State four millions of dollars to which it had no decent pretense of a claim. Never was any affair conducted in a more businesslike way. The appointed agents of the corporation came to Harrisburg when the legislature was in session and regularly set up a shop for the purchase of members at prearranged and specified prices. You condemn this piece of business because it was dishonest, but was it more dishonest than that which the same corporation habitually does when it stands on the highway and by fraud or force extorts from individual citizens a much larger sum in excessive tolls, to which its right is no better than to the money it tried to get by bribery?

The functions of railroad corporations are clearly defined and ought to be as universally understood as those of any servant which the State or general government employs. Without proprietary right in the highways, they are appointed to superintend them for the owners. They are charged with the duty of seeing that every needed facility for the use of those thoroughfares shall be furnished to all citizens, like the justice promised in Magna Charta, without sale, denial, or delay. Such services, if faithfully performed, are important and valuable, and the compensation ought to be a full equivalent; accordingly they are authorized to pay themselves, by levying upon all who use the road, a tax, or toll, or freight, sufficient for that purpose.

But this tax must be reasonable, fixed, certain, and uniform, otherwise it is a fraud upon the people, which no department of the State government, nor all of them combined, has power to legalize.

It is much easier to see the nature and character of the mischief wrought by the present practices of the railroad companies than it is to calculate its extent. If your action depends in any degree upon the amount of the spoliation which the people of the State have suffered and are now suffering for want of just laws to protect them, you certainly ought to direct an official inquiry into the subject and ascertain the whole truth as nearly as possible.

But investigations have already taken place in Congress and the legislatures of several States; complaints founded upon specified facts come up from every quarter; verified accusations are made by some of the companies against others; railroad men have openly confessed their fraudulent practices, and sometimes boasted of the large sums they accumulate by them. Putting

these together you can make at least an approximate calculation. I doubt not you will find the sum total of the plunder they have taken in the shape of excessive charges to be frightful.

Three or four years ago a committee of the United States Senate collected the materials and made a report upon this general subject, in which they showed that an excess of five cents per hundredweight, charged on the whole agricultural crop of the then current year, would amount to seventy millions of dollars. Upon the crop of the last year it would doubtless come nearer a hundred millions. The railroads would not get this sum, because not nearly all of it is carried, but it would operate as an export tax operates; that is to say, the producer, the consumer, or the intermediate dealer, would lose that amount on the whole crop, carried or not carried. In 1880 the charges from Chicago to the eastern markets were raised from ten cents per hundredweight to thirty-five cents, the latter rate being unquestionably twice as high as a fair one. You can count from these data the terrible loss sustained by the land, labor, and trade of the country. It was the end and the attainment of a combination still subsisting between the great trunk lines, as they are called, to pool their receipts, to stop all competition, to unite the stealing power of all into one grand monopoly and put the whole people at their mercy. It was a criminal conspiracy by the common and statute laws of all the States.

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We are often told that in this struggle for honest government against the power of the railroad corporations the just cause has no chance of success. We do seem to be out on a forlorn hope. The little finger of monopoly is thicker than the loins of the law. The influence of our enemies over the legislature is mysterious, incalculable, and strong enough to make the Constitution a dead letter in spite of oaths to obey it, and a popular demand, almost universal, to enforce it. There is no other subject upon. which the press is so shy as upon this, the most important of all. Afraid to oppose the corrupt corporations, and ashamed to defend them, it sinks into neutrality. Prudent politicians always want a smooth road to run on, and the right path here is full of impediments. In this state of things we seem weaker than we really are; for the unbroken heart of the people is on the side of justice, equality, and truth. Monopolists may sneer at our blundering leadership and the unorganized condition of our common file, but they had better bethink them that when the worst comes

to the worst, our raw militia is numerous enough to overwhelm their regulars, well paid and well drilled as they are. They have destroyed the business of hundreds for one that they have favored. For every millionaire they have made ten thousand paupers, and the injured parties lack no gall to make oppression bitter.

The people, certainly, got one immense advantage over the carrying corporations when they adopted the seventeenth article of the Constitution. That concedes to us all the rights we ask, puts the flag of the commonwealth into our hands and consecrates our warfare. The malign influence that heretofore has palsied the legislative arm cannot last forever. We will continue to elect representatives again and again, and every man shall swear upon the Gospel of God that he will do us the full and perfect justice which the Constitution commands. At last we will rouse the "conscience of a majority, screw their courage to the sticking place, and get the appropriate legislation" which we need so sorely.

