on their return, taking life on land as easily as possible 
 to make up for their long sojourn on the deep. 
 
 Looking back through the records of early ages we find a cer- 
 tain crude equality between the sexes, that is, in the upper ranks 
 of life. The Iliad, celebrating a war caused by the beauty of a
 
 WOMAN IN GOVERNMENT. 737 
 
 woman, shows this in many places. The Pheeacian Queen, for 
 instance, is depicted as having a share of public responsibility and 
 sitting on high in the seat of judgment. 
 
 The Odyssey depicts a later age, when Grecian women had 
 fallen from their primal high estate and were rather subject to 
 men, even when queens by right of birth or wifehood. Penelope, 
 for instance, the sweet example of the chaste and constant heart, 
 waiting for her lord's return so many weary years, not only has to 
 endure the brawling of the many suitors for her hand and land, 
 but is patronized and put in the background by her own son, 
 Telemachus. 
 
 As the Homeric age faded into fable, the power of woman in 
 Grecian government paled gradually into insignificance, that is to 
 ^say, the power of the good women, the mothers, wives, sisters, 
 and daughters of those marvellous men who in art, philosophy, 
 history, poetry, and eloquence made Greece the gem and glory of 
 the world. 
 
 Except in Sparta all the states of Greece adopted and put in 
 practice the oriental notion that a life of seclusion was the chief 
 business of modest women, and that education, save in household 
 matters, was a tree of knowledge fruitful of ill rather than good. 
 
 The mother of Socrates probably could not read, and it is doubt- 
 ful whether the wife of Sophocles, the Shakespeare of his age, 
 could comprehend much more than a jot of that solemn and splen- 
 did dramatic poetry by means of which her husband still inhabits 
 the bosoms of men. 
 
 Sparta alone escaped the general decline. There the women 
 showed an intense interest in and a profoundly patriotic sympathy 
 with the affairs of the state. To lose the shield in battle equiv- 
 alent to throwing it away so as to run faster from the foe was 
 esteemed among Greeks, as among Romans, a mark of cowardice 
 and accounted a disgrace. " Come back with your shield or on 
 it ! " was the cry of the Spartan woman to husband, lover, or son, as 
 they went forth to battle ; and when the dying Spartan was asked by 
 his wife what his epitaph should be, he replied : " Sparta hath 
 many a nobler son than he," and the woman's pride in her country 
 and interest in its government compelled her to fulfil his dying 
 behest.
 
 738 TIIK STOKY OF COVKIJNMKXT. 
 
 Singular, in truth, must have been the daily drama of Athenian 
 civilization, when the chaste women were excluded from political 
 affairs, and even secluded from very much social intercourse with 
 well-bred men. It is one of the strangest and saddest assertions 
 of history, that in those days only the women of loose morals were 
 educated and were capable of acquiring and exercising wealth and 
 pmver. The fact faces us that, when Alexander the Great laid 
 low the walls of a city, it was Lais or Thais, a courtesan, who 
 offered her purse to rebuild them. 
 
 These women were called Hetamc, and our illustration affords 
 a fair representation of their idle, luxurious life as they rest on 
 a balcony of Parian marble overhanging the play of the summer 
 waves of the amethystine ^Egean. That they were originally 
 adventuresses from Asiatic Greece, and that their ranks were 
 recruited from the numerous Mediterranean islands rather than 
 native Greek women of the mainland, seems likely. 
 
 Yet how unlikely it would seem that Plato, the most august of 
 philosophers, must have studied feminine human nature chiefly 
 through such a medium ! When, however, we reflect that Aspasia, 
 the Queen of these Hetairac, was accounted the equal and was the 
 sought companion of such men as Pericles, Socrates, and Phidias, 
 we are constrained to admit that such was probably the case. 
 
 This Aspasia actually lectured l on rhetoric and philosophy to 
 social gatherings of loose-robed courtesans, and her hold on the 
 affections of the statesman, Pericles, lasted to his last hour. 
 Thus the government of Athens at one period may be said to 
 have been administered from a house of bought smiles and coarse 
 caresses. 
 
 Let not this frightful statement over-startle the student ! Cities 
 like New York, and even that modern Athens, whicli lies dreaming 
 of olden freedom under the shadow of Bunker Hill, have been run 
 by aldermen under the influence of "ladies" on whom Aspasia 
 would have thought her lectures wasted. 
 
 Her lectures were doubtless luminous with wit and humor, or 
 
 > "This very fact," says Mary A. Livennore, "shows there was more to those Moose-robed 
 courtesans' than is generally supposed, and as for Aspasia, she was charged with ' walking 
 the streets unveiled, sitting at table with men, disbelieving in the Greek gods, and believ- 
 ing only in one sole Creator, and with entertaining original ideas concerning the motions of 
 the sun and moon.' She was in advance of her time, and the a ire could not understand her."
 
 WOMAN IN GOVERNMENT. 
 
 739 
 
 perhaps were somewhat like our modern sensational sermons ; yet 
 such sermons must have seemed to the practical Athenian " sober- 
 sides " but a poor exchange for the frightful losses of the two wars 
 
 ISABELLA RECEIVING COLUMUl's. 
 
 which Aspasia's personal quarrels and jealousies were supposed to 
 have caused. 
 
 Mobbed in the streets of Athens, the violet-crowned city by the 
 sea. this full-blown flower of feminine beauty and intellectual 
 power was dragged before the Areopagus for judgment, to be
 
 740 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 saved, however, from the righteous wrath of a roused people by 
 the soothing eloquence of her staunch lover, Pericles. 
 
 After his death, it is said, she continued her course of lectures 
 under the auspices, not of a man of genius like her former associ- 
 ates, but of a wealthy flour merchant. Such was the influence 
 of woman in government in the palmy days of Grecian civilization. 
 Sic transiit gloria G-rcecice ! 
 
 When Roman roughness and robustness triumphed over Greek 
 grace and cunning, Rome was really at the height of its moral 
 power in the world, and such women as Lucretia and Cornelia, 
 chaste wives and wise mothers, were plentiful among the Romans, 
 and had a voice, though not a vote, in shaping the laws and cus- 
 toms, and moulding the public mind to that high stamp of intel- 
 lectuality which made the Roman for ages the lawgiver of nations. 
 But just as Greece had been Orientalized and the rank of her 
 women lowered, so Rome in turn, though the material mistress of 
 the world, became the intellectual slave of the Grecian culture 
 that she had conquered. 
 
 It was in vain that Horace, her wisest and most popular poet, 
 sang, u Take away these Oriental aids to luxury I hate them, 
 boy " The insidious East prevailed, and Roman manners under- 
 went a gradual refining and Roman morals a rapid undermining, 
 until in the words of the same poet, though not quite as he 
 implied, " Rome fell by its own weight " the burden of a gross 
 immorality, caused by the presence of a bad indirect, and the 
 absence of a good feminine direct, influence in the government. 
 
 During this period of about three centuries at and following 
 the Christian era there arose two women, both Orientals, and 
 representing the two antagonistic types of woman in government, 
 perhaps, more perfectly than any of the antique world. 
 
 The first was Cleopatra, that " serpent of Old Nile," and what 
 she may have planned must remain a mystery, fascinating and 
 elusive as the primal mystery of life. As we understand her 
 through the cloudy conceptions of her time, she aspired, for mere 
 personal glorification, to bend the empire of the world into the 
 crook of her finger, now toying with the majesty of the first 
 Caesar, now inflaming the passions of the rough Antony with her 
 infinite wit and grace, now attempting, but failing, to beguile the
 
 WOMAN IX GOVERNMENT. 741 
 
 proud Augustus, just as victory nested amid his banners and his 
 dim dream of an august Csesarean empire rose rapidly into the 
 fair outlines of a firm, definite plan. 
 
 Cleopatra to us appears simply a perfect type of all that is dis- 
 tinctly bad in feminine government, or in feminine influence as 
 applied to government, yet she may have been at heart a patriotic 
 Egyptian princess, trying to save her people from alien domination 
 by playing off one Roman ruffian against another. Whatever she 
 was, she remains a most picturesque failure. 
 
 Two hundred and fifty years later another Eastern queen, Zeno- 
 bia, ruling with wondrous wisdom, endeavored, at Palmyra, to lay 
 the foundations of an Oriental empire, but her patriotic dream of 
 a united East was rudely dispelled by the Roman Emperor Aurelian, 
 who, scenting her purpose, deposed her before she was strong 
 enough to defy Rome. 
 
 Had the purple been hereditary in the Roman Empire, doubt- 
 less some great feminine rulers would have appeared equal to 
 England's Elizabeth, or Spain's Isabella, in mental vigor ; but im- 
 perial titles in that Greco-Roman civilization rested simply on the 
 whims of the soldiers, and women had no chance to become heads 
 of the state. 
 
 The low condition of woman generally, which naturally resulted 
 in a military empire, was somewhat changed when the Germans 
 began to overrun Italy. Attila, the Hun, had styled himself 
 " the Scourge of God," and the Germans generally considered 
 themselves divine scourges, especially made for the chastisement 
 of the corrupt and effeminate Romans. Lame Gaiseric bade his 
 pilot steer, when setting out on a Roman foray, " for the ports of 
 those with whom God is angry." 
 
 The German was far ruder than the Roman even in the remotest 
 period of Roman history. To drink mead from an enemy's skull, 
 for example, was a pleasant social accomplishment among these 
 barbarians. 
 
 But the notion of allegiance to the state instead of to a single 
 person, as representative of the law, imported by the Germans into 
 Rome, was an idea that was bound to operate ultimately for the 
 elevation of woman and the extension of her powers in govern- 
 ment. Because, since women could receive and convey title to
 
 742 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 land, they thus might acquire service and allegiance, and thus 
 occasionally could rise to political as well as social equality with 
 men. Thus in feudalism, lurking at the bottom of that otherwise 
 oppressive system, lay a few seeds of possible feminine power. 
 
 Then, too, the Catholic Church by its conception of a divine 
 maternity, its exaltation of a human girl to the rank of the Mother 
 of God, began to emphasize the idea in good men's minds of a 
 certain sacredness attaching to woman, and also the idea of a cer- 
 tain feminine right to rule by virtue of that sacredness. 
 
 Yet at the same time that the Church, in its broad general doc- 
 trines, raised and widened the sphere of woman as never before, 
 nevertheless it narrowed, in those early centuries and through the 
 Middle Ages, the powers of individual women almost as much as 
 the law did. 
 
 Hence women of active ambition, denied full direct expression 
 by Church and Law, began to seek a vent for their energies in the 
 exercise of indirect power, by a subtle pandering to the ruder pas- 
 sions of men. And so powerful did these feminine politicians 
 become that in the first half of the tenth century even the papacy 
 itself appears to have been swayed by unscrupulous women. 
 
 The development of feudalism during the eleventh century and 
 through the crusades, contributed to the legal, social and moral 
 elevation of woman, or, to state the case very moderately, to 
 the emancipation of women of a certain class. To be sure, the 
 Salic law of France forbade the succession of women to the 
 throne of France, but in the tributaries to that throne this law did 
 not strictly apply. Eleanor of Aquitaine, at the age of thirteen, 
 was ruler of all the country between the Loire and the Pyrenees. 
 
 The age of chivalry, the flo\ver and fruit of feudalism on the 
 sentimental side, which went out like a candle at the laughing breath 
 of Cervantes, went out because it had outlived its usefulness as 
 well as its beauty, and had become an absurdity ; but it is a mis- 
 take to suppose that chivalry exalted woman merely as an object 
 of passionate attention. 
 
 The courtesy shown to women in the days of chivalry was more 
 than a refined voluptuousness ; it rose quite often into a genuine 
 worship that made the masculine worshipper worthy of an equal 
 adoration in return. That age, lacking many of the material
 
 744 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 comforts which mark this age of manifold mechanisms, this century 
 of gas, and brass, and electric monopolies, and over-crowded cities, 
 was, nevertheless, in some ways, perhaps, as well supplied in the 
 essentials of spiritual happiness. 
 
 The fifteenth century in Europe brought to the front of poli- 
 tics two remarkable women, one, an inspired or some say, crazy 
 peasant girl, Joan D'Arc, the other, Agnes Sorel, for thirteen 
 years the companion, confidante and counsellor of the King of 
 France. 
 
 Joan of Arc, with her passionate desire to see the Dauphin 
 crowned at Rheims, despite the English foe, and with her Amazonian 
 love of being in battle like a man, or of leading men, is the more 
 picturesque figure, and the enthusiasm which the chaste peasant 
 maid evoked is still vibrant in the world to-day. 
 
 So much so is this the case that we have the singularly sugges- 
 tive spectacle of Sarah Bernhardt, the leading French actress, 
 playing the part of Joan in a play especially written for the 
 popular taste rather than for the popular actress. 
 
 Yet a much grander dream than Joan's, to drive the English 
 encroachers entirely out of her beloved France, was the steady 
 purpose of Agnes Sorel, the first, and probably the best, of the 
 long line of French frailties who ruled unlucky France through 
 the affections of the king. Here was no easy task to turn a 
 butterfly prince into a steady and sensible monarch, to make almost 
 a statesman out of royal material so exceedingly raw. 
 
 But Agnes Sorel loved her country even more than she loved 
 her king, though she probably loved him very deeply, too, for we 
 are apt to love the things that we create, be they our children, or 
 our works, or the characters that we help our loved ones to build 
 up. 
 
 The next three centuries of French history were the halcyon 
 times of woman's supremacy in government, but it was nearly 
 always the supremacy of the wanton, ruling a king through 
 his passions, and ruled herself by a priest through her super- 
 stitions. 
 
 This might not have been so disastrous to the people at large 
 had the priests been as a rule like such churchmen as Manning, 
 and Gibbons, and many others, or even had they been men of the
 
 
 
 .t.-^. v; 7-t'J 
 
 ...>-T- -: 
 
 *fe -'.. -- ! M 
 '''" *> 
 
 
 WILHELMISE, THE CHILD QUEEN OF THE NETHERLANDS. 746
 
 746 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 high ambitions and broad abilities of a Richelieu, but mostly they 
 appear to the unbiased eyes of after ages mere" court politicians, 
 fond of playing the wind-god in the causing or calming of teacup 
 tempests. 
 
 The depravity of that long national night not only outraged 
 morals but good taste, which, after all, is in itself a kind of 
 rudimentary moral sense. Citation of the whole list of horrors 
 would sicken the reader. Let one suffice. Diane de Poitiers, 
 who ruled France through Henry II., began her career as the mis- 
 tress of his father. 
 
 The vileness of -the House of Valois has passed into a proverb. 
 Compared with the princes of that stock, Henry VIII. of England 
 shines forth as rather a gentleman, somewhat uncertain as to the 
 state of his affections, no doubt, and with a peculiarly adjusted 
 conscience, but still with a faint possibility of human nature lurk- 
 ing somewhere amid his catalogue of enormities. 
 
 When he committed a crime, he tried to convert it into a virtue 
 by some regal or legal alchemy. Thus he paid at least a certain 
 inverted homage to an ideal of right dimly recognized by him in 
 others ; natures, if not in his own. 
 
 None of the French princes would have troubled themselves to 
 have invented a new church, as did Henry VIII. of England, for 
 the sake of securing a divorce from a mere wife of state whom 
 they had ceased to care for. They would simply have seized the 
 other woman whom they happened to desire and bent her or broken 
 her to their bestial will. 
 
 About this time a great woman ruled in Spain jointly with her 
 husband, Ferdinand, consolidating the two houses of Arragon and 
 Castile. Isabella, it must be admitted, had probably some of the 
 bad qualities of her race, who have been styled by one rather 
 partisan historian the most tigerish family of monarchs that ever 
 ruled in Castile. 
 
 That Isabella permitted the dreadful Inquisition must probalily 
 remain a stain on her fame, but that she treated brutally her 
 daughter is rather hard to believe when collated with the fact that 
 she was indignant at the cruelties practised on the newly dis- 
 covered Indians by her subjects in the New World. 
 
 The attempt has been made by some English writers to take
 
 WOMAN IX GOVERNMENT. 747 
 
 from Isabella the credit of having pawned her jewels to defray the 
 expenses of Columbus in his expedition to discover America. But 
 Mary A. Livermore, whose public and private utterances, 
 whether of opinion or of fact, are marked by accuracy and modesty, 
 says on this point : 
 
 " If there is one historic statement more clearly proved than that 
 Isabella pledged her jewels for the funds for Columbus' first expedi- 
 tion, I have yet to learn it. To be sure, Luis Santangel furnished the 
 funds from the finances of the ecclesiastical treasury of Arragon 
 of which he was treasurer, but the jewels of Isabella were the 
 collateral security pledged for the payment. 
 
 " Harriet Hosmer is now in Rome making an heroic statue of 
 Isabella to commemorate that event. She spent months in study- 
 ing every detail of Isabella's history, in Spain and in Rome. She 
 is convinced of the truth of the story, and is making her statue 
 for the World's Fair, representing Isabella offering her jewels to 
 Columbus." 
 
 Feminine domination in Europe reached its climax in the time 
 from 1550 to 1600. The Marys in England and Scotland, and 
 the infamous Catherine de Medici in France, from 1559 to 1589, 
 earned the title of being the crowned curses of kingdoms. 
 
 To corrupt the morals of her own sons, and to influence one of 
 them to commit the monstrous crime and blunder of the massacre 
 of St. Bartholomew, shows the bad eminence of Catherine's 
 character. How the cause of the Catholic Church has suffered by 
 such champions as Mary Stuart and Catherine de Medici it is 
 easy to see. 
 
 But in England the star of woman's political influence began 
 to shine with a light less lurid, less blood-red and flame-red than 
 the fires of Smithfield that had provoked stout John Knox, lurking 
 in safe obscurity at Dieppe, to blow forth to the public his " First 
 Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women," 
 which opened in clear, unmistakable tones : - 
 
 " To promote a woman to beare rule, superioritie, dominion or em- 
 pire above any realme, nation or citie, is repugnant to nature, con- 
 tumelie to God, a thing most contrarious to his reveled will and 
 approved ordinance, and finallie it is the subversion of good order, of 
 all equitie and justice."
 
 748 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Later, on the ascension of England's throne by Elizabeth, who 
 became a stanch prop of the Protestant cause more from policy, 
 possibly, than real belief, John Knox, compromising a little 
 with his conscience, perhaps, tried to soften somewhat the rough- 
 ness of that " First Blast." But it still rings true as expressive 
 of what a tolerably good man must have felt at the spectacle then 
 presented by the crowned women of the world. 
 
 Elizabeth, the greatest of England's queens, had all the national 
 failings and some of the national vices emphasized in her personal 
 character. The vanity of the average Englishman which the 
 average American has inherited in part if not in whole, that 
 makes him believe his race and nation the finest under the sun, 
 was a conspicuous characteristic of good Queen Bess. 
 
 That she was also capable of easy lying and that strong oaths 
 came naturally to her quick lips full of Plantagenet temper seems 
 beyond a reasonable doubt. Yet we must remember in our judg- 
 ing that lying in courts and in the management of politics is not 
 called lying but diplomacy, and Elizabeth, very likely, was early 
 taught this poor trick as the A B C of statesmanship. 
 
 The inherited intensity of the woman's nature was thwarted by 
 her determination, for the sake of her people, to live unmarried, 
 and thus natural forces turned inward soured her and emphasized 
 her eccentricities. The closeness of her grandfather, the miser 
 king, re-appeared in many of her monetary dealings, but it is 
 hardly believable that her niggardliness caused her, as has been 
 charged, to give rotten bread to the gallant seamen who drove off 
 the Spanish Armada. 
 
 Mary A. Livermore, who has made especial study of this English 
 queen, and who was assisted in her lecture on Elizabeth by books 
 and manuscripts in the British Museum, which no one is allowed 
 to remove, and who, before rewriting her lecture amid these vener- 
 able archives, had already written it four times, such is the 
 patience and fidelity of those who aim at accuracy puts her 
 valuable opinion of this great woman in government in these 
 vivid words : 
 
 The English people adore Elizabeth, She founded the English 
 nation. It was a heterogeneous collection of agriculturists when she
 
 WOMAN IN GOVERNMENT. 749 
 
 ascended the throne. She was two hundred years ahead of her time 
 and would have given entire and perfect religious freedom, had it been 
 safe. She held England firmly in her hand for thirty years and would 
 not allow it to go to war, knowing that the development of a nation 
 must come from within if it is to grow. 
 
 Elizabeth had no extravagant court-follies, no costly sensualities, no 
 wasting wars which disheartened the people, cut the sinews of national 
 strength, and sowed the seeds of future revolution. 
 
 All her expenses for palaces, processions, journeys, carriages, servants 
 dresses, everything averaged only 8325,000 a year, while Louis XIV.. 
 Le Grand Monarque, spent 40,000,000 on one palace alone. Her 
 flirtations and coquetries were a part of her state policy, and her deter- 
 mination never to marry was the outcome of her great ambition to 
 make England a nation. 
 
 The rule of Louis XIV. in France was remarkable for a change 
 in appearances, though not in realities at the French Court. 
 The lady who managed this monarch, Madame de Maintenon, 
 believed herself to be devout in spite of the peculiar position 
 forced upon her by a more or less grim destiny. 
 
 Therefore the fiat went forth that piety and rigidity of conduct 
 were to be the fashion at court ; but while this madame was mistress 
 of affairs, 300,000 exiles of the best heart and brain of France also 
 went forth to other lands rather than risk the persecutions which 
 a superstitious woman, anxious to compound for her own sins by 
 punishing those of others, might take a fancy to inflict. 
 
 Throughout this reign a semblance of decency was kept up by 
 the aristocrats, who, to their credit be it said, chafed under the 
 hypocrisy of their daily lives and longed for the day when 
 Madame de Maintenon's power should be over. 
 
 When that day came and Louis lay in state, harmless at 
 last, the French nobility commenced that crazy whirl of cruel 
 lust through the patient eighteenth century which was to end 
 only with the guillotine, and the awakening of the common 
 people. 
 
 The reign of that pious sinner, de Maintenon, gave way to that 
 of de Parabere who controlled the policy of the Regent. The 
 next Louis was only a symbol of a man, a sort of vivified marion- 
 nette whose strings were pulled at merest whim by Madame la
 
 750 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Marquise de Pompadour, whose style of wearing the hair is even 
 yet not entirely gone out of fashion. 
 
 She it was who made Louis sign the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 
 1748, because she could not trust him alone with the army. Not 
 long after, against the counsel of his ministers, she forced the 
 foolish Louis into the Seven Years' War to punish Frederick the 
 Great for some coarse jokes he had made about her. 
 
 Like Aspasia, she affected literature and sought the friendship 
 of Voltaire, that incarnate sneer. But of the doctrines of the 
 social philosophers, who belonged to the magic circle of which 
 Voltaire was the central point, she was supremely ignorant. 
 
 When some of those who saw (or thought they saw, like men 
 to-day, who see similar signs) below the smooth surface of the 
 times, and heard the rumbling thunder in the heart of the moun- 
 tain, told this Queen of Caprice and Paris what troubles were 
 at hand, she laughed their solemn words away and said, " Apres 
 nous le deluge ! " " After us let the deluge come then ! " 
 
 It came like the lava-flood on that laughter-loving city of the 
 South like that outbreak of Vesuvius which is hinted at in our 
 illustration of fugitive women watching, in a pause of their flight, 
 the fiery cloud breathed out by the angry mountain. 
 
 It came, and the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, who was the 
 first thoroughly good woman in nearly two hundred years to have 
 a hand in directing the statecraft of womanized France, was 
 drowned in la Pompadour's deluge. The vengeance of a people 
 long oppressed, like the rain of God, fell from that cloudy heaven 
 on the just and unjust. The glorious Revolution swept away 
 impartially chaste queen and royal courtesan. The reign of the 
 common people had begun. 
 
 During that eighteenth century the power of woman in France 
 and her grasp on government were matched by similar conditions 
 among other nations. The first Bourbon King of Spain, grandson 
 of Louis XIV. of France, for nearly fifty years was ruled by 
 his wife, Elizabeth Farnese and her Jesuit Confessor, which pair, 
 with the best of intentions, contrived to complete the ruin of 
 Spain. 
 
 In England Queen Anne, a rather stupid woman, managed to 
 steer the ship of state with tolerable success by selecting clever
 
 WOMAN IN GOVERNMENT. 
 
 751 
 
 ministers. After her, Caroline, wife of George II., shared with 
 Walpole the government of England, her husband believing to the 
 day of his death that he was not a woman-ruled monarch like his 
 
 MARY A. LIVERMORE. 
 
 neighbors of France and Spain. In Austria, Maria Theresa made 
 a gallant attempt at maintaining her rights and enlisted the sym- 
 pathy of the Hungarian Diet. 
 
