these States, had nothing whatever to do with the matter in hand; an ancestry which dated back to Germany or Holland, to Great Britain or Sweden, brought no different conceptions to the descendants of the purpose they had come to consider. There was a beautiful art; its language was the one universal one; they were there to promote its highest interests; this was the one sufficient introduction. The other fact was the firm belief, denoted by the accounts given of club methods by their members, that the communities in which they lived were being benefited as communities by their work, and in some cases it was shown how this altruistic side of the question had reached out in practical ways and accomplished practical results.

New York's Charities

It is the habit of legislatures to treat all bills relating to charities liberally. Usually such bills have the indorsement of earnest and good people, actuated by the best of motives. To find that a legislature also exercises discrimination, that it considers carefully the arguments for and against the bills presented in behalf of charity, is cause for congratulation. The New York State Legislature has made that record. In its last session every bill presented that contained pernicious features or was opposed by the State Board of Charities was defeated. This may be attributed to the influence of the State Board of Charities and the experience gained by the re-elected members. Some institutions tried to secure special legislation to exempt them from the supervision of the State Board of Charities. In no case was this effort successful. That there has been waste and extravagance in the expenditure of public money in many institutions has been an open secret for years. Power to control this matter by careful supervision has been acquired by the State Board of Charities within a few years. Among the most important bills passed by the Legislature was one giving the Board of Estimate and Apportionment of the city of New York the right to use its discretion as to apportioning public money in the case of "every charitable, eleemosynary, correctional, or reformatory institution, wholly or partly under private control."

The city Comptroller was largely instrumental in securing the passage of this bill. It is well understood that he has been opposed to the untrammeled use of city money in private or semi-private institutions, and that he will exercise his authority in supervision over all the institutions receiving public funds. The policy hereafter will be not to apportion lump sums to the institutions, but to pay them on the basis of work done for the city's legitimate protégés. This plan is both economical and sensible.

The Principles of the
Fathers

A great deal of current discussion assumes that the Declaration of Independence is a declaration in favor of self-government, and that consistency requires that a Republic initiated by such a statement of principles should recognize the right of self-government in all peoples. This supposed truism is applied to the solution of various political problems, and is supposed to necessitate woman suffrage, negro suffrage, Cuban suffrage, Filipino suffrage. Why it does not require childhood suffrage in the family is not clearly stated.

The Declaration of Independence is not an infallible epitome of political truth, and if experience proved it erroneous in any particulars there would be no reason why the Nation should not in these particulars discard it. But it so happens, as matter of fact, that this document says nothing whatever about self-government. Only one clause, and that a parenthetical one-the phrase one the phrase "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"

can be interpreted to imply, even remotely, any doctrine of self-government, and this implication from this phrase is by no means a necessary one. For it is quite conceivable that a people might very gladly consent to be governed by others and relieved of all the responsibilities of governing. In fact, in all wellordered schools the boys consent to the government; they are not kept in subjection through mere fear; nine-tenths of the women in the country apparently consent to be governed and have no desire to

govern; and there is a not inconsiderable minority of citizens who appear very willing to relinquish into other hands all the responsibilities of government, even at the risk of incompetence or worse in the governing body.

What the Declaration of Independence affirms is that governments exist for the benefit of the governed; and this is very different from affirming that they must always be administered by the governed. "A decent respect to the opinions of mankind," says the Declaration, "requires that they [the people] should declare the causes which impel them to the separation;" and the following is the statement of the causes:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

This is perfectly explicit. It declares. that men have certain inalienable rights, and it does not include the right of selfgovernment among them; that the end of government, and, by implication, the sole end of government, is to protect these rights; that when government becomes destructive of these rights it ought to be overthrown; that the people, when they have overthrown it, have a right to establish a new government in whatever form will insure public safety and happiness being free; and, by implication, that they may choose for that purpose a military or a civil government, an autocracy, aristocracy, oligarchy, representative democracy, or pure democracy. In fact, our fathers chose as their first form of government, not a pure democracy, but a republic in which aristocracy and representative democracy were intermingled. Negroes, Indians, and foreigners could not vote; nor native-born Americans unless they possessed some property qualification, in some of the States, or some religious qualification in others. The people were not allowed to choose their own President

he was chosen for them by a representative body; nor to make their own lawsthey were made for them by another representative body. It is doubtful whether even a considerable minority would have approved the referendum or the initiative, and it is certain that practically none would have submitted judicial questions to the people at a general election or even to a mass-meeting of representative citizens, as they are submitted to the General Assembly by the constitution of the Presbyterian Church.

If we turn from the document itself and the interpretation of it afforded by the practice of the fathers to the history out of which the Declaration grew, its significance is equally clear; it was historically, not a protest against government by an aristocracy or an oligarchy, but against government for the benefit of the govern

ors.

So.

