vidual defendants are the several officers of the State who, under the law, compose the board of liquidation. That board is in no sense the custodian of this fund. The Treasurer of the State is the keeper of the treasure collected from this tax, just as he is the keeper of other public moneys. He holds them, but only as agent of the State, not as a trustee. If there is any trust, the State is trustee, and, unless the State can be sued, the trustees can not be enjoined. The officers owe their duty, to the State alone, and have no contract relations with bondholders. There is nothing in the cases cited by counsel which, in the opinion of the court, authorizes the relief which is asked. When a State submits itself without reservation to the jurisdiction of the court in a particular case, that jurisdiction may be used to give full effect to what the State has, by its act of submission, allowed to be done; and if the law permits the coercion of public officers to enforce any judgment that may be rendered, then such coercion may be employed for that purpose, but this is very far from authorizing courts, when the State can not be sued, to set up its jurisdiction over officers in charge of public moneys. The decree in the suit in equity, and judgment in that for mandamus, are affirmed.

Finances. The State Treasurer had the following cash balances on hand to the credit of the various funds, March 31, 1883:

Total.....

$775,876 76 The Treasurer also made the following statement:

The bonded debt is about $11,800,000, requiring at 2 per cent. say 8236,000 per year: the Treasurer has paid reduced interest for 1880, $126,432; for 1881, $127,054; for 1882, $112,256-showing that over half the bondholders have accepted the proposal to take 2 per cent. for five years, and 4 per cent. thereafter.

State Lands. Much controversy has taken place regarding a contract entered into between Gov. Wiltz and John McEnery for the recovery of lands due the State from the United States. It was claimed that "the contract provides that scrip shall be issued to the contractor, which he can place on any land. In other words, when he recovers 1,000 acres of seamarsh, worth say 10 cents an acre, he gets

acre.

scrip for 500 acres, which he can place on other land belonging to the State, worth say $1 per Or if the tract recovered shall be five eighths swamp and three eighths good land, he may take the latter and leave the State the least valuable portion, and have besides a little surplus scrip to put somewhere else."

It was also claimed that under the terms of the contract the State had been defrauded with the connivance of Register Richardson, who resigned on the 30th of June. Gov. McEnery, when attacked on account of this contract, replied that it was in full force when he came into office, and he had no power to annul it.

Levees. The drainage from over 1,200,000 square miles of the Mississippi valley, concentrated above Louisiana's northern boundary, can only be kept within the banks of the Mississippi by a line of levees extending from Arkansas on one side and from Baton Rouge on the other, to the Gulf of Mexico, 720 miles. Add to this the 305 miles of levees built along the interior streams-the Lafourche, Atchafalaya, Des Glaizes, Black, Tensas, and Roundaway-and we have a total of 1,025 miles.

From Jan. 1, 1879, to May 31, 1883, the State expended for levees $1,617,311, out of a total of cash expenditures for all purposes of $8,876,872-over 18 per cent. From 1869 to 1879 the cash expenditures for levee purposes amounted to $8,733,121. Since 1869, then, Louisiana has spent for levees $10,350,432.

A Levee Convention, consisting of representatives from thirty-four parishes and several railroads, was held at Baton Rouge on the 18th and 19th of June. The Governor submitted a message containing various recommendations. The action of the convention was embodied in the report of a committee on the Governor's message and in resolutions. The following are the essential portions of the report:

1. The inauguration of a plan to prevent the cutting of the levees, and the use of them as highways. Under existing laws, the local authorities are not invested with sufficient power to prevent the use of the levees as roadways, and to impose proper penalties. We would therefore recommend the passage of laws giving to the police juries full and ample power to pass laws and ordinances defining and providing adequate punishment for such offenses.

2. Maintaining and repair of levees. We would recommend the passage of an act to compel work upon the levees by the adult citizens living in the levee district, such work to be under the control and direction of the police juries. We further recommend that the police juries be urged to exercise the important powers intrusted to them by existing laws for the maintenance and protection of levees, and especially to the use of the levees as roads or their cutting for roadways or rice-flumes. We approve the suggestion of the Governor in reference to the just responsibility of railroads to contribute to the maintenance and support of the levees which protect their property. We recommend the formation of chartered volunteer companies of levee guards in towns and cities; the erection of station or signal houses at convenient points by the people of the vicinity. The said stationhouses to be used as depots for materials and appliances to stop crevasses or to strengthen weak points.