Whenever a majority in both houses becomes independent enough to throw off the chains which now bind them to the service of monopoly; when frequent repetitions of the oath to obey the Constitution shall impress its obligation upon their hearts; when admonition and reproof from within and without"line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little "-shall have taught them that fidelity to the rights of the people is a higher virtue than subserviency to the mere interests of a corrupt corporation; when the seventeenth article shall have been read and reread in their hearing often enough to make them understand the import of its plain and simple words, then, without further delay and with no more paltry excuses, they will give us legislation appropriate, just, and effective. A tolerably clear perception of their duty, coupled with a sincere desire to do it, will enable them to catch the shortest and easiest way. All trifling with the subject will cease at once; all modes of evading this great point will go out of fashion; no contrivance will be resorted to of ways not to do it while professing to be in favor of it; our common sense will not be insulted by the offer of a civil remedy to each individual for public offenses which affect the whole body of the people and diminish the security of all men's rights at once. The legislative vision, relieved from the moral strabismus which makes it crooked now, will see straight through the folly of trying to correct the general evil except by the one

appropriate means of regular punishment at the suit of the State. Does this seem harsh? Certainly not more severe than any other criminal law on our statute book which applies to railway managers as well as to everybody else. They need not suffer the penalty unless they commit the crime; and they will not commit the crime if you make a just penalty the legal consequence. Pass a proper law to-day and they will be as honest as you are to-morrow. Every one of them can be trusted to keep clear of acts which may take him to the penitentiary. They have been guilty in their past lives, and will continue in evil doing for some time to come because the present state of your laws assures them that they shall go "unwhipped of justice." But threaten them with a moderate term of imprisonment and a reasonable fine, and they will no more rob a shipper on the railroad than they will pick your pocket at a prayer meeting. Your law will do its work without a single prosecution. Thus you could, if you would, effect a perfect reform, and yet not hurt a hair on any head-"a consummation most devoutly to be wished."

But it is not to be expected that such good will come immediately. Nearly ten years ago the legislature was commanded to carry out the beneficent measure of the Constitution. For nine years that illustrious body was a dumb impediment to the course of justice-all its faculties paralyzed by some inscrutable influence dead- devoid of sense and motion, as if its only function was to "lie in cold obstruction and to rot." At last, when it was wakened up by the present governor, and reminded of the seventeenth article, it opened its mouth and spoke as one who did not know whether he was sworn to oppose the Constitution or to obey it. Some members have shown their utter hostility to it, some have been willing to defend small portions of it, and one Senator discovered that it was all equally sacred. But his plan meets no favor. Still, we need not despair. The people and the Constitution, mutually supporting one another, will be triumphant yet. Meanwhile let all the railroad rings rejoice. This is their day; ours is to come.

M

JAMES G. BLAINE

(1830-1893)

R. BLAINE'S great strength lies in his naturalness and in his perfect control of himself. In his studied efforts he strains after effect seldomer than almost any other man in American history who has exercised great power over popular assemblies. Burke goes from one climax to another in rapid succession, regardless of the risk of bathos. Blaine rises steadily to his final climax as if it were part of his nature to increase his strength at every step of his progress. He described himself and his own naturalness of method in saying of Garfield: "He never did so well but that it seemed he could easily have done better." Whether he rises with the first impetus of his subject, or circles with easy grace and assured wing-sweep after having risen, we see that what he does is essentially part of his nature.

It is said that Whitefield once preached to an audience of sailors in New York city and described the wreck of a vessel on a lee shore with such effect that at the climax the entire audience rose to its feet crying, "The long boat-take to the long boat!" Blaine had something of the same faculty of compelling his audience to forget him, to lose sight of his individuality, to cease to hear his voice, and to become wholly engrossed in the subject itself. This and his intense nervous energy, so controlled that it does not display itself in passion, show in his greatest oratorical efforts as the probable secret of what was called his "magnetism." In his oration over Garfield he sinks himself wholly in the character of the man he eulogizes, and without once confessing himself voices his own deepest nature in defining the intellectual and moral nature of his friend. The rapid flow of its limpid sentences make the oration over Garfield a model for all who hate exaggeration and love above everything else the simplicity of that continuous and sustained statement which feels no need of tropes and metaphors. Mr. Blaine's great strength is the purity of his English, the power of sustained effort, the ability to keep the end in view from the beginning, and the power to make every subordinate part fit into the whole. Lacking this faculty, the greatest orator of England, forgetting in his own strength the weakness of his audiences, made almost as great a reputation for emptying the benches before the close of his speeches as he did for the