 " Holy " Russia, too, for sixty-seven years of the eighteenth 
 century suffered from a set of crowned courtesans to whom far 
 worse words than John Knox put forth in his " Blast " could be 
 justly applied. Catharine I., Anne, Elizabeth, and Catharine II. 
 hardly seem to be modern women, but rather hideous nightmares 
 of some historian's dream. The present Empress of Russia, whose 
 picture adorns these pages, must not be confounded with those
 
 752 THE STORY OF GOVKKNMKNT. 
 
 brazen horrors. Her placid beauty is a shadow of the kind and 
 placid soul which animates her slightest actions. 
 
 In our brief survey of the part woman has played in govern- 
 ment, we arrive now at the nineteenth century, which was the first 
 to witness on any large scale the dawn of democracy in the modern 
 world, and in this, our century, we find few women very con- 
 spicuously or actively engaged in managing the affairs of nations. 
 
 Perhaps the most striking figure is the Dowager Empress of 
 China, who for twenty-five years has influenced the daily destinies 
 of 450,000,000 of people, and in curious contrast with this mys- 
 terious old lady in Asia is the Baby Queen of the Netherlands, 
 whose innocent face is like so many girl faces in many a humble 
 home. 
 
 One who has read Hollandish history cannot help feeling as if 
 the queenhood of this little Wilhelmine were casting backward 
 a forgiving beam of gentleness over the crimes and follies of the 
 House of Orange, and at the same time throwing forward a gleam 
 of promise for the future. 
 
 In England the long and well-balanced life of Victoria has 
 wiped away the memories of the disgraceful days of the last 
 George, and by easy stages of popular expansion has paved the 
 way for a republican government in the days soon to come. But 
 the crowned wives of this century, while they escape censure in 
 comparison with the past, are not the best real specimens of women 
 in government. 
 
 The real queens of this epoch, springing from the ranks of the 
 people, and demanding merely that homage which moral grace, 
 subserved by intellectual power, must finally obtain, are to be 
 found in many a quiet home, in many a land, helping their fathers, 
 brothers, husbands and sons, to make this world just a little better 
 and younger every day.
 
 XVI. 
 
 Sen?i~JVlilitary Constitutional 
 JYIorjarcfyy* 
 
 A one wanders through the galleries of Versailles, drink- 
 ing in the beauty of the surroundings, now looking at 
 the paintings where the history of France is repre- 
 sented by battle scenes from the earliest struggles of 
 the Gaul down to recent campaigns in the Crimea and Italy, and 
 then gazing on the wonderful fountains of Apollo, with the Tria- 
 non seen through the leaves, full of memories of Marie Antoinette, 
 what visions of history more vivid and exciting than any romance 
 rise in the mind what memories of great sovereigns, who, raising 
 France to the highest pitch of glory and influence, were, by the 
 very means they employed for such ends, the cause of her subse- 
 quent fall and humiliation ! 
 
 First Louis XIV., le G-rand Monarque, whose extravagance in 
 building this palace impoverished France and helped to bring his 
 descendant to the guillotine, filled its walls with pictures commem- 
 orating the victories won by Prince Condd and Marshal Turenne, 
 then saw his hopes of further conquests end at Blenheim. Then 
 came the Corsican Bonaparte, who with his marshals at first found 
 Europe too small for their conquering armies. But after Auster- 
 litz and Jena came Waterloo, and the first empire and its glories 
 faded out on that fatal field. 
 
 Finally Napoleon III. plays his brief part, and after Magenta, 
 Solferino, and the Malakoff comes Sedan, and his empire vanishes 
 
 753
 
 754 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 into history ; for a third time, after a short period of martial 
 intoxication, France begs for mercy at the hands of the victorious 
 German. 
 
 Of all the striking historical events these palace walls have 
 witnessed, that one of January 18, 1871, was the most dramatic in 
 its completion of a people's desire, its consummation of the hopes 
 of patriots and statesmen for many centuries : the unification of 
 Germany under one strong power. On that day, already cele- 
 brated in the annals of Prussia as the one on which, in 1701, its 
 first king, Frederic L, was crowned at Konigsberg, King William, 
 passing between lines of German soldiery representing the various 
 nations of Bavaria, Saxony, Wurtemborg, and the smaller princi- 
 palities, entered the famous G-allerie des Grlaces, and standing 
 under a picture of Louis XIV. faced as proud and triumphant an 
 assembly of men as ever gathered about a leader. 
 
 Behind him were ranged six hundred battle flags from his regi- 
 ments. At his right hand stood the Crown Prince, then the pic- 
 ture of health and the promise of long life. Ranged beside 
 him right and left were the kings, princes, and reigning powers 
 of Germany, statesmen, delegates from the North German Con- 
 federative parliament, such as the speaker, Herr Simson, who 
 came in the name of that parliament to offer the imperial crown, 
 and who in 1848 made the same proffer to the brother of the 
 present king, and representatives from the free towns, and the 
 leading officers of his victorious armies. 
 
 As the old king, whose military career began with fighting against 
 the first Napoleon, saw himself supported by such a statesman as 
 Bismarck, soldiers like Von Moltke and Von Roon, his soldier son 
 and heir, Fritz, and his brilliant nephew, Frederick Charles, the 
 " Red Prince" he must have felt that his kingdom was founded 
 on a rock, even if the proclamation making him Emperor seemed 
 like a dream. After the acceptance by the king of the imperial 
 dignity, Bismarck, whose clear brain and iron will had made this 
 scene possible, read the following document in a strong, clear voice 
 vibrant with personal, as well as national, triumph : - 
 
 We, William, by God's grace King of Prussia, hereby announce that 
 the German princes and free towns having addressed to us a unanimous 
 call to renew and xmdertake with the re-establishment of the German
 
 SEMI-MILITARY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 755 
 
 Empire the dignity of Emperor, which now for sixty years has been 
 in abeyance, and the requisite provisions having been inserted in the 
 Constitution of the German Confederation, we regard it as a duty 
 we owe to the entire Fatherland to comply with this call of the 
 united German princes and free towns, and to accept the dignity of 
 Emperor. 
 
 Accordingly, we and our successors to the crown of Prussia hence- 
 forth shall use the imperial title in all the relations and affairs of the 
 German Empire, and we hope to God that it may be vouchsafed to 
 the German nation to lead the Fatherland on to a blessed future, under 
 the auspices of its ancient splendor. 
 
 May God grant to us and to our successors to the imperial crown 
 that we may be the defenders of the German Empire at all times, not 
 in martial conquests, but in works of peace, in the sphere of national 
 prosperity, freedom, and" civilization. 
 
 When the reading was over the Grand Duke of Baden stepped 
 forward and cried : u Long live the German Emperor William! " 
 This cry was taken up by the assembly, who then advanced and 
 did homage to the new Kaiser, while the soldiers outside carried on 
 the cry, and the cannon of Mount Valdrien, ever firing, grumbled 
 in the distance, as if the Gaul muttered curses on what he could 
 not prevent. So to the popular mind of Germany the old legend 
 came true that the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who with his 
 knights lay bound in enchanted sleep in the mountains of Bavaria, 
 would come to life again and restore the German Empire. 
 
 The Constitution of this empire, formed by blood and iron, 
 bears date April 16, 1871. By its terms all the states of Ger- 
 many (twenty-five in number) " form an eternal union for the pro- 
 tection of the realm and the care of the welfare of the German 
 people." The legislative functions of the empire are vested in the 
 Emperor, the Bundesratb, and the Reichstag. The supreme direc- 
 tion of military and political affairs of the empire is vested in 
 the King of Prussia, who bears the name of Deutscher Kaiser, 
 or German Emperor. The imperial dignity is hereditary in the 
 line of Hohenzollern, and follows the law of primogeniture. 
 
 The executive power is in the Emperor's hands. He repre- 
 sents the empire internationally, can declare war if defensive, 
 make peace as well as enter into treaties with other nations ; he
 
 756 THE STOKY OF (iOVKUNMENT. 
 
 also appoints and receives ambassadors, but for declaring offensive 
 war the consent of the Bundesrath is necessary. The separate 
 states have the privilege of sending ambassadors to the other 
 courts, but all consuls abroad are officials of the empire, and are 
 named by the Emperor. 
 
 This upper house of the legislative body, styled the Bundesrath, 
 or Federal Council, represents the individual states of Germany 
 like the Senate of the United States. It comprises fifty-eight 
 members, who are appointed by the governments of the individual 
 states for each session. The apportionment is not equal for each 
 state, following the analogy of the United States Senate, but is 
 according to population. All the members of the Bundesrath, 
 .whose presiding officer is the Chancellor of the Empire, have the 
 right to be present at the deliberations of the Reichstag. 
 
 Acting under the direction of the chancellor, the Bundesrath 
 has a supreme and consultative board, and as such lias twelve 
 standing committees : 
 
 Army and fortifications ; naval ; tariff, trade and taxes ; trade and 
 commerce; railways, posts, and telegraphs; civil and criminal law; 
 financial accounts ; foreign affairs ; Alsace and Lorraine; constitution; 
 standing orders ; railway tariffs. 
 
 Each committee consists of representatives of at least four states 
 of the empire ; but the foreign affairs committee includes only the 
 representatives of Bavaria, Saxony, and Wiirtemberg, and two 
 other representatives to be elected every year. 
 
 The other body called the Reichstag, corresponding to the United 
 States House of Representatives, is comprised of 397 members 
 (about one to every 118,000 inhabitants) who are elected by uni- 
 versal suffrage for five years. Both the Bundesrath and Reichstag 
 meet in annual session convoked by the Emperor. The Emperor 
 has the right, after a vote by the Bundesrath, to prorogue and 
 dissolve the Reichstag. 
 
 Without the consent of the Reichstag, the prorogation may not 
 exceed thirty days, while in. case of dissolution new elections 
 must take place within sixty days and a new session must open 
 within ninety days. The Reichstag is presided over by an officer 
 elected by its own members. All laws of the empire must receive
 
 SEMI-MILITARY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 761 
 
 the votes of an absolute majority of the Bundesrath and Reichstag, 
 and to take effect must receive the assent of the Emperor, and be 
 countersigned when promulgated by the chancellor of the empire. 
 
 As regards its legislative functions the empire has supreme and 
 independent control in matters relating to military affairs and the 
 navy, to the imperial finances, German commerce, to posts and 
 telegraphs, and also to railways, as far as these affect the common 
 defence of the country. Bavaria and Wiirtemberg, however, have 
 preserved their own postal and telegraphic administration. 
 
 The legislative power of the empire takes precedence of that of 
 the separate states in the regulation of matters affecting freedom 
 of migration, domicile, settlement, and the rights of German sub- 
 jects generally, also everything relating to banking, patents, copy- 
 rights, navigation of rivers and canals, civil and criminal legislation, 
 judicial procedure, sanitary police, and control of the press and of 
 associations. 
 
 These officers of state, or imperial secretaries, do not form a 
 ministry or cabinet as in Great Britain where the members come 
 into office or leave it with the prime minister, but act indepen- 
 dently of each other, and are under the general supervision of the 
 chancellor. They are classified thus : 
 
 1. Chancellor of the empire. 
 
 2. Ministry for foreign affairs 
 
 3. Imperial home office. 
 
 4. Imperial admiralty. 
 
 5. Imperial ministry of justice. 
 
 6. Imperial treasury. 
 
 Also presidents of imperial bureaus: 
 
 1. Post-office. 
 
 2. Railways. 
 8. Exchequer. 
 
 4. Invalid Fund. 
 
 5. Bank. 
 
 G. Debt Commission. 
 
 The various states of Germany are represented as f olio ws i a the 
 Bundesrath and Reichstag ;
 
 762 
 
 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 STATES OF THE EMPIRE. 
 
 Number of 
 .Members in 
 Btindesrath. 
 
 Number of 
 Deputies in 
 Reichstag. 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 3 
 4 
 5 
 6 
 7 
 8 
 9 
 10 
 11 
 12 
 13 
 14 
 15 
 16 
 17 
 18 
 19 
 20 
 21 
 22 
 23 
 24 
 25 
 
 Kin 
 Gra 
 
 Due 
 Pri! 
 
 Fre< 
 
 
 
 55 
 
 Rei< 
 
 
 17 
 
 6 
 4 
 4 
 3 
 2 
 3 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 2 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 
 236 
 
 48 
 17 
 23 
 14 
 6 
 9 
 3 
 3 
 1 
 3 
 2 
 2 
 2 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 3 
 
 i 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 
 
 , Mecklenbnr <T -Schwerin .... 
 
 Hesse 
 
 Olclenbur " 
 
 Saxe-^Veimar 
 
 Mecklenburt*-Strelitz 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Scli\varzbur"-Ruc]olstad.t 
 
 Sehwarzburg-Sondershausen . . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 58 397 
 
 Alsace and Lorraine are represented in the Bundesrath by four commissioners without 
 votes. 
 
 This Constitution bears the impress of the master hand of Bis. 
 marck, and after the one formed by the fathers of the American 
 Republic is the greatest piece of statecraft of the age and is like 
 the latter in many respects, although the means given for the 
 people to express themselves are few. It was hardly to be 
 expected that the full measure of freedom in this particular would 
 come at once, for the chief aim was to vest in the Emperor as much 
 executive power for war as possible. 
 
 To realize the different threads which were woven together to 
 make this new German Empire, one needs to read the proclamation 
 carefully. In it the empire is spoken of as restored after being in 
 abeyance sixty years, therefore, historically, the German Kaiser is 
 the successor of Charlemagne, Otho the Great, Frederick Bar- 
 barossa, Charles V., and Francis II. who abdicated in 1806 in 
 obedience to Napoleon.
 
 SEMI-MILITARY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 763 
 
 In this new empire Austria has no longer a position, and for the 
 first time the reigning house is Protestant in religion and is no 
 longer elective. These facts represent the culmination of years 
 of war and diplomacy and the wasting of thousands of lives on 
 the battlefield. The free cities of Liibeck, Hamburg, and 
 Bremen, although incorporated in this empire, preserve their local 
 rights or republics, the same as the little republic of San Marino 
 does in the kingdom of Italy, and the rights of the petty princes 
 and dukes are carefully guarded so that relics of feudalism still 
 survive. 
 
 So we see the feudal rights of the petty princes, the kingly 
 offices of Saxony, Wurtemberg, and Bavaria granted them by 
 Napoleon I., and the democratic privileges of the free cities all 
 preserved and welded together as if by the hammer of Thor. 
 The empire firmly established, reforms were quickly inaugurated. 
 The post-office, railways, and telegraphs were nationalized, 
 although Bavaria and Wurtemberg retain control over their own 
 systems. 
 
 A uniform system of currency was adopted on a gold standard, 
 based upon the mark, approximate value of which in United States 
 currency is twenty-five cents. 
 
 100 Pfennigs = mark ) ,,, 5 marks = Halbe-Krone ) 
 
 3 marks Thaler ( sl1 10 = Krone } gold. 
 
 20 ,, = Doi>pel-Krone ) 
 
 A uniform code of commercial and criminal law was adopted, 
 but not of civil. The appointment of judges is also a state and 
 not an imperial function. The Constitution provides for entire 
 liberty of conscience and for complete equality among all religious 
 confessions. The order of Jesuits, however, is interdicted in all 
 parts of the empire, also all convents and religious orders, except 
 those for nursing the sick. Education is general and compulsory, 
 and every German is liable to service in the army with no substitu- 
 tion allowed. 
 
 The approval of the Kaiser must be obtained to all appoint- 
 ments, and nothing affecting the superior direction of the troops 
 of any state can be done without his consent. With the exception 
 of Bavaria, all German troops must swear the oath of fealty to 
 the Emperor, and that is imposed upon the Bavarians in time of
 
 764 
 
 THK STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 war. Every German capable of bearing arms must be in the 
 standing army (or navy) seven years, three years in the active, 
 and four in the reserve. 
 
 All able-bodied men between the age of seventeen and forty- 
 five, who are neither in the standing nor reserve army, must belong 
 to the Landsturm, which is only called out in event of invasion of 
 Germany. The peace footing of the imperial army is : officers, 
 20,440 ; men, 491,217 ; horses, 93,908. War footing: 
 
 
 FIELD ARMY. 
 
 Garrison 
 
 Army. 
 
 Grand 
 
 Total. 
 
 Active. 
 
 Reserve 
 Landwehr. 
 
 Total. 
 
 Officers 
 
 22,377 
 4,247 
 7,928 
 942,408 
 280,472 
 2,028 
 40,081 
 
 9,536 
 1,300 
 1,933 
 354,915 
 72,963 
 648 
 9,872 
 
 31,913 
 5,547 
 9,861 
 1,297,323 
 353,435 
 2,676 
 49,953 
 
 16,209 
 2,055 
 3,096 
 868,627 
 86,324 
 882 
 8,768 
 
 48,122 
 7,602 
 12,957 
 2,165,950 
 4:j(>,759 
 3,558 
 58,716 
 
 
 Other Officials 
 
 Hank and File. - . . 
 
 
 
 Other Carriages 
 
 
 To this must be added the railway staff and Landsturm, so at 
 the last extremity Germany would have a war strength of not less 
 than 3,000,000 trained men. As for naval strength, Germany has 
 28 ironclad ships, of which 16 are for coast defence. She has 
 other war ships, bringing her total to 77 ships, 511 guns, 18,051 
 men, and 132 torpedo boats. 
 
 With two exceptions, the German states have constitutional 
 forms of government, most of these wrung from their rulers since 
 the time of the First Napoleon. Carefully as the rights of the 
 individual states are preserved, the steady growth of a national 
 spirit will inevitably fuse these various German states into one com- 
 pact nation like England or France. In a few years Bavaria, 
 Saxony, or Hanover probably will no more. think of any separation 
 of interests than do the provinces of Brittany, Burgundy, or Nor- 
 mandy, in France to-day. 1 
 
 JThe empire is bounded by the North Sea (293 miles). Denmark (47 miles), and the Baltic (927 
 miles). On the east by Russia (with Poland) (843 miles). South by Austria (1,403 miles) and 
 Switzerland (25C miles). On the west by France (242 miles), Luxemburg (111 miles), Belgium 
 (70 miles), and Holland (377 miles). Its area is 208,738 square miles, and population (census 
 1890)49,416,476. Of this, 3,223,500 belong to other nationalties than German, such as Wends, 
 Slavs, Poles, Danes, and French.
 
 SEMI-MILITARY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 
 
 769 
 
 To understand the historical growth of this Empire we must go 
 back before the Christian era. The Germanic tribes are branches of 
 the great Teutonic race, who are supposed to have followed the Kelts 
 in their movement westward, both starting from the common Aryan 
 origin in Asia. Teutons, spreading westward and as far north as 
 Norway and Sweden, were checked by the Gaulish Kelts near the 
 Rhine, and settled in Central Europe, about the rivers flowing 
 north, such as the Spree, Elbe, and Oder. Of" this epoch the his- 
 tory clouds into fable and through the mists of this bor- 
 der-land of fact heroic fig- 
 ures loom figures which the 
 genius of German poets and 
 especially of the mighty poet- 
 musician, Wagner, have made 
 luminous with solemn, haunt- 
 ing beauty. One of these early 
 regal tragedies of love and 
 jealousy is delineated in our 
 picture of Brunhild recogniz- 
 ing Guihrun at the side of 
 
 O 
 
 Siegfried. 
 
 The earliest authentic ref- 
 erence to these Teutons is 
 that of Pythias, the Greek 
 sailor, who found himself 
 laughed at on his return, 
 300 B. c., from the coast of 
 the Baltic Sea, for speaking 
 of the amber he found there, the rise and fall of the tides, and 
 the barbarians about the Vistula River clad scantily in skins and 
 armed with clubs. Later, in the year 113 B. c., the dwellers in 
 northern Italy were surprised to see an army of men, accompa- 
 nied by their women and children, swarming southward through 
 the passes of the Alps. This swarm was made up of two races, 
 the Cimbri and Teutons, and numbered several hundred thousand. 
 They came from the country about the North Sea, and were either 
 driven out by other tribes or yielded to that migratory instinct 
 always strong in the Teutonic races. They were a large-sized, 
 
 AN EARLY GERMAN WARRIOR.
 
 770 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 blue-eyed, red or yellow-haired race of fighters, who in a f jw years 
 overthrew several Roman armies seiit against them. It seemed 
 as if Rome was to suffer a fate similar to what she endured at the 
 hands of the Gauls under Brenmis, nearly three hundred years 
 earlier. 
 
 One characteristic of this earliest recorded Teutonic inva- 
 sion was the taking of their women and children, who shared 
 the dangers and endured the hardships with the men. This 
 same thing occurs later in the invasion of Britain by Anglo-Saxon 
 tribes in the fifth century; and still again in the settlement of 
 the new world by their modern descendants, Englishmen, and the 
 subsequent migrations westward in the United States by the same 
 race. Marius, the Roman consul, 102 B. c., after several severe 
 battles, defeated the Teutons in Gaul, whither they had wandered; 
 then, hastening back to Italy where the Cimbri had remained, 
 annihilated them. The captives made slaves by these wars after- 
 wards revolted in Rome under the lead of Spartacus. 
 
 We next hear of the Teutons or Germans from Ctesar, 50 B. c., 
 who, having conquered Gaul, encountered them there under their 
 chief Ariovistus. The name German given by the Gauls to a 
 Teutonic tribe who had crossed the Rhine, became the title of all 
 the Teutonic tribes of a later date. Caesar, seeing the warlike as 
 well as migratory instinct of this race, thought Rome would best 
 be guarded by invading their territory as he had that of the Gauls, 
 and reducing them to submission. He drove Ariovistus and his 
 tribe of Suevi over the Rhine, and soon after, by building 
 bridges across that river at Coblentz and Bonn, invaded German 
 territory. 
 
 In spite of the headlong valor of the tribesman, the steady dis- 
 cipline of the Roman legionary won the day after many a hard- 
 fought battle. The compact formation of the legion, with the 
 short thrust of the Roman sword, was too much for the loose array 
 of the Germans fighting with a longer weapon. Although Caesar 
 annihilated some tribes he made but slight headway, and seemed 
 little inclined to follow them into the recesses of their dark 
 forests. He soon made peace and incorporated some of the Ger- 
 mans in his army, especially as cavalry, and they did great service 
 for him later at Pharsalia, where he defeated Pompey and over-
 
 SEMI-MILITARY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 771 
 
 threw the Roman republic. From this time Germans began to 
 enlist in the Roman armies until finally they outnumbered the 
 Romans in the legions. Csesar, by his far-reaching vision, is 
 credited with keeping off the invasion of Rome by these Teutonic 
 tribes nearly four hundred years. From him and the historian 
 Tacitus we learn where the most important of these tribes were 
 situated, and what were their manners and customs. 
 
 Although all these tribes had a common Teutonic origin, they 
 differed in many respects from each other; the Suevi especially 
 having peculiar characteristics. These held no private ownership 
 in lands, but each year changed about, holding it in common, so 
 that no one could become so attached to a locality that he would 
 be unwilling to go on distant forays. 
 
 The Noith, or Low German for the conformation of the land 
 divided these tribes into High and Low owned his land to 
 a certain extent, and cultivated it apart from the rest. The land 
 about their primitive villages was held in common, so were the 
 fertile pastures and the forests ; but the tendency of the North 
 German was to live apart. Several of their thatched cottages 
 they called a village ; and a number of these villages was called 
 a hundred, while several hundreds made a gau, or district. 
 
 Every hundred had its own chief, called a prince, who was 
 elected by the freemen of the tribe, who alone had the right to 
 vote as well as bear arms. The chiefs of the tribes were also 
 elected and these were called kings ; while several tribes on going 
 to war would elect one of their number, called a Hertzhog, to 
 lead them. The mass of tribesmen were freemen, and they 
 recognized a class of nobility among them from their ancient 
 descent, while below them were the slaves, either captured in 
 war or freemen unable to pay their debts. The similarity 
 between debt and slavery still exists. 
 
 Between the freemen and the slaves were another class called 
 Litij or Leuti (German for people) who held no land except in 
 service of some freeman, an idea afterwards developing into the 
 feudal system, and who bore no arms. The assemblies of the 
 freemen took place either in March or May, as do the town meet- 
 ings in New England to-day, the political offspring of these 
 primitive /oftfc moot, or meetings. These assemblies were held in
 
 772 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the open air in some grove during the crescent moon, where were 
 offered sacrifices of oxen, which were eaten and washed down 
 with huge draughts of beer and mead, while the freemen gave 
 their opinions with perfect freedom. 
 
 In the morning those who were sober formed themselves into 
 a circle and deliberated over the counsels of the night, The laws 
 of hospitality were rigidly observed, and a stranger was perfectly 
 safe in the humblest cot, even if he were charged with a crime. 
 But he was not expected to stop longer than three days, as the 
 saying was: "A three days' guest is everywhere curst." 
 