The principles of the Declaration of Independence were partly an inheritance from the French, partly from the English, and in both countries the issue was the same: Do governments exist for the benefit of the governed, or for that of the gov ernors? In the old Roman Empire the government existed for the benefit of the ruling class, undisguisedly and avowedly The provinces were conquered that they might be taxed, and the taxes were not expended in the provinces for the benefit of the people who paid them; they were sent to Rome to contribute to the luxury of the imperial oligarchy centered there. This principle of government for the benefit of the governed passed over into the Latin races, and was known in the end of the last century, from the dynasty which represented it, as Bourbonism. Its most dramatic and probably worst exhibition was in France, where, under Louis XVI., the peasantry burned their fruit-trees and their furniture for fuel and fed on grass, while the king expended $200,000 a year on his stables alone. It was against this government for the benefit of the governors, this government which consigned to misery and death unnumbered thousands of the people that it might keep in corrupting idleness a few hundreds of favored nobles, that the French revolted. The same system fought hard to get a lodgment in England. Overthrown in the death of Charles I., it came back in the coronation

from his description may here suffice to epitomize it: "A great peer had small cause to regret that the gates of commerce were barred to him and his, as long as he could help himself out of taxes, and help himself royally." How royally and how unscrupulously he did help himself Trevelyan makes clear. That it was the object of the English bureaucracy to use the American colonies for its own enrichment, as it had used Ireland and India, history makes equally clear. That it was against this spoliation of the governed for the benefit of the governor, not for any abstract right of self-government, that the Declaration of Independence was a protest and the American Revolution a successful revolt, is made certain by the reading of the document itself, by a study of the history which preceded and gave birth to it, and by the political institutions which were founded upon it.

There are times when self-government is palpably inconsistent with the Declaration of Independence. Self-government in the Indian Territory created a plutocracy, which is the meanest and most despicable of all forms of government. It made of the Territory a paradise for landrobbers, and a refuge for the banditti and train-wreckers who fled thither after every succeeding tragedy to escape the processes of the courts. Official reports have shown how, under self-government, spoliation, corruption, robberies, assassinations, flourished. At length, in order to protect the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it became necessary to go into that Territory, overthrow its form of self-government, and institute a new government which would do something to secure that "safety and happiness of the people" for which, according to the Declaration of Independence, governments are instituted among men. Senator Dawes and no man in the country knows the conditions better than he does, or has better proved by life service his devotion to the principles of our fathers-has made all this clear by his article on another page on "A Spent Protectorate." The carpet

bag governments in the South were a form of self-government; but they robbed the people, took much and gave little; and, according to the Declaration of Independ ence, it became "the right of the people to alter or abolish" that government, "and to institute a new government, laying its foundation in such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them seemed most likely to effect their safety and happiness." It is because the people of the North realize the lamentable failure of the first experiment that they endure with patience some grievous wrongs in the initiation of the second; but they will not be patient if in the issue it shall be clear that the new government is, like the old slaveocracy, organized for the benefit of the few and the injury of the many. In Santiago the death-rate under Spanish misrule was seven hundred a week; under General Wood's beneficent despotism it is reduced to forty or fifty a week. That under Cuban self-government it would have taken half a century to accomplish the sanitary reforms which General Wood has accomplished in half a year is certain; that they would ever have been accomplished is doubtful. Which right takes the precedence: the right to life of the six hundred and fifty killed every week before their time, or the right of the Cubans so to administer municipal government as to kill them? There is but one answer to that question.

It is the duty of the American people, if they wish to be true to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, to establish, wherever they have the authority, government for the benefit of the governed; so to administer that government as to secure to the people under it the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; wherever government has become destructive of these ends, to alter or abolish it; and, wherever they either frame a new government or administer it when it is already framed, to do so on such principles and in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect the "safety and happiness" of the people. Self-government is one means to this end: to be used when it will accomplish this end; not to be used when it is destructive thereof.

In what sense self-government is itself an end, and how good government can be

made to conduce thereto, are questions which we shall consider in a succeeding article.

giving effect to the will of the non-political voter in the choice of candidates, or to relieve him from the dilemma of voting blindly or not at all.

The first blow at the root of the trouble

in Minnesota

The Legislature of Minnesota in its closing hours put upon the rolls a law the workings of which will be watched with lively interest by all who are striving to give to the conscience and better judgment of the people a means of free expression in the selection of candidates. This law provides for holding direct primaries in the county of Hennepin, in which the city of Minneapolis is located. The fact of its passage has already been noticed in our columns, but the history and scope of the measure, as described by Mr. Webster Wheelock, of the St. Paul "Pioneer Press," deserve much fuller examination. The measure was the joint product of a group of Minneapolis men, several of whom have had a practical experience in politics, and one of whom is a politician of National reputation. The law, therefore, embodies no "iridescent dreams," but is a thoroughly practical measure drawn by practical men who know the ins and outs of politics.

