tween different phases of this "robbery" is not political, but economic. The simplest phase is chattel slavery, where the rich, with the aid of their mercenary defenders, own land, tools, and men. This system went down in Europe, and, but for the rebellion, would have gone down in America, by a natural law of decay. It cannot flourish after its extension has been checked, for the reason that, while slavery rapidly develops a new country, it beggars and exhausts an old one. It killed the Roman Empire, and, with the empire, may be said (in Europe) to have killed itself. The system of landlordism and serfdom is better adapted to a rude state of society, with a weak general government. Therefore, it flourished in the Middle Ages as at no other time. It disappeared about the end of the fifteenth century, for various reasons, the chief of which is that the growth of commerce and manufactures rendered other investments more profitable than land, and made it easier and cheaper to hire men as wage workers than to rule over them as over serfs.

Thus came in the modern system of capitalism and wage labor, which, however, according to Marx, is as certainly transitory as its predecessors. Capitalism means partial freedom of contract, wages rising (absolutely) with profits, a high general standard of comfort, diffused education, democracy. But it is also true, of course, that relatively to the profits of capital, wages fall when profits rise. Thus there is opened an increasing gulf between the capitalist and the wage worker. Again, competition among capitalists, continually reducing the price of commodities to the cost of production, necessitates increasingly minute subdivision of labor, destroying that technical skill which made the old-fashioned shoemaker or blacksmith independent; degrading the laborers into portions of the machine they operate; stimulating the competition for employment which prevails among them; increasing the frequency of those periods when they are thrown out of work and reduced from comfort to beggary, and, of course, contributing to increase the revolutionary discontent of educated men, nurtured in hope and enjoyment, who see themselves hopelessly distanced by those whom they can in no way regard as their superiors.

The chasm which threatens to engulf our social system is still further widened by the destruction of small capitalists in the battle of competition, and the growth of great monopolies, advancing pari passu with the pauperization of the laboring class. The miseries and dangers thus engendered by the very nature of modern trade and industry, are greatly aggravated by the periodical gorging of the market with goods produced in excess of the demand during seasons of speculation, and the consequent forced migration of capital to other branches by the dreary road along which lie bankruptcy, stagnation, reduced consumption, reduced production, slow liquidation, and that gradual revival of business which closes a financial crisis.

The critical character of these periodical revulsions is greatly aggravated by the fluctuations of that uncertain currency which speculative business has everywhere introduced. It has so far been palliated by the extension of the market into new countries-America, India, Egypt, China, etc. But when this process reaches an end, and one commercial system extends over the world, then, if not sooner, prices will actually foll to the cost of production, and the catastrophe of production for profit will be reached. Anarchy, there

fore, according to anarchists, is the inevitable end of the present drift and tendency of things. Trimmers may devise means to put it off; Napoleons and Bismarcks may, for a time, stifle it in blood, but the longer it is deferred, the more violent will be the reaction which brings it in at last. is wise statesmanship which gives up moribund institutions to die. is reform which anticipates in a less painful manner the work of revolution. C. L. JAMES.

IV.

MR. EATON'S NOVEL LAW PROPOSITION.

That only

That only

In reply to a Senator who had asserted that the office of the Presidency was simply executive, Mr. Dorman B. Eaton, in the June number of the NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, declares with much emphasis that the Constitution confers upon the President "one-third of the law-making authority." This is certainly a novel proposition in constitutional law. If a measure should lack one vote of having a majority in either House of Congress, would Mr. Eaton contend that the President could possibly make it a law? And, in regard to the effect of a veto, the object of which is to prevent and not to make legisla tion, how can one-third of the members of each House ever be required to counteract it? The least number of members able to pass a bill is a majority of those voting. If the President should veto it, two-thirds would become necessary. Clearly, then, the maximum number required to overcome the veto is not one-third but one-sixth.

If Mr. Eaton so largely overstates the powers of the Presidential office, because it is held by Mr. Cleveland, his course is quite in line with many things that have been said and done within two years by those who in politics are making use of the advertising methods which Mr. Barnum has applied with such eminent success in the show business. Having exhausted all the resources of praise upon the person of the President, it appears that it has become necessary to exaggerate the prerogatives of his office. If, on the other hand, Mr. Eaton's assertion is made in the heat of an argument over a great constitutional principle, why does he direct it at anything so petty and irresponsible as a person "representing but in half part a state in a body which has but two-thirds of one-half of the sum of the law-making authority?" Why does he not choose a far more shining mark-a magistrate who, in addition to the powers of the Executive of the nation, wields the legislative power of more than twenty-five Senators and one hundred and eighteen members of the House" combined? For we believe it was Mr. Cleveland who first discovered and promulgated the doctrine that his high office was 'essentially executive." If that office is so great that the legislative powers claimed by Mr. Eaton do not constitute an “essential" function of it, then our Presidency can be nothing less than an elective dictatorship. In regard to removals from office, Mr. Eaton sets forth a record, which, taken with some facts which he does not state, clearly sustains his assertion that the President "has made a more heroic struggle than all his predecessors together," but it is not so clear that the struggle has been made entirely against the spoils system.