 Every foreign wayfarer might pluck three fruits from a tree, 
 three shares from a field, and three fish from a pond, whence came 
 the proverb, "Three are free.' 1 ' 1 Their idea of Heaven, or Val- 
 halla, where the souls of the dead fought each other all day and 
 caroused all night, gives some indication of their general charac- 
 teristics. When the Romans met them they were still a nomadic 
 people to a great extent, and were constantly warring with each 
 other. 
 
 Under Drusus and Germanicus the Romans carried their arms 
 furthest into Germany, and the Rhine and the Danube were 
 made the limits of the empire, and these two rivers were con- 
 nected by a wall to prevent any sudden foray from the tribesmen. 
 Roman traders penetrated into the depths of the forests, and along 
 the Rhine and other rivers Roman cities sprang up, such as 
 Cologne, Mentz, Treves, and Ratisbon. So imminent seemed the 
 conversion of Germany into a Roman province like Gaul that 
 Herman, or Arminius, as the Romans called him, a chief of the 
 tribe of the Cherusci, formed in the year 5 A. D. a league with 
 other tribes to strike at the legions then in Germany. Yarns, 
 their commander, was told that a tribe in the Teutoberger forest 
 had revolted, and he hastened to chastise them. 
 
 Marching through the dense woods, encumbered with heavy 
 armor, their feet slipping in the mud caused by the heavy rains, 
 the Romans found themselves attacked on every side by the 
 infuriated Germans. The battle raged for several days, but at 
 last turned against the Romans who could not form in the dense 
 woods, and were in consequence completely annihilated with a 
 loss of over 40,000 men. This decisive victory ensured the free-
 
 SEMI-MILITARY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 777 
 
 dom of the Germanic tribes, with the purity of their race and lan- 
 guage, and placed Herman as one of the great leaders of the race, 
 like Frederick the Great, and Von Moltke of later years. Its 
 effect in Rome was appalling, and Csesar Augustus went from 
 room to room in his palace crying, " Varus ! Varus, give me back 
 my legions." 
 
 For two hundred years the Germans were comparatively quiet ; 
 then they began to be restless and show signs of yielding to their 
 migratory instinct. The movement was not sudden, but came in 
 waves at different intervals until everything Roman was sub- 
 merged. The Goths were first to move, and being pressed by 
 the Huns, a Tartar tribe from the east, left their homes along 
 the Vistula River, crossed the Danube and settled in the Roman 
 territory south. Becoming more powerful by fresh accessions, 
 they finally captured Rome itself under their chief, Alaric. 
 
 Then the Burgundians, Vandals, and Alani began to move ; the 
 former settling about the river Rhone in Gaul, and mixing with 
 the inhabitants formed the kingdom of Burgundy. The history 
 of the Franks in Gaul interests us because in the year 800 
 Charlemagne, one of the successors of the original Frank ish 
 conquerors, was crowned Emperor in Rome by the Pope after 
 his victory over the Lombards, thereby restoring the empire of 
 the West. He was as much Emperor of the Germans as of the 
 Franks because both countries were united under him, and by his 
 conquests in Italy became king of the Lombards. 
 
 The Frankish kings had embraced the Trinitarian form of the 
 Christian creed, while most of the other Teutonic tribes had 
 embraced the Arian heresy, as the Church called it. The Saxons 
 were still heathen, and only renounced the religion of their fore- 
 fathers after over thirty years' struggle with Charlemagne. At 
 last, their chief, Wittikind, finding resistance hopeless, was bap- 
 tized and received into the Catholic faith, Charlemagne standing 
 as his sponsor. 
 
 By the sword of the great Frankish king, and the preaching 
 of Saint Boniface, Christianity was spread throughout Germany. 
 From the time of this Frankish invasion of Gaul to Charlemagne 
 the conditions of life had greatly changed among the people. 
 Originally all were freemen who owned land and who could vote
 
 778 THE STORY OP GOVERNMENT. 
 
 in the assemblies, but by conquests all this was gradually altered, 
 especially in the conquered country. Lands (in those days the 
 only wealth) which were formerly held as allodial or belonging 
 to one's self alone, now were held in the name of another, and rent, 
 either in service or produce, was given for them. 
 
 On the other hand, the one holding the fee or fief was bound 
 to protect the one holding under him, the obligation being 
 reciprocal, and thus arose the feudal system. In those days of 
 almost universal personal warfare protection was necessary to 
 those who lived by farming, and so classes began to form ; the 
 lower, or serf class, who were denied the use of arms, and were 
 obliged to cultivate the soil, and the land-holding or territorial 
 class who lived on the former, but bore arms and protected them 
 from others. In Germany this took slower root than else- 
 where, although the original class of Liti were ruled on some- 
 thing of this plan ; but the large class of freemen made the feudal 
 system difficult to be established, and regarding certain laws of 
 inheritance it never was as firmly founded as in other countries. 
 
 After the death of Charlemagne, 843 A. D., no one was power- 
 ful enough to hold his mighty empire together, and after years 
 of fighting between his sons, and later his grandsons, the lat- 
 ter decided to divide the empire, which was done by the Treaty 
 of Verdun. In this treaty the various chiefs made oath in their 
 respective tongues. Louis the German, who took all the coun- 
 try east of the Rhine, or roughly what is now Germany, spoke in 
 German, while Charles the Bald, who took Francia Occidentalis 
 (modern France), spoke in French. Lothair, the third brother, 
 took a long narrow strip along the left bank of the Rhine from 
 the Alps to the sea, which he called Lotharingia (modernly Lor- 
 raine), and which was destined to prove an apple of discord for- 
 ever between the other two nations. 
 
 Although this separation marks the political beginning of Ger- 
 many, the various tribes were still governed by their chiefs or 
 dukes, and spoke different dialects. Charlemagne created the 
 archbishops of Cologne, Treves, and Maintz, spiritual princes 
 with power equal to the dukes, so the latter would in a measure 
 be curbed. After the separation of Germany the descendants of 
 Charlemagne continued on the throne, but on the cessation of line
 
 780 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 in Louis III., the child, the chiefs of the various nations, or 
 dukes, decided to elect one of themselves king. 
 
 On the death of Conrad, they chose Henry, Duke of Saxony, 
 as king in 919, called the Fowler, because when told of his elec- 
 tion he was found hunting. The country was in a bad state when 
 he came to the throne, especially from the invasion of the eastern 
 frontiers by hordes of Huns and Magyars. The eastern provinces, 
 Bohemia and Moravia, had already been settled by Sclavonic races 
 who filled in the vacant territory made by the migration of the 
 tribes. The Huns fought on horseback, and from their quick 
 movements suddenly rushing to a charge, and as quickly wheel- 
 ing about and returning, it was hard to beat them. 
 
 Formerly, in 451, these savage tribes had threatened to conquer 
 Europe under their King Attila, who called himself the Scourge 
 of God, and who devasted Europe until defeated near Chalons in 
 Gaul. This Attila was called by the Germans Etzel, and figures 
 in their legends of the Nibelunglied as the husband of Kriemhild. 
 The Huns, who now fought with Henry, were settled in Hungary 
 and were fully as fierce as the former ones under Attila. To 
 preserve his country while he made ready to defend it Henry paid 
 tribute to these savages until by building walled towns along the 
 frontier in Saxony, and obliging every ninth man to dwell therein, 
 he was in condition to resist the enemy. 
 
 The last tribute he sent was a mangy dog which, of course, 
 was meant for an insult, and in the war following Henry was 
 victorious and the power of the Huns broken. This was the 
 beginning of town life among the Germans. Formerly they had 
 hated cities, and as a rule destroyed them, but now a new era was 
 opening. Yet, in spite of the introduction of Christianity, they 
 were as fierce as when in former times they swore "by the deck 
 of the ship, and the rim of the shield, by the withers of the 
 horse, and the point of the sword." 
 
 Besides driving away the Huns, Henry invaded the country of 
 the Wends, a Sclavonic tribe, and captured their stronghold 
 Branniber, afterwards called Brandenburg, the cradle of the 
 modern kingdom of Prussia. Henry the Fowler's wise and ener- 
 getic rule did much to consolidate the nation until succeeded by 
 his son Otto the Great, who, after his conquests in Italy, was
 
 SEMI-MILITARY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 
 
 781 
 
 crowned Emperor at Rome in 962, and then the country was com- 
 mitted to a policy which in the end proved to be the political ruin 
 of both Germans and Italians. 
 
 The papacy from its hereditary dislike of the Lombards, and 
 from fear of some Italian prince becoming too powerful, was only 
 too glad to crown German kings as Emperors and kings of Rome 
 and Lombardy. This alliance of Church and State sovereignties 
 
 MODERN GERMAN ARTILLERY MEN. 
 
 was destined to bear bitter fruit in the future, but now it worked 
 advantageously to both Pope and Emperor, although the poor 
 people were the sufferers. 
 
 The successors of Otto the Great followed in his footsteps, 
 consolidating the conquests in Italy by repeated invasions, and 
 spending the blood and treasure needed for the full development 
 of their own country in this desire to hold the beautiful land of 
 Italy in subjection, which they partially succeeded in doing for 
 many grievous years.
 
 782 THi: STORY OF GOVKKN.MKNT. 
 
 This was the origin of Germany's claim to Italy, which made 
 the latter country a battlefield for centuries whenever any power 
 such as Spain or France wished to quarrel with Germany. 
 This claim was never relinquished until the victory of the Prus- 
 sians over Austria, at Sadowa, in 1866, forced the latter power to 
 cede Venice to Italy, which had been the former's ally in that 
 famous seven weeks' war. 
 
 By 1024 the kingly power passed to the ducal house of Fran- 
 conia. The cities now began to rise in importance, especially 
 those along the Rhine, which had continued from the time of the 
 Romans with more or less smouldering vitality. The walled 
 towns on the eastern frontier, originally harbors of refuge from the 
 Huns, now became equally places of shelter for the oppressed 
 serfs and peasants, crushed down by the weight of the landhold- 
 ing class. Learning, always in the hands of the clergy, began 
 slowly to revive from the tremendous tidal wave of barbarism, 
 and schools were established at Liege, Gemblowers, Paderburn, 
 and many other places. 
 
 In this century arose another of those wavelike movements of 
 the people of Western Europe, bent on conquest, only this time 
 it was a reflex one from west to east, instead as formerly east to 
 west, and they were called crusades. The Greek empire had 
 fallen before the followers of Mahomet, and with Constantinople, 
 passed the Holy Land with Jerusalem into the hands of the Turks 
 and Saracens. That the Holy Sepulchre should be in the hands 
 of unbelievers was not to be endured by the followers of the 
 Church in Europe, and the fiery preaching of Peter the Hermit 
 aroused all the fanatical and warlike elements there. Everything 
 was promised to those who would enlist in the holy cause. Sins 
 were remitted and crimes pardoned, to those who wore the red 
 cross, and serfs became freemen. 
 
 The first crusade under Godfrey de Bouillon wrested Jerusalem 
 from the Turks in 1096, and for the next two hundred years the 
 arid lands of Palestine were- the battle-grounds of contending 
 hosts of infidels and Christians. In Sir Walter Scott's novel of 
 the Talisman, is an account of the third crusade in which Richard 
 the Lion Hearted, King of Englandand tin; crafty Philip Augustus 
 of France, took part. The Emperor Frederick P>arbarossa, of Ger-
 
 783
 
 784 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 many, was the head of this invading host, but he was drowned 
 while trying to cross one of the rivers in Syria near where Alex- 
 ander the Great came near suffering the same fate. 
 
 So great was the religious fervor created by these wars, that it 
 was one time preached that the Holy Land could only be con- 
 quered by children, and such was the madness of the times that 
 the fifth crusade was composed of thousands of boys and girls. 
 They attempted to reach Palestine but were captured by pirates, 
 and few of the original number ever returned. When these 
 devastating wars ceased, it is estimated that 6,000,000 of the 
 fighting class of Europe had perished. 
 
 From these wars came a more enlightened knowledge of the 
 East, and an intellectual activity gained by contact with the 
 more highly civilized Moc/rs and Arabs. From them, also, arose 
 the various orders of Knights Templar, Knights Hospitallers, and 
 the Teutonic order, who on return to Europe exercised great influ- 
 ence over affairs there. 
 
 When Henry IV. died, the ducal house of Franconia became 
 extinct, and the famous old duchy, the cradle of the empire from 
 whence had migrated the conquering Franks under Clovis, was 
 divided up between the Church and some petty princes, like the 
 Count Palatine of the Rhine (who became elector in the place of 
 the Duke of Franconia), the Landgrave of Hesse, and Count of 
 Nassau. This division of large duchies into small principalities, 
 an account of the law of descent following the one of equal divi- 
 sion rather than the feudal one of primogeniture, was another evil, 
 retarding the national growth of Germany. It was the beginning of 
 individualism, or particularism as it was called then in politics, 
 which afterwards was carried to ridiculous extremes. 
 
 Under Lothair II. the kingly power was in the House of Saxony 
 for a short time, 1125 to 1137, and then passed to the House of 
 Hohen Staufen by the election of Conrad III. in 1138. The 
 Hohenstaufens, a Suabian ducal family, were the most brilliant 
 of any in Germany during mediaeval times; the Suabians had 
 always been noted for their intellectual brilliancy, and this family 
 was typical of the country. 
 
 Soon after Conrad's election began the famous quarrel of Guelf 
 and Ghibeline, destined to divide Germany and Italy into hostile
 
 SEMI-MILITARY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 785 
 
 parties centuries after the original meaning of the words was 
 forgotten. Count Welf, of Bavaria, went to war with the Hohen- 
 
 staufens, whose castle in Suabia was called Weibling, and from 
 the difficulty the Italians had in pronouncing the W, this letter 
 was changed to G. The Ghibelines were the supporters of the
 
 786 THE STOHY OF GOVERXMKNT. 
 
 Emperor, and the Guelfs were those opposed, and later on were the 
 adherents of the popes in their long struggle with the Emperors. 
 
 Under Frederick Barbarossa, the greatest of these Emperors, 
 the boundaries of the empire were the widest since Charlemagne, 
 embracing Italy, Burgundy, Poland, and Denmark. Having 
 been crowned King of the Lombards, lie became involved in war 
 with the cities in Northern Italy, which ended in his levelling 
 the principal one, Milan, to the ground. And by his victories 
 over the rebellious Henry the Lion Duke of Saxony he ground 
 that duchy into fragments, and as an old chronicler says, "AH 
 the animals came in for a share ; the lion kept the heart for his 
 share; the lynx (Bavaria) had a leg; the dog (Hesse) a shoe; 
 the pig (Holstein) the lungs ; Cologne and Bremen each a hind 
 leg, while Mentz got the tail." 
 
 Thuringia and Westphalia, portions of this proud duchy, be- 
 came separate and were ruled by their respective courts, while 
 the duchy of Bavaria Barbarossa gave to Otto of Wittelsbach, in 
 whose descendants' hands it remains to this da}-. 
 
 The people had nothing to say about these changes, when 
 they passed from king to duke or duke to count, or whether they 
 passed from the mailed hand of the feudatory lord to the mortmain 
 of the Church. Their condition was alike pitiable and hopeless, 
 for what the feudal lord or the Church did not take from them, 
 the robber knights seized if they could. 
 
 With the death of Frederick Barbarossa in the Holy Land, the 
 empire fell to Frederick II., the most brilliant and accomplished, 
 as well as ill-fated prince of the Middle Ages. This emperor by 
 marriage acquired the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples, which, 
 added to his Lombard kingdom in the north of Italy made him all 
 but supreme master of that country. To this the Pope naturally 
 objected, and the quarrel began. One side thundered forth with 
 anathemas and bulls of excommunication, while the other retali- 
 ated by physical force, frequently driving the Supreme Pontiff 
 from Rome by arms. 
 
 The effect on Germany of this struggle between Kaiser and 
 Pope was to loosen all bonds of authority, as the latter in excom- 
 municating the former would absolve all his subjects from their 
 allegiance; and the turbulent nobles and tributary princes were
 
 SEMI-MILITARY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 787 
 
 not slow to avail themselves of the situation. On the other hand 
 the Emperor, to raise men and money for his Italian wars, was 
 forced to sell to the cities important franchises and civil liberties 
 which enabled them to become almost so many little republics. 
 The Emperors were likewise forced to grant equally important 
 rights to the princes who supported him, and these rights made 
 
 THE CROWNING OF A POET WITH LAUREI,. 
 
 them independent, so all over Germany arose a horde of petty 
 irresponsible tyrants. 
 
 Instead of the people becoming a homogeneous compact nation, 
 like the French and English, they were hopelessly subdivided 
 amongst themselves. In the long struggle between the popes 
 and the emperors, the popes won, and the power of the emperors 
 who opposed them was completely shattered. One of the latter, 
 Henry VI., was forced to stand, with scant covering, three 
 days in a snow storm, at Canossa, to obtain pardon of the Pope. 
 Frederick II., the last of the Hohenstiuifens to reign, was, from
 
 788 THK STORY OF (JOVKUNMKXT. 
 
 his personal beauty, attractiveness, and wide knowledge of 
 languages, speaking as he did French, German, Italian, Greek, 
 Latin, and even Arabic, the "wonder of the age." In him the 
 arts found a liberal patron, and poetry a suitor, for lie wrote 
 the first Italian sonnet in that language. To his court came all 
 the brilliant minds of the day, lawyers like Peter de Yincis to 
 draw up a code for a kingdom, or poets to receive at the fair 
 hands of his queen the wreath of laurel more to be coveted than 
 crowns. 
 
 \Vith the extinction of the house of Ilohenstaufen as dukes of 
 Suabia as well as emperors of Germany, their famous patrimony 
 of Suabia was divided up among their heirs, as formerly were 
 Franconia and Saxony. For years after they ceased to reign 
 Germany passed through the darkest hour of her existence, and 
 that period was called Interregnum (1250-1278), when rival can- 
 didates struggled to get possession of the imperial title. All 
 authority was set at defiance, and each one settled his own 
 troubles with the sword. There arose throughout the land, 
 especially along the banks of the rivers, like the Rhine, innum- 
 erable robber castles, built and inhabited by a class of nobles who 
 disdained to get a living by other means than force. 
 
 These castles were built along some lonely road, or where 
 several met, and all travellers, especially merchants, had to pay 
 toll, or be attacked and have their goods seized. Prelates of the 
 Church even were not above adding to their revenue by these 
 means. One of them, a bishop, on being asked why he built his 
 castle in an out of the way place where no one could get a living 
 by fanning, replied that "four roads crossed in front of his 
 domain." The cities, finding their merchants constantly plucked 
 by these aristocratic robbers, leagued together and made war 
 upon them. Many of the robber knights were hanged and their 
 castles burned, and their picturesque ruins to-day lend a charm 
 to the scenery along the Rhine. 
 
 The cities now began to be an important factor in the nation's 
 development, and were at this period the only places of refuge for 
 liberty of conduct or of conscience. After the wave of migrating 
 tribes had passed, most of the Roman cities were in ruins, but 
 Saint Boniface, who first converted the Germans, restored some of
 
 789
 
 790 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 them and made them bishoprics, under the control of some bishop 
 or abbot. In these cities the pious monks began the building of 
 those beautiful cathedrals of Gothic architecture which will be 
 the admiration of the world as long as civilized man can appre- 
 ciate the beautiful. 
 
 The building of these masterpieces was a cause of the growth 
 of these cathedral towns. Successive armies of workmen were 
 employed, as they were frequently hundreds of years in finishing 
 these wonderful structures, and following them came the pilgrims 
 to worship at the shrine, and after them came the trader, eager 
 for profit; so gradually about the Church there grew up a com- 
 munity sufficient unto itself, as regards their own governing, 
 and whose laws were based upon other ideas than killing and 
 plunder. 1 
 
 In the north of Germany arose towns such as Bremen, Ham- 
 burg, and Liibeck, Stittin, Dantzic, and Kb'nigsberg, along the 
 North and Baltic Seas, who leagued themselves together as the 
 "Hansebund," or Hanseatic League, which extended its influence 
 to towns in the South, such as Augsburg and N Urn berg, and West 
 even into Russia. These towns coined money, issued notes, and 
 bills of credit, built fleets which dominated the seas, and exercised 
 all the rights of sovereign states, and were really so many little 
 republics surrounded by feudalism. 
 
 When the anarchy of the Interregnum could no longer be 
 endured, the imperial free cities wished for some ruler who could 
 assist them in their struggles with the princes. So it was decided 
 to hold an election. The choice of the electors was Rudolf of 
 Habsburg, in 1273, so called from his castle in Switzerland (still 
 standing), as one most likely to heal the growing antagonism 
 between the church and the princes of Germany. Rudolf, the 
 founder of this powerful and grasping family, had all the traits 
 which have made that house a stumbling-block to progress and 
 civilization. 
 
 The power of this family came from fortunate marriages, and 
 from the extinction of the great ducal families, which left a crowd 
 
 * In this manner grew up Mayence, Worms, Cologne, and Strasburg, along the Rhine ; 
 Ghent, Brussels, and Utrecht, in the Netherlands; Miinster, Bremen, and Magdeburg iu 
 Saxony, and WUrzburg, Prague, and Vienna in other parts of the country.
 
 SEMI-MILITARY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 791 
 
 of petty princes who were only too willing to maintain the suc- 
 cession of Emperor in the House of Habsburg in return for the 
 maintenance of their petty sovereignty. In his old age Rudolf 
 married the beautiful Agnes of Burgundy, then only fourteen 
 years of age. After the ceremony the Bishop of Spires was so 
 enchanted by her beauty, that he rapturously kissed her (the man- 
 ners were free in this age), whereupon the Emperor told him it wa 
 the Agnus Dei (i.e., the Lamb of God), not Agnes the Empress, 
 that he ought to kiss. 
 
 One of his successors, Rudolf II., was a true son of this grasp- 
 ing race, and he was immortalized by Dante's curse in his poem 
 of Purgatoria : 
 
 '' May on thy race Heaven's just judgment fall; 
 And be it signally and plainly shown, 
 With terror thy successors to appall, 
 Since by thy lust yon distant lands to gain 
 Thou and thy sire have suffered wild to run 
 What was the garden of a fair domain. 
 
 Canto F7II-101. 
 
 When one thinks of the blood shed by this family in the thirty 
 years' war, the assassination of Don Carlos, the son of Philip II., 
 the beheading of Marie Antoinette in the French Revolution, the 
 dismemberment of the Austrian Empire by Napoleon I. and later 
 on by Napoleon III., where she was found to yield Venice to 
 Italy, the death of Maximilian in Mexico, the crushing defeat by 
 the Prussians at Sadowa, and the recent tragedy of the family, the 
 suicide of the Crown Prince Rudolf, it seems as if the great 
 Italian poet's curse had been fulfilled. 
 
 The Electoral College had now fallen into confusion, and the 
 constant appeals from it to force of arms by disappointed candi- 
 dates kept the Emperors in never-ceasing turmoil. Originally 
 the tribes of Franks, Saxons, Suabians, and Bavarians, and some- 
 times the Lorrainers from across the Rhine, would encamp along 
 the banks of that river and choose one of their dukes or chiefs of 
 tribes, as king. Gradually the four dukes of these first four 
 tribes took to themselves the sole right of voting; the three arch- 
 bishops of Cologne, Treves, and Maintz voting with them. By 
 1184, the votes of Franconia and Suabia had passed to other
 
 792 THE STOltY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 hands, and the King of Bohemia hud put in a claim for the vote 
 hitherto held by Bavaria. 
 
 To stop this wrangling the Emperor, Charles IV., in 1355, 
 issued the Golden Bull which settled this question, and declared 
 the legal place of election should be Frankfort, and the ceremony 
 of coronation should take place at Aix-la-Chapelle, with the Arch- 
 bishop of Cologne to crown the king elected. The number of 
 electors was made seven, the original number, and their dignity 
 was declared equal to kings, while conspiracy against them was 
 high treason. In 1338 the electors declared their independence of 
 the Pope's sanction to make their choice of king valid. 
 
 The invention of gunpowder rapidly brought a change to the 
 now disappearing Middle Ages. This was discovered by a monk 
 named Schwartz, at Freiburg, in 1354, and the discovery cost him 
 his life by an explosion. The first powder mill was built at 
 Liibeck in 1360, and the first iron cannon balls were used by the 
 Hanse Towns in 1387, as the first balls were made of store. 
 
 With the introduction of gunpowder came a revolution in the 
 art of war, and with it the loss of the prestige of the nobility who 
 always fought on horseback on the battlefield. Before this, clad 
 in a suit of armor, with his horse equally protected, the noble \vas 
 invincible to the ordinary foot soldier, but now that the meanest 
 man with a gun could kill the bravest, the days of chivalry were 
 over. 
 
 With the introduction of gunpowder also came other forces to 
 change the thought of the age, and the most potent of these was the 
 discovery of printing by John of Gutenburg in 1430. Before 
 this, books were copied by hand, and this immense labor was done 
 by monks in the monasteries, and to them and their patient 
 life-long labors is due such preservation as we have of the liter- 
 ary relics of the ancient classic world. 
 
