of ground that he may call his own, not to be violated while he lives, any more than his grave may be violated when he is dead. Let "equality" be written in the fundamental law of the land as it is written in the New Testament, where the Apostle Paul says. "I mean not that other men be eased and ye burdened, but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want, that there may be equality."

The lands will be cultivated after a little while, with costly machinery beyond the reach of private owership, the cost of cultivation being met by a tax on each farm of a given number of acres and adjusted according to productiveness of lands-(as the cost of carrying the mails is met by a tax on each letter or package of a given weight) the best scholarship and engineering skill will be called into requisition -the whole continent honey-combed with artesian wells, canals and reservoirs for irrigating purposes dug, mighty machines utilized to bring forth the common means of support of a numerous population who will thus be rendered comfortable.

So will the people co-operate to bring out all the hidden resources of nature for the support of human life-the billions of money now worse than wasted upon standing armies, muskets, Krupp guns, ships, of war, fortifications, etc., will be directed to making the deserts blossom as the rose-rent usury and private capital employing labor will be abolished and the industry of all men and all women will be devoted to the "public service"-making every home a "White House," and all work a dignified office-and each and every legitimate pursuit yielding to the workers each, and to all other "officials,” a just and equitable compensation-neither above nor below the average Income of farmers and producers in general-if any difference, the rule will be "the harder the work the higher the pay,"-keeping ever in view the great truth that the only object of human effort, according to nature, is subsistence, and that the amount requisite to this is about the same to each human being. The law should solve this one great problem, viz.: the equitable distribution of products-which will be reached, when to each shall belong the whole produce of his own labor to be disposed of according to the will of the producers and to all shall belong the common bounties of nature, not to be monopolized by any.

XI.. Co-operation Inevitable.

Machinery, without legislative help, has destroyed the small shops and the small manufactories. The "little weaver" now stands behind a very different kind of loom from that of a century ago. It was then in his own little cottage, surrounded by wife and children, he did his work. Now it is in a vast manufactory, in the midst of hundreds of operatives, he toils for scanty wages, the profits of his labor going to make millionaires, and they not all so philanthropic as was Peter Cooper, nor so patriotic as is Benjamin F. Butler. Machinery will destroy the small farms also. Co-operation has become a necessity. Association is forced upon mankind by the advance of civization. Let that association be fraternal; and let equality of interests and of rights prevail. This is all I plead for; that all may co-operate, according to the spirit and teachings of the New Testament, as brothers and sisters, as equals in interest-all associations being like the church organized on the day of the Pentecost, designed to exalt society to the happy condition of a family circle, in which all exclusiveness shall end, in which every child shall freely eat out of the sugar-bowl, and every member of the great family shall do his or her part to provide the family feast, in which all shall sit at the same table and no

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little one be obliged to wait. There will be no servants. Each will wait upon himself. The commonwealth of humanity will be a Brook Farm.*

ESSAY VII. THE FREEDOM OF THE MANY.

I. Building for the Common Welfare.

The weal or woe of humanity is as dependent upon institution as upon any natural condition. Good government will make a people happy, though they inhabit the most barren and desolate region, as Switzerland and Iceland, for instance. Bad government will rende them miserable, though they inhabit the most fertile region, as Ireland and Egypt, for instance. Reform, social and political, consists in bettering the institutions of mankind. Perfected institutions is another name for the Kingdom of God on earth. We have only to break down whatever is established in the interest of caste or class and build for the general welfare to increase immeasurably the sum of human happiness. The "perfect commonwealth" assures to its citizens the Apocalyptic condition of peace and felicity-the "equality" mentioned in the Declaration of American Independence as the common birthright. But is it possible to build this perfect commonwealth. It is possible. Let all exclusive privileges be abrogated, except such as are founded in nature-as the family. The home must be the only "corporate monopoly," it being instituted by Diety. "Uniformity" will be the law of society. All artificial advantages will be removed. There will be no rich and no poor, no castles and no hovels, but one common level that no man will be so vain as to desire to rise above, except in the development of his God-given facultis of mind and heart. This is the democracy that is to be the realization of perfect equality as far as institution can go-equal privileges to all and each, and no special benefits to any each being confined by institution to a strict observance of the Golden Rule.

He is blind indeed who does not perceive that a peaceful revolution is right at our doors. The new unfoldment of mind has brought a new civilization. The dream of the prophets will be realized. The deserts will be reclaimed to cultivation; wars will close; the United States of the World is right now at the threshold, and the starry flag of the Universal Confederation of Republics will soon be unfurled. Private interest will soon give way to public welfare. The era of emigration will close soon. Nothing will be left to mankind but the perfection of institutions of government at home and the enforcement of the natural and unalienable rights of humanity.