3. Improvement of navigation. The convention has by independent resolutions fully indorsed the

sentiments expressed by the Governor in reference to the Mississippi River Commission. The committee heartily recommends the suggestion of the Governor in reference to the appointment of an executive committee of ten so organized as to be readily assembled, the duty of the committee to be to act in concert with other bodies of a like character and to be ready with all necessary information to go before Congress at its next and ensuing sessions in behalf of the interests of the people of this State.

Among the resolutions were the following: That we earnestly appeal to his Excellency the Governor of Louisiana to immediately adopt such means and measures as may be necessary to place the entire convict force at work on the levees of the State.

That the chairman of this convention appoint a committee of ten delegates to confer with the representatives of the Mississippi Valley, Texas and Pacific and Morgan railroads, to receive any proposition tending toward their assisting in the matter of keeping a general system of levees in conjunction with the

State.

That concerning the Red and Atchafalaya rivers, we deem inexpedient and hurtful to the commercial interests of the people of the Red river country and those of the tributaries, any attempt to divert the course of that river away from the Mississippi, and that the waters of the Red should be deflected from the Atchafalaya.

Democratic Convention. When the question of candidates to be voted for at the election in April, 1884, came to be discussed, much opposition to the renomination of Gov. McEnery, led by the New Orleans "Picayune," manifested itself within the Democratic ranks. The primaries were attended with much excitement, and in some instances with violence. The convention met in Baton Rouge on the 18th of December; a prolonged struggle over contested seats ensued, and an adjournment was not reached till midnight of the 20th. Gov. McEnery was renominated by a vote of 2201, to 178 for Francis T. Nicholls. An attempt to make the nomination unanimous failed. The ticket was completed as fol

lows:

Lieutenant-Governor, Clay Knobloch, of Lafourche; Treasurer, E. A. Burke, of Orleans; Attorney-Gencral, M. J. Cunningham, of Natchitoches; Secretary of State, Oscar Arroyo, of Plaquemines; Auditor, Ő. B. Steele, of Union; Superintendent of Education, Warren Easton, of Orleans.

66

"With the exception of the gentleman nominated for the attorney-generalship," says the 93 66 Picayune," all the nominees are of the McEnery faction, and the ticket as a whole gives no promise of that reform in the management of the party and the administration of the State of which both are so much in need."

Among the resolutions adopted by the convention were the following:

That we declare our hostility to the entire principle of lottery dealings. The Constitution declares gambling to be a vice, yet it encourages that vice in its worst form, not only inciting to breaches of faith and embezzlement in the effort to get rich on the turn of the wheel, but demoralizing society, corrupting polities, and impeding legislation; and we demand that the Legislature to be chosen at the ensuing election shall enact such legal measures as are necessary for their suppression.

That the convict-labor of the State should be appropriated and assigned to labor on the public levees, under the direction and control of the State authorities, by such legislation as may be necessary.

Sugar and Rice.-The year 1882-'83 witnessed the heaviest production of sugar ever made in Louisiana since the war.

There were 120,555 acres of cane crushed, or 25,523 acres more than the previous year, and the average yield per acre was 2,782 pounds where the vacuum-pan was used, or 2,368 pounds where open kettles or the ordinary steam-train were used. The first arrival of sugar comprised 20 barrels white clarified from the Forlorn Hope Plantation, parish of Iberville, and came in October 7th.

The crop amounted to 303,066,258 pounds of sugar, equivalent to 241,220 hogsheads. The production of open-kettle or old-process sugare amounted to 184,860,390 pounds, or 150,292 hogsheads. The production of clarified or centrifugal sugars amounted to 118,205,868 pounds, or 90,927 hogsheads.

The total product of molasses for the season amounted to 15,716,755 gallons, of which 4,255,411 gallons represented centrifugals and 11,461,344 gallons were open-kettle or old-proproduction amounted to 9,691,104 gallons, of cess molasses. During the year 1881-'82 the which 2,926,186 gallons were centrifugals and 6,764,918 gallons were open-kettle molasses.

The production of rice in Louisiana for the season of 1882 amounted to 187,217 barrels of ed to 55,422,180 pounds, or 240,966 barrels of clean rice. The crop the previous year amountclean rice. The crop for the season of 1880 amounted to 61,331,340 pounds, or 266,658 bar

rels of clean rice.