 The establishment of universities, together with the diffusion 
 of learning by printing, had an immense influence on the thought 
 of the age. The University of Prague, established in 1348, was 
 already famous for its teachers, such as John Huss and Jerome of 
 Prague, who counted their followers by thousands in Bohemia. 
 The ecclesiastical authorities tried to stop this intellectual awak- 
 ening by burning Huss and Jerome, but their death was the sig-
 
 794 THE STOItY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 mil for a bloody uprising in Bohemia under the leadership of 
 John Ziska, who, although blind, became one of the great soldiers 
 of his time. So fierce- and unrelenting was this man that on his 
 death, i:i 1424, lie desired that his skin should be flayed from his 
 body and made into a drum to be beaten in the presence of the 
 enemy. 
 
 */ 
 
 When Maximilian I. came to the throne in 1493, it seemed as 
 if the lowest point of anarchy and political dismemberment had 
 been reached, although he in a measure restored the prestige of 
 the nation, and tried to introduce some reforms. At the Diet of 
 Worms, 1495, there was issued an Edict of Perpetual Peace, 
 which was to do away with settling private quarrels by the sword 
 or the Faustrecht, fist law, as it was called. 
 
 Trials by combat or by ordeals, such as walking over hot iron, 
 known as the judgment of God, were still prevalent, for the 
 people yielded to law slowly and with distrust. When, a man 
 accused a woman, the conditions of the combat were made equal 
 by burying the man in the ground to his waist, and then armed 
 with a stick, he had to defend himself from the woman who had 
 a stone tied in the end of a veil for a Aveapon. 
 
 The House of Hapsburg Avas at the culmination of its power 
 when Charles V. was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1520, as 
 Emperor of Germany, for he ruled over more provinces than any 
 previous sovereign, as he took in all the new world which 
 Columbus had added to the Spanish throne, since by marriage 
 Spain, Burgundy, and the Netherlands had come into the hands 
 of this family, and his brother Ferdinand took Austria and the 
 Tyrol and afterwards Bohemia and Hungary. His coronation 
 was one of boundless magnificence and display of Avealth, as 
 befitted the taste of this young sovereign Avho so far had shown 
 only an inclination to be dissolute, though later he Avas to develop 
 into the most pOAverful ruler of his time. 
 
 The first act of the IICAV Emperor's administration was to 
 appoint a Diet of the empire at Worms, in 1521, to consider the 
 proper measures to combat the neAV ideas that Avere then spreading 
 from the teachings of Martin Luther. This extraordinary man 
 Avas born in Thuringia, in 1483, of a peasant family, and became 
 an Augustine friar and professor of theology in the University
 
 \
 
 796 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 of Wittenberg. At first he desired merely to reform certain 
 abuses which were flagrant in the Church, but the current of the 
 times was too strong for him and he finally broke from Rome. 
 
 The establishment of the universities, reviving as it did the 
 study of Greek and Hebrew, had spread abroad a spirit of inquiry 
 and criticism, and great scholars like Reuchlin, Erasmus, and 
 Melancthon had prepared men's minds for the partial overthrow 
 of the Roman Church. The peasantry and lower orders thought 
 they had everything to gain from any change whatever, and 
 gladly hailed these new doctrines as a sign of better times for 
 them, while the princes simply saw in them an opportunity to 
 dispossess the Church of some of its enormous wealth. 
 
 Luther, summoned to the Diet, walked all the way to the city 
 of Worms, and presented so poor an appearance that the Emperor, 
 Charles V., said he looked like the last man to convert him. 
 Charles V. was too far seeing a man not to realize that" these 
 new doctrines would not only disturb the Church, but destroy the 
 empire, so, after sternly admonishing the princes assembled that 
 he would continue the religion of the Roman Church as he had 
 inherited it from his ancestors, he refused to listen longer to the 
 arguments of Luther. After this Luther was concealed for nearly 
 a year in the Castle of Wartburg, where he spent his time trans- 
 lating the Bible into German. He was not above many of the 
 superstitions of his age, and the room is still shown at the castle 
 where he threw an inkstand at the devil. 
 
 This translation, one of the greatest intellectual achievements 
 of German scholars, fixed one of the many dialects of High and 
 Low German, as the one to be followed ever after by the scholarly 
 classes, and became also the language of the people. The peas- 
 ants beholding in these doctrines a chance for their relief, as 
 now they were hopelessly bound to the soil, threw off the yoke 
 of their feudal lords, and raising large but poorly disciplined 
 armies, began burning and devastating the country far and wide 
 in 1525. 
 
 Suabia, the Rhineland, and Franconia were in a blaze with 
 burning convents and castles ; churches were ruined, monasteries 
 plundered, while cities like Miinster, which fell into the hands of 
 a set of fanatics called Anabaptists, were given over to every kind
 
 SEMI-MILITARY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 
 
 797 
 
 of excess. It was the first articulate cry of the down trodden, 
 masses, and like the similar rising in France of the Jacquerie, 
 and the later explosion of the Reign of Terror, was marked by 
 blind rage and untamable ferocity. Although these poor peasants 
 were the followers of Luther, he had no sympathy with them, and 
 wrote to their rulers "To strangle, to stab them, secretly and 
 openly, as they can, as one would a mad dog." 
 
 GERMAN SOLDIERS OF MODERN DAYS. 
 
 Charles V., now weary with these religious strifes, called a Diet 
 at Augsburg, in 1555, to see if some agreement suitable to all 
 parties could be arranged. This, in a measure, was done, and 
 rights were given to the Lutherans which were withheld from Ilir 
 followers of Calvin and Zwingli. Peace, to a certain extent, 
 followed this Diet, and a few years after Charles resigned his 
 Spanish and Netherland interests to his son Phillip, and those of 
 Germany to his brother Ferdinand. 
 
 Bohemia, now possessed by Austria, had even before the times 
 of Luther been the stronghold of opponents of the Church, who 
 now embraced these new doctrines with enthusiasm. Austria,
 
 798 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 determined to stamp these new ideas out, had sent two commis- 
 sioners to Prague to look over the ground. On the 23d of May, 
 1618, a day famous as the beginning of the longest, bloodiest, 
 and most senseless war on record, for the end left both parties 
 (neither convinced) just where they began, was done the deed 
 which began the "thirty years war" 
 
 Count Thurm, at the head of a party of thirty noblemen, rushed 
 into the castle where Martinitz and Slawata, the two commis- 
 sioners, were consulting. Without any parleying, they threw 
 them out of the window, saying, " Now see if your Virgin will 
 help you ! " Their trembling secretary was sent after them, fol- 
 lowing on the bodies of his masters, to whom he apologized as he 
 struck, saying he could not help it. In spite of the fall of 
 seventy feet the men, beyond being bruised and badly shaken 
 up, were uninjured, for they fortunately fell on a heap of refuse. 
 " By heavens ! " exclaimed one of the throwers, " their Virgin has 
 saved them! " as the men were observed crawling off amid a fire 
 of pistol s.hots. 
 
 Both sides quickly found able leaders to command their armies, 
 Count Mansfield for the Protestants, and Tilly and Wallenstein 
 for the Imperialists. At the end of twelve years the Imperialists 
 were everywhere victorious, and the cause of the Protestants 
 seemed hopeless, for the latter were divided among themselves 
 regarding religion, and were jealous oi each other's success, while 
 the former had but one form of religion, and were controlled by 
 the central authority of the Emperor. Of all the men whom 
 these troublous times had thrown to the front, Wallenstein Avns 
 the ablest, at least until his great opponent, Gustavus Adolphus, 
 of Sweden, appeared on the scene. 
 
 Born in Bohemia, and educated by the Jesuits, Wallenstein 
 became interested in the study of astrology, common in those 
 days, and succeeded in surrounding himself with an air of mys- 
 tery, and attaching himself to the Imperialists. By the force of 
 his energy and ability to command, he soon rose to the head of 
 their armies, not, however, without arousing envy and hatred. He 
 was the living embodiment of the spirit of the times, stern, dark, 
 and merciless to those who opposed him. 
 
 So confident were the Imperialists of success that they issued
 
 LTJDWIG V, BEETHOVEN.
 
 800 THE STOHY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 an Edict of Restitution, which was that all Church property then 
 in the hands of Protestants should be returned to its owners. 
 This the latter refused to do, and prepared to renew the unequal 
 conflict, when a new element appeared on the scene in the person 
 of Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden. 
 
 This young king, the ablest tactician of his time, had intro- 
 duced a new order of things in the old formation for battle, by 
 making his lines fewer so not to present as deep a front to artillery 
 fire. His troops were armed with a lighter and more easily loaded 
 musket than their opponents, Avhile their tactical formation for 
 battle was more modern and in keeping with the growing use of 
 artillery. 
 
 Landing on the coast of Pomerania with a small but highly 
 disciplined army of fifteen thousand men, Gustavus quickly 
 regained most of Northern Germany from the Imperialists. He 
 was too late to raise the siege of Magdeburg, for that city was 
 soon after captured by assault by the soldiers of Tilly, who razed 
 its buildings, and put twenty thousand of its inhabitants to the 
 sword with every species of imaginable cruelty. Gustavus came 
 up with Tilly soon after at Leipsic, and after a stubborn contest, 
 in which the superiority of the new tactics of the Swedes was 
 apparent, won the day, and the Imperialists were driven further 
 South. 
 
 Tilly having died from wounds received at Leipsic, there was 
 nothing else to do but recall Wallenstein and place him at the 
 head of the Imperialists. Once again the banditti of Europe 
 flocked to his standard, and, as if by magic, Wallenstein was at 
 the head of a large army, and by his generalship forced Gustavus 
 to give him battle at Lutzen. The field was closely contested, as 
 two of the ablest generals of the day headed the armies, but vic- 
 tory at last remained with the Swedes, although they left their 
 brilliant King Gustavus dead at the moment of victory. The 
 Avar had nearly burned itself out when a new hand made its 
 appearance to assist the Protestants, the hand, strange to say, of 
 a Cardinal of the Church Armand de Richelieu. 
 
 This statesman saw in the troubles of Germany an opportunity 
 to humble Austria, and to gain a step nearer the Rhine for 
 France. By entering into a treaty with Oxenstein, the Minister
 
 SEMI-MILITABY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 
 
 801 
 
 of Sweden, and advancing men and money to the Protestant 
 princes of Germany, Richelieu fanned the war flames into fury 
 again. After several years more of strife both parties, wearied 
 out, came to an understanding at the Peace of Westphalia. 
 
 
 GEHMAN CHILDREN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 The Peace of Westphalia was fatal to Germany politically, by 
 reason of its dismemberment by France and Sweden. She was 
 too weak to refuse the demands of her allies, so she saw France 
 take Metz and parts of Lorraine and Alsace from the House of 
 Austria, while Sweden got Pornerania, Mecklenburg, and the 
 Netherlands, in gaining their freedom, came under the Influence
 
 802 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 of France. The latter also, by insisting on the complete separa- 
 tion of the Swiss Confederation from the Imperial Empire, had 
 two open doors to invade Germany. Through the absorption of 
 Burgundy by France, and the wringing of Alsace and Lorraine 
 from Austria, the two nations of France and Germany were 
 brought face to face on the Rhine and that vexed question of 
 the Rhine provinces was made a permanent issue. 
 
 It is estimated that two thirds of the people of Germany per- 
 ished either by the sword or famine during this dreadful period. 
 Whole provinces were laid waste, cities were sacked, castles 
 battered down, monasteries burned, and large numbers of people 
 lapsed into barbarism. The war had been conducted by both 
 parties with diabolical ferocity and fiendish ingenuity in torturing 
 each other's prisoners. There was nothing that the devilish wit 
 of man, or the fanatic rage of religion, could not devise to maim, 
 burn, or torture, not only men but helpless women and children. 
 The following account by an eye-witness will give some idea of 
 the way the common people were persuaded to give up their 
 money : 
 
 Both hands of one were tied fast behind him, and a horse hair was 
 drawn through his tongue by means of an awl. Then, whenever he 
 would move it only a little up and down, it gave the wretched man 
 such torture that he often cried out for death. But at every cry he had 
 four lashes with the thong on his calves I believe the fellow would 
 gladly have killed himself to get rid of the pain if he could have used 
 his hands. Another's head was bound tightly with a cord containing 
 many knots, and twisted behind above the neck with a wooden stick, 
 drawing it tighter and tighter till the bright blood streamed out of his 
 forehead, mouth, and nose, and even his eyes, and the poor man looked 
 like one possessed. I was frightened at these cruel plagues and this 
 pitiless tyranny, and begged Battraurtz to think of God and his own 
 conscience, and spare the few harmless folk a little in his tortures. But 
 he spoke in anger, "If you have much pity, you can't be my friend 
 long. He that has pity belongs to the devil." 
 
 The whole character of the German seemed changed by these 
 wars, and he became dull, heavy, and full of gloomy ideas: nor 
 was he susceptible of the least feeling of mercy, and every judi- 
 cial trial was stained by the blood of the tortured. The House
 
 SEMI-MILITARY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 803 
 
 of Hapsburg was still powerful enough to get its successors 
 elected from father to son, and by virtue of being Dukes of 
 Austria and Kings of Bohemia and Hungary, they were strong 
 enough to stamp out all remains of heresy in those dominions. 
 Although Imperialists in name, they did nothing to federate the 
 empire, and simply sought to aggrandize their family. 
 
 The other principal courts now were those of Bavaria and 
 Wurtemburg, and, with the exception of the growing power of 
 Prussia, the rest of Germany was given over to the miserable 
 tyranny of a horde of petty rulers spiritual and temporal. The 
 Turks still threatened Germany through Hungary, until defeated 
 by John Sobiesky, under the walls of Vienna, and the French 
 under Louis XIV. began their restless movements towards the 
 Rhine. 
 
 England, Holland, and Austria ranged themselves against 
 France and Bavaria, and once again poor Germany was made the 
 battleground of nations. Under the Duke of Marlborough, the 
 ablest general since Gustavus, and Prince Eugene of Savoy, who 
 had already won fame in the Avar with the Turks, the allied army 
 gave battle to the French at Blenheim, Oct. 12, 1704, under 
 Marshal Tallard. The result was a decisive victory for the 
 allies, the French losing twenty thousand men killed and 
 wounded, and the same number were made prisoners, among 
 whom was the Marshal himself. 
 
 The war, however, did not cease with this decisive victory, 
 but raged from the Netherlands along the Rhine frontier, which 
 was ravaged so by the French that it became almost a desert, and 
 across the Alps into Italy. The following year Marlborough 
 defeated Marshal Villeroi at Ramillies, a place in sight of the 
 afterwards famous field of Waterloo, and in 1708 won the battle 
 of Oudenarde, and Malplaquet in 1709, while Eugene had been 
 equally successful in Italy. 
 
 Louis XIV., of France, humbled by these tremendous defeats, 
 signed the Peace of Utrecht in 1711, when he relinquished most 
 of his territory along the Rhine, together with large possessions 
 in the New World to England. In spite of these wars Germany 
 was gaining ground in wealth, although backward as compared 
 with France, England, or even the Netherlands.
 
 804 THE STORY OF GOVP3RNMENT. 
 
 And now another family was rapidly rising into prominence, 
 who by their achievements were ultimately to remodel the Ger- 
 man nation. They were from Suabia, and from the start were a 
 thrifty, long-headed race, who could save money as well as fight for 
 it. As far back as 1170 Frederick Barbarossa had made Conrad of 
 Zollern a Burgrave of Nuremburg, which advanced the family to 
 such an extent that one of his descendants, Frederick, was able 
 to loan the Empero" Sigismund four hundred thousand guildern. 
 Unable to pay it back, Sigismund made Frederick Margrave of 
 Brandenburg in 1415. 
 
 Prussia was conquered by the Teutonic Order of Knights after 
 the third crusade, and the natives were either exterminated or 
 reduced to serfdom. In both these provinces of Brandenburg and 
 Prussia large numbers of Saxons, Franks, and other North Germans 
 settled and formed large and flourishing cities, and the country was 
 called East and West Prussia, with Konigsberg as the capital. 
 
 As early as the Elector Albert, the law of primogeniture was es- 
 tablished in the Mark of Brandenburg, and from that time the House 
 of Hohenzolleru Avas spared the cutting up into fragments which 
 ruined politically those other nations of Germany who adhered to 
 the Teutonic principle of equal inheritance. In 1608, the Duchy of 
 Prussia, through failure of direct heirs, came to the Ilohenzollern 
 branch, who were Electors as well as Margraves of Brandenburg. 
 
 This house amounted to little until the time of Frederick 
 William, called the Great Elector, although during the recent 
 wars they had seized all the Church property they could grasp. 
 The Great Elector was the first of a long line of able men who 
 left no stone unturned that they might leave Prussia greater than 
 they found it. He defeated the Poles and made them relinquish 
 all claims to the Duchy of Prussia, and later on thrashed the 
 hitherto invincible Swedes at Fchzbellin, taking from them in 
 consequence a large portion of Pomerania. 
 
 He was the first to keep a large standing army in time of peace, 
 by which means Prussia began to exercise a power greater 
 than her natural position warranted. The son of the Great Elec- 
 tor thought himself strong enough to be called a king, so after 
 a reluctant consent from the Emperor he got himself crowned at 
 Konigsberg, Jan. 18, 1701.
 
 SEMI-MILITARY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 
 
 805 
 
 His son, Frederick William, the half crazy father of Frederick 
 the Great, increased his standing army from thirty-eight thousand 
 to eighty-four thousand, and drilled them to mathematical preci- 
 sion in tactics, the influence of which training seems to have 
 lasted into our time. He also enjoyed the fad of having the 
 
 : . . < ' 
 
 FREDERICK. TUE GREAT RETURNING FROM THE BATTLE OF PRAGUE. 
 
 tallest men in the world as his grenadiers, and when they would 
 not enlist did not hesitate to kidnap and impress them. 
 
 An army so laboriously constructed was too precious to risk in 
 war, so the king simply created a weapon he never used, and 
 refused to fight with. At his death, in 1740, the army fell into
 
 806 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the hands of one who could use it, Frederick the Great. The 
 history of Germany for the next generation revolves about tin- 
 career of this wonderful man who, coming to the throne of Prussia 
 when he was only twenty-eight, quickly made himself felt as the 
 greatest ruler of his age. 
 
 In early youth lie was inclined more towards music and poetry 
 and the study of French literature than the pursuit of arms, but, 
 on coming to the throne all this was changed, and he resolved on 
 a war of conquest against the young Austrian Queen, Maria 
 Theresa. This woman, who was to dispute with Frederick as to 
 who was the ablest sovereign of the time, came to the Austrian 
 throne the same year as Frederick began his reign. Her acces- 
 sion to the throne was the signal for trouble, for Bavaria pushed 
 her claims for the imperial dignity, while the young king of 
 Prussia, without a word of warning, invaded Silesia, and over- 
 threw the Austrians at the battle of Molwitz. 
 
 It was Frederick's first battle and, thinking at one time that all 
 was lost, he fled from the field, only to find next morning that 
 his old Field Marshal, Schwerin, had Avon a victory for him. 
 France saw another opportunity to injure Austria, and forming an 
 alliance with Prussia, Saxony, and Bavaria forced Maria Theresa 
 to fly from Vienna to Hungary. This people had never been 
 friendly to Austria, but aroused by the sight of the beautiful 
 Maria Theresa in her misfortunes, they shouted, "We will die 
 for our King l Maria Theresa ! " They came to her aid with 
 enthusiasm, and she quickly recovered her lost ground. Her 
 husband was unable to cope with Frederick, and she was forced 
 to make peace and cede Silesia. 
 
 The Silesian wars had left Germany in an unsettled condition, 
 especially Austria, who saw the rise of Prussia with ill-concealed 
 distrust, and only waited an opportunity to regain her provinces. 
 In consequence Austria and Prussia began to seek alliances, and 
 here the empress queen was successful, for Russia, Sweden, 
 France, and Saxony joined with her, while Frederick got only the 
 doubtful friendship of England. 
 
 Seeing that a struggle was inevitable, Frederick, with charac- 
 teristic energy, did not wait for war to be declared, but invaded 
 
 1 There was no queen by law, so she was called king.
 
 808 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Saxony and, putting its army to rout, came up with the Austrians 
 at Lowositz, and defeated them. This was the beginning of the 
 "Seven Years' War," which was to settle the question whether 
 Prussia was to remain in the family of nations. 
 
 The coalition now formed against Frederick was enough to 
 appall the stoutest heart, for the allies could bring into the field 
 five hundred thousand men to Frederick's two hundred thousand. 
 Frederick, with his usual impetuosity, did not wait, but rushing 
 through the mountain passes of Bohemia, struck the Austrians at 
 Prague, and after one of the most obstinate battles of modern 
 times, defeated them, although he suffered the loss of one of his 
 greatest officers, Marshal Schwerin. 
 
 After his victory of Prague, Frederick rushed to meet Daun, 
 the Austrian general, who fought a battle with him at Kolin, for 
 the first time victory remaining with the Austrians. Frederick 
 was now forced to retreat from Bohemia, and found at the same 
 time that the French had crossed the Rhine and were advancing 
 from the west, the Swedes were in Pomerania, and the Russians 
 on the eastern frontier. The Russians, after winning one vic- 
 tory, recrossed the frontier, and the Prussian army opposing 
 them, moved' to meet the Swedes, driving them out of Pomerania. 
 Frederick, with only twenty-two thousand men, marched to check 
 the French army of sixty thousand under the Duke de Richelieu, 
 at Rossbach. 
 
 The corruption of the court of Louis XV. had not been the 
 means of improving the French army, nor was a profligate like 
 Richelieu, although acceptable to Madame Pompadour, the 
 highest type of a general. So in spite of the disparity of num- 
 bers the French were quickly overthrown and routed with great 
 loss, while Frederick's loss was trifling. 
 
 Leaving Rossbach, Frederick returned to meet the Austrians, 
 now advancing under Prince Charles at Leuthen. Here the 
 strategic superiority of Frederick was manifest, and he employed 
 the oblique order of battle against the long line of the enemy, 
 stretching nearly five miles, and consisting of eighty thousand 
 soldiers, while his force was only thirty thousand. He managed 
 to mass the bulk of this on the extreme left flank of the Austrians, 
 and succeeded in overthrowing them.
 
 SEMI-MILITARY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 809 
 
 Yet the victories of Rossbach over the French and Leuthen over 
 the Austrians, while raising Frederick to the front rank of great 
 commanders, the latter battle, in Xapoleon's opinion, ensuring his 
 immortality, barely saved Prussia from annihilation, for the fol- 
 lowing year found the Russians burning the villages and ravaging 
 the fields of eastern Prussia, until checked by Frederick at Zorn- 
 dorf, where, with only thirty-two thousand men, he attacked fifty 
 thousand Russians with the utmost fury, on August 25, 1758. 
 
 The battle was bloody and indecisive, and ceased only with the 
 utter exhaustion of both armies, when night put an end to the 
 fury of the combatants, who after the cartridges had given out 
 fought hand to hand until 11,500 Prussians, and 21,500 Russians 
 were dead or wounded. The next day the Russians disappeared, 
 and Frederick turned his attention to Daun, who was advancing 
 with the Austrians. The genius and good judgment which 
 Frederick had hitherto displayed, with the exception at Kolin, 
 now for a time seemed to leave him, and he was surprised and 
 badly beaten by Daun at the battle of Hochkirch, Oct. 14, 1758. 
 Yet in spite of this defeat, where he lost Marshal Keith and nine 
 thousand men and one hundred and one guns, besides Maurice of 
 Dessau and himself wounded, Frederick withdrew in good order, 
 and his opponent failed to follow. 
 
 The game for Frederick seemed now played out ; his treasury 
 was empty, the magnificent infantry he had drilled and disci- 
 plined to the point of perfection had ceased to exist after nine 
 pitched battles, numerous skirmishes, and the terrible marches to 
 which he had subjected them. In their place were raw levies and 
 recruits from other countries, while the troops of Austria steadily 
 improved in quality, and their artillery was always superior. 
 
 The following year, 1759, found Frederick in such financial 
 straits that he resorted to debasing the coin he paid his soldiers 
 with, and but for the subsidies from England could not have put 
 another army in the field. With forty-eight thousand he attacked 
 the Russians at Kunersdorf, August 12, 1759, who had seventy- 
 eight thousand men, and at first he was brilliantly successful, but, 
 crowding his opponents too hard and thus cutting off their retreat, 
 he was in return attacked by them and driven from the field. 
 
 It was the severest defeat the king had ever received, and it
 
 810 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 was owing entirely to himself and his obstinacy in. forcing the 
 conflict against the advice of all his generals, and had it been 
 followed up the Prussian monarchy would have ceased to exist. 
 The following year found the indomitable Frederick facing his 
 old enemies, the Austrians, under Dauii and Loudon, in the much 
 fought over territory of Silesia. Here Loudon was defeated at 
 Ziegnitz, and soon after Daun at Torgau, which proved to be the 
 last battle either of these constant opponents would ever fight. 
 The energy of all was now used up, so peace was declared, and 
 the bloodiest war of modern times was brought to an end. 
 
