CHAPTER VII. THE EVOLUTIONISTS

WE have seen how the Transcendentalists tried to suppress vivisection, in spite of all it has done for the health and happiness of mankind. The sanguinary intolerance of Robespierre and other disciples of Rousseau was described earlier in this volume. And the notorious inability of Carlyle and Garrison to argue calmly with those who differed with them further illustrates the tendency of confidence in one's own infallibility. Only he who knows that he may be wrong can admit consistently that those who reject his favourite beliefs may be right. The Parliament of Religions showed that there has been a growing conviction of the equal rights of holders of all forms of belief and unbelief; this conviction has been promoted by recognition of two great facts: first, that knowledge is based upon experience, and, second, that no one's life is so complete that he has nothing to learn from other people. If they do not believe as he does, it may be merely because experience has taught them truth which he still needs to learn. Each one knows only in part; and therefore no one can afford to take it for granted that anyone else is completely in error.

I. This tolerant method of thought has gained greatly in popularity since Darwin proved its capacity to solve the problem of the origin of man. The possibility that all forms of life, even the highest, are results of a natural process of gradual development has often been suggested by poets and philosophers. The probability was much discussed by men of science early in the nineteenth century; but it was not until 1858 that sufficient evidence was presented to justify acceptance of evolution as anything better than merely a theory. Twenty-one years had then elapsed since Darwin began a long series of investigations. In the first place, he collected an irresistible number of cases of the influence of environment in causing variations in structure, and of the tendency of such variations to be inherited. Most men who accepted these propositions admitted their insufficiency to account for the multiplicity of species; but the explanation became complete when Darwin discovered that any plant or animal which is peculiarly fit for survival in the continual struggle for existence is likely to become largely represented in the next generation. A spontaneous variation which prolongs the life of its possessor may thus become not only more common but more firmly fixed in successive generations, until a new species is established.

To this tendency Darwin gave the name "natural selection"; but this term literally implies a deliberate choice by some superhuman power. Herbert Spencer proposed the phrase, "survival of the fittest"; but it must be remembered that the fitness is not necessarily that of greater moral worth.

There may be merely such a superiority in strength and cunning as enables savages to devour a missionary. Spencer says that "the expression, 'survival of the fittest,'" merely means "the leaving alive of those which are best able to utilise surrounding aids to life, and best able to combat or avoid surrounding dangers." Weeds are fitter than flowers for natural growth; and Joan of Arc proved unfit to survive in the contest against wicked men.

This discovery of Darwin's made it his duty to avow a view which was so unpopular that he felt as if he were about "confessing a murder." He was making "a big book" out of the facts he had collected, when a manuscript statement of conclusions like his own was sent him by Wallace, who had discovered independently the great fact of the survival of the fittest. Darwin wished at first to resign all claim to originality; but his friends insisted on his taking a share of the honour of the discovery. Accordingly an essay, which he had written in 1844, was read in company with that sent him by Wallace before the Linnæan Society, in London, on July 1, 1858. The importance of the new view was so well understood that the entire first edition, amounting to 1250 copies, of Darwin's _Origin of Species_, which book he wrote soon after, was sold on the day of publication, November 24, 1859. Other editions followed rapidly, with translations into many languages. No book of the century has been more revolutionary.

II. Theologians still insisted on the supernatural creation of each species of plant or animal, and especially of the human race, in its final form. The inference that man had been developed by natural processes out of some lower animal, was easily drawn from the _Origin of Species_, though not expressly stated therein; and there was great alarm among the clergy. An Anglican bishop, who was nicknamed "Soapy Sam" on account of his subserviency to public opinion, declared in a leading quarterly that Darwin held views "absolutely incompatible" with the Bible, and tending to "banish God from nature." Other prominent Episcopalians called the new book "an attempt to dethrone God," and propagate infidelity. Cardinal Manning denounced the "brutal philosophy" which taught that "There is no God, and the ape is our Adam." Both Catholics and Protestants started anti-Darwinian societies in London, and, in 1863, Huxley saw "the whole artillery of the pulpit brought upon the doctrine of evolution and its supporters." The example of England was followed promptly by France and Germany. America was distracted by civil war; and her men of science were so few and timid that the denunciations of Darwinism which were prompted by the theological and metaphysical prejudices of Agassiz were generally accepted as final decisions. The position of the Unitarians and Transcendentalists may be judged from the fact that, during a period of nearly three years after the publication of the _Origin of Species_, nothing was said about Darwinism in the extremely liberal divinity school where I was then a student. Evolutionism had to look for advocates in America to Spiritualists like Denton or unbelievers like Underwood at that period.

Clerical opposition increased the general unwillingness of scientific men to snatch up new views. As early as 1863, however, Darwin received the support of the famous geologist, Lyell, as well as of a younger naturalist destined to achieve even more brilliant success. Huxley has distinguished himself in arguments against the scientific value of the Bible. Among his other exploits was a demonstration that a chain, in which no link is missing, connects the horse with a small, extinct quadruped possessed of comparatively few equine peculiarities. In this case, transformation of species is an undeniable fact. Other young naturalists in England, as well as in Germany, gradually became willing to push the new view to its last results; and Darwin was encouraged to publish, in 1871, his elaborate account of the origin of our race, entitled _The Descent of Man_. The wrath of the churches blazed forth once more; and Gladstone entered the arena. Englishmen ventured no longer to say much about the differences between Moses and Darwin; for the obvious retort would have been, "So much the worse for Moses." A German Lutheran, however, bade his congregation choose between Christ and Darwin; and the infallibility of Moses was asserted so zealously by a Parisian Catholic as to win formal thanks from the Pope.

America was now wide awake; irreligious tendencies were assigned to evolutionism by the president of Yale, as well as by some Princeton professors; and one of these latter warned believers in the development of man that they would be punished as infidels after death. The verdict of men of science has at last been pronounced so plainly as to be accepted by thoroughly educated people in the Northern States; but the Southerners are more bigoted. Even so late as 1894, a professor of biology at the University of Texas was dismissed, in violation of contract, for teaching evolutionism. A similar offence had been found sufficient, ten years before, by the Presbyterians of South Carolina, for driving a devout member of their own sect from his chair in a theological seminary. That popular writer on geology, Winchell, was requested in 1878 by a Methodist bishop to resign a professorship at Nashville, Tennessee, where he had expressed doubt of the descent of all men from Adam. The geologist refused to resign, and the chair was suppressed.

Voltaire's chief grievance was the intolerance of Christianity. Paine and Bradlaugh complained that there was much immorality in the Old Testament. The most damaging of recent attacks have been made in the name of science. Genesis and geology had been found irreconcilable before the appearance of Darwinism; but the new system widened the breach. The most serious offence to the theologian, however, was that he could not longer point without danger of contradiction to beneficial peculiarities in the structure of plants and animals, as marks of the divine hand. The old argument about design was met by a demonstration that such peculiarities were apt to arise spontaneously, and become permanent under the pressure of the struggle for existence. The theologian has had to retreat to the position that Darwinism has not accounted for the soul, the intellect, and especially the intuitions.

III. Whether Darwin succeeded or not in this part of his work is not so important as the fact that, several years before he announced his great discovery, an elaborate account of the process by which the powers of thought and feeling have been developed gradually out of the lowest forms of consciousness was given by Herbert Spencer. The first edition of his _Principles of Psychology_, published in 1855, carried the explanation so far as to show the real origin and value of the intuitions. Their importance had been almost ignored by thinkers who relied entirely on individual experience, and greatly overrated by the Transcendentalists; but neither set of philosophers could explain these mysterious ideas. The infallibility of conscience is not to be reconciled with such facts as that Paul thought it his duty to persecute the Christians, or that Garrison, Sumner, John Brown, and Stonewall Jackson were among the most conscientious men of the century. The ancient Greeks agreed in recognising justice, but not benevolence, among the cardinal virtues; precisely the opposite error was made by Kant and Miss Cobbe; and a tabular view of all the lists of fundamental intuitions which have been made out by noted metaphysicians might be mistaken for a relic from the Tower of Babel. Emerson's religious instincts were not so much impressed as Parker's with the personality of God and immortality; but the difference seems almost insignificant when we remember what ideas of theology arose spontaneously in New Zealand. How widely the intuition of beauty varies may be judged from the inability of aesthetic Chinamen to admire the white teeth and rosy cheeks of an English belle. Intuition is plainly not an infallible oracle; but is it merely a misleading prejudice?

The puzzle was solved when Spencer showed that intuition is a result of the experience of the race. Courage, for instance, was so important for the survival of a primitive tribe in the struggle against its neighbours, that every man found his comfort and reputation depend mainly on his prowess. If he fought desperately he gained wealth, honour, and plenty of wives; but cowards were maltreated by other men and scorned even by the women. The bravest man left the largest number of offspring; and every boy was told so early and earnestly to be courageous as to develop a pugnacious instinct, which has come down to the present day in much greater strength than is needed for the ordinary demands of civilised life. We love war too much, because our ancestors were in danger of not loving it enough for their own safety. As courage ceased to be the one all-important excellence, industry, fidelity, and honesty were found so useful as to be encouraged with a care which has done much to mould conscience into its present shape. Other virtues were inculcated in the same way. The welfare of the family was found to depend largely on the fidelity of wife to husband; and the result was that chastity has held a much higher place in the feminine than in the masculine conscience. So our religious instincts owe much of their strength to the zeal with which our ancestors sought to avert the divine wrath. Thus we have ideas which were originally only vague inferences from primitive experience, but which have gradually gained such strength and definiteness, that they have much more power than if we had thought them out unaided by the past. Spencer himself says, "There have been, and still are, developing in the race certain fundamental moral intuitions" which "are the results of accumulated experiences of utility, gradually organised and inherited," but "have come to be quite independent of conscious experience." They "have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility"; and thus conscience has acquired its characteristic disinterestedness.