LOUVAIN, THE REFORMATORY PRISON AT. Louvain is a city of Belgium, fifteen miles northeast of Brussels. The management of its reformatory prison is based on the principle that even in the most corrupt man there is a germ of good sentiments and feeling, the development of which can be secured by making the prison a place of repentance and amendment. The first condition required for this end is the separation of the prisoner from bad counsels and bad examples. This introduces the cell system. But in the erection of the building at Louvain the results of experience were kept in view. It was believed that the numerous cases of madness and suicide in cellprisons were not caused by the system of separate confinement in itself, but by the bad application of it. Thus, on adopting the form of a star in the construction of the building (an arrangement found most convenient for watchfulness), it was determined to change entirely the material and moral treatment of the prisoners. The cells are airy and well lighted. Water is brought to them in abundance by a pipe with a stop, which is opened at pleasure within, but which is controlled by a key on the exterior. There is a similar arrangement for the gas-jet, and by a special contrivance it can be made to furnish the heat required for the prisoner's trade. A wash-stand, water-closet hermetically closed, several book-shelves, a table, a chair, and a folding-bed, compose the furniture. There are also the tools or machines necessary for the prisoner to prosecute some work. Here are seen tailors, shoemakers, saddlers, bookbinders, carpenters, locksmiths, etc. Some of the prisoners are bakers; others scullions, or head cooks. The cookery of the latter is not very nutritious, but it is not un wholesome. The bread is better than that of the French; in the other articles of food there is no comparison. In the French prisons, the inmates receive during the week only soup, and on Sunday a little meat, while at Louvain they have bread in the morning, soup at noon, vegetables at night, and meat twice a week.

The prisoners have also the liberty to buy "knick-knacks" with a little of the money which they earn; the rest is kept for them until the expiration of their sentences. These sums are comparatively large; for in this prison most of the clothing and equipments of the Belgian army are made, and the Government pays as good wages as to the free workmen.

When any kinds of work were to be done which required the labor of many persons together, it was found very troublesome to maintain the rule of separation. At first it was decided never to suffer two convicts to labor

VOL. XXIII.-32 A

together, except under the special watch of a guard who should prevent any communication between them. But this proved insufficient. The problem was solved under the principle upon which the establishment was founded. It was indispensable to protect the convict, on his going out of prison, against disagreeable recognition by his old fellow-prisoners. It has been said that the first requisite for the encouragement of a repentant criminal to persevere in his reformed life, was to prevent his disgrace from being cast upon him, if possible. Thus, upon the arrival of the convict at the prison, he is taken to the director, to whom he tells, in confidence, his name; in exchange he receives a number, by which only he is henceforth known. He then goes to the dressingroom, and after undergoing the changes required by the rules, he puts on a large bonnet which conceals his features, and has only the two openings for the eyes. He never goes from his cell, or receives any person there, without concealing his countenance in this manner. Thus he continues, or believes that he continues, entirely unknown.

One very forcible objection to the cell system is the mute state in which the convicts are kept. Absolute silence is a very severe chastisement; it often causes madness, and, in any case, it is not in itself an agent of improvement. That danger has been avoided at Louvain. If the convicts can not converse among themselves, they are in constant connection with their guards and with the overseers, who come and go continually. Besides, they are visited every day by the director or his assistant, or the distributors of food, the clergy, or rabbi. Twice a week, and sometimes oftener, they have a long visit from the teacher. All the prisoners are obliged to go to school. There is an amphitheatre where the pupils can see the professor, but can not see one another. They are really separated by a door, which each one closes as he reaches his place. Lest they might be recognized by the voice, all questions are forbidden during the lesson; but the instructor afterward goes to each cell to assure himself that his explanations have been understood. Thus, in a novel manner, the monotony of the imprisonment is broken.

Again, the kind of labor imposed on the convicts is their safeguard against hypochondria. In other prisons labor is repulsive, as nearly all is done by machinery. At Louvain the labors require a certain mental application. and therein the convicts find a real relief. This organization also enables a convict to fit himself to obtain a livelihood if he came to the prison without having learned a trade; or to make a change if he does not wish afterward to resume his old trade. The results of this system are excellent, if we can believe the statistics of the first twenty years that the prison has been in operation. The cases of suicide or madness are not more numerous, for the population, than in the cities of Belgium, though

the convicts have a thousand means by which to take life. The awls, paring-knives, scissors, and leather straps, abound in the cells.