 Frederick had retained Silesia, but his kingdom was well-nigh 
 ruined. Yet after a few years, such was the wisdom and energy 
 of his government, that Prussia rose again, and became not only 
 the strongest but the best governed of the German States. The 
 House of Hapsburg on the other hand came out of this long strug- 
 gle with diminished prestige and territory, while in France the 
 misery of the people was such that it was evident a political hur- 
 ricane would soon overturn everything. 
 
 The storm of the French Revolution began to darken the 
 horizon of Europe, and although the people of Germany were 
 apparently quiet, the ruling class were agitated by the fall of the 
 Bastile, in 1789, the beheading of Louis XVI. and Marie 
 Antoinette, the latter a German princess, and daughter of Maria 
 Theresa, and the constant influx of French emigrant nobles who 
 thronged every court and clamored for armed interference in the 
 affairs of France.. 
 
 In an evil hour Frederick William II., the unworthy successor 
 of the great Frederick and Joseph II., now Emperor of Germany, 
 declared war against the French nation, but suffered a series of 
 defeats such as Valmy and Jemappes from that now infuriated 
 people. Prussia now made peace with France, leaving Austria 
 alone to fight it out. Three French armies struck the latter 
 power, one under Moreau on the Upper Rhine, the second under 
 Jourdan on the Lower, and the young Bonaparte invaded Italy. 
 
 While the first two armies were unsuccessful, the latter was 
 brilliantly so, and after a series of unparalleled victories its com- 
 mander, then only twenty-six years of age, was able to dictate 
 his own terms of peace at Campo Formio, in 1797, whereby France
 
 THE NUN AND THK FLOWFRS. From German painting.
 
 812 T1IK STOKY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 gained the whole of the left bank of the Rhine. But one war was 
 not to settle the passions now aroused throughout Europe, and 
 soon Austria and France were fighting again, with the same 
 result as before. Napoleon thrashed the armies of the former at 
 Marengo, and Moreau gained the equally important victory of 
 Hohenlinden. 
 
 Important changes now were made in the internal affairs of 
 Germany on account of so much territory having been surrendered 
 to France. The spiritual electorates of Treves, Cologne, and 
 Mentz were abolished, although the last was transferred to 
 Ratisbon. By way of compensation the electoral dignity was 
 given to the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, the Duke of Wiirtem- 
 berg, the Margrave of Baden, and the Grand Duke of Tuscany. 
 All the free imperial cities were done away with except five, 
 viz : Liibeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Augsburg, and Nuremberg, and 
 a vast number of bishoprics and abbacies were abolished. 
 
 Napoleon had now, in 1804, assumed the title of E^hperor of 
 the French, and later appropriated the iron crown of the Lom- 
 bards, thus re-establishing on French soil the Empire of Charle- 
 magne. England, now at war with Napoleon, subsidized the other 
 nations of Europe, such as Sweden, Russia, and Austria, to form 
 a coalition against him. This coalition yielded to the rapid 
 blows of Napoleon and Austria was defeated at Ulm, Vienna was 
 captured, and the Austrian army, with the Russian allies, were 
 hopelessly beaten at Austerlitz. 
 
 This victory made Napoleon master of Germany, and he pro- 
 ceeded to re-arrange its various states to suit himself by forming 
 the Confederation of the Rhine out of all the small German states 
 on the right bank of that river. He also rewarded his German 
 allies by making the electors of Bavaria and Wiirtemberg kings., 
 and the smaller dukes, grand dukes, etc., and gave them territory 
 at the expense of Austria. 
 
 The House of Hapsburg was now in the dust, and on August 6, 
 1806, its Emperor, Francis II., formally renounced the title of 
 Emperor of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. Thus that 
 union of spiritual and secular power ceased to exist, having lasted 
 from the reign of Otto the Great, on German soil, and from 
 Charlemagne in 800.
 
 SEMI-MILITARY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 
 
 813 
 
 Prussia, who had hitherto avoided a conflict with the Corsican 
 adventurer, Napoleon, was now led to declare war against him, 
 feeling that, with her armv drilled in the tactics of Frederick the 
 Great, she could come off. victorious. It was a vain belief, for 
 her army, although well drilled, was not yet acquainted with the 
 modern manoeuvres of Napoleon, and it received two crushing 
 defeats at Auerstadt and Jena, leaving the nation at the feet of 
 the French Emperor who 
 treated very rudely the 
 beautiful Louise, Queen 
 of Prussia, when she 
 sued to him for mercy. 
 
 He treated her like 
 a conqueror, and di- 
 vided her territory 
 among his German 
 allies, such as the Elec- 
 tor of Saxony, whom he 
 made a king with Po- 
 land as tributary, while 
 he made Hanover, 
 Brunswick, and Hesse- 
 Cassel into the King- 
 dom of Westphalia, 
 which he gave to his 
 brother Jerome. Con- 
 stant wars with Napo- 
 leon only seemed to 
 rivet the chains of Ger- 
 many closer, and tear 
 
 from her fresh territory. One reason for this was that the people 
 of the nation cared very little about the humiliation of their 
 rulers, for the rule of the French broke off the last remnants of 
 the old feudal system. 
 
 But the star of the Corsican began to pale, and in 1812, after 
 his disastrous Moscow campaign, the German rulers saw a chance 
 to free themselves from his yoke. By promising the people con- 
 stitutions, abolishing serfdom, and in other respects placing 
 
 LOUISE OF PRUSSIA AND HER TWO SONS, 
 
 AFTERWARDS FREDERICK WILLIAM IV. 
 
 AND KAISER WILLIAM.
 
 814 THE STOEY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 themselves in line with the results of the French Revolution, 
 they were enabled to raise armies of such patriotic fervor that 
 Napoleon for the first time had to cope with a thoroughly aroused 
 national feeling. 
 
 Prussia in her darkest hour had been sustained by the beauti- 
 ful Queen Louise, the mother of two sons who were to succeed 
 to the throne of Prussia, and one even to revive the German 
 Empire and repair the disaster of Jena by Gravelotte and Sedan. 
 Napoleon had demanded that Prussia should only have a stand- 
 ing army of forty-two thousand men. Stein, her great states- 
 man, apparently agreed to this, but just as soon as a recruit was 
 properly instructed his place was taken by a new one, so in a few 
 years Prussia had a well-drilled army, several times that amount, 
 within call. 
 
 Despite his terrible losses in Russia, Napoleon had a large 
 army under him in Germany in the following year, but after 
 some minor successes saw several of his marshals beaten at various 
 points of the long line he tried to hold, so he concentrated about 
 Leipsic, where he received the attack of the allied army. This 
 great struggle, known as the battle of the nations, because there 
 were Swedes, Austrians, Prussians, and Russians on one side 
 opposed to the French, lasted two days when, after terrible 
 slaughter on both sides, Napoleon gave way and retreated across 
 the Rhine, with a loss of nearly sixty thousand men, while the 
 allies had lost about fifty thousand. In our chapter on Masonry 
 was a picture of this retreat. 
 
 The allies now poured into France, and in spite of the mar- 
 vellous defence made by Napoleon, overcame him, and forced him 
 to abdicate, sending him to the Island of Elba in the Mediter- 
 ranean. He was not there long before he escaped, and re-seating 
 himself on the throne of France, again was ready for battle. 
 Austria, Prussia, England, and the minor German states, rushed 
 to arms and prepared for a second invasion of France. Napoleon 
 anticipated their movements by invading Belgium and endeavor- 
 ing to strike the Prussian army under Blucher, and the British army 
 under Wellington, before they could unite. For this purpose he 
 had one hundred and sixteen thousand men, while Blucher had 
 the same number and Wellington one hundred and six thousand.
 
 13 B
 
 816 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Rapidly concentrating his troops by forced marches at Charleroi, 
 June 15, 1815, he gave battle the next day in two places, one on 
 his extreme left at Quatre Bras, where Marshal Xey encountered 
 Wellington, and the other on his right where he himself fought 
 with Blucher at Ligny, the battlefields being ten miles apart. The 
 close of this day found Ney unable to drive Wellington from the 
 field, while Napoleon with great difficulty had barely managed 
 to do so with Blucher. Wellington and Blucher retreated on 
 converging lines towards Brussels with Napoleon in sharp pursuit 
 who, having left Grouchy to reach the Prussians, attended to the 
 English army. 
 
 On the memorable 18th of June, Wellington and Napoleon met 
 at Waterloo, where the fate of Europe was to be decided. It 
 was nearly noon before Napoleon began his attack, and soon after 
 small detachments of Prussians began to appear on his right 
 flank. It was evident that Grouchy had failed to hold the Prus- 
 sians in check, although it was nearly evening before sufficient 
 numbers of them appeared to decide the fate of the day. The 
 French were some seventy-two thousand strong, while Wellington 
 had sixty-nine thousand men, so it was the policy of the latter to 
 simply hold his ground until Blucher should appear. This he 
 did in spite of the terrific assaults on his line by the French, until 
 at last the British and Prussian armies were joined, and then they 
 swept Napoleon from the field, and from his throne forever. 
 
 After this War of Liberation, Germany, like the rest of Europe, 
 had a season of profound peace, so long, that war seemed van- 
 ished from the civilized world. Underneath this, however, there 
 was great political unrest, for the rulers of Germany having 
 promised constitutions to their subjects, were slow in making 
 these promises good. Metternich, the Prime Minister of Aus- 
 tria, was the chief obstacle in getting any reforms made, or any 
 change in the disjointed condition of Germany. Austria refused 
 to take up again the imperial crown, and she refused to allow 
 others to seize it. Her idea was to keep the rest of the country 
 in small and divided principalities. 
 
 Stein and Scharnhorst, the two statesmen, wished a powerful 
 German nation, with political rights for the people, and an army 
 made up of every man capable of bearing arms, but the reactionary
 
 SEMI-MILITARY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 817 
 
 ideas of Metternich prevailed, and an Act of Confederation was 
 passed by the thirty-nine sovereign states, which now made up 
 Germany, an act that was simply a continuation of the methods of 
 the old inefficient Diets without the central head of the empire. 
 This patching up of the old mediseval political wagon lasted for 
 a while, and then the revolution of 1848, that, starting in Paris, 
 flamed up over Europe shook many a regal numbskull from his 
 throne. 
 
 After this, most of the kings granted constitutions to their 
 subjects, but not before blood had been shed, especially in Berlin 
 where the king, Frederick William IV., tried to crush out the 
 rising of the people with grapeshot. After this there were 
 several abortive attempts to create anew the German Empire, 
 and at an assembly of. delegates from all parts of Germany at 
 Frankfort in 18-18, the imperial crown was offered to the King 
 of Prussia who refused it. 
 
 In Italy, likewise, the desire for unification was daily becoming 
 too strong to be resisted. Italy had suffered for centuries, just 
 as Germany had, from a swarm of petty rulers who succeeded in 
 draining the country of its resources, and made every effort to 
 stifle the growing national feeling. The House of Savoy, under 
 its King, Victor Emanuel, was now the. hope of the Liberals and 
 Nationalists in Italy; the other rulers being either too despotic 
 or imbecile to do anything but oppose unification. 
 
 Similar to Prussia some years later, Italy had now four great 
 men to represent her, and they were her soldier king, Victor 
 Emanuel, his Prime Minister Cavour, the ablest statesman since 
 the days of Richelieu, the orator Mazzini, whose eloquence suc- 
 ceeded in keeping alive the spark, of Italian freedom, and her 
 popular hero Garibaldi. Cavour, whose introduction of Sardinian 
 troops in the Crimea to assist France and England had won for 
 him the aid of Napoleon III., now with the assistance of the 
 latter's troops began a war with Austria so as to drive her out of 
 the country. The two great victories of Magenta and Solferino 
 did this effectually, and soon after, when peace was declared, 
 Italy became united with Victor Emanuel as its first king, the 
 papal states and Venice falling to her later. 
 
 The constant constitution-tinkering, which had been going on
 
 818 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 since the fall of Napoleon, had led to a certain measure of freedom 
 among 1 the states, most of them now, since 1848, having some 
 kind of constitutional government, but nothing had heen accom- 
 plished towards making Germany a firm, united nation. King 
 William of Prussia had called to his aid as Prime Minister, Otto 
 Von Bismarck, and from this man's appearance on the scene Prus- 
 sia soon found herself committed to a policy, not second in bold- 
 ness to those of Napoleon First or Frederick the Great. 
 
 A man had arrived, and it was the beginning of the end for the 
 petty little princelets who had misgoverned Germany for cen- 
 turies. Although a reactionist and conservative in affairs at 
 home, where he was constantly embroiled with the Prussian Par- 
 liament over the question of army supplies, he soon after coming 
 to power made the first move on the political chessboard which 
 was to close in the formation of the new German Empire. 
 
 The duchies of Schleswig and Holstein had placed themselves 
 under the rule of the Danish kings some hundreds of years before, 
 although they were German in language, in customs, and were 
 always represented in the German Diets. Latterly there had been 
 constant friction between them and the Danish government over 
 questions of succession and infringments of some of their local 
 rights. They appealed to the German Diet, who resolved to send 
 an army to their assistance. 
 
 Here was Bismarck's opportunity, for, not wishing to pull the 
 hot chestnuts out of the fire himself, and knowing that if Prussia 
 alone should undertake this war she would incur the universal 
 reprobation of Europe, he induced Austria to assist and it was 
 soon over with little Denmark, who ceded the two duchies to 
 Prussia and Austria, whereupon the allies quickly began disagree- 
 ing with each other as to who should have them. 
 
 As this was ultimately to be a question of war, Bismarck kept 
 the question open until he was thoroughly prepared. Ever since 
 the war with Bonaparte, Prussia had adopted the system of uni- 
 versal military service. She had now at this time adopted the 
 needle-gun, the first breech-loading rifle to be used on a large 
 scale, and had constructed a system of railways leading to various 
 strategic points, so her troops could be quickly thrown at an 
 enemy before he could cross the frontier.
 
 819
 
 820 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Not only were the various arms of the service drilled to the 
 highest point of efficiency, but in Berlin was established a war 
 college known as the General Staff, where the brightest of the 
 army officers studied over all possible combinations of attack and 
 defence with every adjoining nation. War was thus made a 
 science. This college became a vast storehouse of information 
 regarding the resources, railways, forts, and troops of other coun- 
 tries, often more accurate and minute than the country knew 
 itself. 
 
 Here the business part of war was thoroughly marked out, and 
 the nation kept at the point of immediate preparation. The time 
 soon arrived for action, as the diplomatic part of the struggle 
 came to nothing, and in the summer of 1866 Prussia and Austria 
 were at each others' throats again. In Frederick's time it was a 
 seven years' war; this was finished in seven weeks. Taking the 
 initiative three Prussian armies directed by Von Moltke crossed 
 the frontier into Bohemia before the slow-moving Benedek, the 
 Austrian commander, realized the situation. 
 
 After some minor engagements in which the Prussians steadily 
 pushed their opponents before them, one of the Prussian columns 
 under Prince. Frederick Charles came up with the Austrians at 
 Sadowa. Here, joined by the third army, the prince, although 
 having only about one hundred and twenty thousand, did not hes- 
 itate to attack Benedek with two hundred thousand, the object 
 being to hold his attention so closely that he could not move to 
 ward off the blow of the second army under the Prussian crown 
 prince who was marching on his flank. 
 
 The plan worked out like a chess problem, and while Prince 
 Charles could make no impression on the Austrian centre, he held 
 it like a vise; soon the columns of the crown prince came in 
 sight, and, after a desperate resistance on the part of the Austrians, 
 they were driven from the field, thousands falling under the piti- 
 less fire of the needle-guns. 
 
 Peace was soon declared, and Austria was pushed out of the Ger- 
 manic Confederation where she had long ceased to be a worthy rep- 
 resentative. Venice was given to Italy who had been Prussia's 
 ally by raising an army, and thus detaining a large one of the 
 Austrians in Italy, and the North German Confederation was
 
 SEMI-MILITARY CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 821 
 
 formed Avith Prussia at its Lead, while the South German states 
 were left free to make separate treaties with Prussia regarding 
 future events. 
 
 Prussia had been almost alone in this struggle with Austria, 
 for nearly all the other German states sided witli the latter power, 
 especially Hanover, Saxony, "\Yurtemberg, and Bavaria. Prussia 
 annexed Schleswig-Holstein and Hanover, and some of the 
 smaller duchies. This sudden revelation of Prussia's power was 
 not relished by the Emperor Napoleon III., of France, who had 
 been accustomed to have his hand in every European disturbance, 
 and whose Avishes had not even been consulted by Bismarck in 
 making peace Avith Austria. 
 
 France Avas impelled by her pride to find some excuse to 
 quarrel Avith Prussia, and Napoleon, although he Avell kneAV that 
 his army was not ready, AV:IS forced by the petty pretext of the 
 insult to her ambassador to declare Avar July 15, 1870. Napoleon 
 evidently hoped that the South Germans would, as heretofore, 
 ally themselves Avith any power against Prussia, but here he made 
 his mistake, not reckoning on the tremendous force of the HCAV 
 idea of a unified German nation. 
 
 It was not a question UOAV of princes making alliances and 
 dragging the people either side they chose, but the rising of an 
 enraged and determined nation Avho resolved in spite of petty 
 differences of small states to repel the invader, and aftenvards 
 settle the question of German unity, which every one felt was noAV 
 the price of the struggle. Prussia and her allies, Saxony, 
 Bavaria, and Wurtemberg Avere fully prepared, having the Prus- 
 sian army system applied to them since Sadowa, and Avere able 
 a few days after the declaration of Avar to send six hundred 
 thousand men to the front, backed by three hundred thousand 
 reserA'es. 
 
 France could barely muster three hundred and fifty thousand 
 troops of the line, poorly armed and equipped, their artillery 
 muzzle-loading and antiquated, no -system for either moving or 
 feeding so large a body of men, and finally an absolute dearth of 
 military talent. 
 
 Yet with so small an army, and a good commander, the defen 
 line of the Vosges Mountains could have l>een held against the
 
 822 THE STORY OF (iOYKKKMKNT. 
 
 invading hosts of Germans, Imt in an evil hour Napoleon moved 
 forward to take the initiative. 
 
 His line was too long, and before he could rectify it the Ger- 
 mans had broken it in two places, at Weisembourg and Spicherin, 
 and followed this up with the crushing defeat of Worth. Though 
 outnumbered and outgeneraled, the French soldiers had still 
 fought bravely, but were now huddled about the fortifications of 
 Metz under Marshal Bazaine, and under Marshal McMahon at the 
 camp of Chalons where the Emperor Napoleon staid. 
 
 Bazaine, moving too slowly towards Paris, found that the 
 enemy had outmarched him and were 1 leading him by the terrific 
 struggles of Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte. Beaten back, he 
 retired on Metz, where some months later he ignominiously sur- 
 rendered the largest army ever known to lay down its arms. 
 McMahon, thinking he could rescue Bazaine, started by a long 
 circuitous road to the northeast, where he was met by the armies 
 ot Von Moltke at Sedan, and after some hard fighting, forced to 
 surrender the Emperor and nearly one hundred thousand men. 
 
 This should have closed the war, but the French, wounded 
 to the quick by these bitter reverses, resolved to continue the 
 unequal struggle. Paris was besieged by the Germans, but on 
 the outside the indomitable energy of Gambetta raised army after 
 army of recruits, who only became food for powder against the 
 stern discipline and perfectly trained battalions of Germany. 
 
 The struggle was long, bitter, and bloody, but the end came 
 when Chanzy and Bourbaki, in command of the relieving armies 
 of Paris, were hopelessly defeated. France then sued for mercy by 
 her representatives, Thiers and Favre, who pled in vain that the in- 
 demnity might be paid all in money and not in any loss of territory. 
 Thus William of Prussia came to be crowned in Paris Emperor 
 of a United Germany, a semi-military constitutional monarchy. 
 
 The men to whom these last scenes of the drama were due were 
 Bismarck, one of the greatest of modern statesmen, Von Moltke, 
 the greatest European strategist since Napoleon, Von Roon, the 
 organizer of the immense equipment necessary to move so vast an 
 army, and last the old King William, who had the wisdom to 
 let these giants work out the problem without too much imperial 
 interference.
 
 XVII. 
 
 THE chief events in the history of the American Union 
 are so well known that it would be a waste of time to 
 retell them in these pages. The framing of a constitu- 
 tion for self-government or home rule by the pilgrims in 
 the cabin of the Mayflower was an act that struck the keynote to 
 the music of that freedom which, from a dim dream in the mind of 
 the early New Englanders, became in a century and a half an active 
 aspiration that fruited into a vital fact. For the first century, 
 of course, the colonists were occupied largely with attempts to 
 maintain their footing on the soil against the original possessors, 
 and also against the French of Canada and of some portions of 
 the west, who had become allies of the Indians in their resistance 
 to colonial encroachments. But as soon as the colonists found 
 their footing firm, the desire for home rule and their feeling of 
 natural isolation from England, their feeling of geographical and 
 climatic differences, began to operate powerfully on the sentiments 
 of the people in America and to ripen a spirit of nationality, and 
 they would doubtless have found other excuses for revolution 
 
 823
 
 824 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 in the course of a few decades even if a wise monarch had been 
 on the throne, and if wise ministers like Chatham had been in 
 power pursuing a conciliatory policy towards the colonies. 
 
 It should be understood that, after our independence was estab- 
 lished, we still for many years had a very doubtful career before 
 us, and had it not been for France distracting the attention of 
 Europe and especially of England, and had it not been for Xapoleon, 
 whose rise helped us to preserve our integrity as a nation, we 
 might have fallen again under the domination of Great Britain. 
 
 As a natural historical sequence after the War of 1812, and the 
 Mexican AVar, which was not to our credit, but was a move for 
 the aggrandizement and extension of empire, we passed through 
 the throes of civil war, and the problem of slavery which had 
 promised to break up this vast nation into a collection of small, 
 jealous, antagonistic states was settled. But, as some of the 
 most careful observers from Madison to Lincoln have remarked, 
 "There are dangers still ahead of us," and it behooves us not 
 to be inflated with national vanity, but to remember that the 
 complex republicanism under which we live and under which 
 we enjoy some undeniable blessing.? is still in many respects an 
 experiment. 
 
 AA r e are menaced at this moment with grave perils from the 
 accumulation of national wealth in a few hands, and the danger 
 is that the masses in our large cities may some day find a leader 
 and may begin a conflict, compared to which the blood shed in 
 the French Revolution will be as a drop of water to Niagara. 
 Already can be heard the subterranean voices which hint a possi- 
 ble earthquake. It is therefore the duty of every American 
 citizen to study our form of government, reflect upon it most care- 
 fully, and try to cast his ballot in such a way as to prevent, if 
 possible, the social upheaval to which all the signs of the times 
 most emphatically point. 
 
 This chapter, therefore, will not rehearse the striking events 
 of American history, but will show in as plain and simple a man- 
 ner as possible the form of our government, and the functions 
 of the officers who administer it. The pictures, likewise, Avith 
 which this chapter is illustrated, will be general rather than 
 special in their relation to the text and not, as in other chapters,
 
 COMPLEX REPUBLICANISM. 
 
 825 
 
 the subjects of more or less extensive comment and anecdotal 
 allusion. 
 
 The majority of legislative bodies throughout the civilized 
 world are con- 
 stituted w i t h 
 two houses, 
 being modelled 
 after either the 
 Congress of the 
 United States or 
 the Parliament 
 of Great Britain. 
 All the repub- 
 lics of South 
 America have 
 congresses of 
 two houses gen- 
 erally known as 
 the Senate and 
 House of Repre- 
 sentatives. The 
 Senate in these 
 countries almost 
 in variably repre- 
 sents the quasi- 
 sovereignty of 
 the States or 
 separate prov- 
 inces of the 
 country, while 
 their House of 
 Representatives 
 or. Chamber of 
 Deputies, as it 
 is usually call- 
 ed, elected by 
 
 THE DISCOVERER OF AMERICA. 
 
 the voting people on the basis of population, represents the 
 people in their national unity.
 
 826 THE STORY OP GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Mexico has a Congress with a Senate and House of Representa- 
 tives. Brazil has a similar assembly. Hayti has a National 
 Assembly of two houses. The Dominican Republic has a legisla- 
 ture consisting of only one house. San Salvador, where the 
 discoverer of America first set his progressive foot, has but one 
 legislative chamber; Gautemala has only one; Honduras has but 
 one which is designated as the Congress of Deputies; Costa Rica 
 has a single house called the Chamber of Deputies. All of these 
 Central and South American countries have adopted our system 
 of having the President and his Cabinet entirely independent of 
 Congress wiuim the lines of executive duty as prescribed by their 
 respective constitutions. 
 