When we feel this inner prompting to a brave or honest action which must be done promptly or left undone, it is our duty to act without hesitation or regard to our own interest. We are serving our race in the way which its experience has taught. Suppose, however, that there is time enough for deliberation, and that we see a possibility of harm to our neighbours, our family, or even to our own highest welfare. In this case, we ought to compare the good and evil results carefully. We should also do well to consider what was the decision of the consciences of the best and wisest men under similar circumstances. If we neglect these precautions, we may be in danger of following not conscience but passion. There is also a possibility that conscience may embody only such primitive ideas of duty as have since been found incorrect. This has often been the case with persecutors and monarchists.

Generosity is still too apt to take an impulsive and reckless form which perpetuates pauperism. Spencer has taught us that conscience is worthy not only of obedience, but of education.

Spencer's attempt to substitute a thoughtful for a thoughtless goodness of character has been much aided by his protest against such undiscriminating exhortations to self-sacrifice as are constantly heard from the pulpit. Good people, and especially good women, welcome the idea of giving up innocent pleasure and enduring needless pain. The glory of martyrdom blinds them to the fact that, as Spencer says in his _Psychology_, "Pains are the correlatives of actions injurious to the organism, while pleasures are the correlatives of actions conducive to its welfare." In other words, "Pleasures are the incentives to life-supporting acts, and pains the deterrents from life-destroying acts." Abstinence from pleasure may involve loss of health. Self-sacrifice is scarcely possible without some injury to mind or body; as is the case with people who make it a religious duty to read no interesting books and take scarcely any exercise on Sunday. It is further true that "The continual acceptance of benefits at the expense of a fellow-being is morally injurious"; as "The continual giving up of pleasures and continual submission to pains are physically injurious." Blind self-sacrifice "curses giver and receiver--physically deteriorates the one and morally deteriorates the other," "the outcome of the policy being destruction of the worthy in making worse the unworthy." No wonder that men are stronger, and also more selfish, than women. Almost all self-sacrifice involves loss of individual liberty. The subjection of women has been deepened by their readiness to sacrifice themselves to those they love; their fondness for martyrdom often leads them into the sin of marrying without love; and generosity of heart facilitates ruin. Women would really be more virtuous if they felt less obligation to their lovers and more to their race.

IV. Spencer's psychological discoveries were corollaries to that great principle of evolution of which he made the following announcement as early as 1857 in the _Westminster Review_. After declaring his belief in "that divergence of many races from one race which we inferred must have continually been occurring during geologic time," he stated that "The law of all progress is to be found in these varied evolutions of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous," or in other words, "out of the simple into the complex." The discoveries of Darwin and Wallace were not announced before 1858, but Spencer avowed in 1852 his belief in "the theory of evolution" or "development hypothesis," according to which "complex organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple ones." It was without any aid or suggestion from Darwin that Spencer's statement of the law of evolution was brought into the final form published in 1862. Evolution was then described as change, not only from the simple to the complex, but also from the chaotic to the concentric and consolidated, or, in Spencer's own words, "from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity." Progress, he says, consists in integration as well as differentiation. There is an increase in permanence and definiteness as well as in variety. Higher forms are not only more complex and unlike than lower ones, but also more stable and more strongly marked.

Spencer has been represented by some Transcendentalists as Darwin's pupil; but the whole system just described would, in all probability, have been built up in substantially its present form, if both Darwin and Wallace had kept their discoveries to themselves. The only difference would have been that Spencer could not have been sustained by such a great mass of evidence. All these facts were collected by Darwin merely to prove the physical development of men and other animals from lower forms of life; but Spencer showed that all the phenomena of thought and feeling, as well as of astronomy, geology, and chemistry, are results of the great laws of integration and differentiation. All human history and social relations can be accounted for in this way. And if this extension had not been given to the principle of evolution, Darwin's discoveries might soon have ceased to have much interest, except for students of natural history. Each of the two great evolutionists helped the other gain influence; but their co-operation was almost as unintentional as that of two luminaries which form a double star.

V. Spencer has done much to diminish intolerance, by teaching, as early as 1862, that all religions are necessary steps in the upward march of evolution.

He has also attempted to reconcile religion and science, by teaching that the one all-essential belief is in a great unknowable reality, which is not only inscrutable but inconceivable. In writing about this supreme power, he uses capitals with a constancy which would look like an assumption of knowledge, if the same habit were not followed in regard to many other words of much less importance. He admits that "We cannot decide between the alternative suppositions, that phenomena are due to the variously conditioned workings of a single force, and that they are due to the conflict of two forces." "Matter cannot be conceived," he says, "except as manifesting forces of attraction and repulsion"; but he also says that these antagonistic and conflicting forces "must not be taken as realities but as our symbols of the reality," "the forms under which the workings of the unknowable are cognisable." This creed is accepted by many American evolutionists. It is the doctrine of one of Spencer's most elaborate and brilliant interpreters, Professor John Fiske, of such popular clergymen as Doctors Minot J. Savage and Lyman Abbott, and of many of the members of that energetic organisation, "The Brooklyn Ethical Association." _The Open Court_ of Chicago and other periodicals are working avowedly for "the Religion of Science"; but that is not to be established without much closer conformity to the old-fashioned creeds and ceremonies than has been made by Spencer. His later works seem more orthodox than his earlier ones; but his final decision is that "The very notions, origin, cause, and purpose, are relations belonging to human thought, which are probably irrelevant to the ultimate reality." He has also admitted that the proposition, "Evolution is caused by mind," "cannot be rendered into thought." And he is right in saying that he has nowhere suggested worship.

Whether he has proposed a reconciliation, or only a compromise, whether evolutionism will ever be as popular in the pulpit as Transcendentalism, and whether there is not more reality in the forces of attraction and repulsion than in Spencer's great unknowable, are problems which I will not discuss. Darwin was an agnostic like Huxley, who held that "We know nothing of what may be beyond phenomena," and "Science commits suicide when she adopts a creed." Huxley pronounced the course of nature "neither moral nor immoral, but non-moral," and declared that "The ethical progress of society depends not on imitating the cosmic process but on combating it." The severity of his criticism of the Gospel narratives called out threats of prosecution for blasphemy. He avowed "entire concurrence" with Haeckel, who holds that belief in a personal God and an immortal soul are incompatible with the fundamental principles of evolution. The German scientist argues in his elaborate history of the development of animals, that life is no manifestation of divine power, working with benevolent purpose, but merely the necessary result of unconscious forces, inherent in the chemical constitution and physical properties of matter, and acting mechanically according to immutable laws. The position of Haeckel and Huxley is all the more significant because Frederic Harrison knows of "no single thinker in Europe who has come forward to support this religion of an unknown cause."

VI. A much more important controversy has been called out by Spencer's theory of the limits of government. As early as 1842 he proposed "the limitation of state action to the maintenance of equitable relations among citizens." His _Social Statics_ demanded, in 1850, as a necessary condition of high development, "the liberty of each, limited only by the like liberty of all." His ideal would be a government where "every man has freedom to do all he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man." These propositions are repeated in the revised edition of 1892, which differs from the earlier one in omitting a denial of the right of private property in land, and also a demand for female suffrage. How far Spencer had changed his views may be seen in his volume on _Justice_. Both editions of _Social Statics_ deny the right of governments to support churches, public schools, boards of health, poorhouses, lighthouses, or mints. Spencer would have titles to land guaranteed by the State, and property-holders protected against unjust lawsuits; but otherwise the government ought to confine itself, he thinks, to managing the army, navy, and police.

This position is defended by an appeal to the fact that the citizen is most energetic and intelligent where he is most free to act for himself. No American is as helpless before pestilence or famine as a Russian peasant, or as afraid to go to a burning house until summoned by the police. A despotism may begin with a strong army; but it ends, like the Roman Empire, in the weakness which it has brought on by crushing the spirit of its soldiers. Strong governments make weak men. Never was there a mightier army than was given by the French Republic to Napoleon. Industrial prosperity depends even more closely than military glory on the energy of men who have been at liberty to think and act freely. People develop most vigorously where they are least meddled with. The average man knows much more than his rulers do about his own private business; and he is active to promote it in ways which secure the general welfare.

Great stress is laid not only in _Social Statics_ but in Spencer's book on _The Man versus the State_, and in several essays, on the many times that the British Government has increased an evil by trying to cure it. What is said about its extravagance will not surprise any American who remembers what vast sums are squandered by Congress. The post-office is often spoken of as proof that our Government could run our railroads; but one of Boston's best postmasters said, "No private business could be managed like this without going into bankruptcy." The British Government has a monopoly of the telegraph; and introduction of the telephone was very difficult in consequence. In Victoria, the Postmaster-General has abused his privileges so much as to appoint a "sporting agent" to telegraph the results of a horse-race; and this same highly protectionist colony has had laws forbidding any shop to be open after 7 P.M., except on Saturday, and any woman to work more than forty-eight hours a week in any factory. How governments interfered in former centuries with people's right to feed, clothe, employ, and amuse themselves, seems almost inconceivable at present.

