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 Linnaean 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 Zoologique 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 Miserables, 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 Grimke'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

Beranger, 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 Miserables 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 Koniggratz, 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.