 In the eastern hemisphere the countries enjoying constitutional 
 liberty have generally followed the British parliamentary system 
 of having a cabinet depending solely on the continued support of 
 a majority in the popular house of the national assembly. A few 
 have upper houses which are constituted very much like the 
 United States Senate, the members representing the constituent 
 states of the kingdom or empire. 
 
 In Germany the Bundesrath, or House of Peers, is the upper 
 house of the German Imperial Assembly, which represents the 
 various states of the empire, while the Reichstag, or House of 
 Representatives, represents the people of the empire as a national 
 entity. In Austria-Hungary two parliaments exist, one for the 
 western part of the empire, or Austria proper, and the other for 
 Hungary. Each of these parliaments consists of two houses, one 
 a chamber of nobles or magnates, and the other of members elected 
 directly by the people. Until about thirty years ago one parlia- 
 ment made laws for the Austrian empire, but the Hungarians 
 demanded a parliament of their own, or Home Rule, as it is 
 called in Ireland, and after a long struggle attended with turmoil, 
 confusion, and bloodshed their demand was conceded. Since then 
 internal peace has prevailed in that empire. 
 
 Denmark has a legislature of two houses named the Rigsdag. 
 The upper chamber is the Landsthing composed of landlords, and 
 the lower chamber, or Folkthing, is made up of members who are 
 elected by all the people. Iceland has one house of thirty-six 
 members, thirty of whom are elected by the people and six
 
 COMPLEX REPUBLICANISM. 
 
 827 
 
 appointed by the Danish king. The legislature of Sweden is 
 named the Diet. It consists of two houses known as the First 
 and Second Chambers. Norway's legislature is called the Stor- 
 thing or the Great Court, and has two chambers termed the Lag- 
 thing and the Odelsthing. Sweden and Norway are united 
 politically, the same king being ruler over both countries. 
 
 Spain and Portugal have legislatures which are designated as 
 the Cortes. Each Cortes comprises two houses, one named the 
 House of Peers, the other the Chamber of Deputies. France has 
 two houses, a Senate and Chamber of Deputies, the members of 
 
 TIIE PILGUIMS' FIRST SUNDAY IN AMEKICA. 
 
 both being elected. Switzerland and Holland have each two 
 houses, one representing the states, the other the masses. 
 
 Finland is the only section of the Russian empire which has an 
 elective legislature, an ancient institution which it has preserved 
 through many vicissitudes, and which the Czar refuses to allow 
 in any other portion of his dominions. In this assembly the 
 nobles, clergy, burghers, and peasants are represented. Servia's 
 legislature of two houses, one of Peers, and the other of popular 
 representatives, is called the Skupshtina. Roumania and Italy 
 also have each two chambers. Greece has one chamber which is 
 called the Bould. San Marino, a little republic many centuries 
 old, containing about seven thousand people, has an assembly of
 
 828 THE STORY OP GOVERNMENT. 
 
 sixty members who are elected for life from three classes: the 
 nobles, burghers, and peasants. This republic elects a president 
 every six months. 
 
 Andorra, another little republic in a valley of the Pyrenees, 
 between France and Spain, with a population of thirteen thou- 
 sand, has a single chamber of twenty-four members, and the 
 executive duties are exercised by the bishop of the diocese of 
 Udal in Spain. Belgium has a Senate and House of Representa- 
 tives. Japan, under its constitution recently adopted, has a 
 House of Peers and a House of Representatives. Hawaii has 
 practically a similar system, the Sandwich Islanders calling their 
 chambers the House of Nobles and House of Representatives. 
 
 The British Colonial legislatures essentially follow the system 
 of the British Parliament. The South African republics, the 
 Transvaal and the Orange Free State, have two houses, the mem- 
 bers of both being elected. Their legislatures are called the 
 Volksraad. Egypt, under the Khedive as ruler, is governed by a 
 Chamber of Notables who are selected by him. India is governed 
 by a British Governor-General and an Executive Council which 
 he appoints. The Asiatic countries generally are governed in a 
 manner similar to Russia, that is to say, by the will of the monarch, 
 and are utterly destitute of any form of legislative assembly. 
 
 There are three coordinate branches or departments in our 
 government of the United States called the legislative, the execu- 
 tive, and the judicial ; the first of which makes the laws, the 
 second directs their execution, and the third determines precisely 
 the meaning of those laws. 
 
 The legislative branch consisting of two houses, or bodies of 
 representatives, the Senate and House of Representatives, is called 
 the Congress of the United States, whose general powers are set 
 forth in Article I., Section 8, of the Constitution thus: 
 
 SECT. VIII. The congress shall have power 
 
 1. To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises ; to pay the debts, and 
 provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; but 
 all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States: 
 
 2. To borrow money on the credit of the United States: 
 
 3. To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several 
 States, and with the Indian tribes: 
 
 4. To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the 
 subject of bankruptcies, throughout the United States:
 
 COMPLEX REPUBLICANISM. 829 
 
 5. To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix 
 the standard of weights and measures : 
 
 6. To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and cur- 
 rent coin of the United States: 
 
 7. To establish post-offices and post-roads : 
 
 8. To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing, for 
 limited times, to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective 
 writings and discoveries: 
 
 9. To constitute tribunals inferior to the supreme court: to define and pun- 
 ish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the 
 law of nations : 
 
 10. To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules 
 concerning captures on land and water: 
 
 11. To raise and support armies; but no appropriation of money to that use 
 shall be for a longer period than two years: 
 
 12. To provide and maintain a navy: 
 
 13. To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval 
 forces : 
 
 14. To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, 
 suppress insurrections, and repel invasions: 
 
 15. To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for 
 governing such parts of them as may be employed in the service of the United 
 States; reserving to the States respectively the appointment of the officers, 
 and the authority of training the militia, according to the discipline prescribed 
 by congress : 
 
 16. To exercise- exclusive legislation, in all cases whatsoever, over such 
 district (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular 
 States and the acceptance of congress, become the seat of the government of 
 the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by 
 the consent of the legislature of the State in which the same shall be, for the 
 erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful build- 
 ings : And 
 
 17. To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper, for carrying into 
 execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this constitu- 
 tion in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer 
 thereof. 
 
 The Constitution provides that Congress must meet at least 
 once a year. The time when it assembles is fixed by law on the 
 first Monday in December of every year. The President, how- 
 ever, is authorized by Article II., Section 3, of the Constitution, 
 to call a special session at any time, whenever " in his opinion there 
 is business requiring immediate attention." Congress enacts all 
 the laws by which the whole people of the United States as a 
 nation are governed. It represents the whole people as well as 
 the States in their ^wasi-sovereignty, and hence is the only com- 
 petent authority under our republican form of government to
 
 830 THE STORY OF GOVKI: N M KNT. 
 
 make the laws \vliicli we arc hound to ohcy. This first coordinate 
 branch, the legislative, is divided into what is usually called the 
 
 popular branch -the House of Representatives and the Senate. 
 
 Respecting the House of Representatives, Article I., Section 2. 
 of the Constitution provides that it shall be composed of members 
 chosen every second year by the people of the several States, and the 
 electors in each State shall have the qualifications which are requisite 
 for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislature. 
 No pei-son shall be a representative who shall not have attained 
 the age of twenty-five years, and have been seven years a 
 citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be 
 an inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen. 
 
 Each member of the House of Representatives is elected by a 
 direct vote in the congressional district which he is said to repre- 
 sent. He must be elected by either a majority of the votes cast 
 or by a plurality according to the law of the State in which the 
 election takes place. 
 
 The congressional districts are fixed every ten years by the 
 legislatures of the respective States immediately after the national 
 census is taken, because as representation is based on population, 
 when the latter is found to increase or diminish, it is necessary 
 to increase or diminish the number of representatives to which 
 a State is entitled in order to secure as nearly as possible a perfect 
 equality in popular representation among the various States. 
 
 Congress determines the required number of population which 
 constitutes a congressional district. In the early days of the 
 republic the number was much smaller than now. The number 
 of members in the House of Representatives and the population 
 which each represented at different decades is shown by the 
 following table : 
 
 Decade. Members. Population. 
 
 1793 to 1803 105 33,000 
 
 1803 to 1813 141 33,000 
 
 1813 to 1823 181 ' 35,000 
 
 1823 to 1833 212 40,000 
 
 1833 to 1843 240 47,700 
 
 1843 to 1853 223 70,080 
 
 1853 to 1863 234 93,500 
 
 1863 to 1873 241 127,941 
 
 1873 to 1883 292 UQ,V,:\ 
 
 1883 to 1893 325 151,900
 
 COMPLEX REPUBLICANISM. 831 
 
 A member must be an inhabitant of the State, but not necessarily 
 of the district in w'Juch lie is elected, although few if any members 
 heretofore elected have not been residents of the districts which 
 returned them. 
 
 A member of the British House of Commons represents a 
 geographical district which was last fixed by Act of Parliament, 
 in 1884, containing at that time a population of about sixty-five 
 thousand people, although some members represent boroughs which 
 contain a smaller population, but none less than fifteen thousand. 
 A member of the Swiss and National Assembly represents about 
 twenty thousand persons in the canton from which lie is returned, 
 and in most countries where representative government obtains a 
 very similar rule is followed. 
 
 The members of the House of Representatives are elected 
 biennially. Their election now takes place in all the States of 
 the Union on the first Tuesday in November, though formerly it 
 was not so in a few States. Members of the House are generally 
 called Congressmen, which is quite correct, and it would be 
 equally correct to designate the members of the Senate in the 
 same way since both bodies form the Congress of the United 
 States, but the appellation " Congressman," by general usage has 
 come to be regarded as applying to the members of the House of 
 Representatives alone. 
 
 The great power which the House of Representatives exclusively 
 possesses, a power conferred by the Constitution itself, is that all 
 money for any national purpose whatever must be raised by virtue 
 of laws which it must originate. It is a cardinal principle of our 
 government that no authority or body save the immediate repre- 
 sentatives of the people alone should first move in the levying of 
 taxes upon the people, or voting away their money for any purpose 
 whatsoever. 
 
 During the recent Chilian difficulty, for instance, if the Execu- 
 tive and the Senate had been united in favor of war, the House of 
 Representatives by a vote of a majority of one could have prevented 
 war by simply refusing to vote the means to carry it on. Of course 
 the members thus voting would have assumed the responsibility of 
 their action in the face of their constituents who would very soon 
 at the ballot-box have an opportunity of expressing themselves
 
 832 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 regarding the conduct of their representatives, should they come 
 forward for re-election. 
 
 Another power exclusively exercised by the House of Repre- 
 sentatives is the impeachment of the President and Vice-President 
 of the United States, and of judges of the United States Courts for 
 crimes and misdemeanors. In cases of this nature, the House 
 proceeds by passing a resolution containing the formal charges 
 against the party impeached, which charges are laid before the 
 Senate sitting as a High Court of Judicature to determine the 
 guilt or innocence of the accused, who is summoned' to appear 
 before it and answer to the charges. 
 
 The House selects a committee, or managers, as they are termed, 
 to prosecute the case, which they do by procuring the attendance 
 of witnesses, by examination of the same, and cross-examination of 
 the witnesses of the accused, and by such other ways as are allowed 
 in ordinary courts. Happily but few trials of impeachment have 
 been held in this country, the most celebrated being that of Presi- 
 dent Johnson in 1868. 
 
 By far the most important member of the House is the Speaker. 
 After a new House assembles and the roll of membership is called, 
 his election is the first business transacted. He wields immense 
 power, second only to that of the President of the United States. 
 He is usually elected by the votes of the dominant political party 
 in the House, and he appoints all the committees whose duties are 
 to consider and report upon every legislative matter which is laid 
 before Congress. 
 
 As he invariably selects a majority, sometimes a large majority, 
 of his own party on these committees, the far-reaching power of 
 his position may be perceived. No measure can reach the House 
 until it is first passed on by a committee which he has appointed. 
 It is in the power of the majority of a committee to report such 
 measures as they favor at the most propitious time, and to report 
 such as they are opposed to adversely at the most unfavorable 
 time. 
 
 The majority of each committee has practically the shaping of 
 all legislation introduced in the House, as it veiy seldom happens 
 that any bill favorably reported by a committee is defeated or even 
 materially altered. So important is the office of Speaker regarded
 
 834 TIIK STOIIY OF <;<>VKI;N.MKXT. 
 
 that very exciting contests generally take place over his election. 
 These contests in some instances have been very prolonged, 
 notably in the cases of (Jnieral Ranks in 1850, and Mr. Penning- 
 ton in 1860, when over two months were spent before an election 
 Avas made in either case. 
 
 The Speaker is entitled to vote on any question but very seldom 
 does except in the case of a tie, when he is obliged to determine 
 the issue by his vote, and he must vote when any question is to 
 be decided by ballot. The Speaker's salary is eight thousand 
 dollars a year, while all the other members of the House are paid 
 five thousand dollars each. 
 
 Of the important committees of the House the most impor- 
 tant are the Committee on Ways and Means, and the Committee 
 of Appropriations. The first named is the committee which has 
 charge of devising ways and means to raise revenue for the support 
 of the government. This is done chiefly by internal revenue laws, 
 and by tariff acts which lay duties on products imported into the 
 United States. The Committee of Appropriations pass upon all 
 measures which call for money out of the National Treasury for 
 any purpose whatever and hence its great importance. It prima- 
 rily holds the purse-strings of Uncle Sam's strong box. 
 
 Immediately after electing its speaker the House votes for its 
 other officers, which consist of a clerk, a sergeant-at-arms, a 
 doorkeeper, a postmaster and a chaplain. None of these officials 
 can be elected from among the members of the House, but any 
 citizen not holding a salaried office under the national government 
 is eligible. 
 
 The clerk has a number of assistants whom he appoints and 
 pays for their services. He also pays the regular salaries of 
 persons engaged in the service of the House or of any of its 
 committees. His most important business, however, consists in 
 keeping the docket of legislative business in a proper manner, so 
 that bills come up in their regular order of precedence, thus fur- 
 nishing the Speaker and any member of the House at any time with 
 a correct chart of the progress of business. He also calls the roll 
 and records the votes when a yea and nay vote is taken. 
 
 The sergea:it-at-arms is an official who is supposed to represent 
 in his own person all the sovereign force of the House when he
 
 COMPLEX REPUBLICANISM. 
 
 835 
 
 acts in pursuance of its orders or in obedience to the Speaker. 
 He secures order in the House when any serious confusion occurs 
 by advancing among the disorderly members with the ancient 
 emblem of his office the mace; he has power to arrest and im- 
 prison any member for a gross violation of the rules, and keep the 
 offender in close custody until released by order of the Speaker 
 or the House. 
 
 His power of arrest, however, is chiefly exercised on occasions 
 when it is found 
 necessary to get a 
 quorum of the 
 House ; that is, the 
 required number 
 with. which to 
 transact business, 
 when he sets forth, 
 commissioned by 
 the Speaker to ar- 
 rest every absent 
 member whom he 
 m ay meet and 
 bring him forth- 
 with before the bar 
 of the House to 
 give a satisfactory 
 excuse for non-at- 
 tendance, which is 
 a grave breach of 
 the rules. In ad- 
 dition to these very onerous duties he is also the official who pays 
 the congressmen their salaries. 
 
 The door-keeper of the House is another important personage 
 who is allowed to appoint a number of assistants to aid him in 
 the performance of his duties. He exercises general supervision 
 over the Hall, or meeting place of the House, the committee rooms 
 adjoining, and the galleries to which the public is admitted. The 
 members' desks, chairs, and all the fittings and equipments pertain- 
 ing to the House are in his charge. He allows no one to appear 
 
 THOMAS JEFFEB8ON.
 
 836 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 on the floor of the House except such persons as have a right to be 
 there. 
 
 The postmaster receives all letters for the members, which his 
 assistants deliver as soon as possible. His office, that of special 
 postmaster to the House, is created by law and is regarded as a 
 very honorable position. 
 
 The chaplain is, of course, a clergyman, who invokes the Deity 
 preliminary to the legislative work of each day's session. In addi- 
 tion to this, his only other official duty is to appear at the funerals 
 of such congressmen as die at the Capitol. At the beginning of 
 the century it was a part of his official business to preach a sermon 
 to Congress on Sundays, but this practice has been discontinued 
 for many years, owing chiefly to the non-attendance of members. 
 
 In addition to his salary of five thousand dollars a year, each 
 member of the House is allowed something over one hundred 
 dollars a year for stationery, newspapers, etc., and also a travelling 
 fee, or " mileage," as it is called, which is fixed at a rate of twenty 
 cents a mile for every mile travelled between his residence and the. 
 city of Washington. 
 
 A member is prohibited from holding any other salaried office 
 under the national government, and he is also legally incapable of 
 holding any salaried office created by the Congress of which he is 
 a member until the term of life of that House of Representatives 
 has expired. No member can legally receive any pay from indi- 
 viduals or corporations for any service which they may have 
 rendered in the House, or in any matter in which the United 
 States is involved, save that in the latter case professional fees as 
 attorneys in the courts are regarded as proper. 
 
 They are also prohibited from voting on measures in which their 
 private interests are directly affected, such as railroad, telegraph, 
 and other corporations in which they are shareholders, but it is 
 alleged that breaches of this prohibition have become the rule, 
 and observance of the prohibition the exception, and this allega- 
 tion is based on some substantial grounds. The power of great 
 corporations affects our national, state and municipal legislators 
 more and more every year and will, till a change in our system 
 takes place and industrial equality as well as political equality 
 shall be firmly established.
 
 838 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The other subdivision of Congress is called the Senate of the 
 United States. According to Article I., Section 3, of the Consti- 
 tution : The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two 
 senators from each State, chosen by the legislature thereof, for six 
 years ; and each senator shall have one vote. No person shall be 
 a senator who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years 
 and been nine years a citizen of the United States, and who shall 
 not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State for which he 
 shall be chosen. 
 
 The equality and limited sovereignty of the respective States 
 of the Union are represented by the Senate, each State small or 
 large being entitled to elect two senators to that body and no 
 more. Thus, the new States of North Dakota and South Dakota, 
 with populations of 182,719 and 328,808 respectively, are repre- 
 sented by the same number of senators as the States of NCAV York 
 and Pennsylvania, the former with a population of 5,997,853, and 
 the latter with a population of 5,258,014. 
 
 The Senate corresponds with the Council of States of the 
 Swiss Confederation, referred to elsewhere, which consists of two 
 representatives from each canton, but with this difference; in 
 Switzerland they elect the members of the Council of States for a 
 term of one, two, or three years, as the cantonal legislatures may 
 determine, while the duration of office of our senators and the 
 method of their election is established by constitutional provision. 
 By constitutional provision also the vice-president of the 
 United States presides over the sessions of the Senate, Avliile 
 the Swiss Council of States elect their presiding officer. The 
 vice-president is not allowed to vote unless in the case of a tie 
 vote in the Senate, when he is obliged to decide. When he is 
 absent for any cause, the Senate elects a president pro tempore, 
 who performs the duties of the office until the return of the vice- 
 president. 
 
 It is customary at the beginning of every session to elect some 
 senator as temporary chairman who is generally called upon 
 whenever occasion requires to take the chair throughout the entire 
 session in the absence of the vice-president. The vice-president 
 is paid a salary of eight thousand dollars a year ; the members of 
 the Senate each receive five thousand dollars a year.
 
 H X 
 I 
 
 3 * 
 
 II 
 
 % w
 
 840 THE STORY OF GOVKKNMKNT. 
 
 The other officers of the Senate are a secretary, sergeant-at- 
 arnis, chaplain, postmaster and librarian. The office of Secretary 
 of the Senate corresponds to that of Clerk of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives. The secretary keeps the roll of senators and is the 
 custodian of all records, papers, bills, petitions and resolutions 
 which come before the Senate. He pays the senators their sala- 
 ries, which duty is performed for the members of the House of 
 Representatives by the Sergeant-ut-Arms of the House. He has 
 several clerks to assist him, subject to his direction and control. 
 
 The Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate is the official representa- 
 tive of the power of that body, and his authority and duties 
 correspond in every respect with that of the Sergeant-at-Arms of 
 the House, except that he does not pay the senators' salaries and 
 that he has control of the door-keepers of the Senate and all the 
 subordinate employees as well as general charge of the furniture 
 of the Chamber, its ante-rooms and lobbies. 
 
 The chaplain, postmaster, and librarian of the Senate perform 
 duties exactly analogous to the similar officials of the House. 
 The Senate does not permit its presiding officer, the vice-presi- 
 dent, to appoint its committees as the Speaker of the House of 
 Representatives does in his Chamber, but they select a special 
 committee for the purpose, which appoints the various committees 
 to consider and report upon all measures laid before them. The 
 senators are privileged from arrest while attending to their duties, 
 as also are the members of the House by constitutional provision. 
 
 All the important official appointments made by the President 
 of the United States must be submitted to the Senate for confirma- 
 tion. If it votes in favor of an appointee, the person is said to 
 be "confirmed," and he can immediately assume the duties of the 
 office ; if it votes to reject, the person rejected is debarred from 
 the office, and the President is powerless without the consent of 
 the Senate. 
 
 This exclusive power of "consent" which the Senate possesses 
 also extends to the treaties which are made with foreign nations. 
 No treaty negotiated between the President and government of a 
 foreign country can go into force and effect until it is ratified by 
 a two thirds vote of the Senate, according to Article II., Section 2, 
 of the Constitution, which says : " The President shall have power,
 
 COMPLEX REPUBLICANISM. 
 
 841 
 
 by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, 
 provided two thirds of the senators present concur." 
 
 As a general rule the Senate approves all treaties submitted by 
 the President, but a notable exception occurred in 1888 during 
 the administration of President Cleveland. The latter laid be- 
 fore the Senate an extradition treaty which had been negotiated 
 with the British . 
 
 Govern ment, 
 providing f o r 
 the mutual sur- 
 render of cer- 
 tain offenders 
 against the laws 
 of this country 
 and Great Brit- 
 ain; but it was 
 rejected in the 
 Senate by a 
 great majority. 
 
 The ground 
 of objection was 
 that some of its 
 sections would 
 enable the Brit- 
 ish Government 
 to secure the 
 extradition of 
 Irish political 
 offenders that 
 
 is of Irishmen BUNKEK HILL MONUMENT, AT CHARLESTOWN, MASS. 
 who mio-ht vio Erected to commemorate the Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775. 
 
 late the Special Coercion Act which applied to Ireland only, and 
 to no other portion of the British empire, and which created 
 many new offences not regarded as crimes in either Great Britain 
 or the United States. 
 
 The Senate holds what is termed an executive session whenever 
 it considers the matters of appointments or treaties, which means 
 a secret session at which each senator present, as well as the
 
 842 THE STORY OP GOVERNMENT. 
 
 special clerk who keeps the record, is sworn to preserve secrecy 
 respecting the proceedings. At the beginning of our government 
 all sessions of the Senate were secret for a period of five years, but 
 this obnoxious practice was abandoned and all of its sessions, 
 with the exception mentioned, are now as public as those of the 
 House of Representatives. 
 
 The Senate is the high court of the United States for the trial 
 of impeachments of national officials before which the House of 
 Representatives present their accusation and prosecute the defend- 
 ant until judgment is rendered. Of late years, more especially 
 since the Civil "War, the Senate has been chiefly composed of very 
 wealthy men. At the present time it is very often referred to 
 derisively as the billionnaire club, for it is alleged that many of 
 its members have been elected, not on account of probity, merit, 
 or statesmanlike qualities, but solely through the influence of 
 their personal wealth, or that of the syndicates or corporations 
 whose special interests they are expected to subserve, as members 
 of the highest branch of our national legislature where the votes 
 of the two senators from Nevada, with a population of 44,327 
 souls, have the same weight as the vote of all the thirty-four 
 members of the House of Representatives from New York on 
 every question which comes before Congress, save an original 
 appropriation or tax -levy bill. 
 
 A movement which is rapidly gathering strength is being 
 agitated in many parts of our country for the election of senators 
 by a direct vote of the people. Many powerful reasons can be 
 urged in favor of this change in the method of their election, and 
 hardly one sound objection can be offered to it. The nearer the 
 representatives are to the whole body of voters, the greater the 
 responsibility they feel and the more strictly they can be held to 
 account. The senators are afar off from the people now, because 
 elected by the legislatures, which have been time and again 
 manipulated to elect senators who would never be elected by the 
 people, had they the privilege of the selection. This change of 
 method it will require a constitutional amendment to bring about, 
 but the gain to the public will be worth all the pains taken. 
 