Persecution was one among many forms of mischievous meddling. Locke, in arguing for toleration in 1689, was obliged to take the ground that "The whole jurisdiction of the magistrate reaches only" to securing unto all the people "life, liberty, health," and also "outward things such as money, lands, houses, furniture, and the like." "Government," he said, "hath no end but preservation, and therefore can never have a right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the subject." Clearer language was used by those French patriots who declared in the Constitution of 1791 that liberty consists in ability to do everything which brings no harm to others; and, two years afterwards, that the liberty of each citizen should extend to where that of some other citizen begins. Nearly fifty years later, a theory very like Spencer's was published by Wilhelm von Humboldt, brother of the great naturalist. Among the many writers who have held that government ought not to be merely limited but repudiated totally was Thoreau. It was in 1854 that this zealous abolitionist publicly renounced his allegiance to a great anti-slavery commonwealth, and that he asserted, in _Walden_, the necessity of preserving individual liberty by conforming as little as possible to any social usages, even that of working regularly in order to support one's self and family in comfort. That same year, Spencer showed in his essay on _Manners and Fashion_ the difference between a regulation by which public opinion tries to prevent rude people from making themselves unnecessarily disagreeable to their neighbours, and one which encourages dissipation by arbitrarily check-ing innocent amusement. Even in the latter case, however, there is, as he says, but little gain from any solitary nonconformity. Reform must be carried on in co-operation.

That powerful assailant of Transcendentalism, John Stuart Mill, was not an evolutionist; but it was largely due to his liberal aid that the system of differentiation and integration was published. This generosity was consistent with his own position, that all opinions ought to have a hearing, and especially those which are novel and unpopular, for they are peculiarly likely to contain some exposure of ancient error or revelation of new truth. This fact was set forth with such ability in his book, _On Liberty_, in 1859, that several long passages were quoted in the public protest, delivered in Ohio five years later by Vallandigham, against the war then carried on for bringing back the seceded States. Mill holds that neither government nor public opinion ought to interfere with any individual, except "to prevent doing harm to others." He says, for instance, that there would be no tyranny in forcing parents to let their children have education enough to become safe members of society. Such a law could scarcely be justified by the principle of giving all the liberty to each compatible with the like liberty of all. Among the restrictions which Mill mentions as oppressive are those in England and America against selling liquor, gambling, and Sunday amusements. He admits the difficulty of deciding "how far liberty may be legitimately invaded for the prevention of crime."

VII. It was in full conformity with the principles of Mill, Spencer, and Locke that the Constitution of Louisiana, as revised in 1879, declared that the only legitimate object of government "is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property. When it assumes other functions, it is usurpation and oppression." Similar sentiments have been occasionally expressed in political platforms. Such narrow limits have not, so far as I know, ever been observed in the United States or in any other civilised land. Few people love liberty so much as not to be willing that the state should give them security against conflagration and contagious disease. There is also a general demand for such safety as is given by roads, streets, bridges, lighthouses, and life-saving stations. The necessity of hospitals, asylums, and poorhouses is manifest. If all this expense had to be met by public-spirited individuals, it is probable that their wealth would prove insufficient. It is further necessary for the public safety that there should be compulsory vaccination during epidemics of smallpox, confinement of dangerous lunatics and tramps, rescue of children from vicious parents, and maintenance of what ought not to be called compulsory but guaranteed education. Marriage has to be made binding for the protection of mothers as well as children. The thirst for drink needs at least as much restraint as is kept up in Scandinavia. And the tendency of bad money to drive out good is strong enough to justify laws against circulation of depreciated currency.

Public schools are particularly important in America, where presidential and congressional elections are apt to turn on financial issues which can scarcely be understood by men not thoroughly educated. Spencer's objections apply more closely to the European system, that of centralisation of management, than to the American. It is well to know also that he was misled by a hasty reference, perhaps by some assistant, to an English statistician named Fletcher. This high authority did admit, in 1849, that he found "a superficial evidence against instruction." He went on, however, to say much which is not mentioned in _Social Statics_, and which proved the evidence to be only superficial. By classifying crimes according to enormity, he showed that the worst were most frequent in the least educated districts. He also discovered that those counties in England where ability to sign the marriage register was most common were most free from paupers, dangerous criminals, and illegitimate children. "The conclusion is therefore irresistible," says Fletcher, "that education is essential to the security of modern society." Most of the other testimony brought forward in _Social Statics_ is invalidated by Fletcher's method; and Spencer added nothing in the second edition to the insufficient statements in the first.

British education has improved greatly in both quality and quantity since 1876; but the prisons of England and Wales had only two-thirds as many inmates in 1890 as in 1878, and only one-half as large a part of the population. The most dangerous prisoners were only one-third as numerous in 1890 and 1891 as forty-five years earlier; and the percentage of forgers only one-tenth as great as in 1857. We ought further to remember the almost complete unanimity of opinion in favour of free education wherever it is universal.

Public schools in America are all the more useful because they are superintended by town and city officials, elected in great part by men who know them personally. This is also the case with the boards of health, and the managers of poorhouses, cemeteries, public libraries, and parks. Among other subjects of local self-government are the roads, bridges, streets, and sewers. Our large cities are notoriously misgoverned, but it will be easier to raise the character of the officials than to contract their powers. Much is to be hoped from civil service reform, proportional representation, and nonpartisan elections. Town affairs are usually so carefully looked after by people not in office as to be managed for the public welfare. Both in towns and cities the tendency is to enlarge rather than contract the functions of the government. A proposal that any city should let tenements or sell coal more cheaply than is done by individuals, would seem to be for the advantage of everybody except a few payers of heavy taxes. The majority of voters would care little about increase of taxation, in comparison with the prospect of more demand for labour and greater activity in business. It is easy to make extravagance popular where the majority rules. Our State constitutions would probably make it impossible for coal to be sold or tenements let by cities and towns; but these latter often carry on gas-works, water-works, electric roads, and other highly beneficial industries. This may be necessary to check the rapacity of corporations; but otherwise there is too much danger of extravagance, discouragement of individual enterprise, and delay in improving the processes monopolised by the municipality. Some evils would be lessened by a transfer of the control of lighthouses and life-saving stations from the national Government to that of the nearest cities, or else of single States.

Our people are much better able to judge of the success of State than of Federal legislation and management. Of course the chief duties of the State are to pass laws for the protection of life and property against crime, and to manage such indispensable penal, charitable, and educational institutions as are not provided by the municipalities. It is still necessary for the States of our Union to keep up the militia; but perhaps the best thing that could be done for the public safety would be to have tramps kept from crime, and assisted to employment by a State police. Ownership of real estate would be more secure, and sale easier, if titles were guaranteed by the State; and it would also do well, as Spencer suggests, to help people of moderate means resist lawsuits brought to extort money. It seems, at all events, well that our States keep up their boards of health, and their supervision of banks, railroads, steamboats, and factories. There are a great many unnecessary laws, as, for instance, was one in Massachusetts for selling coal below market price. This was fortunately decided to be unconstitutional; but whether this commonwealth ought to continue to supply free text-books, especially in high schools, seems to me questionable. Many individualists object to laws against gambling, selling liquor, and other conduct which does no direct injury except to those who take part voluntarily. There are vicious tendencies enough in human nature, I think, to justify attempts to keep temptation out of sight.

No advantage of this kind can be claimed for the Sunday laws in our Eastern and Southern States. It is certainly desirable to have one day a week of rest from labour and business; but it is equally true that a man's ploughing his field or weeding his garden does not infringe on the liberty of his neighbours, diminish their security of person and property, or encourage their vicious propensities, even on Sunday. It is setting a bad example to break any law; but I do not think that any citizen of Massachusetts was seriously corrupted by resisting the Fugitive Slave Act; and I doubt if any Vermonter was morally the worse for breaking the law in that State against Sunday "visits from house to house, except from motives of humanity or charity, or for moral and religious edification." It is better to have the laws obeyed intelligently than blindly; and those really worthy of respect would have more authority if every prohibition which is never enforced, except out of malice, were repealed. Much aid is given to morality by such religious observances as are voluntary and conscientious; but compulsory observance breeds both slaves and rebels.

How far our Sunday laws are meant to encourage the peculiar usages of the popular sects is seen in the fact that, since 1877, about 150 professed Christians, who had kept the Sabbath on the day set apart in the Bible, were arrested on the charge of having profaned Sunday by such actions as ploughing a retired field, weeding a garden, cutting wood needed for immediate use, or making a dress. They refused to pay any fine; most of them were imprisoned accordingly; in one case the confinement lasted 129 days; two deaths were hastened by incarceration; and in the summer of 1895 eight of these "Saturdarians," as they were nicknamed, were working in a chain-gang on the roads in Tennessee. One of the eight was a clergyman. Among the commonwealths which prosecuted observers of the original Sabbath as Sabbath-breakers were Georgia, Maryland, Missouri, Arkansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and seven other States. Such prosecutions were too much like persecutions; for people who kept neither Saturday nor Sunday were not so much molested. If the Sunday laws were really meant for the public welfare, every citizen would be allowed to choose his own Sabbath, and no one who kept Saturday sacred would be required to rest on Sunday also. Such liberal legislation has actually been passed by Rhode Island and many other States.

How strict the law is against doing business on Sunday may be judged from the fact that in 1896 a decrepit old woman was sent to jail in New York City for selling a couple of bananas, and a boy of fifteen was arrested for selling five cents' worth of coal in January. Three men were fined for selling umbrellas in the street on a rainy Sunday in 1895, and others were arrested for selling five cents' worth of ice. People who have no refrigerators suffer under the difficulty of buying ice, fruit, and meat on a hot Sunday in our Eastern cities.