A race of thinkers is coming upon the stage who will point the way to the realization of the equality anticipated by Jefferson. One evil and wrong after another will break down and pass away as did chattel slavery. Wage slavery and land monopoly are the next to go. Co-operative industry will become the universal system of labor. Soon will the demand go forth for a revision of our national constitution of government. Then will the toilers do as they did in California-control the convention in the interest of labor. Soon will all the republics of North and South America be confederated together in a sisterhood of States. European republics will grow in number and importance and become the United States of Europe. *The Sermon on the Mount, however foolish it may seem to the standards of the street, is a prophecy of the perfect state, and its principles will yet be the law of the world. Already we hear in many a social movement that selfishness will be fatal to society. A state that allows one man to own a railroad while thousands starve in rags, is doomed to go, and aught to. The political economy of the golden rule is the only one that will make society safe.-Rev. H. M. Simmons, in "Unity," May 24, 1888.

Then will soon follow the United States of the World, covering the map of both hemispheres completely.

II.. Perfecting the Imperfect.

The citizens of this Cosmopolitan Christian Commonwealth will be of two classes, the strong and the weak. The strong will bear the burdens of the weak, and the greatest among them will be the servants of the rest. Every movement will be directed toward perfecting the imperfect. The Sermon of Jsues on the Mount will be the Constitution of the New Republic.

1. The Master's blessing will be pronounced on the heads of all little children. The commonwealth will take them in her arms and bless them. The bringing out into beautiful, ripe, mellow and delicious fruitage the infinite possibilities that lie enveloped in the minds and hearts of children will be made the primary aim of all effort of men, as it is of the angels. Yea, it is the sole object according to the purpose of nature for which God created the universe of worlds and pronounced His benediction upon them of "very good." Hence the best practical methods of education that experience may sanction will be adopted by mankind, and no child will be allowed to grow up unprepared for the duties of citizenship. Foundlings, orphans and all destitute children and youth, will be gathered into most pleasant homes, where love shall be the only law and kindness the only discipline.

2. And homes of the same character will be provided for the weak and incompetent ones, and for all that are incapable of selfsupport. These will receive care as from loving sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, neighbors and friends; for every man and woman that God has blessed with health and strength to work will be a Good Samaritan, and they will speak their gracious voice in the laws and crystallize their most benevolent will in beneficient institutions, born of the thought of Him who "spake as never man spake." He "went about doing good"" teaching us by His example the true objects of life. He healed the sick; He cleansed the lepers; He cast out the demons; and, dispersing a mob by an appeal to inherent manly principle, ("He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her"), He said to the woman what we should say in our acts, feelings, and laws, to the frail and fallen: "Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more." And here, too, we may learn a better way of controlling and dispersing a mob whose purpose, it may be, to "uphold law and order and punish crime" (as at Jerusalem of old and at Cincinnatti of late), than by turning on them Gatling guns and breech-loading rifles in the hands of National Guards.

3. A more beneficent system than the one that shall have In view the casting out the devils of evil, the reclaiming such as go out into forbidden paths the healing the morally sick, through the all-controlling, all-reformative power of human kindness and pitying love, who can devise? The first aim will be to give pleasant, useful and remunerative employment to each failing one. The inducements held before him to activity and healthful industry will be such that no sane mind can resist them. Each will be enticed from wrongdoing as were the mob that would have stoned to death the woman taken in adultery-by appeals to the divine manhood and womanhood latent in the hearts of the most ignorant and (so-called) depraved, The treatment of the criminal, then, will be compulsory only in this: he will be domiciled to one place held in leading-strings the same as a child. All idea of pains, punishments and solitary imprisonments will be expunged from the laws. The criminal will be brought as a patient into hospital. His malady will be treated to be cured.

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To cure as well as to prevent disease we must remove its cause. Nature is the healer. Crime is the effect of causes that may be removed. Every soul will gravitate to virtue and flow on in the right coursethe course of nature-as water in its channel, when the conditions of society are made what they ought to be.

III. Legalized Wrong.

Who is to blame for the wrong there is in the world? Society is wholly to blame for it. There is no path of right-doing left open at all by society for men to walk in. The "straight and narrow way," is barricaded and entirely shut up by unjust laws and evil institutions established by society to enable the few idlers to rob and enslave the many workers. Bad laws and barbarous "institutions" have made luxurious Dives possible, and starving Lazarus inevitable. "Business" is licensed theft, as saloon keeping is licensed murder. The monopolist, through licensed extortion, seizes upon the products of the labor of thousands of workers and he thus becomes a millionaire "wrings from the hard hands of peasants," by "indirection," the fruits of their sweat and toil in a "legal" way.

