foot of the mount of social and political transfiguration? May the people, through those of their number chosen for the purpose, called legislators, pass laws that shall help to put bread into hungry mouths, hats on uncovered heads, coats on naked backs, and shoes on bare feet, but not dare to recognize greater needs and deeper cravings? Is the work of a community done, are its powers exhausted, when the cry, "what shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed," has been heard and regarded? Who says to human gov ernments, striving to evolve a nobler civilization: "Thus far, but no further?" What high decree of God or of men strikes the sceptre from the popular hand the moment it would summon the masses from dusty highways and sordid market places, out to green fields and sun-lit mountains? Who has been commissioned to roll a red sea of perpetual despair in front of the children of men, as they would fain fly toward the land of promise, from the task-masters of Egypt?

MATTERS OF FACT.

Passing, now, the further analysis of the primary and inalienable rights and powers of the people, which these inquiries challenge-how is it in point of fact? Do legislatures, as the fiduciaries of the people, renounce their sovereignty at the outer threshold of God's temples of grace and beauty-not daring to enter? Do the people always stay contentedly in the workshop, and amid the bales and casks of commerce, never daring to approach the Beautiful Gates, and swarm out where bright fields, the minstrelsy of birds, and glory-tinted skies invite? Are our statutes limited to the bare necessities and material utilities of life? Is the strong arm inovoked for naught beyond the domain of our common and lower needs and comforts? Let the millions paid, willingly paid for the most part, here in republican America, in the form of taxes and assessments levied and collected by State and municipal law, for gigan tic reservoirs and costly water-works-for Lake Tunnels and Croton and Cochituate Aqueducts-for Central Parks, and other parks and pleasure grounds innumerable-for public fountains, gardens and promenadesfor public museums, galleries of art, academies of music, libraries and reading rooms-for flooding the streets and public buildings with artificial light by night-for memorial statues and structures in granite and bronze and marble, and a hundred other forms of public ministry to the demands of æsthetic culture-of elegance, taste and beauty-let all these, so familiar and so valued, be the emphatic answer.

The people rise to a conception and appreciation of these things; they desire them, believe it right to have them, and resolve to have them. And then, as in all other instances, so in this, their will at length passes on to legislative halls, and is recorded in imperative statutes-money is wanted for beauty as well as for bread, for art as well as for trade. The

mandate goes forth and searches out and hunts down every tax-payer, and just behind, stand the same inexorable, mail-clad, resistless sentinels and servitors of the laws, armed with the powers and weapons of compulsion. Is the assessment for a Park, a Fountain or a Statue? it must be paid, under the same penalties and at the peril of the same coercion as if it were for a bridge, a prison or an almshouse. Now, these things lie beyond the iron orbit of hard material necessities, out in the blue firmament where play the forces of a higher civilization, where the inspirations of art and taste and beauty have recognition. And yet the regency of the people over them, through the law-making power, is acknowledged. They are, to-day, among the familiar subjects of federal, State and municipal legislation.

In direct alignment with the examples just noted, is the history and development of free public education in this country. The idea of free schools, established and supported by the State; was born of the political sagacity, far-reaching wisdom and sanctified common sense of the New England Fathers, who builded their moral, social and political institutions upon foundations as enduring as the rocks of their own sea-girt colonies. The splendid results of that grand idea have been the admi ration of observing nations for more than a hundred years. It was a seminal and diffusive truth that was planted by those hardy, libertyloving men of God. It enfolded the germinal principles, the essential elements, of our political system-the vital ideas of a free republican State. It has been adopted by nearly every commonwealth from the Lakes to the Gulf, and from Sea to Sea.

How has it attained this universal recognition-this firm intrenchment in the laws? Just as all the other popular measures to which reference has been made. It commended itself to the judgment of the people; it was seen to be essential to the public welfare, and the people therefore decreed that it should be put in practice. Their decree went up to general assemblies and was there re-issued in the form of State school laws, with all the machinery required for their enforcement. And now in all these free school States, every property-owner, resident or nonresident, bachelor or patriarch, whether personally friendly or hostile to the system, must pay the school tax assessed against him. The whole power of the State is in reserve to enforce the law and collect the tax, and the people, almost with one voice, say it is right.

A PALPABLE INCONSISTENCY.

But now, when it is proposed to go a step further, in precisely the same direction, in the same moral and political plane, in furtherance of precisely the same ends, and seek such additional legislation as will tend to perfect and consummate the whole work-as will utilize the enormous expenditures of money and secure the largest possible harvest for the

intellectual and moral garners of the commonwealth-a sudden halt is sounded all along the line, and notes of apprehension and alarm are heard. Multitudes who ardently, and even vehemently, defend and support free schools, and favor the imposition of every tax necessary to their maintenance in the most liberal and efficient manner, are unaccountably disturbed at the idea of any legal provisions to secure attendance. The attitude and opinions of these good men may be thus epitomized:

"Proclaim the gospel of universal education by free public schools," they say: "it is the only gospel of political safety. Ballots for all, without knowledge for all, is the precipitous road to anarchy or despotism. Establish your school systems, with all their intricate and nicelyadjusted machinery, and their tens of thousands of school officers and fiduciary agents. Let the school-houses rise and their bells ring out from every hill-side and valley, from every cross-roads and prairie. Seek out, train and employ the choicest men and women of the land to instruct and teach the children of the people, with a wise disregard of false economy as to wages. Furnish and equip, with a lavish hand, the buildings and grounds, with whatsoever is required for the work of instruction, or demanded by the rules of convenience and taste. And for all these things tax the people. Tax them, if need be, to the utmost limits of State law, municipal law, local district law, and sub-district law. Tax them on all realty and personalty; let no description or class of property escape. Tax them for buildings, furniture and apparatus; for books and libraries; for grounds and appurtenances, and for the improvement and ornamentation thereof. Tax them for superintendents and assistant superintendents; for head-masters and principals; for teachers and assistant teachers; for special instructors and lecturers; for penmanship, music and drawing; for culture in science, art and language. Tax them for primary schools, intermediate schools, grammar schools, high schools, normal schools, scientific and polytechnic schools, agricultural schools and colleges, and, if you will, for a great free university at the head of all. Tax them for the salaries and wages of school officers and employees, from State Superintendents and Secretaries of Boards of Education, down to janitors, messengers and errand boys; for the commissions and expenses of overseers, collectors and treasurers. Tax, with a free hand, that nothing be wanting, for the people must be educated. If any refuse to pay, bring down upon then the strong arm, and make them pay; enforce the law, seize and sell their goods and property, and extort the tax, for the youth of this nation must be educated. Do all these things without hesitation or fear; replenish and fill your school treasuries, and keep them full, in city, town and country. Spare no pains, omit no duty, exercise every power conferred by law, for the very life of the Republic depends upon the

education of all the people. But, let there be no compulsion in the matter of attendance! Any legislation on that subject would be un-American, anti-republican, arbitrary, despotic, odious. Every parent must be left at perfect liberty to avail himself of these princely provisions, or not, and to educate his child, or leave it in ignorance, as he may elect; and where there is no parental control, the right of the child to go to school or stay away, must on no account be infringed or abridged. These are matters with which the government, even though that government be but the embodiment and utterance of the popular will, has no business to meddle. Reserved and sacred precincts are these, into which no impertinent school law may presume to intrude. The very idea of pressure in this direction is offensive, and repugnant to the spirit of our institutions."

"Moreover," say they, "such legislation will do no good; it will not reach the evil-the spirits of absenteeism and truancy cannot be so exorcised. It will merely offend, and alienate, without materially adding to the muster-rolls of the schools. And besides, it is vain to pass laws in advance of public sentiment; they will be an irritation and offence, while practically remaining a dead letter. And again, if parents may be compelled to educate their children as the State prescribes, in things secular and temporal, they may also in things religious and spiritual, and thus the inviolable realm of conscience may be invaded. Only make the schools themselves what they should be, and the maximum attendance will be attained without legislation. In every view, therefore, the attempt to reach the question of attendance in this way, is impolitic and unnecessary, and would prove inoperative and mischievous."

This summarizes, not unfairly I think, the pith of what is urged on the other side. I will not characterize these objections as preposterous, but I do say that they will not bear the light of reason, analysis, and experience.

FORCE AS AN ELEMENT IN GOVERNMENT.

And first, as to the allegation that such legislation would be unAmerican; a new and dangerous assumption of power; an alarming perversion of the governmental function. Notice, it is with the prerogatives of republican commonwealths, supreme political communities, that we are dealing; not with private associations, or organizations within the orbit of the sovereign authority. We are concerned with what the people, massed as a substantive unit, have the authority and power to do, through their own forms and appliances of government.

It is then, but the utterance of an irrefragable political truth to declare, as I do declare, that all secular human governments depend, in the last resort, upon bayonets and bomb-shells, that is, upon force. Compul

sion, the power of enforcing obedience, is the bed-rock on which every organized human government, of whatsoever kind, rests down, and on which it must abide and will abide, till the Golden Age of the race, of which poets sing and for which christians pray, shall be ushered in.

In the rear of every mandate of autocrat or despot; of every statute enacted by Parliament, Congress or General Assembly; of every decree promulgated by tribunals of justice, round the globe, are drawn up, in silent, waiting, serried ranks, the grim legions of force. Their symbols of office are sabres and Gatling guns; their arguments are grape-shot and steel. Their work begins when that of legislatures and courts ceases to be effective. I speak figuratively, but the figure expresses a truth, palpable, universal and unquestionable; the truth that physical force, the power of compulsion, supplements, underlies and environs, of absolute necessity, all organized secular human governments; all national, state and municipal legislation, and all judicial decrees-the truth, that without this investiture of force, and the right to invoke its presence and aid, when emergencies demand, every form of government among men would be liable to go to pieces with the first insurrectionary outbreak or convulsion. Of all optimistic political chimeras, the wildest and most fallacious is the notion that all the affairs of mundane states and nations can be conducted on strictly Sunday-school principles.

FAMILIAR EXAMPLES.

This element of force, this reserved right of coercion, runs through our whole political system from top to bottom. It confronts us everywhere. For rebellion and treason, it sets in motion the Army and the Navy, sweeps land and sea with the crimson tempest of war, and drives insurgent States back to their spheres within the orbit of the Union; for murder, it has the terrible retribution of the scaffold; for robbery, arson, forgery and other high crimes, it builds the grim walls of prisons, jails and dungeons; for mutiny on shipboard, its fetters are ever in readiness; for desertion from the army, in the face of the enemy, it has drum-head courts-martial, and death by musketry; for rebellion against the tax-laws, it decrees the seizure and sale of goods and property; for innumerable minor offences against the provisions of law and the peace and order of society, it has temporary imprisonments, fines, forfeitures and countless other punishments and disabilities. In each and every case, in the last resort, it meets the culprit with clenched fists, not with moral precepts-it takes him by the throat, not by the hand.

Grading the penalty to the crime or the wrong, this strong hand is omnipresent and ubiquitous. We live and move, by land and by sea. by day and night, in an atmosphere of law, surcharged everywhere and every moment with the electricity of force, and if no red bolt descends upon our heads, it is simply because we obey the laws and behave our