Sunday laws and customs differ so widely in our various States, that they cannot all be wise and just. Rest from labour and business is secured in Southern California, without State legislation, by the action of public opinion; and were this to become too weak, it would be reinforced by the trades-unions. Personal liberty is not necessarily violated by laws prohibiting disturbance of public worship; but it would be if anyone were compelled to testify in court, or sit on the jury, or do any other business elsewhere, on any day set apart for rest by his conscience and religion. There seems to be little necessity for other legislation, except under peculiar local circumstances to which town and city magistrates are better able than members of State and national legislatures to do justice. The question, what places of business that have no vicious tendencies ought to be allowed to open on Sunday, might settle itself, as does the question how early they are to close on other days of the week. There needs no law to prevent business being done at night. Stores which could offer nothing that many people need to buy on Sunday, would have so few customers that the proprietors could ill afford to open their doors. Where the demand is as great and innocent as it is for fresh meat and fruit in hot weather, the interest of the proprietor is no more plain than is the duty of the legislator and magistrate. People employed in hotels, stables, telegraph offices, libraries, museums, and parks, can, of course, protect themselves from overwork, as domestic servants do, by stipulating for holidays and half-holidays.

Whatever may be the gain to public health from cessation of labour and business on Sunday, there is no such advantage, but rather injury, from the prohibition of healthy recreations and amusements, which are acknowledged to be perfectly innocent on at least six days of the week. Sunday is by no means so strictly observed, especially in this respect, on the continent of Europe as in the United States. Sabbatarianism is peculiarly an American and British institution; and this fact justifies the position that it is by no means a necessary condition of the security, or even the welfare, of civilised nations. If our Sunday laws cannot be proved to be necessary, they must be admitted to be oppressive. Over-taxation is but a slight grievance compared with the tyranny of sending men and women to jail for inability or unwillingness to pay the fines imposed in 1895 by the State of Tennessee for working on their farms, or in Massachusetts soon after for playing cards in their own rooms. Further consideration of the question, what amusements should be permitted on Sunday, will be found in an appendix.

Such problems are peculiarly unfit for treatment by our central Government. Its chief duty, of course, is protection of our people against invasion and rebellion; and the authority of the President and Congress ought not to be weakened by vain attempts to settle disputes which would be dealt with much more satisfactorily by the cities and towns. A Sunday law too lax for Pennsylvania might be too strict for California. The system of post-offices is too well adapted for the general welfare to be given up hastily; but the Government ought to surrender the monopoly which now makes it almost impossible for citizens to free themselves from dependence on disobliging or incompetent postmasters. I have nothing to say against the Census, Education, Health, and Patent Bureaus, nor against the Smithsonian Museum, except that our citizens have a right to use their own property as freely on Sunday as on any other day of the week. I do not see why our Government should have more than that of other nations to do with the issue of paper money; but I leave the bank question to abler pens.

The tariff is a much plainer issue. We are told in _Social Statics_ that "A government trenches upon men's liberties of action" in obstructing commercial intercourse; "and by so doing directly reverses its function. To secure for each man the fullest freedom to exercise his faculties, compatible with the like freedom of all others, we find to be the state's duty. Now trade-prohibitions and trade-restrictions not only do not secure this freedom, but they take it away, so that in enforcing them the state is transformed from a maintainer of rights into a violator of rights." The obstacles to importation deliberately set up by American tariffs, indirectly check exportation; for unwillingness to buy from any other nation diminishes not only its willingness but its ability to buy our products in return. The United States are actually exporting large amounts of cattle, wheat, and cotton, as well as of boots and shoes, agricultural implements, steel rails, hardware, watches, and cotton cloth. These commodities are produced by Americans who can defy foreign competition. In some cases the tariff enables them to raise their prices at home, to the loss of their fellow-citizens. Prices abroad cannot be raised by our Government. What it can and does do is to burden both farms and factories by duties on lumber, glass, coal, wool, woollen goods, and many other imports. The rates are arranged with a view to increase, not individual liberty or public security, but the profits of managers of enterprises which would not pay without such help. Men who are carrying on profitable industries have to make up part of what is lost in unprofitable ones. In fact, the cost of living is increased needlessly for all our citizens, except the privileged few.

There would be less injustice in aiding new enterprises by bounties; but the proper authorities to decide how much money should be voted for such purposes are the cities and towns. Some of the makers of our national Constitution wished to make tariff legislation in Congress impossible except by a majority of two-thirds; and this might properly be required for all measures not planned in behalf of individual liberty or the public safety. Much of the business now done by the nation ought to be transferred to the States. They took the lead between 1830 and 1870 in improving rivers and harbours, building railroads, and digging canals. The result of transferring such work to Congress was that in 1890 it voted $25,000,000 to carry on 435 undertakings, more than one-fourth of which had been judged unnecessary by engineers. Two years later, four times as many new jobs were voted as had been recommended by the House committee. Among these plans was one, in regard to the Hudson River, which was the proper business of the State of New York. The extravagance of our pension system is notorious. If the restriction proposed by Spencer is applicable anywhere, it is to central rather than local governments.

VIII. Great as are the evils of unnecessary laws, Spencer's remedy is too sweeping to be universally supported by evolutionists. Huxley protests against it as "administrative Nihilism," and declares that if his next-door neighbour is allowed to bring up children "untaught and untrained to earn their living, he is doing his best to restrict my freedom, by increasing the burden of taxation for the support of gaols and workhouses which I have to pay." His conclusion is that "No limit is or can be theoretically set to state interference." The impossibility of drawing "a hard and fast line" is admitted even by so extreme an individualist as Wordsworth Donisthorpe, who complains that "Crimes go unpunished in England," while the "Great National Pickpocket" is busy "reading through all the comedies and burlesques brought out in the theatres," "running after little boys who dare to play pitch-farthing," or "going on sledging expeditions to the North Pole."

Lecky agrees so far with Spencer and Mill as to say, in _Democracy and Liberty_, that punishment should "be confined, as a general rule, to acts which are directly injurious to others," and accordingly that "With Sunday amusements in private life, the legislator should have no concern." As a check to over-legislation, he recommends biennial sessions, instead of annual; and he protests against the despotism of trades-unions. His strongest point against Spencer is that sanitary legislation has added several years to the average length of life in England and Wales, prevented more than eighty thousand deaths there in a single year, and actually reduced the death-rate of the army in India by more than four-fifths.

IX. Spencer has succeeded in increasing the number of individualists so much, that Donisthorpe says they can be counted by the thousand, though there were scarcely enough in 1875 in England to fill an omnibus. Transcendentalism had made individualism comparatively common long before in America. The principle of not interfering with other people, except to prevent their wronging us, is fully applicable, as Spencer says, to the relation of husband with wife, and also to that of parent and teacher with child. It could also be followed with great advantage in the case of domestic servants. There can be no doubt of the correctness of the position, taken in the _Principles of Sociology_, that delight in war has a tendency to stifle love of liberty. Sparta, Russia, and the new German Empire show that where the ideal of a nation is military glory, "The individual is owned by the State." The citizens are so graded, that "All are masters of those below and subjects of those above." The workers must live for the benefit of the fighters, and both be controlled closely by the government. Armies flourish on the decay of individual rights. How difficult it was to avoid this, during some bloody years, even in America, has been shown in Chapter IV. A nation of shopkeepers is better fitted than a nation of soldiers to develop free institutions.

One of Spencer's objections to Socialism is that it would "end in military despotism." Nothing else could replace competition so far as to keep a nation industrious. Spencer is right in saying, "Benefit and worth must vary together," which means that wages and salaries should correspond to value of work. Otherwise, "The society decays from increase of its least worthy members and decrease of its most worthy members."

These facts are so generally known already, that there is less danger than is thought by Spencer, of either the national establishment of Socialism or of a ruinous extension of governmental interference. The average American is altogether too willing to have his wealthy neighbours taxed for his own benefit; but he knows that he can make himself and his family more comfortable by his own exertions than his poor neighbours are; and he is not going to let any government forbid his doing so. He does not object to public libraries, and perhaps would not to free theatres; but he would vote down any plan which would prevent his using his money and time to his own greatest advantage. He is sometimes misled by plausible excuses for wasting public money, and arresting innocent people; but he insists on at least some better pretext than was made for the old-fashioned meddling with food, clothing, business, and religion. He may not call himself an individualist; but he will never practise Socialism.

This sort of man is already predominant in Great Britain, as well as in America; and multiplication of the type elsewhere is fostered by mighty tendencies. The duty of treating every form of religion according to ethical and not theological standards is rapidly becoming the practice of all civilised governments; and persecution is peculiar to Turkey and Russia. These two despotisms form, with Germany, the principal exceptions to the rule that political liberty is on the increase throughout Europe, especially in the form of local self-government. The nineteenth century has made even the poorest people more secure than ever before from oppression and lawless violence, as well as from pestilence and famine. Destitution is relieved more amply and wisely, while industry and intelligence are encouraged by opportunity to enjoy comforts and luxuries once almost or altogether out of the reach of monarchs. The fetters formerly laid on trade of cities with their own suburbs have been broken; and the examples of Great Britain and New South Wales are proving that nations profit more by helping than hindering one another in the broad paths of commerce. Industrial efficiency has certainly been much promoted by the tendency, not only of scientific education but of manual training, to substitute knowledge of realities for quarrels about abstractions. All these changes favour the extension of free institutions and also of individual liberty, wherever peace can be maintained. Industrial nations gain more than warlike ones by encouraging intellectual independence; but the general advantage is great enough to ensure the final triumph of liberty.

