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70353.11

HARVA

JUN 6 1880

Bright Fund
Впедке

Copyright, 1888.

BY RAYMOND L. BRIDGMAN.

TEN YEARS OF MASSACHUSETTS.

THE COMMONWEALTH.

THE truth that the state has not advanced beyond its laws, and that its progress is to be seen in those laws makes the study of them—and of the intelligence, conscience and will of the state as seen in them-most helpful in understanding the state's progress. To him who has the vision to see through the laws, they are more thrilling than fiction, for they touch the lives of those who "stand out and take the thunder and lightning" of life's poverty and calamities as well as of those who seek by the laws new means of protecting themselves in the acquirement of wealth.

Every general law is an attempt to deduce from what has happened (sometimes in only a few instances) rules to govern what may happen again. The state's foresight is the result of looking backward. It locks the stable door after the horse has been stolen, but because so many other horses are left. Back of the laws are the suffering and loss on which they rest, material or moral. In every line of the liquor laws

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