For three or four years there has been a demand in Minneapolis for some measure of this kind. Prior to 1895, party primaries in Minnesota were conducted without regulation by statute. But the Legislature of that year, in response to a very general demand for a remedy for certain underhanded practices that had grown up, passed a law which legalized party primaries, required ample publication of the place and time of meeting, prescribed rules for their conduct, and gave to the Convention itself a standing in law. This law has done away with a great deal of fraud and chicane. As far as it goes it is satisfactory. But it has left the power to dictate nominations in the hands of the active politicians, whose interests are not always identical with those of the general public. It has continued the convention, with the trading and log-rolling which so often result in the selection of men distasteful to the rank and file of the party. Beyond making it possible to find out where the primary is to be held, it did nothing toward

Minneapolis, whose direct primary bill was commented on in The Outlook of May 1, 1897. This measure applied the Australian ballot system to primaries, and-what was more essential-proposed to do away with the delegate convention entirely. Common primaries were to be held at which voters were to receive official ballots upon which the name of each office was to be printed, with a space opposite to be filled by the voter with the name of the person he desired nominated for that office. This measure, though warmly supported by a public-spirited minority, was killed in the house of its origin. This year, however, the Minneapolis delegation came bristling with direct primary bills. There were three separate measures, each providing a slightly different means of arriving at the same end, but all applying the Australian system. The best or most practicable features of these measures combined, presented to the House in a substitute, and sent to the Senate by an almost unanimous vote. In the Senate the bill which had been drawn to apply to the three counties containing the cities of the first class, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Duluth, was amended so as to apply only to Hennepin County, and in that shape it finally became a law. That the measure did not pass in its original form was due to the silent but determined opposition of politicians of the class that saw in such a system a menace to its supremacy.

were

The principal features of this law are : First, the application of the Australian system; second, the nomination of candidates for primaries by petition; third, common primaries at which voters of all parties assemble to choose by a plurality vote their party candidates for the final election; fourth, the holding of these primaries on the first day of registration, which is fixed at seven weeks before election day, at the regular election booths, with the regular judges and clerks acting as judges and clerks of the primary. All the safeguards thrown about the regular

election are thrown about the primary election, down to the last detail.

To become a candidate for nomination all that is necessary is to file with the county auditor a petition and an affidavit and pay a ten-dollar fee to cover expenses. The petition must contain not less than five per cent. of the "total vote cast at the last election for the candidate of the party with which the applicant affiliates." These provisions are intended to check indiscriminate candidacy. The last day for filing notices of candidature is eleven days before the primaries. On the tenth day the county auditor is required to post sample ballots, one for each of the several parties. On primary election day the voter goes to the booth, registers just as he does now, the Minnesota law requiring fresh registration at every election, and is asked if he desires to vote at the primary. If he answers in the affirmative, he is given one of each of the party tickets fastened together, retires to the booth, marks the one he desires, presumably that of his own party, folds them all together and deposits them all together in the ballot-box. If he votes more than one ticket, that containing the largest number of offices voted for is alone counted. If the same number of names is marked on each, both are thrown out, thus preventing the nomination of weak candidates by voters of the opposite party. The vote is then counted and canvassed by the official canvassing board prescribed by the statute governing regular elections. Those persons receiving the high

more important results expected of what is known as the Wallace Law. By utilizing one of the regular registration days the law tends further to encourage primary voting, since, under the Minnesota law, as before stated, one must register to vote at the final election. By utilizing the regular election machinery, it not only saves expense and prevents confusion, but throws about the primary election the same cloak of authority that surrounds the final election.

There is little doubt that, if the law is given a fair trial in Minneapolis in the fall of 1900, its application will be extended-perhaps to the whole State, as indications of a demand for such a law are by no means confined to the three large cities. There is little doubt that, once the meaning of direct nominations is understood, the demand will be overwhelming. The passage of the Wallace Bill has made a breach in the wall of indifference and unintelligent conservatism which its application will widen, and through it the people of Minnesota, and probably those of other Northern States, will not be slow to enter into the citadel of their rights. With direct primaries, as the experience of South Carolina and Georgia has abundantly shown, the machine can only recommend, never dictate, nominations. Best of all, the responsibility of each voter for the candidates put forward by his party awakens the public spirit essential to a pure democracy.

the candidates of that party for the offices for which they stood, and their names are put upon the final ballot.

It will be seen that this method of procedure will do away with the convention entirely; that it leaves any coterie or organization powerless to prevent any candidate from presenting himself for nomination, and powerless to prevent his nomination if a majority of his party desires it; that it will thereby tend to encourage the candidacy of capable men. too independent to truckle to the machine; and that, by making the primary intelligible and protecting it from fraud, it will encourage the attendance of those who under the prevailing system know that it is ordinarily useless to attend. Such are the

The Outlook declared last week that, in its judgment, the Episcopal Church was on trial; it hastens to add that the Episcopal Church has successfully met the test of its catholicity imposed by the case of Professor Briggs. Bishop Potter has justified the faith of those who believed not only in his prudence and sagacity, but in his courage and clear-mindedness. He has dealt in a direct and conclusive way with a matter which would have become extremely troublesome and dangerous if it had been handled with timidity or uncertainty. The courageous way is always the safest way in the end; and Bishop Potter, who, like his father, has many times shown the instinct of statesmanship,