APPENDIX: SUNDAY RECREATION

THIS is much more common in New England and Great Britain than it was in the eighteenth century. The dinner has become the best, instead of the worst in the week. Scarcely anyone rises early; and nobody is shocked at reading novels. There is an enormous circulation in both English and American cities of Sunday papers whose aim is simply amusement. There is plenty of lively music in the parlours, as well as of merry talk in which clergymen are ready to lead. People who have comfortable homes can easily make Sunday the pleasant-est day of the week.

For people who cannot get much recreation at home, there are increasing opportunities to go to concerts, picture-galleries, and museums. Among the reading-rooms thrown open on Sunday in America about 1870 was that of the Boston Public Library; and no difference is now made in this great institution among the seven days, except that more children's books and magazines are accessible on Sunday. What important museums are now open in London, Boston, and New York have been already mentioned in Chapter VI. These opportunities are still limited; but there is no obstacle, except that of bad weather, to excursions on foot or bicycle, behind horse or locomotive, in electric car or steamboat, to beaches, ponds, and other places of amusement. The public parks are crowded all day long in summer; and people who go to church in the morning have no scruple about walking or riding for pleasure in the afternoon. These practices were expressly sanctioned by Massachusetts in 1887, and by New Jersey in 1893; and the old law against Sunday visiting has been repealed since 1880 in Vermont.

The newer States have taken care not to pass such absurd statutes. I believe that the majority of our people were willing, as for instance was that prominent Episcopalian, Bishop Potter, to have the Chicago Exposition open on Sundays. Theatres and baseball grounds attract crowds of visitors in our cities, especially those west of the Alleghanies. Whatever changes are made in the East will probably be in the direction of greater liberty. The only question is how fast the present opportunities of recreation ought to be increased.

No one would now agree with Dr. Chalmers in calling the Sabbath "an expedient for pacifying the jealousies of a God of vengeance." Good people have ceased to think, as the Puritans did, that "Pleasures are most carefully to be avoided" on every day of the week, or that "Amity to ourselves is enmity against God." Preachers no longer recommend "abstaining not only from unlawful pleasures, but also from lawful delights." Popular clergymen now say with Dr. Bellows: "Amusement is not only a privilege but a duty, indispensable to health of body and mind, and essential even to the best development of religion itself." "I put amusement among the necessaries and not the luxuries of life." "It is as good a friend to the church as to the theatre, to sound morals and unsuperstitious piety as to health and happiness,... an interest of society which the religious class instead of regarding with hostility and jealousy, ought to encourage and direct." "There is hardly a more baleful error in the world than that which has produced the feud between morality and amusement, piety and pleasure."

The fact is that pleasure means health. As I have said in a newspaper entitled _The Index_: "It is a violation of the laws of health for anyone, not absolutely bed-ridden or crushed by fatigue, to spend thirty-six hours without some active exercise in the open air. Trying to take enough on Saturday to last until Monday, is dangerous, and most people have little chance for healthy exercise except on Sunday. The poor, ignorant girl who has had no fresh air for six days ought to be encouraged to take it freely on the seventh. And we all need our daily exercise just as much as our regular food and sleep. The two thousand delegates who asked, in behalf of ninety thousand working men, in 1853, to have the Crystal Palace open on Sundays, were right in declaring that 'Physical recreation is as necessary to the working man as food and drink on the Sabbath.' The fact is that pleasure is naturally healthy even when not involving active exercise. Dark thoughts breed disease like dark rooms. The man who never laughs has something wrong about his digestion or his conscience. Herbert Spencer has proved that our pleasant actions are beneficial, while painful ones are injurious both to ourselves and to our race. (_Principles of Psychology_, vol. i., pp. 278-286; Am. Ed.). Thus Sunday amusements are needed for the general health.

"They are also necessary for the preservation of morality. This consists in performing the actions which benefit ourselves and our neighbours, in other words, pleasant ones, and abstaining from whatever is painful and injurious. It is only in exceptional cases that we can make others happy by suffering pain ourselves. Now and then the paths of virtue and pleasure diverge; but they always come together again. As a rule, they traverse precisely the same ground and in exactly the same direction. This is very fortunate; for if pleasure were always vicious, virtue would be hateful and impossible. The most blessed of all peacemakers is he who keeps virtue and pleasure from falling out. There is no better text than that which the little girl said she had learned at Sunday-school: 'Chain up a child and away she will go!' Even so strict a man as Dr. Johnson said: 'I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep people from vice.' Is there no need of them on the day when there is more drinking, gambling, and other gross vice than on any other? Need I say what day keeps our policemen and criminal courts most busy, or crowds our hospitals with sufferers from riotous brawls? Has not the experience of two hundred and fifty years justified those English statesmen who showed themselves much wiser than their Puritan contemporaries in recommending archery, dancing, and other diversions on Sunday, because forbidding them 'sets up filthy tippling and drunkenness?' To keep a man who does not care to go to church from getting any amusement, is to push him towards the saloon. And not only the laws against liquor selling, but others even more necessary for our safety, would be much better enforced if we did not encourage lawlessness by keeping up statutes which our best men and women violate without scruple and with impunity, or which actually prevent good people from taking such recreation as they know they ought to have. Outgrown ordinances should not be suffered to drag just and necessary laws down into contempt. "Nobody wants to revive those old laws of Massachusetts Bay which forbade people to wear lace, or buy foreign fruit, or charge more than a fixed price for a day's work. No more Quakers will ever swing from a Boston gallows merely for preaching. But our laws against Sunday amusements are in the same spirit as that which hung Mary Dyer. In old times, government kept continually telling people what to do, and took especial pains to make them go to church on Sunday. If they stayed away, they were fined; if they did not become members, they were not allowed to vote; if they got up rival services, they were hung; if they took any amusement on Sunday, they were whipped. All four classes of laws for the same unjust end have passed away, except that against Sunday recreation. This still survives in a modified form. But even in this shape it is utterly irreconcilable with the fundamental principles of our government. All American legislation, from the Declaration of Independence, rests on the great truth that our government is founded in order to secure us in our unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our State is a limited partnership for mutual protection. We carry it on in order to make our freedom more complete; and we tolerate no restrictions on ourselves except such as are necessary conditions of the greatest possible liberty. These principles are already fully acknowledged on six days of the week, but only partly on the seventh. Still, there is a growing recognition of the likeness between laws against Sunday amusements and such prohibitions of eating meat in Lent as once caused people to be burned alive."

A weekly day of rest is a blessing; but David Swing is right in saying that "Absolute rest, perfectly satisfactory to horse and dog, is not adequate to the high nature of man." Complete torpor of mind and body is more characteristic of a Hindoo fakir than of a Christian saint. Should those who wish to rest as much as possible on Sunday sleep in church? There is nothing irreligious in fresh air. The tendency of outdoor exercise to purify and elevate our thoughts is so strong that Kingsley actually defended playing cricket on Sunday as "a carrying out of the divineness of the Sabbath." If there is no hostility between religion and amusement on six days of the week, there cannot be much on the seventh.

No Protestants are more religious than the Swedes and Norwegians. Everybody goes to church; there is theological teaching in the public-schools; and advocacy of liberal religious views was punished in 1888 with imprisonment. No Scandinavian objects, so far as I know, to indoor games, croquet, dancing, or going to the theatre on Sunday; and these amusements are acknowledged to be perfectly proper throughout continental Europe. No one who allows himself any exercise or recreation on Sunday has a right to say that his neighbours do not need more than he does. Lyman Beecher could not preach his best on any day when he did not work hard at sawing wood or shovelling sand in his cellar. There would be less dyspepsia on Monday if there were more exercise on Sunday. Herbert Spencer tells us that "Happiness is the most powerful of tonics. By accelerating the circulation of the blood, it facilitates the performance of every function; and so tends alike to increase health where it exists, and to restore it when it has been lost. Hence the essential superiority of play to gymnastics."

A Bible Dancing Class is said to have been organised, in deference to such facts, in New Jersey by an Episcopalian pastor, who perhaps wishes to accomplish Jeremiah's prediction of the Messianic kingdom, "Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance." Among other liberal clergymen is Brooke Herford, who says: "We want Sunday to be the happiest day in all the week. Keep it free from labour, but free for all quiet, innocent recreations." Rev. Charles Voysey wrote me in 1887, lamenting the immorality arising "from the curse of having nothing to do or nowhere to go on Sunday afternoons and evenings." "Young persons especially," he said, "would be better, and morally more safe, for greater opportunities of innocent pleasure and games at the hours of enforced idleness on the Sunday."

The spirit of the legislators is changing like that of the clergy. The first laws against Sunday amusement were passed by men who thought all pleasure vicious on every day of the week. Our present statutes are kept in force by people who like amusement, and get all they want of it; but who make it almost impossible for their poor neighbours, in order to conciliate ecclesiastical prejudice. "They bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne and lay them on men's shoulders"; but they themselves do not feel the weight.

Whatever may be the advantage of keeping Sunday, it cannot be kept religiously when it is kept compulsorily. Rest from unnecessary labour and business on one day every week may be for the public welfare; but this rest is not made more secure by indiscriminate prohibitions of amusement. The idlest man is the most easily tempted to disturb his neighbours. No man's property is more safe or his personal liberty more secure because his neighbours are liable to be fined for playing golf. Laws against Sunday recreation do not protect but violate individual liberty. A free government has no business to interfere with the right of the citizens to take healthy exercise and innocent amusement whenever they choose.