A fruitful source of the evils that afflict us is our giving up the control and ownership of public institutions into private hands. There is nothing belonging to a railroad of the nature of private property. The track, the station houses, the cars, the engines, are all for public use. The giving up control and ownership of these into private hands for private profit is the great sin of our age. Also the banks of issue are public institutions and not private. The officials who conduct the business of issuing money ought to receive salary from the government, like other public officials; but they should not be permitted to levy tax uncontrolled on production, and thus pile up immense private fortunes at the public expense. The insurance business, as at present conducted, is a gigantic swindle. Insurance companies are institutions authorized by legal enactment to defraud and despoil the public. These and the kindred monopolies of lands, mines and manufactories are the chief source of the great evils that afflict our country at the present time.

How much better off is a wage slave than was a chattel slave? And how much better off are the farmers of America "taxed without there consent," by Vanderbilt and Gould, than were our fathers "taxed without their consent" by George Third? How much less barbarous and inhuman is the system of wage slavery, than was that of chattel slavery? And how much less onerous the burdens of the people under the tyranny of kings Vanderbilt and Gould than they would have been under the kings of England? Was it not "law" that made the chattel slave?-and is it not "law" that makes the the wage slave? A "fugitive slave law" was enacted for the benefit of the "lords of the lash" who worked the chattel slaves. A detestable "militia law," enlisting for five years and arming with Gatling guns and breech-loading rifles, thousands of mercenary national guards in every state of the Union, to shoot down "strikers," is enacted for the benefit of the "lords of cash," who work the wage slaves.

Our criminal code was invented by feudal tyrants to be a weapon in their hands, through the wielding of which to gain the mastery over their fellowmen to hold them in bondage forever. If a toiler in Scotland, on the estate of "His Grace," the Duke of Argyll, (who is the legal owner of millions of acres of Scotland's soil, just like Jefferson Davis was once the legal owner of hundreds of slaves), or upon the estate of any other duke or lord in Scotland, he should commit so grave an offense against British law as to shoot or snare a rabbit wild in the woods, that "His Grace," or lordship, claims to

own by "right of primogeniture"-inheritance from his remote ancestor, who won the title to those lands and rabbits "with his good broadsword," many centuries ago, from the poor Scottish peasants whom he murdered, men, women and children, in their beds, or turned out of doors to starve, burning their houses and grain stacks, and driving off their flocks of sheep and goats and their cows (the same thing that is being re-enacted in Ireland, and on the island of Skye today by British "evictors")-the toiler for killing the wild rabbit, contrary to British law, is compelled to pay an enormous fine or be imprisoned for months in a loathsome British jail.

Thus are the people kept under the yoke by "law" in the old world. Our laws are of the same kind and character and have the same aim as have the laws of Great Britain, our parent country, whose common law we inherit. Their aim is to give power to the dwarfs to bind the giants-to the few to fetter the many. And though our national constitution of government was framed to "promote the general welfare and to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity," yet it has not got outside the boundary of feudal despotism entirely with all of its "amendments." Our criminal code ought to be got rid of as was chattel slavery. It belongs to the dark ages. Its barbarism is out of harmony with our civilization.

The few by means of a false and wicked social system gather together the products of the labor of the many and place those products out of reach of the rightful owners-the producers of them. Penal laws are enacted to "protect the rights of property." that is to say. to enable the thieves to keep possession of the stolen goods. If a tramp from Massachusets, or from any other state or country, far or near, begs a crust of bread in the state of Connecticut, he may, for this "crime" be imprisoned a year in the penitentiary; and in Iowa the punishment is the same for begging a crust of bread, as for stealing fifteen dollars in money. Thus is "property protected," and humanity unprotected, in our un-christian land.

IV.. A Silver Lining to the Cloud.

But these barbarities belong not to the people-lie not at the door of the masses. They arise because the people have been deprived of a controlling voice in the government. Laws are passed at the dictation of the monopolists who, being controlled by avarice, have no humanity more than when the great money making industry of the eighteenth century was the slave trade. If it were not for the voice of the people the slave trade would be revived with all its horrors. The common people are humane. An illustration of this I met with last fall. I was introduced to the president of a club in New York a Hungarian association of poor workingmen, organized for the helping of the helpless-a benevolent society. It was not religious in the common acceptation of the term. But it filled a place that the church ought to fill. A fund of hundreds of dollars had been collected and was held in reserve for the relief of the poor and unemployed Hungarians. So, when the common people once control, provision will be universally made for all the poor. Remunerative employment will be provided, so that no hands will rest in enforced idleness and no one will beg his bread. But step by step the people advance. Soon the ninety-and-nine will make all the laws. The one will join the common ranks, and they will count one hundred equals. Our penitentiaries will soon become schools of reform. Convicts will be paid wages. They will be gathered into pleasant apartments for several hours each day before blackboards, maps and charts, and instructed by kind, devoted and philanthropic teachers. Good books and periodicals will be furnished them to read. In a little while