 The second coordinate branch of our government is the Execu- 
 tive, or President, who is the supreme officer to see that the laws
 
 COMPLEX REPUBLICANISM. 843 
 
 enacted by the national legislature are enforced. Article II., Sec- 
 tion 1, of the Constitution provides that the executive power shall 
 be vested in a President of the United States of America. He 
 shall hold his office during the term of four years, and together 
 with tli3 vice-president, chosen for the same term, be elected as 
 follows: Each State shall appoint in such manner as the legisla- 
 ture thereof may direct a number of electors, equal to the whole 
 number of senators and representatives to which the State may be 
 entitled in the Congress; but no senator, or representative, or 
 person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States 
 shall be appointed an elector. 
 
 No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the 
 United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall 
 be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any, person be 
 eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of 
 thirty-live years and been fourteen years a resident within the 
 United States. 
 
 The President of the United States is not elected by a direct 
 vote of the people, but by " electors " who are chosen in such 
 manner as the legislatures of the several States shall determine. 
 A State legislature by a committee may choose the electors to 
 represent it in the Electoral College, or it may direct the governor 
 to appoint them, or have them selected in any other way. But, 
 as a matter of fact, the "electors" in every State are voted for 
 directly by the people on the Tuesday following the first Monday 
 in November of every presidential year 
 
 The "electors " chosen in each State are obliged to meet on the 
 first Wednesday of the month of December next ensuing in the 
 capital of their State where they vote for President and vice- 
 president. A majority of the votes of the total Electoral College 
 is required to elect. If no one voted for by the electors receives 
 a clear majority, the election of President is decided by the House 
 of Representatives. 
 
 After the electors in the several States have voted for the can- 
 didates of their choice they make three lists of the ballot taken, 
 which they enclose and seal with a certificate stating that they are 
 accurate. Two of these lists are addressed to the President of 
 the United States Senate, one of which is forwarded by mail and
 
 844 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the other by a special messenger. The third list is deposited 
 with the judge of the district court, within whose jurisdiction the 
 election has been held. 
 
 At the expiration of a month after the meeting of the Electoral 
 College in each State, if nothing is heard in Washington by mail 
 or messenger from a State, the President of the United States 
 Senate serves notice on the Secretary of State, who immediately 
 procures the certified list in the custody of the district judge, 
 which is laid before the President of the Senate. Congress then 
 assembles on the second Wednesday of February to count the 
 votes of the Electoral College. 
 
 The Senate, with much formality, headed by its president, 
 preceded by the sergeant-at-arms, enters the hall of the House of 
 Representatives where they are received by the members of the 
 latter body standing. The President of the Senate, ascending to 
 the speaker's dais, breaks open the sealed envelopes containing the 
 returns, which he announces to both houses, and he declares who, 
 if any, has a majority of the electoral votes, and is consequently 
 elected President. 
 
 In case no person has a majority, the House of Representatives 
 alone proceeds to elect the President, which it does by selecting 
 by ballot, as provided in the Constitution, from among the three 
 candidates who have received the highest number of electoral 
 votes, such candidate as it prefers. This selection, however, is 
 not made by each representative casting one vote for his choice 
 it is made ly the majority of the representatives from each State 
 agreeing on a certain candidate for whom they cast the vote of their 
 /State, each State having but one vote on such an occasion, the 
 members of the minority, however large, having practically no 
 voice in the matter. 
 
 For instance, if the election of President were to be decided 
 in 1893 by the House of Representatives, the State of Massachu- 
 setts would record its presidential vote for a Democrat, seven of 
 its representatives being of that political party, while its six 
 Republican representatives would be absolutely powerless to 
 affect the result. 
 
 In case no candidate for the vice-presidency has a majority of 
 the electoral votes, the /Senate chooses the vice-president, for the rea-
 
 846 THK STOUY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 son that Jus principal duty is to preside over that body. But they 
 must choose between the two candidates having the most votes for 
 vice-president, each senator voting, the majority of votes being 
 required to elect. And in case the House of Representatives 
 fails to elect a President, it will be seen that this vice-president 
 elected by the Senate becomes President, none having been chosen 
 otherwise according to the Constitution. 
 
 The chief duty of the President is to see that all laws are prop- 
 erly carried out. This includes not only the acts passed by Con- 
 gress, but the organic law itself, the Constitution as well as all 
 treaties and stipulations entered into between the United States 
 and foreign countries. He is commanded by the Constitution to 
 lay before Congress from time to time information respecting the 
 state of the country, and in cases of emergency lie is authorized 
 to call a special session. 
 
 He is formally notified by Congress at the opening of every 
 session that the national legislature is prepared to receive any com- 
 munication which he desires to lay before them, whereupon he 
 sends what is termed a message, or written communication, which 
 deals with the general condition of the country, or calls their 
 attention to some matter of pressing urgency, and is of greater or 
 less length according to the importance and necessities of the 
 subject matter which it contains and according to the natural 
 verbosity of its composer. Most presidential messages are so long 
 that very few persons read them. 
 
 The President is commander-in-chief of the army and navy of 
 the United States. The object of this provision in the Constitu- 
 tion is to ensure that the sovereign authority over the armed 
 forces of the country shall always remain in the person of the man 
 who is elected every four years by the votes of the country. He 
 appoints our ministers and consular officers to foreign countries, 
 receives formally all foreign minister's accredited to this country, 
 and under his direction our State department grants exequaturs, 
 that is, permits to depart to foreign consuls in the United States. 
 He alone is authorized to negotiate treaties with foreign powers 
 which he must lay before the Senate representing the States for 
 adoption without which no treaty can go into effect. 
 
 The power to pardon for any violation of the laws of the United
 
 847
 
 848 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 States belongs to the President as supreme ruler. This pardon- 
 ing power exercised by the head of all civilized nations corre- 
 sponds in a great measure to the powers allowed courts of equity, 
 which afford relief in cases where the courts of law, by reason of 
 the rigidity and universality of the written law, fail to do so. 
 Violations of the criminal law of the United States take place 
 from time to time through ignorance, or some other powerful 
 extenuating circumstance occurs which could not be pleaded in 
 defence in court; in such cases the President in his discretion can 
 exercise his high prerogative the power to pardon with which 
 he is invested by the Constitution. 
 
 Every bill passed by Congress must be approved by the Presi- 
 dent. When a measure passes both houses it is submitted to him 
 for his signature. If he signs the bill it immediately becomes 
 the law; if he refuses to sign he returns the bill to Congress with 
 a special message containing reasons for withholding his signa- 
 ture. When he refuses to sign a bill he is said to be exercising 
 the veto power given him by the Constitution. A vetoed bill is 
 practically dead, unless its friends in Congress can secure for it a 
 two thirds vote of both Houses, when it becomes law, the Presi- 
 dent's veto notwithstanding. 
 
 In case a bill passes over the veto, it is sent by Congress direct 
 to the State department, where it takes its place among all other 
 laws, and must be carried out precisely as if it bore the signature 
 of the Executive. This right of the President to veto any legisla- 
 tive measure passed by a majority of the representatives of the 
 people, as well as by a majority of the States represented by the 
 Senate, seems, under a republican form of government, to be a 
 singular anomaly. 
 
 The people elect men to enact laws ; they also elect a certain 
 man to execute those laws, but the Executive possesses sub- 
 stantially the power to say what laws shall be enacted by the 
 law-makers, because it is almost impossible to secure a two thirds 
 vote to overrule a veto in both Houses against the tremendous 
 influence of the President, backed by the official patronage and 
 the great army of officials dependent upon him. 
 
 A bare majority of the votes in both Houses can enact any law 
 which the President approves; if he disapproves, a two thirds
 
 MILITARY HEROES OF THE LATE WAR. 
 
 849
 
 850 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 vote is required, so that his legislative power exercised in this 
 negative fashion is equal in a House of three hundred members 
 and a Senate of eighty to forty-nine votes in the one house and 
 thirteen in the other respectively, or the difference between a bare 
 majority and the number requisite added to it to carry a measure 
 over the veto. 
 
 The reason for so much legislative power in the hands of the 
 Executive does not appear to be sound to-day, however it may 
 have been at the time the Constitution was adopted. The pre- 
 rogative of British monarchs was conferred by it upon our Execu- 
 tive, but no British monarch has exercised the veto, since the 
 time of Queen A.nne at the beginning of the last century, and it 
 is very certain that it will never be used again against a parlia- 
 mentary act, while our Presidents have used it with impunity to 
 defeat measures to which they were opposed. 
 
 The Swiss confederation does not permit its executive to inter- 
 fere in any direct or indirect way with the Federal Assembly, 
 and the veto power is retained by the people themselves, who exercise 
 it at the ballot-box under the law of the Referendum, which is 
 explained in another part of this work. 
 
 The President cannot be tried in any ordinary court for an 
 offence against the law. Provision has been made, however, that 
 if he offends he must be accused by the House of Representatives, 
 and tried by a legal process called impeachment, by the Senate. 
 If he is found guilty he can be removed from office. The vice- 
 president is subject to impeachment and removal in a similar 
 way, as well as certain other officers of the government. 
 
 The salary which the President receives is fifty thousand dollars 
 a year, with the use of the executive mansion in Washington, 
 called the White House, which is all furnished and equipped at 
 the expense of the government. The public treasury also pays 
 the salaries of his two secretaries, two clerks, telegraph operator, 
 and a number of minor employees who are engaged in the execu- 
 tive mansion. 
 
 The President appoints the members of his Cabinet, or advisors, 
 who receive each a salary of eight thousand dollars a year. Each 
 member of the Cabinet is at the head of a very important and 
 extensive department, which he manages under the direction of
 
 COMPLEX llEl'UBLICAXISM. 851 
 
 the President, who can remove him at any time he sees fit. The 
 Cabinet officers are prohibited by law from taking any part in the 
 proceedings of Congress, unlike the members of the Swiss Execu- 
 tive, who are permitted, and indeed often requested, to appear on 
 the floor of either house to explain and to give information 
 respecting the transactions of their departments, and to advocate 
 or oppose legislative measures pending, but who are not allowed 
 to vote. There does not appear any good reason why the privi- 
 leges extended to the Swiss cabinet could not be adopted in the 
 United States with the same advantage. 
 
 Since our executive department comprises the working machin- 
 ery of the national government throughout the country, as well 
 as in its relations to foreign countries, a brief summary of the 
 special departments into which it is subdivided, with their chief 
 officials, powers, and duties will be in order. 
 
 The Secretary of State has the management under the direction 
 of the President of the duties appertaining to correspondence with 
 the United States ministers and consuls to foreign countries, 
 with the representatives of foreign powers accredited to the 
 United States, and to negotiations of every character relating to 
 foreign affairs. lie is also the medium of correspondence between 
 the President and the chief executive of the several States of the 
 Union; ho has the custody of the great seal of the United States, 
 and countersigns and affixes such seal to all executive procla- 
 mations, to various commissions, and to warrants for pardon, and 
 the extradition of fugitives from justice. 
 
 He is regarded as the first in rank among the members of the 
 Cabinet. lie is also the custodian of the treaties made with 
 foreign states and of the laws of the United States. He grants 
 and issues passports, and all exequaturs to foreign consuls in 
 the United States are issued through his office. He publishes 
 the laws and resolutions of Congress, amendments to the Consti- 
 tution, and proclamations declaring the admission of new States 
 into the Union. He is also rhar'-vd with certain annual reports 
 to Congress relating to commercial information received from 
 diplomatic and consular officers of the United States. 
 
 The Secretary of State is aided by the Assistant Secretary of 
 State, who becomes the acting scrretary in the absence of his chief.
 
 852 THE STORY' OF GOVKUNMKNT. 
 
 Under the organization of the department the assistant secretary, 
 second assistant secretary, and third assistant secretary are respec- 
 tively charged with the immediate supervision of all correspond- 
 ence with the diplomatic and consular officers of the United 
 States, and of the miscellaneous correspondence relating thereto, 
 and in general they are intrusted with the preparation of the cor- 
 respondence upon any questions arising in the course of the public 
 business that may be assigned to them by the secretary. A chief 
 clerk has the general supervision of all the clerks and other 
 employees, and of all the business of the department. 
 
 The Secretary of the Treasury is charged by law with the 
 management of the national finances. He prepares plans for the 
 improvement of the revenue and for the support of the public 
 credit; he superintends the collection of the revenue, and pre- 
 scribes the forms of keeping and rendering public accounts and of 
 making returns ; he grants warrants for all moneys drawn from the 
 treasury in pursuance of appropriations made by law, and for 
 the payment of moneys into the treasury ; and he annually sub- 
 mits to Congress estimates of the probable revenues and disburse- 
 ments of the government. 
 
 The Secretaiy of the Treasury also controls the construction of 
 public buildings, the coinage and printing of money, the collec- 
 tion of statistics, the administration of the coast and geodetic 
 survey, life-saving, lighthouse, revenue cutter, steamboat inspec- 
 tion, and marine hospital branches of the public service, and fur- 
 nishes generally such information as may be required by either 
 branch of Congress on all matters pertaining to everything within 
 the jurisdiction of the department. 
 
 There are three assistant secretaries of the treasury. One of 
 these has general supervision of the work assigned to one of the 
 three divisions of the department, called the Division of Appoint- 
 ments, which attends to public moneys, loans and currency, 
 secret service, etc. He signs all letters and papers relating to 
 the business of his division as assistant secretary, or "by order of 
 the Secretary, " except such papers as by la-w require the signature 
 of the secretary himself, and he performs all other duties prescribed 
 by law or by the secretary. 
 
 Another of the assistant secretaries has the general supervision
 
 WALL STKKET, XEW YORK. 
 
 853
 
 854 THE STORY OF (JOYKKN M KNT. 
 
 of the work assigned to the Division of Customs, which embraces 
 revenue marine, special agents, and bureau of navigation. He 
 signs all letters and papers relating to the business of his division 
 as assistant secretary, or "by order of the Secretary," except such 
 as by law require the signature of the secretary. 
 
 The third assistant secretary has general supervision of the 
 business assigned to the Division of Mails and Files, which 
 embraces warrants, estimates, appropriations, etc. He signs all 
 letters and papers issuing from his division as assistant secretary, 
 or "by order of the Secretary," except such as require the signa- 
 ture of the secretary. 
 
 The chief clerk of the secretary of the treasury supervises under 
 the immediate direction of the secretary and assistant secretaries 
 all the clerks and employees connected with the department. He 
 has the superintendence of all buildings occupied by the depart- 
 ment in the city of Washington, the transmission of the mails, 
 the care of all horses, wagons, and carriages employed, the direc- 
 tion of engineers, machinists, firemen, and laborers, and the ex- 
 penditure of the appropriations for contingent expenses of the 
 treasury department. He has also supervision of all the official 
 correspondence of the secretary's office so far as to see that it is 
 stated in correct and official form, the enforcement of the general 
 regulations of the department, and the charge of all business of 
 the secretary's office not assigned. 
 
 Six auditors are appointed for the department each of whom is 
 at the head of a division bureau assigned to pass upon a special 
 class of accounts, the whole together covering all the financial 
 transactions o: the United States. Two comptrollers, designated 
 as the first and second, are also appointed, whose duties are to 
 re-examine, revise, and certify the accounts reported }yy the 
 auditors. 
 
 The Commissioner of Customs revises and certifies the accounts 
 of revenues collected from duties on imports and tonnage ; fines, 
 penalties, and forfeitures under the custom and navigation la\vs, 
 and from other sources connected with custom matters, also the 
 accounts of the importation and exportation of goods under the 
 warehouse, system, and many other kindred matters, and he also 
 approves and files the official bonds given by custom officers, and
 
 Wheeling into 15th St. from Pennsylvania Ave. 
 
 GRAND PARADE. KEVIEW OF THE UNION A KM 
 
 From James Ej
 
 miXOTON, D. C., AT THE CLOSE OP THE WAR. 
 
 aintings. 
 
 May 23 and 24. 1865 
 
 855-858.
 
 COMPLEX REPUBLICANISM. 859 
 
 transmits their commissions. This office is organized in two 
 divisions, Customs and Appointments. 
 
 The Treasurer of tho United States is charged with the receipt 
 and disbursement of all public moneys that may be deposited in 
 the treasury at Washington, and the sub-treasuries at Boston, 
 New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, San Fran- 
 cisco, St. Louis, Chicago, and Cincinnati, and in the national 
 bank United States depositories; is trustee for bonds held to 
 secure national bank circulation, and custodian of Indian trust 
 fund bonds; is agent for paying the interest on the public debt, 
 and for paying salaries of members of the House of Representa- 
 tives. The following are the sub-divisions of the treasurer's 
 bureau : 
 
 Chief Clerk. Receives and distributes the official mail, has charge 
 of the correspondence and the disposition and payment of the clerical 
 force, and the custody of the records and files, and of the issue of dupli- 
 cate checks and drafts. 
 
 Cash Division. For receipt and payment of public funds at 
 Washington. 
 
 Issue Division. Completion of new United States notes, gold and 
 silver certificates, and count of silver, gold, and minor coin. 
 
 Redemption Division. All currency except national bank notes 
 received and redeemed. 
 
 Loan Division. Interest checks prepared and bonds redeemed. 
 
 Accounts Division. The accounts of the treasury, the sub-treas- 
 uries, and the United States national banks depositories are kept. 
 
 National Bank Division. lias custody of bonds held for national 
 bank circulation, for public deposits and various public trusts, and 
 makes collection of semi-annual duty. 
 
 National Bank Redemption Agency. Notes of national banks are 
 redeemed and accounted for. 
 
 The Register of the Treasury is the head official bookkeeper of 
 the United States. He prepares a statement which shows all 
 receipts and disbursements of the public money (except those made 
 under the supervision of the Post-Office Department) which state- 
 ment is transmitted annually to Congress by the Secretary of the 
 Treasury. Tit! signs and issues all bonds and sends to the Treas- 
 urer of the United St:i.i;-s schedules showing the names of persons 
 entitled to receive interest thereon. He registers all warrants
 
 860 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 drawn by the Secretary of the Treasury upon the Treasurer, and 
 transmits statements of balances due to individuals after the settle- 
 ment of their accounts by the first comptroller or the Commissioner 
 of Customs, upon which payment is made. The bureau of the 
 Register is sub-divided into the following divisions: 
 
 Loan Division. In this division registered and coupon bonds are 
 issued and all registered bonds transferred ; it also has charge of the 
 conversion of coupons into registered bonds, the ledger accounts with 
 holders of registered bonds, and the preparation of schedules upon 
 which interest on the registered bonds is paid. 
 
 Receipts and Expenditures Division. In this division are kept the 
 great account books of the United States which show the civil, diplo- 
 matic, internal revenue, miscellaneous aud public debt receipts and 
 expenditures. 
 
 Note Coupon and Currency Division. In this division redeemed 
 bonds, paid interest coupons, interest checks, and interest-bearing notes 
 are examined and registered. Treasury notes, legal tenders, and 
 fractional currency are examined, cancelled, and the destruction 
 thereof witnessed and recorded. 
 
 Interest, Expense, and "Warrant Division. In this division the 
 interest on the various loans, the premiums and discounts on bonds 
 sold, and the expense of negotiation are ascertained. It also receives 
 and registers all civil accounts and civil pay warrants. 
 
 The Comptroller of the Currency has, under the direction of 
 the Secretary of the Treasury, the control of the national banks. 
 The sub-divisions of this bureau are : - 
 
 Organization Division. The organization of national banks. 
 
 Issue Division. - The preparation and issue of national bank circu- 
 lation. 
 
 Reports Division. Examination and consolidation of the reports 
 of national banks. 
 
 Redemption Division. The redemption and destruction of notes 
 issued by national banks. 
 
 The Director of the Mint has general supervision of all the 
 mints and assay offices of the United States. He prescribes 
 rules, to be approved by the Secretary of the Treasury, for the 
 transaction of business at the mints and assay offices. He regu- 
 lates the distribution of silver coin, and the charges to be col- 
 lected from depositors. He receives for adjustment the accounts
 
 KEW yOKK POST OFFICE. 1750, 1800, 1890. 
 
 861
 
 862 THE STORY OF GOVKKNMKNT. 
 
 of the mints and assay offices, superintends their expenditures and 
 annual settlements, and makes special examinations of them 
 \\hene\er 'deemed necessary. Ail appointments, removals, and 
 transfers in the mints and assay offices are subject to his 
 approval. 
 
 The purchase of silver bullion and the allotment of its coinage 
 is made by him, and at his request are made all transfers of the 
 moneys in the mints and assay offices, and advances from appro- 
 priations for the mint service. Tests of the weight and fineness 
 of coins struck at the mints are made in the assay laboratory 
 under his charge. He estimates annually the values of the 
 standard coins of foreign countries for the guidance of the custom- 
 house officials and for other public purposes. He also prepares 
 two annual reports, one for the fiscal year, printed in the finance 
 report of the Secretary of the Treasury, and the other for the 
 calendar year, which contains the statistics of the yearly produc- 
 tion of the money metals. 
 
 The Commissioner of Internal Revenue makes assessment of all 
 internal revenue taxes, and has general superintendence of theii 
 collection and of. the enforcement of internal revenue laws, the 
 employment of internal revenue agents, the compensation and 
 duties of gangers, store-keepers, and other subordinate officers, 
 the preparation and distribution of stamps, instructions, etc., 
 the analysis of food and drugs in the District of Columbia, and 
 the payment of the bounty of sugar. His bureau is sub-divided 
 into eight divisions, which are designated as appointments, law, 
 tobacco, accounts, distilled spirits, stamps, assessments, revenue 
 agents, and sugar bounty. 
 
 The Solicitor of the Treasury takes cognizance of all frauds or 
 attempted frauds on the customs revenue. He is charged by law 
 with duties regarding the compromise of debts, and with a super- 
 vision over suits for the collection of moneys due to the United 
 States, excepting those due under the internal revenue laws. 1 1 is 
 approval is required of official bonds of United States assistant 
 treasurers, department disbursing clerks, collectors of intern;;! 
 revenue, the secretary and the chief clerk of the department of 
 agriculture. As the l:nv officer of the treasury department many 
 matters are referred to him for his examination and opinion aris-
 
 864 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 ing under the customs, navigation, banking, and registry laws, 
 and in the administration of the department. 
 
 He is also charged by law with the supervision of suits and 
 proceedings arising out of the provisions of law governing national 
 banking associations in which the United States and any of its 
 agents or officers are parties; also with the charge, release, and 
 sale of lands acquired in payment of debt, excepting those acquired 
 under internal revenue laws. 
 
 The Superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey is an 
 official of the Treasury Department. He is charged with the 
 survey of the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts of the United 
 States, the survey of rivers to the head of tide-water or ship navi- 
 gation, deep sea soundings, temperature, currents, etc., and 
 observations on latitude and longitude and points of reference 
 for state surveys. Results of this survey are published annually 
 which embody professional papers of great value, notices to 
 mariners, tide tables, charts upon various scales, including harbor 
 charts, general charts of the coast, and sailing charts, chart cata- 
 logues, and coast pilots. 
 
 The General Superintendent of the Life-Saving Service is also 
 an official of the Treasury Department. He supervises the 
 organization and government of the employees of the service, pre- 
 pares regulations and fixes the number and compensation of the 
 surf-men at the several stations within the provisions of law, and 
 does such other things as he believes requisite to promote the effi- 
 ciency of the life-saving service. He makes an annual report of 
 the expenditures of the money appropriated for the maintenance of 
 the life-saving service to the Secretary of the Treasury, by whom 
 it is laid before Congress. 
 
 The Supervising Surgson-General is charged with the super- 
 vision of the marine hospitals and other relief stations of the ser- 
 vice, and the care of sick and disabled seamen taken from the 
 merchant vessels of the United States, and from the vessels of the 
 revenue marine and lighthouse services. He examines and 
 passes upon the medical certificates of claimants for pensions 
 under the laws of the life-saving service. He has also the direc- 
 tion of laboratories established to investigate the cause of con- 
 tagious diseases, and publishes each week an abstract of sanitary
 
 865 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
 
 866 THK STOKV OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 reports received from all parts of the United States and through 
 the State Department the reports received from foreign countries. 
 
 The Supervising Inspector-General of Steam Vessels superin- 
 tends the administration of the steamboat inspection laws, pre- 
 sides at the meeting of the Board of Supervising Inspectors, 
 receives all reports and examines all accounts of inspectors. 
 
 The Chief of the Bureau of Statistics collects and publishes 
 the statistics of our foreign commerce, embracing tables showing 
 the imports and exports respectively by countries and custom 
 districts, the rates of duty on imports, and the amount of duty 
 collected on each article or class of articles, the number of immi- 
 grants, their nationality and occupation, arriving from foreign 
 countiies, and the number of passengers departing for foreign 
 countries, with much other information of kindred tenor. 
 
 The publications of this bureau are as follows : Annual Report 
 on Commerce and Navigation ; Annual Report on Internal Com- 
 merce ; Annual Statistical Abstract of the United States ; Quar- 
 terly Reports on Commerce, Navigation, and Immigration; 
 Monthly Summary Statement of Imports and Exports ; Monthly 
 Reports of Total Values of Foreign Commerce and Immigration; 
 Monthly Reports of Exports of Breadstuffs, of Provisions, of 
 Petroleum and Cotton. 
 