These considerations would justify a protest, not only against the Sunday laws made by Congress for the District of Columbia, but also against the statutes of every State in the Union, except Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, and Wyoming. "Whoever is present at any sport, game, play, or public diversion, except a concert of sacred music, or an entertainment given by a religious or charitable society, the proceeds of which, if any, are to be devoted exclusively to a religious or charitable purpose," on what is called "the Lord's day" in Massachusetts is liable to a fine of five dollars; the penalty for taking part may be fifty dollars; and the proprietor or manager may be fined as much as five hundred dollars. New Jersey still keeps her old law against "singing, fiddling, or other music for the sake of merriment"; and express prohibitions of "any sport" are still maintained by Connecticut, Maine, and Rhode Island. Prominent among other States which forbid amusements acknowledged innocent on six days of the week, are New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Many of our States show particular hostility to card-playing, dancing, and theatre-going. The fact that fishing was practised by some of the Apostles on Sunday has not saved this quiet recreation from being prohibited by more than twenty commonwealths.

If every Sunday law were a dead letter, it ought to be repealed, because it tends to bring needed laws into contempt; but among recent results of Sunday legislation are the following. In 1876 some children were fined for playing ball in Rhode Island; so, about this time, in Massachusetts, were a boy for skating, a young man for playing lawn-tennis, and a merchant for fishing with his little son. In 1894 two men were fined $10 each for playing golf on a lonely hill, in the commonwealth just mentioned; five boys under fifteen arrested for playing marbles in New York City; and every member of a baseball club in Pennsylvania fined. In 1895 a man and a boy of fifteen were fined $20 each for fishing in New York; and the attempt of some clergymen, aided by police, to break up a show in Missouri, caused a tumult in which men's heads were broken by clubs, while women and children were trampled underfoot. On the first Sunday that the London galleries and museums were thrown open to their owners, May 24, 1896, two men were shot dead in Attleboro, Mass., by a policeman who had been ordered to break up a clambake. In that same year and State, a manager was fined $70 for allowing _Yankee Doodle_ to be performed in the Boston Theatre; three men were arrested for bowling; half a dozen Jews who had been playing cards in a private house were fined $10 or $20 each, and those who could not pay were sent to jail. Among the Sabbath-breakers arrested in 1897 were a number of newsboys at the national capital, nine golfers in Massachusetts, a young man for holding one end of a rope over which some little girls were skipping in New York City, and also the manager of a show in New Jersey, who spent ten days in jail. Fines were levied in 1898 for playing golf in Connecticut, and twenty-five fishermen were arrested on one Sunday in Buffalo, N. Y. Such are the risks which still accompany innocent and healthy amusements in the Eastern States. Many such arrests are made in order to collect fees, or gratify malice; and neither motive ought to be encouraged by the friends of religion.

Some magistrates in Long Island, N. Y., are believed, while still holding that baseball breaks the Sabbath, to have discovered that golf does not. It is further said that on July 9, 1899, some baseball men who had been playing a Sunday game to a large crowd saved themselves from arrest by using their bats and balls to imitate golfing as soon as a policeman appeared in their grounds.

None of the Sunday laws is so mischievous as the decree of Mrs. Grundy against all forms of recreation not practised by the wealthy and fashionable. These people have so much time on six days of the week for active outdoor sport and indoor public entertainments, that they make little attempt to indulge in such recreations on Sunday. People who have only this one chance of playing ball, or dancing, or going to stereopticon lectures, concerts, and operas, suffer in health by having these recreations made unpopular as well as illegal. The climate of New England and New York, as well as of Great Britain and Canada, has unfortunately been so arranged that there are a great many cold and rainy Sundays, when much time cannot be spent pleasantly in walking or riding. This matters little to people who get all the amusement they want in their parlours. But what becomes of people who have no parlours? For instance, of servant-girls who have no place where they can sing or even laugh? Shop-girls and factory-girls find their little rooms, Sunday after Sunday, too much like prisons. Young men are perhaps even more unfortunate; for they go to the saloon, though this is often closed without any better place of amusement being opened. Why should every week in a democratic country begin with an aristocratic Sunday, a day whose pleasures are mainly for the rich?

Libraries and museums are blessed places of refuge; but "What are they among so many?" The residents of the District of Columbia are particularly unfortunate, as the Smithsonian Museum, National Library, and other buildings, which are open during six days, are kept shut on Sunday. Congress seems to be of the opinion that working people need no knowledge of natural history, except what they can get from sermons about Jonah's whale and Noah's ark. Washington is not the only city whose rich men ought to remember the warning of Heber Newton: "Everything that tends to foster among our working people the notion of class privilege is making against the truest morality in our midst. As they look upon the case, it is the wealthy people, whose homes are private libraries and galleries of art, who protest against the opening of our libraries and museums to those who can afford no libraries and buy no pictures. Sabbatarianism is building very dangerous fires to-day."

We should all be glad to have more intellectual culture given on Sunday. One way of giving it would be for the churches to open public reading-rooms in the afternoon. This would be decidedly for their own interest; and so would be delivery of evening lectures on history, biography, and literature. The Sunday-schools in England found it necessary, even as late as 1850, to give much time to teaching reading and writing as well as the higher branches. Sunday-school rooms in America, which now are left useless after Sunday noon, might be employed in teaching English to German, Italian, and Scandinavian immigrants during the afternoon and evening. Classes might also be formed in vocal music, light gymnastics, American and English history and literature, physiology, sociology, and political economy. Such changes would make our churches all the more worthy of the founder, who "went about doing good."

The observance of Sunday as a day of rest from labour and business will be all the more popular as it is made precious to irreligious people. They are numerous enough to have a right to ask that the public school-houses be opened for free classes in French, German, drawing, and modelling; botany, chemistry, and bird-lore; cooking, sewing, and wood-work. If teachers of these branches were employed on Sunday by our cities, less money would be needed for police. Our industrial interests would certainly gain by having this system carried out as far, for instance, as is done by Lyons and Milan, which have special Sunday-schools for teaching weaving. Goldsmiths are instructed by similar schools in Austria, and blacksmiths in Saxony. The full advantage of Sunday classes of the various kinds here suggested might not perhaps be seen until a taste for them could be made general, but doing this would go far to diminish the taste for saloons.

The first step, however, which ought to be taken by our legislatures is the repeal of all laws hindering the sale of tickets on Sunday to exhibitions of pictures or curiosities, concerts, stereopticon lectures, or other instructive entertainments which are acknowledged inoffensive during the rest of the week. How far dramatic performances and other very attractive forms of public amusement should be permitted to take place on Sunday is a question which ought to be settled by municipal authorities, with due reference to each special case. The people whose feelings ought to be considered are not those who wish to stay away from such places. They can easily do that without help from the police. The people who ought to be heard, first and last, are those who wish to get innocent amusement on their one day of leisure; and the only thing which the police need do is to see that they do get it without being defrauded or tempted into vice. Only the actual existence of such temptation can justify interference with dancing or card-playing in a private house. The Sunday reforms most needed, however, are those which will promote out-door exercise and mental culture.

LIST OF DATES

1776. Declaration of American independence, July 4th.

1780. Emancipation in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.

1783. Peace between IL S. A. and Great Britain, September 3d.

1785. Great prosperity of British factories about this time.

1787. Slavery prohibited north of Ohio River; slave-trade opposed in England; Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation published.

1788. Constitution of U. S. A. ratified by a sufficient number of States, June 21st.

1789. Bastille taken, July 14th.

1791. Paine's Rights of Man, Part L, published, March 13th; Louis XVI. accepts the new constitution, September 14th.

1792. France a republic, September 21st.

1793. Slavery abolished in French colonies, February 4th.

1795. Insurrection in Paris crushed by Bonaparte, October 5th; free public schools founded throughout France.

1796. Bonaparte commander of army of Italy, March 4th.

1797. French Directory makes itself absolute, September 4th; Venice ceded by France to Austria.

1798. Irish rebellion, May 23d.

1799. Usurpation by Bonaparte, November 10th.

1800. Election of Jefferson; Schelling's Transcendental Idealism published.

1801. Inauguration of Jefferson, March 4th.

1802. Birth of Victor Hugo, February 26th; Lamarck's Recherches published.

1803. Hayti declares herself independent, January 2d; death of Toussaint in prison, April 27th; birth of Emerson, May 25th; Emmet's insurrection in Ireland, July 23d.

1804. The Code Napoleon announced, January; Napoleon pro-Liberty in the Nineteenth Century claimed Emperor, May 18th; crowned, December 2d; Schiller's William Tell published.

1805. Battle of Austerlitz, December 2d.

1806. Death of Schiller, May 9th; birth of J. S. Mill, May 20th; battle of Jena, October 14th; Berlin decree of Napoleon against commerce with Great Britain, November 21st.

1807. Slave-trade prohibited by Great Britain, March 25th; Peace of Tilsit, July 7th, raises Napoleon to height of power; embargo laid by U. S. A., December 22d; Oken announces the vertebral analogy of the skull; Hegel's Phaenomenologie des Geistes published.

1808. Rebellion of Spaniards against French rule; witchcraft mob in England; Goethe's Faust, Part L, published.

1809. Birth of Darwin, February 12th; revolt of Tyrolese under Hofer, April 8th; states of the Church annexed to France, May 17th; death of Paine, June 8th; Pope imprisoned, July 6th; divorce of Josephine, December 15th; Lamarck's Philosophie Zoôlogique published.

1810. Hofer shot, February 20th; marriage of Napoleon with Austrian Archduchess, April 1st; post-offices required to open every Sunday in U. S. A., April 30th; revolt against Spanish rule of Buenos Ayres, May 25th, and of Chili, September 18th.

1811. Nottingham riots against machinery, November.

1812. Birth of Dickens, February 7th; war against Great Britain declared by U. S. A., June 18th; Wellington enters Madrid, August 12th; Moscow burned, September 14th; Byron's Childe Harold, Coleridge's Friend, and Hegel's Logik published.