66

SAMUEL W. McCALL.

V.

POSTAL TELEGRAPHY IN ENGLAND.

IN acknowledgment of the March number of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW containing the article on Postal Telegraphy, by Mr. Cyrus Field, Mr. W. H. Preece, the chief electrician of the British Government Telegraph System, addressed to him the following letter :

cess.

DEAR MR. FIELD: There can be no doubt that the acquisition of the telegraphs by the State has in England proved a very decided and great sucThe tariff has been made uniform, viz., 14d. per word over the whole of the United Kingdom, and the practice of working, charging, handling, and delivering has been simplified, centralized, and based on one fixed plan. All head post-offices have become telegraph offices, and vice versâ.

The public itself takes an interest in its property, and every member of it becomes a supervisor of the service, Every Anglo-Saxon in this country can exercise his undoubted right of grumbling with the certain knowledge that his growls will receive attention and consideration. The increase in the work done

It has been the fashion to say that the post-office made a wretched bargain with the telegraph companies, but twenty-years' purchase of the average net profits has not proved a bad bargain, although the curious system of accounts adopted by our Treasury, where everything is charged against reveuue and no capital account is allowed, prevents any one from knowing what profit has been made.

Of course, there are some drawbacks.

1. There is no satisfying the employees, who, on the principle that much will have more, are always clamoring for more.

2. Those who growl the most are apt to get the most.

3. It is hard to prevent political interference at times.

4. Political chiefs are apt to think more of popular kudos than departmental advantage, or public weal.

5. The absence of pecuniary rewards tends to the perfunctory discharge of duties.

Nevertheless, the service is splendidly performed, scientific and technical advance has been greater than it was before, and greater than ever with you. The evils of competition have been entirely eliminated. No favoritism is shown to any one. With your system favoritism is certain. Reges legerunt plectuntur Achivi. New York, Chicago, St. Louis, are well served, smaller towns suffer, and even in your chief cities the rich and busy are well treated, outsiders go to the wall. There is nothing like that with us. I hope your views will meet with success and prosper. Yours very truly,

W. H. PREECE.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

No. CCCLVII.

AUGUST, 1886.

OTTO VON BISMARCK, MAN AND MINISTER.*

DID you personally meet Bismarck? What do you think of him? These are the questions promptly addressed to every notable person returning from Germany to the cisatlantic Continent. Though the speech be of Germany the thought is always of Bismarck. In the commercial cities, on the Western prairies, South, North, in boreal Dakota, whose capital bears his name, Germany and Bismarck are connected conceptions of the mind, as inseparably associated as the twins of Siam. From that day in September, 1862, when returning from the Prussian Embassy in Paris, he entered the cabinet of Berlin, he has been a factor in the world's affairs, of whom at first the neighboring governments and afterward all nations have been obliged to take account. No living man awakens in such broad scope both national and international interest. Intense personal convictions of duty to king and fatherland, combined with a moral fearlessness which com

*I disclaim, at the start, sufficient detailed knowledge of the personal and official career of the German Chancelor to do it justice in the following study. While having the honor of his personal acquaintance during a brief but busy period, I can only claim qualification for the task sufficient to avoid any positive injustice to this industrious and brilliant life.

pels admiration, have created a historic figure which is destined to remain long in the popular memory. The world has at last discovered a man, and still stands looking at him in a sort of maze. It would fain touch him to see if he is of human flesh and blood, or whether he be an ogre, in whose arteries flows molten fire, whose hands are of iron, and whose heart is of granite. Is that towering form, surmounted by its magnificent brain, altogether human or altogether super-inhuman? An Italian at the close of the war of liberation might answer one way; a Frenchman at the end of 1871 another way; and the Germans themselves, at this moment, both ways. Can an American, with an ocean between him and his subject, solve the riddle in the right way?

Let us make the attempt. He is not to be judged upon the principles of the American Declaration of Independence, for he is not an American. The scales in which Washington, and Jefferson, and Lincoln are weighed are not for his weighing. He is bred a Prussian. He is a German of many generations of Germans. He is a monarchist by centuries of heredity. He believes by birth and conviction that kings rule by the grace of God. When we measure him it must be with the German standards. His portrait must be fitted to its German frame.

A strong will and personal independence seem to have run in the family blood, for the first recorded member of the family, one Rulo von Bismarck, appears to have so stubbornly contested with the Roman clergy the management of the schools at Stendal, early in the fourteenth century, that he was excommunicated. There is no evidence of his recantation in consequence of it. Excommunication was applied in two succeeding generations of the family. We remember these ancestral incidents when we read a debate in the Diet, in which Bismarck's ministerial policy toward the Roman Church was challenged. He suddenly paused in his hesitating speech and cried out: "Be sure of one thing, gentlemen; we shall not go to Canossa." All Protestant Prussia felt a thrill, as if Luther had re-appeared and nailed another challenge on the gate leading to Rome. His ancestors were among the gentry of the Mark of Brandenburg for several centuries, and not infrequently were found in the public service of their liege lords. Few, however, attained any special distinction. They were generally fond of country life and field sports; and this taste was in