So far as relates to subsequent or second committals, while in France they count as high as forty-one to forty-eight per cent., at Louvain they scarcely exceed six per cent. The reason of this difference seems to exist not only in the system itself, the administration of which is very intelligent, but also, and especially, in the chosen officers. The lowest guards obtain their places by competition. But this does not satisfy the director, who has them continually under his eye; he desires that they should regard their employment as a mission to which they should wholly devote themselves.

"At the time of our first visit to Louvain," says the journal "La France," "we came strongly prejudiced against the single-cell system generally, so that it was not without surprise that we observed the calm air of the prisoners. They seemed to have even a kind of attachment for their sad home. Here one sees wreaths of ornamented paper all around the cell; in others, the spaces for the vessels were covered with odd ornaments, which revealed a certain taste in the unfortunate ones who had arranged them; in some there were natural flowers in a pot on the work-bench. These flowers had been gathered by the convict in the yard, where he daily made a promenade. These yards do not resemble the dungeons where French prisoners turn back and forth like imprisoned deer. They are oblong little gardens, inclosed on the sides by the high walls and terminating at the ends by gratings, one of which facilitates the watch of the guards placed at a central point, and the other presents the vast kitchen-gardens of the prison. The product of the little gardens goes to some of the convicts, who can cultivate a corner as they please during their recreation, and eat the fruit and gather the flowers. We were no less astonished to see bouquets in the penitentiary-cells, and on entering the office of the director, M. J. J. Paul, an accomplished man, we could not refrain from saying to him, Sweet prison, sir, where the convicts are permitted to make the air which they breathe fragrant with the perfume of flowers.' 'I know it is an infraction of the regulations,' he replied, but I have given an order to the guards not to remove them. When a criminal begins to decorate his cell, by attaching himself to flowers, he has become less obdurate. If one of them finds in his yard a bird fallen from a nest, which he desires to keep in his cell, I close my eyes again and rejoice, for that man will become better.'"

LUTHER QUADRICENTENNIAL. Saturday, Nov. 10, 1883, was the four-hundredth anniversary of the birthday of Martin Luther. There were many reasons why the occasion should be celebrated. That religious and social movement which he originated is one of the few great dividing-points in the history of

civilization. The preceding four centuries belong distinctively to medieval history; the four centuries which have since elapsed belong as distinctively to modern history. More than half of Christendom holds that this religious movement has been a great and almost unmixed evil; less than half hold that it has been a great and almost unmixed good. But there are few men in our day who do not hold that the social and political reforms which sprang out of and have accompanied this movement have been of the highest benefit. It would not be easy to find a Roman Catholic who would wish civil governments to be restored to the state in which they were at the close of the fifteenth century. Few would, even in theory, hold that the Church should be re-established as it was in the times of Alexander VI, Julius II, and Leo X. Indeed, the reformation which went on within the Church was hardly less notable than that which went on from it in the lifetime of Luther, and for a generation thereafter; and that reformation within the Church can be traced, mediately or immediately, to the revolt which Luther headed against the Church.

It is easy to affirm that if there had been no Martin Luther there would have been some other man or men who would have done all that he did, and better than he did it. Nothing is easier than to speculate upon what might have been. But there was a Martin Luther, by whom, through whom, and often in spite of whom, certain great things were brought about. Luther's countrymen, and not a few others, hold that these things were among the most notable recorded in human history.

Luther's life was a warfare. His weapons were thoughts and words, which in the long run have ever proved themselves mightier than armies and armaments. One of the most thoughtful of American authors, writing of "Luther and his Place in History," says: "He spoke for all future ages. His words saved Germany, and created Modern History. The Gothic and German races rose to rare prosperity at the touch of Luther's genius; the Latin races rejected his teachings, and have for three centuries slumbered in dull reaction and decay. He died at the age of sixty-three, the master intellect of the Teutonic race."