1813. Wellington invades France, October 7th; battle of Leipsic, October 16th, 18th, and 19th; Francia ruler of Paraguay; Unitarian disabilities removed in England; Shelley's Queen Mab and Owen's New View of Society published.

1814. Napoleon is deposed by Senate, April 1st, and abdicates, April 11th; liberal constitution introduced by Louis XVIII., May; Washington taken and burned by British, August 24th; Peace of Ghent between U. S. A. and Great Britain, December 24th; Congress of Vienna opens November 3d; graves of Voltaire and Rousseau violated.

1815. Battle of New Orleans, January 8th; Waterloo, June 18th; controversy of Unitarians and Trinitarians in U. S. A.; last heretic burned in Mexico; Lamarck publishes the first volume of his Histoire Naturelle.

1817. Shelley's children taken from him on account of his opinions, March 26th; demonstration at the Wartburg, October 18th; unusual poverty in England; her authors and orators made liable to imprisonment without a trial; Ben-tham demands suffrage for men and women not illiterate; Shelley's Revolt of Islam published.

1818. Chili liberated by battle of Maipu, won by San Martin, April 5th; religious tests abolished in Connecticut; Hannah M. Crocker's Rights of Women published.

1819. Assassination of Kotzebue, March 23d; Carlsbad Conference, August 1st; "Peterloo" massacre at Manchester, August 16th; Shelley's Prometheus Unbound published.

1820. Revolution in Spain, January 1st; and at Naples, July 2d; assassination of French princes, February 13th, causes reaction against liberalism; birth of Herbert Spencer, April 27th; Owen's plan of Socialism proposed, May 1st; conference of Troppau, December 8th; Missouri Compromise; Sydney Smith asks, "Who reads an American book?"; Irving's Rip Van Winkle and Legend of Sleepy Hollow published.

1821. Brazil begins a revolt, January 1st, as do Greece and Sardinia in April, and Peru in July; death of Napoleon, May 5th; Venezuela and Colombra made free by battle of Carabolo, won June 24th, by Bolivar; Austria supreme in Italy; Lundy begins his Genius of Universal Emancipation.

1822. Death of Shelley, July 8th; independence of Brazil proclaimed, September 8th; massacre at Scio; Fourrier's book on Association published.

1823. Spanish patriots crushed by French army, April; Monroe Doctrine announced, December 1st; British Anti-Slavery Society formed; Victor Hugo's Odes and Ballads published.

1824. Mexico a republic, January 31st; Bolivar, dictator of Feru, February 10th, defeats Spaniards at Ayachuco, December 9th; death of Byron, April 19th; accession of Charles X., September 16th; repeal of statutes forbidding English labourers to combine or emigrate; Westminster Review founded.

1825. Much opposition to slavery in Kentucky, Maryland, and North Carolina; many socialist communities founded in U. S. A.; elective courses of study at Harvard College, and also at the University of Virginia, where attendance at religious exercises is made voluntary; Coleridge's Aids to Reflection published.

1826. Citizens of New York petition for repeal of Fugitive Slave Law, and for emancipation in the District of Columbia.

1827. Battle of Navarino, October 20th; Taylor sent to prison for blasphemy, October 24th.

1828. Test Act repealed; Frances Wright lectures against clergy.

1829. Jackson inaugurated March 4th; Catholic Emancipation Act signed, April 13th; Miss Wright opens a Hall of Science in New York City on Sunday, April 25th; James Mill's Analysis and Fourrier's Industrial New World published.

1830. Independence of Greece acknowledged by Turkey, April 25th; accession of William IV., July 26th; revolution at Paris begins July 27th; King's troops driven out, July 29th; he is succeeded by Louis Philippe, August 9th; revolts in Brussels, Warsaw, and Dresden; independence of Belgium acknowledged, December 26th; Hetherington sent to prison for six months for publishing The Poor Man's Guardian; Victor Hugo's Hernani acted; Tennyson's Poems and Lyell's Principles of Geology published.

1831. First number of The Liberator\ January 1st, and of The Investigator, April 2d; Carlile sent to prison for his writings, January 10th; Cobbett tried and acquitted, July 31st; massacre of fifty-five white men, women, and children by slaves in Virginia, Sunday, August 21st; Warsaw surrenders to Russians, September 7th; Reform Bill defeated by bishops, October 7th; Jamaica insurrection, December 22d; free trade convention in Philadelphia; Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris published.

1832. New England Anti-Slavery Society founded in Boston, January 1st (becomes Mass. A. S. in 1836); death of Goethe, March 22d; the insurrection at Paris described in Les Misérables, June 5th and 6th; Reform Bill passed and signed, June 7th; Jackson re-elected, November 6th; woman suffrage lecture in London, December 2d; Jackson's proclamation against attempt of South Carolina to secede, December 11th; bloody resistance to tithes in Ireland; Elliott's Corn Law Rhymes published.

1833. Gradual reduction of tariff voted by Congress, March 1st; death of Bentham, June 6th; Act of Parliament for emancipation in West Indies passed August 28th; American Anti-Slavery Society founded at Philadelphia, December; pro-slavery mobs there and in New York City; municipal suffrage extended in Scotland; unsectarian public schools in Ireland; first free town library in U. S. A. founded at Peterboro, N. H., and opened Sundays thenceforth; Emerson's first lecture; Carlyle's Sartor Resartus published.

1834. Emancipation in West Indies takes place, August ist; new poor law in England, August 14th; insurrection headed by Mazzini in Italy.

1835. Death of Cobbett, June 16th; anti-slavery periodicals taken from post-office at Charleston, S. C, and burned by mob, July; convent at Charlestown, Mass., burned by a mob, August; Garrison mobbed in Boston, and other abolitionists in New York and Vermont, October 21st; extension of municipal suffrage in England; Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Strauss's Life of Jesus published.

1836. Transcendental Club founded in Boston, September; Parker begins to preach; tithes commuted in England; taxes on newspapers reduced; dissenters permitted to marry without disobedience to conscience; Emerson's Nature and Dickens' Pickwick Papers published.

1837. Discussion of slavery in House of Representatives suppressed, January; Miss Grimké's anti-slavery lectures, June; Emerson's address on The American Scholar, August 31st; Anti-Slavery Convention of N. E. Methodists, October 25th; Carlyle's French Revolution published.

1838. Emerson's Divinity School Address, July 15th; Kneeland imprisoned sixty days, that same summer, for blasphemy; Pennsylvania Hall burned by a pro-slavery mob; Irish tithe system reformed; daguerreotypes invented; Atlantic crossed by steam; railroad from London to Birmingham; Channing's Self-Culture published.

1839. Anti-Corn-Law League organised, March 20th; unsectarian common schools in England; great Chartist petition; Pope forbids attendance at the scientific congress at Pisa.

1840. Penny postage, January 10th; nomination of candidate for President, April ist, by Liberty party: quarrels in May among abolitionists; World's Anti-Slavery Convention at London, in June, refuses seats to female delegates; local self-government in Irish cities; protest of American Catholics against sectarianism of public schools; The Dial begins; Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship published.

1841, Hetherington imprisoned in England for publishing Letters to the Clergy, and the editor of the Oracle of Reason for attacking the Bible; Emerson's first volume of Essays published.

1842. Garrison calls on free States to secede, May; death of Channing, October 2d; Brook Farm started, as are many communties about this time; Spencer's theory of the limits of government published, 1844. Morse proves value of telegraph by announcing nomination of Frelinghuysen for Vice-President by Whigs, May 1st; disunion banner publicly accepted by Garrison, June 1st; annexation of Texas and reduction of tariff decided by election on November 5th; rule against discussing slavery repealed by House of Representatives; Lowell's Poems published.

1845. Parker begins to preach regularly in Boston, February 16th; potato rot in Ireland, August; Vestiges of Creation published.

1846. Mexico invaded by U. S. troops, March; free trade established in England, June 25th, and bill to reduce American tariff signed, June 26th; first volume of Grote's Greece and first number of Lowell's Biglow Papers published.

1847. Mexicans defeated at Buena Vista by General Taylor, February 22d and 23d; death of O'Connell, May 15th.

1848. Revolution in Paris, February 22d; King abdicates, February 24th; insurrections in Munich, Vienna, Berlin, Venice, and Milan in March, afterwards in other cities; "spirit rappings" at Rochester, N.Y., begin March 31st; Chartist demonstration at London, April 10th; Emancipation decreed by French Republic, April 27th; socialist insurrection at Paris, June 23d, 24th, 25th, and 26th; "Woman's Rights" Convention at Seneca Falls, N. Y., July 19th; revolt in Ireland, July 29th; Buffalo Convention of Free Soilers, August 9th; Kossuth dictator of Hungary, September 25th; State constitution and town ordinances made in October by citizens of California without Federal sanction; pro-slavery defeat at election of Taylor, November 7th; flight of Pope from Rome, November 24th; Louis Napoleon president of France, December 10th; Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal, Fable for Critics, and Biglow Papers published, 1849. Defeat of King of Sardinia by Austrians at Novara, March 23d, prevents liberation of Italy; Rome captured by French, July 3d; Hungarian army surrendered to Russians by Gorgei, August 13th; Venice taken by Austrians, August 28th; Emancipation Convention in Kentucky.

1850. Death of Wordsworth, April 24th, and of President Taylor, July 9th; Fugitive Slave Bill signed, September 18th; first national "Woman's Rights" Convention at Worcester, Mass., October 23d and 24th; Bradlaugh's first lecture; Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, Spencer's Social Statics, and Tennyson's In Memoriam published.

