versity education must be encouraged for those who can profit by it. 15. Public affairs must be administered in a broad and liberal spirit. Salaries should be commensurate with the service rendered. There should be no penny-wise economy. The element of beauty is not to be neglected. 16. There must be liberty of conscience for all Protestant Christians. No distinction should be made between members of the various Protestant sects as to freedom in worship, and the right to hold office. "Without liberty of conscience, civil liberty cannot be perfect; without civil liberty, liberty of con science cannot be perfect." 17. Primogeniture in the descent of land is not suited to a republic. 18. Mercenary marriages are odious in a free commonwealth. 19. Public office is a public trust, and the magistracy should at all times be accountable to the people for their management of public affairs. 20. Prisoners charged with state crimes are entitled to be heard by counsel.1 21. The great end and aim of a commonwealth is the vindication of common right and the upholding of the law of nature. Rightly organized, it supplies its citizens an intense stimulus for thorough and honest work. 22. Ministers of the gospel should not hold office. Political activity might tend to corrupt them, or to corrupt religion. Their disability to hold office should be established by law. 23. There should be public parks and other lawful means of recreation provided for the people. The despoiling of parks and noted public buildings is not admissible, in general, even 1 In this matter, as elsewhere, Harrington works out his theory to the last practical detail. In a state trial, the counsel for the plaintiff, or accuser, standing upon the right hand of the court, shall speak one hour and a half by the hour glass, and no longer. While papers are read, or witnesses examined, the sands are not to run. The accused, standing on the left, and appearing if he will by counsel, is governed by the same rules. This is a remarkable provision in the interests of justice, for prisoners under criminal charges could not appear in an English court by counsel having the right to speak in their behalf, until long after Harrington's time. in time of war. Ministers who discountenance dancing and other amusements not in themselves harmful, act unwisely. 24. In a republic, a great general, or a great magistrate should, after a time, voluntarily, when the interests of the commonwealth admit of it, lay aside office and retire to private citizenship. Let him testify that the sovereignty and welfare of the people are greater than the claims of any citizen, however eminent or meritorious. 25. Government needs not only well-devised schemes, but the most prudent and religious choice of public servants that can possibly be made. THEODORE W. DWIGHT. THE THE LIMITS OF COMPETITION. HERE is a sense in which much of the orthodox system of political economy is eternally true. Conclusions reached by valid reasoning are always as true as the hypotheses from which they are deduced. If we admit the fact of unlimited competition, we concede in advance many doctrines which current opinion is now disposed to reject. This refuge will always be open to the latter-day defenders of the faith, as they are confronted by greater and greater discrepancies between their system and the facts of life; it will remain forever true that if unlimited competition existed, most of the traditional laws would be realized in the practical world. It will also be true that in those corners of the industrial field which still show an approximation to Ricardian competition there will be seen as much of correspondence between theory and fact as candid reasoners claim. If political economy will but content itself with this kind of truth, it need never be disturbed by industrial revolutions. The science need not trouble itself to progress. This hypothetical truth, or science of what would take place if society were fashioned after an ideal pattern, is not what Ricardo believed that he had discovered. His system was positive; actual life suggested it by developing tendencies for which the scientific formulas which at that time were traditional could not account. It was a new industrial world which called for a modernized system of economic doctrine. Ricardo was the first to understand the situation, to trace the new tendencies to their consummation, and to create a scientific system by insight and foresight. He outran history in the process, and mentally created a world more relentlessly competitive than any which has existed; and yet it was fact and not imagination that lay at the basis of the whole system. Steam had been utilized, machines were supplanting hand labor, workmen were migrating to new centres of production, guild regulations were giving way, and competition of a type unheard of before was beginning to prevail. A struggle for existence had commenced between parties of unequal strength. In manufacturing industries the balance of power had been disturbed by steam, and the little shops of former times were disappearing. The science adapted to such conditions was an economic Darwinism; it embodied the laws of a struggle for existence between competitors of the new and predatory type and those of the peaceable type which formerly possessed the field. Though the process was savage, the outlook which it afforded was not wholly evil. The survival of crude strength was, in the long run, desirable. Machines and factories meant, to every social class, cheapened goods and more comfortable living. Efficient working establishments were developing; the social organism was perfecting itself for its contest with crude nature. It was a fuller and speedier dominion over the earth which was to result from the concentration of human energy now termed centralization. The error unavoidable to the theorists of the time lay in basing a scientific system on the facts afforded by a state of revolution. This was attempting to derive permanent principles from transient phenomena. Some of these principles must become obsolete; and the work demanded of modern economists consists in separating the transient from the permanent in the Ricardian system. How much of the doctrine holds true when the struggle between unequal competitors is over, and when a few of the very strongest have possession of the field? Can the old-time competition be trusted to divide the fruits of industry between one overgrown shop and another, and between the owners and the workmen in each? Can this same force control railroads, as it once controlled stage-coaches and packetsloops? To be more accurate, are the transactions of consolidated railroad lines governed by the same principles as those of single railroads and stage-coach lines when these are competing with each other? Does the old regulating principle at present exist, and will general well-being continue to evolve itself under its unaided influence? An economic system adapted to the modern era must begin by answering these questions. In most branches of manufacturing, and in other than local transportation, the contest between the strong and the weak is either settled or in process of rapid settlement. The survivors are becoming so few, so powerful, and so nearly equal that if the strife were to continue, it would bid fair to involve them all in < a common ruin. What has actually developed is not such a battle of giants, but a system of armed neutralities and federations of giants. The new era is distinctively one of consolidated forces; rival establishments are forming combinations, and the principle of union is extending itself to the labor and the capital in each of them. Laborers, who once competed with each other, are now making their bargains collectively with their employers. Employers, who under the old régime would have worked independently, are merging their capital in corporations, and allowing it to be managed as by a single hand. We need Ricardo's insight and foresight if we are to attain the economic laws that are to govern the transactions of the practical world. The changes which we are witnessing are as startling in character as those which he witnessed, and are on a scale of greater magnitude. There is this difference between his scientific position and ours, namely, that he saw before him an interval of contest that must of necessity, sooner or later, come to an end; while we see approaching a period < of union which gives a promise of indefinite continuance. He studied the evolution that created a type of industrial establishment; we have to study the functions of this surviving type. History will aid us by furnishing a point of departure, and by indicating the direction of social development, but not by giving facts from which any possible induction can give the principles which we seek. The light derivable from past facts is negative; that derivable from present tendencies is positive. The materials for study lie in the present and the immediate future; and, to be scientific, we must be somewhat prophetic. Predatory competition between unequal parties was the basis of the Ricardian system. This process was vaguely conceived |