 The Bureau of Engraving and Printing is under the Treasury 
 Department. It designs, engraves, prints, and furnishes all of 
 the securities and other similar work of the government printed 
 from steel plates (except postage stamps and postal notes) embra- 
 cing United States notes, bonds and certificates, national bank- 
 notes, internal revenue and custom stamps, treasury drafts and 
 checks, disbursing officers' checks, licenses, commissions, patent 
 and pension certificates and portraits of deceased members of Con- 
 gress and other public officers authorized by law. 
 
 The Secretary of War is the official head of the War Depart- 
 ment of the United States under the President as commander-in- 
 chief, and he performs such duties as the President desires relative 
 to the military service. He has chief supervision of all the esti- 
 mates of appropriations of money to be expended for the depart- 
 ment, and for army supplies and rations, and transportation of 
 troops, and such other expenditures as he is allowed by law to
 
 COMPLEX REPUBLICANISM. 867 
 
 make. He has also official charge of the Military Academy at 
 West Point, of the national cemeteries, the Board of Ordnance 
 and Fortification, and the publication of the official records of the 
 Civil War. 
 
 He also attends to all matters relating to river and harbor 
 improvements, the prevention of obstruction to navigation, the 
 establishment of harbor lines, and lie approves all bridges author- 
 ized by Congress to be built over navigable waters in the United 
 States. An assistant secretary of war aids the secretary in attend- 
 ing to the duties of the office. A chief clerk attends to the official 
 mail and correspondence of the department and to such other 
 duties as may be required by the secretary. 
 
 The military bureaus of the department are supervised and 
 directed by officers of the regular army as follows : Adjutant- 
 general, inspector-general, quartermaster-general, commissary- 
 general, surgeon-general, paymaster-general, chief of engineers, 
 chief of ordnances, judge-advocate-general, and chief signal officer. 
 
 The Secretary of the Navy is at the head of the Navy Depart- 
 ment, attending to all duties which may be assigned by the Presi- 
 dent, and he has general superintendence of the construction, 
 equipment, and employment of all the war-ships of the United 
 States. He is aided by an assistant secretary and a chief clerk 
 who has charge of all the correspondence of the department. 
 
 The naval bureaus of the department are in charge of officers 
 of the navy, and are as follows: Bureau of navigation, yards 
 and docks, equipment and recruiting, ordnance, construction and 
 repair, steam-engineering, medicine and surgery, provisions and 
 clothing, judge-advocate-general, and marine corps. 
 
 The Secretary of the Interior, who is the head of the Depart- 
 ment of the Interior, supervises all business relating to patents 
 for inventions, bounty, and pension lands, public lands and sur- 
 veys, education, railroads, the census, Indian reservations, etc. 
 He is aided by two assistants who have certain specific duties 
 assigned them. A chief clerk has general supervision of the 
 clerks and other employees of the department, and of all its corres 
 pondence and papers. Under the jurisdiction of this department 
 the following important officials conduct the duties of their respec- 
 tive offices.
 
 868 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The Commissioner of Patents administers the patent laws, 
 supervises the issuing of letters-patent, and the registration of 
 labels and trade-marks. A corps of skilled assistants aid him in 
 attending to business of the office. The Commissioner of Pen- 
 sions who examines and adjudicates on all claims for pensions 
 made according to law. The Commissioner of the General Land 
 Office attends to the survey, management, and sale of the public 
 lands, and the issuance of titles for the same. 
 
 The Commissioner of Indian Affairs superintends the various 
 tribes of Indians in the several States and Territories. Through 
 agents he attends to the annual distribution of rations to such 
 tribes as may be entitled thereto ; he has charge of the general 
 management of their schools and other duties of a general charac- 
 ter prescribed by law. The Commissioner of Education collects 
 statistics showing the progress of education throughout the Union, 
 its form and character in the various portions of the countiy, and 
 all such information as may tend to promote the diffusion of 
 intelligence. 
 
 The Commissioner of Railroads is the official to whom those rail- 
 road corporations report whose roads are located wholly or partly 
 north, south, or west of the Missouri River, and to whom the 
 United States Government has granted any loan for building or 
 equipping the said roads; he is authorized to examine their books 
 and accounts at least once a year, and at such other times as he 
 deems necessary, and to furnish such information as he may deem 
 expedient for the interest of the government in his annual report, 
 which must be made to the Secretary of the Interior on the first 
 day of November of each year. 
 
 The Director of the Geological Survey attends to the classifica- 
 tion of public lands, the examination of the geological structure, 
 mineral resources, and products of the national domain The 
 Superintendent of the Census superintends the taking of the cen- 
 sus of the United States every tenth year, and its arrangement, 
 classification, and compilation for the public information. 
 
 The Postmaster-General is the head of the Post-Office Depart- 
 ment, of which he is the director and manager. He appoints all 
 officers and employees of the department except the four assistant 
 postmasters-general, who are appointed by the President by and
 
 ULYSSES S. GKAUT.
 
 870 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 with the advice and consent of the Senate ; he appoints all post- 
 masters whose compensation does not exceed one thousand dollars, 
 makes postal treaties with foreign governments by and with the 
 advice and consent of the President, awards and executes con- 
 tracts, and directs the management of the domestic and foreign 
 mail service. Each of the assistant postmasters-general has 
 charge of a great division containing a large number of sub-divis- 
 ions which is thus arranged for convenience and the despatch of 
 business. 
 
 The Attorney-General is the head of the Department of Justice, 
 and is the first law officer of the government. He represents the 
 United States in all legal matters; he gives his advice and 
 opinion on questions of law when they are required by the Presi- 
 dent, or by the heads of the other executive departments on ques- 
 tions of law arising from the administration of their respective 
 departments; he also exercises a general superintendence and 
 direction over. United States attorneys and marshals in all judi- 
 cial districts in the States and Territories, and lie provides 
 special counsel for the United States whenever required by any 
 department of the government. 
 
 A chief clerk with a number of subordinates assists in conduct- 
 ing the clerical business of the department. The Solicitor-Gen- 
 eral aids the attorney-general in the legal duties of his office 
 and in his absence acts for him. There are four assistant attor- 
 neys-general who assist in all the legal duties which come under 
 the supervision of the attorney-general. 
 
 The Secretary of Agriculture is the head of the Department of 
 Agriculture. He has superintendence of all public business con- 
 nected with the agricultural industry. He appoints all persons 
 employed in his department, except the assistant secretary and the 
 Chief of the Weather Bureau, whose appointments are made by 
 the President. There are a great number of sub-divisions in this 
 department such as the Weather Bureau, the Bureau of Animal 
 Industry, the Botanical Division, the Division of Vegetable 
 Pathology, the Chemical Division, the Seed Division, etc., each 
 with its appropriate chief officer who attends to certain specified 
 duties under the direction of the secretary. 
 
 The Commissioner of Labor is the head of the Department of
 
 COMPLEX REPUBLICANISM. 871 
 
 Labor, whose chief duties are to secure useful information on 
 matters of importance in the relations of labor and capital in the 
 United States. The collection of facts regarding the hours of 
 labor, wages paid to men and women, cost of living, housing of 
 the wage earners, the cost of production and distribution of pro- 
 ducts, and such like come within the scope of his duties. 
 
 He is especially charged to investigate the causes of and facts 
 relating to all controversies and disputes between the employers of 
 labor and their employees, and is authorized to obtain information 
 which may be useful even from foreign countries. He is obliged 
 to report annually the doings of his department to the President 
 and Congress and also at such other times as special information 
 may be desired by either authority. 
 
 An Interstate Commission is established with authority to 
 inquire into the management of the business of all common car- 
 riers who are subject to the provisions of "An act to regulate 
 commerce," which became law on February 4, 187.7, and which 
 has jurisdiction generally over rates 011 interstate traffic, to decide 
 questions of unjust discrimination and of undue preference, and 
 to enforce all the provisions of the act. 
 
 The United States Civil Service Commission makes regulations 
 for the examination of all employees who enter the civil service of 
 the nation. A Court of Claims, the government printing-office, 
 Board on Geographic Names, Bureau of American Republics, and 
 the Inter-continental Railway Commission, with certain limited 
 duties assigned to each, of minor importance, make up the balance 
 of all the bureaus under the immediate control of the Executive. 
 
 Respecting the third coordinate branch of the government 
 the Judiciary Article III. of the Constitution provides: 
 
 SKCTIOX 1. The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in 
 one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may 
 from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the su- 
 preme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior, 
 and shall at stated times receive for their services a compensation 
 which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office. 
 
 SEC. 2. The judicial power shall extend to all cases in law and 
 equity arising under this constitution, the laws of the United States, 
 and treaties made, or which shall be made under their authority to
 
 872 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, to 
 all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction ; to controversies to 
 which the United States shall be a party; to controversies between 
 two or more states ; between a state and citizens of another state ; be- 
 tween citizens of different states ; between citizens of the same state 
 claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or 
 the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens, or subjects. 
 
 In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and 
 consuls, and those in which a State shall be a party, the Supreme 
 Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases 
 before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appelate juris- 
 diction, both as to law and fact; with such exceptions and under 
 such regulations as the Congress shall make. 
 
 The power herein vested in the Supreme Court is now exercised 
 by nine judges, who are called Justices of the Supreme Court, 
 and the tribunal itself is officially designated the Supreme Bench. 
 
 The head, or presiding Justice of the Bench, is called the Chief 
 Justice of the United States. The President of the United States 
 nominates the judges of all the United States courts, which 
 nominations are submitted to the Senate, as it is necessary that 
 the latter should confirm each appointment, otherwise it is of no 
 effect. Whenever the Senate refuses to endorse an appointment, 
 the President generally submits the name of some other person for 
 the office. 
 
 The decisions of the Supreme Court are final; it is the highest 
 authority, the court of last resort. After it decides what is the 
 law on any disputed question, the whole power of the nation 
 stands ready to enforce its decision. Even Congress may pass a 
 measure and the President sign it, but if the Supreme Court 
 declares it to be unconstitutional, it is null and void. The court 
 is independent as well as supreme in the judicial sphere. It does 
 not depend on Congress or the President, as each judge when 
 appointed holds his office during good behavior and cannot be 
 removed except by impeachment, in the manner provided by the 
 Constitution. The court cannot initiate, nor make, nor execute 
 any laws. It can only decide upon laws already made. 
 
 A majority of the court that is of the judges composing it 
 decides every question which comes up for adjudication. This is
 
 A DAUGHTER OF THE 1JKPU13LIC.
 
 874 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 called rendering the decision of the court, which is written out by 
 one of the justices selected for that purpose, in appropriate lan- 
 guage, alleging reasons and citing precedents for the new 
 decision given, which will serve itself as a precedent for the final 
 interpretation of the law in the future. 
 
 When one or more of the judges constituting a minority of the 
 Bench cannot concur with the majority, a dissenting opinion is 
 written out and placed upon record with the other in the official 
 reports of the court, but the dissenting opinion does not affect in 
 any way the interpretation of the law. 
 
 The regular sessions of the Supreme Court are held in Wash- 
 ington from the middle of October till May, when the judges 
 separate, each going into a different section of the country to pre- 
 side over the sessions of the United States Circuit Courts. 
 Special sessions of the court may be held at any time as the jus- 
 tices determine. Each judge is paid a salary of ten thousand 
 dollars a year, the chief justice receiving five hundred dollars 
 additional. Provision has been made by Act of Congress that a 
 justice who has served ten years on the Bench and is seventy years 
 of age may retire on a pension equivalent to his salary for the 
 remainder of his life. 
 
 While the Supreme Court determines finally all questions rela- 
 tive to the Constitution, and to such other matters as are set forth 
 in Article III. of that instrument, Congress, by virtue of its con- 
 stitutional power, has established national courts of inferior juris- 
 diction, viz: Courts of Appeal, Circuit Courts, District Courts, 
 and Commissioners' Courts. 
 
 The Courts of Appeal were established in 1891 to decide 
 definitely certain classes of cases which formerly were appealed to 
 the Supreme Court, thus relieving the latter from the enormous 
 pressure of business which threatened to block the judicial wheels. 
 The whole country is divided into nine judicial divisions each 
 having a Circuit Court. 
 
 These divisions are again subdivided into districts, each having 
 a District Court. The Commissioners' Court is the tribunal of 
 lowest jurisdiction among them all. Each of these courts has the 
 limits of its jurisdiction clearly prescribed by law ; its own judge, 
 or bench of judges, its clerks, and other officials.
 
 COMPLEX REPUBLICANISM. 875 
 
 In the Territories of the United States special national courts 
 are also maintained which adjudicate upon all questions arising 
 within the territorial domain, and having judges and other court 
 officials appointed by the President. All the courts of the United 
 States in every part of the country follow the same rules. They 
 are governed exclusively in their proceedings by the statute law 
 enacted by Congress, and consequently they are not affected by 
 the dissimilarity of the laws of the respective States in which they 
 hold their sessions. The limits of their jurisdiction, however, 
 are explicitly denned, and they cannot invade the field of the 
 State tribunals within the legal domain of the latter, except in 
 those particular instances reserved in the Constitution. 
 
 The most difficult thing to a foreigner to comprehend respect- 
 ing our government is the relation which our States bear to the 
 nation, and the limited universal jurisdiction of the latter 
 throughout the -States. This difficulty disappears, if it is clearly 
 understood that the nation has no authority or power whatever, 
 except such as has been, or may be, specially delegated to it by 
 the States and expressly stated in the Constitution. 
 
 All power in our country comes from the people of the respec- 
 tive States who have deemed it wise for the common welfare to 
 surrender certain powers which they originally possessed to the 
 nation which now exercises them. The nation has no rights or 
 authority except such as have been thus conferred in explicit 
 terms by the States, and it cannot take away any power which 
 they still retain. In some countries the national governments 
 confer and take away the people's rights as they see fit ; with 
 us, the people remain sovereign. 
 
 The ninth and tenth amendments to the Constitution are very 
 explicit on this point, showing how very strictly, indeed jealously, 
 the people guarded against any usurpation of power by our 
 national government. The ninth amendment declares: "The 
 enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be con- 
 strued to deny or disparage others retained by the people." And 
 the tenth amendment, with notable clearness and precision, says, 
 "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitu- 
 tion, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States 
 respectively, or to the people."
 
 876 THE STOIIY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Those powers only which have been considered necessary to 
 ensure the common safety, welfare, and convenience of the people 
 of all the States have been surrendered to Congress which repre- 
 sents the nation. The eighth section of Article I. of the Consti- 
 tution, with the constitutional amendments, define the powers 
 which Congress alone shall exercise. These powers have been 
 stated in the beginning of this chapter and in all other respects 
 each State of the Union is sovereign within its own borders; it 
 can enact such laws as the people see fit, but they must not con- 
 flict with laws passed by Congress in the proper exercise of its 
 constitutional power, nor can a State establish any other than a 
 republican form of government, because the Constitution pro- 
 hibits it from doing so. 
 
 The form of our State governments is very similar to that of 
 the national government. Each State has a written constitution, 
 and a legislative, executive, and judicial department. The execu- 
 tive of a State is called the governor ; he is elected by the people 
 by direct vote, except in one or two States, for a term fixed by 
 themselves, in some cases for one, in others for two or three years. 
 He sees that all laws of the State are carried out, and is com- 
 mander-in-chief of the militia, or armed volunteers, which he can 
 call out for service in certain exigencies prescribed by law. He 
 also possesses the power of veto over such legislative measures as 
 he deems opposed to the public welfare. 
 
 The legislature of a State consists of two houses, an upper and 
 a lower house, designated respectively as the Senate and House of 
 Representatives, though in some States the latter is called the 
 Assembly. The members of both houses are chosen directly by 
 the people. A senator, representing a much larger district than 
 a member of the lower house, is voted for by a much larger num- 
 ber of people, and hence the Senate is always much smaller 
 numerically than the House of Representatives. The duty of a 
 State legislature is to make all laws regulating the internal con- 
 cerns of the State. It is the authority which grants charters 
 to business corporations and cities, and it exercises control over 
 banks, insurance companies, and every public and quasi-public 
 undertaking carried on within its jurisdiction. 
 
 In some States the legislatures are elected every year, and hold

 
 COMPLEX REPUBLICANISM. 881 
 
 annual sessions, while in others biennial elections and sessions 
 are the rule. Very recently in some sections of the country, 
 movements have been made towards securing triennial and even 
 quadrennial elections in certain States. It is claimed by the 
 advocates of less frequent elections and sessions that the turmoil 
 and excitement of political campaigns is a great hindrance to 
 business, and that more perfect legislation could be expected from 
 men chosen for three or four years than from those chosen for one 
 year. These claims, however, are generally made by the agents 
 and attorneys of corporations and syndicates who frequent the 
 lobbies of our State Houses, endeavoring to secure special legisla- 
 tion in the interest of their employers. 
 
 The frequency of our elections in these days of gigantic corpora- 
 tions who bring influences of various kinds to bear on the mem- 
 bers of our legislatures is the great safeguard and tower of defence 
 of the people. The annual political campaign is a great educator 
 of the masses, and the legislator newly commissioned by them 
 more truly understands and closely represents the views of his 
 constituents than one who is removed from them by a term of 
 two, three, or more years. 
 
 The honest and intelligent legislator has no fear of appearing 
 before his constituents frequently for re-election: the dishonest 
 man may well dread the ordeal. There never was a time in the 
 history of our country when it has been so necessaiy for the peo- 
 ple to keep the closest supervision over the doings of their repre- 
 sentatives, and to express their opinions often at the ballot-box 
 on measures and men, than at the present time, owing to the new 
 colossal forces of corporate power which wield such a tremendous 
 and sinister influence in our legislative halls. 
 
 The judicial department of each State, consisting of courts and 
 judges ranging from the court of last resort, or Supreme Tribunal, 
 down to the lowest in jurisdiction, administers the law of the 
 State. The highest court in a State determines finally all ques- 
 tions relative to the constitution of the State, that is to say it 
 interprets the constitution, and all legal matters coming before it 
 on appeal from the lower courts. 
 
 The constitution is the organic law of each commonwealth, and 
 a legislature cannot enact a law which will be operative against
 
 882 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 it. If the constitution requires alteration or amendment of any 
 nature, it must be altered or amended by the whole people of the 
 State, themselves voting directly on the matter. The laws of 
 each State vary as a rule from those of the other States, and the 
 law of one is of no force in any other. 
 
 Because of the sovereignty of the States and the dissimilarity 
 of their laws, the national Constitution provides for the regula- 
 tion of certain general matters by the United States Congress ; 
 and also that the public statutes of each State shall be recognized 
 and respected by all the others. No State, for instance, can 
 impair the validity of a legal contract made in another State, nor 
 can it reopen in its courts a case which has been decided by a 
 competent tribunal in some other State, because the national Con- 
 stitution has so provided to prevent the confusion which would 
 result from such a condition. Congress representing the nation 
 manages the affairs that are common to all the States, while the 
 latter attend to everything else. 
 
 In the sparsely settled districts of the country not included in 
 any of the States, Congress establishes a government usually upon 
 the petition of some of the people who live there. The governor, 
 judges, and other principal officers of the territory are then nomi- 
 nated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The people 
 elect their own legislature which, with the appointed governor, 
 conduct territorial matters very much as the States do. Indeed, 
 a Territory is simply an embryo, or infant State ; it only requires 
 age and growth to become one. 
 
 Each territory sends one delegate to the House of Representa- 
 tives in Washington to look after its interests, and make Congress 
 acquainted with the wants of his constituents. These delegates 
 cannot vote on any question, but they can speak on the floor of 
 the House, and otherwise exercise whatever influence they possess 
 on legislation in which they are interested. 
 
 The power of Congress over the Territories is supreme in every 
 way. A law made by a Territory becomes invalid whenever Con- 
 gress says so. A territorial legislature might pass a law similar 
 to that of a State contiguous, but if Congress disapproved of it, 
 it would be null, while the same law in the State could not be 
 interfered with.
 
 COMPLEX REPUBLICANISM. 883 
 
 When a territory grows large in population and desires to be 
 admitted a State of the Union, its legislature calls a convention 
 which adopts a constitution. This constitution is then pre- 
 sented to Congress, with a petition asking that the territory be 
 permitted to enter the Union of States. As soon as this is 
 allowed, the new State, although its population may not be one 
 twentieth of some of the older States, is entitled to two members 
 in the Senate of the United States, indicative of its equal sover- 
 eignty with the other States. She is entitled to as many mem- 
 bers in the lower House of Congress as her population gives her 
 the right to choose and no more. 
 
 In closing this necessarily brief exposition and explanation of 
 the complexities of the republicanism under which we live, we 
 should fail in our duty to the subject and most of all to the 
 American people, if we did not point out in clear, unmistakable 
 terms the grave perils in the path of our progress to which allu- 
 sion was made in the beginning of this chapter. 
 
 We began our national life with the fairest auspices. The 
 natural wealth of the country was fairly well distributed. No 
 wide extremes of riches and of poverty dazzled and disturbed the 
 public vision. Patriotism, pride in our country or in our country- 
 men a just pride then was no mere catchword or political 
 excuse for oratorical display, but was a vital, throbbing, personal 
 fact. To be an American was greater than a king. 
 
 To-day, hoAV many Americans are practically free ? For, if a 
 man is dependent on the will, or wish, or whim of another to give 
 him work, and has no certainty that his work will be continuous, 
 is he not really a slave ? Yet many of the men who suffer just 
 such a degrading dependence risked their lives thirty odd years ago 
 to abolish slavery ? They did abolish the slavery of colored men 
 and blotted out the word as a legal and technical term. But the 
 thing remains. 
 
 Remains with regained and with increasing vigor a servitude 
 not merely of the semi-civilized and ignorant mass of an alien race, 
 but a subjection of white men, and women, and children to a few 
 taskmasters, a very few profiters and promoters of an industrial 
 system just as absurd as it is cruel and degrading. 
 
 We indulged, especially in New England, in a vast amount of
 
 884 THE STORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 virtuous indignation over the evil of black slavery, and we spent 
 many noble lives and much treasure to remove the motes from the 
 eyes of our Southern brothers. But no unpartisan observer will 
 deny that the condition of colored men under the regime of the 
 planter aristocrat was far better on an average than that of the 
 lower classes to-day in any of our large cities. What, then, 
 awaits the republic ? 
 
 The masses are discontented, and they have a right to be so. 
 For huge monopolies since the war have crawled into existence 
 and coiled themselves around the legislature, the judicial bench, 
 the pulpit and, worst sign of all ! around the press. The middle 
 classes, to be sure, are tolerably prosperous, and a small personal 
 prosperity salves their consciences into silence. 
 
 But theirs is a fool's paradise, for numerically they represent 
 only a tenth of the population and thus, with the working class 
 who represent nearly nine tenths on one side, and the plutocrats 
 who represent about one seventieth "on the other, the middle classes 
 are between the upper and nether millstone, and are liable, unless 
 they wake up in time and hasten to effect a change in the system, 
 to be ground into powder by dynamite in the hands of an enraged 
 populace whose only lack for present action is the lack of a 
 leader. 
 
 There is one cure for many, not for all, the evils of our present 
 situation, and this cure would also be a preventive of a worse 
 condition of the body politic. This remedy is a simple one and 
 the number of persons who see its virtue increases every day. 
 That is, to take all the large businesses which directly concern the 
 masses out of the tricky hands of private enterprise, and make 
 them parts of the machinery of the government, like the post-office, 
 for instance. 
 
 Railroads, telegraphs, telephones, expresses, mines of all kinds, 
 ought to be owned and operated by the general government at 
 cost for the benefit of the whole people. All means of supplying 
 light, heat, and pure water should belong to the cities and towns ; 
 likewise, of course, all franchises for public conveyance such as 
 horse or electric cars. 
 
 After these, some other businesses that affect the health of the 
 people might wisely be done by the village, town, or state. By
 
 COMPLEX REPUBLICANISM. 885 
 
 this method a growth of true and valuable individualities would 
 be stimulated and a sufficiently large field for the free play of 
 better individual effort would remain to yield a rich harvest for 
 the race in the present as well as the future. If some of these 
 things are not done speedily, it needs no special gift of prophecy 
 to predict a tremendous crash of national disaster, for the Ameri- 
 can people, as we noted before, are unquestionably growing very 
 discontented. 
 
 And you who are one of the toiling, moiling millions, you who 
 live in a poor, ill-furnished house, who suffer from cold in winter 
 and have no bathtub to keep you clean from the daily sweats of 
 your vacatioriless summer, you who would like to work a trifle 
 less and to know a trifle more, you who would like to live with just 
 a little more dignity, a little more decency you say the Ameri- 
 can masses have a right to be discontented. A right? Yes, and 
 in truth it is their highest duty to be so, for discontent is one of 
 the noblest words in the American language. Nay, more, it is not 
 a mere word. Discontent is the Divine Mother of Progress.