1851. London Great Exhibition opens May ist; a fugitive slave rescued at Boston, Sunday, February 16th, another at Syracuse, N. Y., October ist; usurpation of Louis Napoleon, December 2d, 1851.

1852. Uncle Tom's Cabin published, March 20th; death of Frances Wright, and accession of Napoleon III., December 2d; Herbert Spencer announces the principle of Differentiation.

1854. Repeal of Missouri Compromise proposed by Douglas, January 23d; return of Burns, a fugitive slave, from Boston, June 2d; U. S. Constitution publicly burned by Garrison, July 4th; Kansas election carried by border ruffians, November 29th; Thoreau's Walden published.

1855. Spencer's Pyschology and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass published, 1856. Sumner assaulted, May 22d..

1857. Disunion Convention, Worcester, Mass., January 15th; death of Béranger, July 16th, and of Comte, September 5th; tariff reduced twenty per cent, in U. S. A.; Buckle's History of Civilisation, vol. i., published.

1858. Essays by Darwin and Wallace read in public, July ist; Jews admitted to Parliament by act passed July 23d; death of Robert Owen, November 17th; Lincoln and Douglas campaign in Illinois.

1859. Austrians defeated at Magenta, June 4th, and Solferino.

June 24th; Lombardy annexed to Sardinia by treaty of Villafranca, July nth; John Brown takes possession of Harper's Ferry, Sunday, October 16th, and is tried November 2d; Darwin's Origin of Species published, November 24th; John Brown hung, December 2d. 1860. Split of Democratic party, April 30th; death of Theodore Parker, May 10th; Garibaldi enters Naples, September 7th; election of Lincoln, November 6th; secession of South Carolina, December 20th; annexation of two Sicilies to Sardinia, December 26th; Mill on Liberty published.

1861. Confederate States of America organised, February 8th; protective tariff passed, March 2d; Russian serfs emancipated, March 3d; Lincoln inaugurated, March 4th; Victor Emmanuel King of Italy, March 17th; Fort Sumter bombarded, April 12th, surrendered, April 13th; Lincoln's proclamation, Monday, April 15th, calls all the North to arms; death of Cavour, June 6th; Union defeat at Bull Run, Sunday, July 21st.

1862. Paper money made legal tender in U. S. A., February 25th; return of fugitives from slavery by army or navy forbidden, March 13th; negro soldiers, April; death of Thoreau, May 6th, and of Buckle, May 29th; disastrous campaign of McClellan in Virginia ends by his retreat, July 8th; Union victory at Antietam, September 19th; emancipation announced as a possible war measure by Lincoln, September 22d; Union defeat at Fredericksburg, December 13th; Victor Hugo's Les Misérables published, also Spencer's First Principles containing his full theory of Integration and Differentiation.

1863. Lincoln proclaims emancipation, January 1st; signs bills suspending Habeas Corpus Act and establishing conscription, March 3d; Union defeat at Chancellorsville, May 3d; Vallandigham sentenced, May 7th; battle of Gettysburg, July 1st, 2d, and 3d, ending in a Union victory; Vicksburg surrendered to General Grant, July 4th; Mississippi opened by surrender of Port Hudson, July 9th; Union victories at Lookout Mountain, November 24th, and Chattanooga, November 25th; Fenian Convention at Chicago, November 25th; Darwinism much opposed by European clergy about this time.

1864. General Grant takes command of all the Union armies, March 12th; undecisive battles in the Wilderness and at Spottsylvania, May 5th-10th; Fugitive Slave Act repealed, June 23d; Nevada admitted, October 31st; Lincoln re-elected, November 8th; Sherman marches from Atlanta, November 16th, and enters Savannah, December 22d.

1865. Death of Cobden, April 2d; Richmond entered by coloured cavalry, April 3d; Lee surrenders, April 9th; Lincoln shot, Good Friday, April 14th, dies April 15th; slavery abolished by Thirteenth Amendment, December 18th; Lecky's Rationalism published.

1866. Prussian victory over Austria at Kônîggratz, July 3d; Venice part of Kingdom of Italy, November 4th.

1867. First convention of the Free Religious Association, May 30th; suffrage extended in England, August 15th; Home Rule in Hungary.

1868. Fourteenth Amendment in force, July 28th; Cuban declaration of independence, October 10th.

1869. Irish Church disestablished, July 26th; witnesses allowed to affirm in Great Britain.

1870. Death of Dickens, June 9th; Napoleon III. defeated at

Sedan, September 1st; France a republic, September 4th; Rome part of the kingdom of Italy, October 9th; Inger-soll begins to lecture; Home Rule agitation in Ireland, 1871. Paris surrendered to Prussians, January 28th; Communists supreme there, March 18th, suppressed, May 28th; emancipation in Brazil; Darwin's Descent of Man published.

1872. Death of Mazzini, March 10th; secret ballot in England; Abbot's "Demands of Liberalism" published in The Index (which began January 1, 1870).

1873. Spain a republic, February 11th; death of J. S. Mill, May 8th; American Liberal League, September 1st.

1874. Military usurpation at Madrid, January 3d; death of Sumner, March 11th; citizens of District of Columbia disfranchised, June 17th; Alphonso XII. king of Spain, December 30th; Mrs. Besant begins to lecture; Victor Hugo's Ninety-Three published.

1875. Sunday Society organised at London.

1876. Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia opens, May 10th, and conventiom of Liberal League, July 1st; disputed election for President, November 7th; Sunday convention in Boston, November 15th; vivisection restricted in England; Cuban rebellion suppressed, 242 Liberty in the Nineteenth Century.

1877. Museum of Fine Arts in Boston open in and after March on Sundays.

1878. Anti-clerical resolution passed by Woman Suffrage Convention, Rochester, N. Y., July; split of Liberal League at Syracuse, N. Y., Sunday, October 27th; Professor Winchell obliged to leave Nashville, Tenn., for evolutionism.

1879. Specie payment resumed in U. S. A., January 1st; death of Garrison, May 24th; Henry George's Progress and Poverty published.

1880. Bradlaugh refused his seat in Parliament, May 21st; many patriots banished to Siberia.

1881. Czar Alexander II. assassinated, March 13th, anti-Jewish mobs on and after April 27th; Bradlaugh excluded by force, August 1st.

1882. Death of Longfellow, March 24th, of Darwin, April 18th, of Emerson, April 27th, and of Garibaldi, June 2d.

1883. Foote and Ramsay, English journalists, sentenced respectively to twelve and nine months in prison for blasphemy.

1884. Death of Wendell Phillips; February 2d; Cleveland elected President, November 4th; Professor Woodrow dismissed from Presbyterian Theological Seminary at Columbia, S. C, for teaching evolution, December 12th.

1885. Death of Victor Hugo, May 20th, and of General Grant, July 23d.

1886. Bradlaugh takes his seat, January 13th; railroad strike in

Missouri suppressed by Federal troops, March; bloody conflict of Chicago anarchists with police, May 4th; statue of Liberty unveiled in New York Harbour, October 28th.

1887. Chicago anarchists hung, November 11th.

1888. U. S. tariff reduced by Mills Bill, July 21st; Cleveland defeated, November 6th; imprisonment in Sweden for blasphemy; Bellamy's Looking Backward published.

1889. Brazil a republic, November 15th; death of Browning, December 12th.

1890. Australian ballot tried in Rhode Island, April 2d; U. S. tariff raised by McKinley Bill, passed by the 4 Billion Dollars Congress, and signed October 1st.

1891. Death of Bradlaugh, January 30th, and of Lowell, August 12th; Jews expelled from Moscow in April, and much persecuted this year and in 1892; New York Museum of Art opened on Sunday, May 31st, to 10,000 visitors.

1892. Death of Walt Whitman, March 26th, of Whittier, September 7th, and of Tennyson, October 6th; bill excluding Chinese from U. S. A. signed, May 5th; Congress votes for closing Chicago Exposition on Sundays, July 19th; Cleveland re-elected, November 8th; New York Museum of Natural History open Sundays; revised edition of Spencer's Social Statics published.

1893. Chicago Exposition formally opened May ist, first open Sunday, May 28th; Parliament of Religions begins Monday, September nth, 10 a.m.

1894. Death of Kossuth, March 20th, of Holmes, October 7th, of

Lucy Stone, October 18th, and of Tyndall, December 4th; Debs, leader of a riot in Chicago, enjoined by U. S. judges, July 2d, and put down by Federal troops; reduction of U. S. tariff, August 2d; Home Rule approved by House of Commons, September ist, refused by House of Lords, September 8th; universal suffrage and extension of local self-government in England; a professor in University of Texas dismissed for evolutionism.

1895. Death of Frederick Douglass, February 20th, and of Huxley, June 29th; rebellion in Cuba; men arrested in New York City for selling ice, umbrellas, etc., on Sunday; eight men who had worked on that day, after keeping Saturday as the Sabbath, forced to labour in the chain-gang in Tennessee.

1896. British Museum, National Gallery, and other institutions opened to the public on Sunday, May 24th, and afterwards; two Sabbath-breakers shot dead that same day by a policeman in Massachusetts; death of William Morris, October 3d; Democratic candidates defeated on a free-silver platform, November 3d.

1897. Dingley Bill to increase tariff, signed July 24th; death of Henry George, October 27th.

1898. War declared by U. S. A. against Spain, April 21st; death of Gladstone, Ascension Day, May 19th; independence of Cuba secured by treaty, August 12th.

1899. Death of Ingersoll, July 21st.