The countrymen of Luther have never been unmindful of their debt to this peasant's son. He gave them a common language, the first requisite to a national unity, lying even deeper than mere unity of race. Not that, as some have said, he created the modern German language. To create a language is what no one man, no cycle of men, has ever done. But in adopting in his writings, and especially in his translation of the Bible, the Franconian dialect, remote on the one hand from what was known as the High Dutch, and on the other from the Low Dutch, yet still intelligible to all, he fixed the forms of that dialect as the language for the people. His guiding purpose was, so to

write that his words should be understood "by the mother in the house, the children in the streets, and the common man in the markets." The translation of the New Testament was almost wholly his own work. Some of the manuscripts of this translation are still extant, and they evince the labor which the work cost him. There are passages which have been corrected and recorrected half a score of times before the exact form was at last attained; but now it seems strange that any other words or collocation of words should have been thought of. In the translation of the Old Testament Luther needed much assistance, for, besides a few rabbis, there was not in all Europe a tolerable Hebrew scholar. So much aid did he receive from these rabbis, that the company of translators was jestingly called "the private Sanhedrim." But, even in this part of the undertaking, the real work of translation was Luther's. His co-laborers might enable him to understand what the Hebrew writers had said in their own language, but Luther alone was competent to make them say it in German. He himself tells what a task it was: "We are working hard," he writes to a friend, "to bring out the prophets in our mothertongue. Ach Gott! what a great and difficult work it is to make the Hebrew writers speak German!" But he did make them do it, so far at least as he understood them; and his in tense sympathy with them went far to enable him to penetrate the very soul of their Oriental thought and phraseology.

So adequate for all purposes has Luther's translation proved, that it is not until our own immediate day that any serious attempt at even a revisal has been made. A German revised translation has just been completed, and the first printed copy of it was presented to the Emperor of Germany on the day of this Lutheran quadricentennial.

Very much of Luther's abundant literary work was for the time merely. He occupied, in a measure, the place now filled by the edi tor. Newspapers and regular periodicals did not then exist; but Luther's pamphlets and broad-sheets partially supplied their place. In one year he put forth nearly two hundred of these treatises, all dealing with current matters, which to him and to others seemed of vital import. All of them have been reprinted again and again. His "Table-Talk," jotted down mainly from memory by one and another of his disciples, is among the most readable of books to this day. He lacked little of being a great poet. He was all his life too busy to be able to spend much time in fitting rhymes and scanning syllables; yet some of his hymns are immortal. The "Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott" is not merely a psalm of worship, but has been also the national battle-hymn, the German anthem of hope and encourage ment, from Luther's day to our own; and wherever this Luther commemoration was solemnized, this hymn formed the fitting prelude.

The great secret of the strength of Luther is, that he was German to the very core of his being. He, as it were, created the German nation, because he was himself a German of the Germans. Julius Köstlein, the latest, and by far the best, biographer of Luther, fairly sums up the national estimate of the man, which is in the main that of the great body of the Protestant world. Köstlein's "Life of Luther" appeared in German ten years ago; an English translation of it was brought out at the time of this commemoration. Köstlein says: "No German has ever influenced so powerfully as Luther the religious life, and, through it, the whole history of his people. No other one has ever, in his whole personal character and conduct, so faithfully reflected the peculiar features of that life and history, and has been enabled by that very means to render us a service so effectual and popular. If we recall to fresh life and remembrance the great men of past ages, we Germans shall always put Luther in the van.

In Germany. There were in Germany some reasons why this four-hundredth anniversary of Lutheranism-which is but another expression for Germanisin-should have a special significance. The consolidation of the disjointed German states into a nation, which had been one of the dreams of Luther's life, had within less than half a generation come to be an established fact, after centuries of unavailing effort. To give a tangible evidence of this great fact, a colossal statue of Germania had been planned, to be placed opposite Bingen on the Rhine. This statue, thirty-three feet high, stands upon a lofty pedestal, erected upon a bold bluff, looking down upon and seeming to keep watch over a long stretch of that historic stream, now for the first time wholly German. It was just ready for unveiling in the autumn of this year. The inscription on its base reads, "In memory of the unanimous and victorious uprising of the German nation, and the restoration of the German Empire, 1870-1871." Herr Stocker, the court preacher at Berlin, speaking to an English audience upon commemoration - day, emphasized the vital connection between Luther and this "victorious uprising." "Prussia," he said, "like other countries, owes its growth to the Lutheran Reformation; and when the Crown Prince of Germany laid a wreath upon Luther's grave at Wittenberg, he well knew what he was doing. He gave public recognition to the truth that the new German Empire had its rise in the Protestant spirit."

The precise mode of the celebration in Germany developed itself but slowly. If any special day was to be chosen, one would imagine that the anniversary of Luther's birth would at once have suggested itself. But for some reason the authorities of Wittenberg—the place of all others most intimately associated with the public life of the reformer-chose to hold their celebration two months earlier, on Sept.