mistaken in her claims respecting state sovereignty. In 1860 state sovereignty did not exist in either section. The South believed otherwise, but her experience during the Civil war made the mistake evident. The Confederate government could not have maintained itself at all except through acts which were emphatic denials of this doctrine. Consequently the South had no warrant for the charge that the North was the aggressor and that President Lincoln inaugurated the war. Mr. Blaine's view is mistaken in that it exaggerates the influence of personal agency. He treats as if altogether voluntary, actions which in great measure were compelled. He lays the entire blame upon those who actually initiated and participated in secession; whereas disunion was inevitable from the moment when the South accepted slavery as "a good"; or perhaps from that earlier time when the South, having ceased to be democratic, came under the rule of the slave holder. Interested motives doubtless had their share in the inception of the secession movement; but there was patriotism also. The event foretold by Calhoun had come to pass; the moral bonds between the sections were broken; we had become "two peoples."

It is difficult to realize the character of the years which just preceded the civil war - how very evil they were! It was the time of the gospel of hate. In the place of the old Union stood the two highly individualized, sharply antagonistic sections. No man could serve the North without incurring the enmity of the South, or the South without incurring that of the North. Nor could a man serve the moribund Union without forfeiting the good will of his own section. This was the real offence of Webster in his 7th of March speech. In that speech he had virtually said: "I care more for the Union than for either section"; and the reply was repudiation by the North and distrust by the South. Henceforth, in what related to the dominant movement of that day, he was an "isolated man." The tragic close of Webster's life is historic because his sufferings grew out of a contradiction, not in himself, but in the situation of the country, a contradiction which in some measure involved and darkened the lives of every devotee of the old Union. Perhaps in no

way was the increasingly unwholesome influence of the times more clearly shown than by its effect on the finest natures. It transformed John Brown, in whom were united the better qualities of the patriarch, the crusader and the philanthropist, into a deliberate organizer of servile insurrection; it made "Stonewall" Jackson, in whom religious enthusiasm and patriotic zeal were as strongly marked as his phenomenal genius for war, eager to unfurl the black flag. The situation became intolerable. Terrible as were the consequences of secession, they were far less terrible than the demoralization of character which it brought to an end.

The true cause of secession is that set forth by the Republican convention of 1864. It was slavery that paralyzed the productive energies of the South; that confined her to agriculture, and those methods of prosecuting agriculture which impoverish both land and people. It was slavery that checked the democratic movement, and delivered the South, bound hand and foot, to the rule of the slave-holding aristocracy. It was slavery that isolated the South, that brought her into hostile relations with the progressive outside world, and so obscured her notions of right and wrong, that she could praise as “a good, a positive good," the institution which she had formerly condemned, and through which she was being undone. It was slavery that induced her to develop and maintain, on an ultrademocratic basis, the antiquated doctrine of state sovereignty, and at the same time to attempt to overthrow those foundation principles of democracy, the rights of free speech and of petition. It was slavery that induced her to force upon the general government a policy of aggression, which resulted in a prolonged and desperate struggle for the possession of the newly acquired territory; and, in the course of this struggle, it was slavery that led to those acts which embittered and inflamed the already alienated sections, the Fugitive Slave law of 1850, the Personal Liberty laws, the overthrow of the Missouri compromise, the bloodshed and terrorism in Kansas, the interferences there against free labor on the part of Pierce and 1 Pollard, Secret History of the Confederacy, pp. 281, 282.

Buchanan, the Ostend manifesto, the Dred Scott decision, the attack upon Sumner, the insurrection at Harper's Ferry, and the fatal demand respecting slavery in the territories made at the Charleston convention of 1860. Finally, it was slavery that forced the South, in the interest of self-preservation, to withdraw from the Union. Indeed, after the South was fully committed to slavery, the course which she actually pursued became compulsory. She could not have remained true to herself, had she undertaken to abandon it. But this course led directly and inevitably to disunion; for, between the principle of slavery, which is the right of the strong to the uncompensated services of the weak, and the principle of modern progress, which is the duty of the strong to help the weak to become strong, there is an "irrepressible conflict." The events of 1860 made evident what Lincoln and Seward had foretold, that within the Union slavery was doomed to extinction. But the destruction of slavery involved the destruction of the entire Southern system -a revolution greater than the North would need to undergo in being made over into a copy of the Austrian empire. Effacement no self-respecting people can accept. To escape this, the South was forced to secede. The South is responsible for secession only in so far as she is responsible for slavery. The participants in secession were the victims of those who converted the South to the belief that slavery was "a good."

ANSON D. MORSE.

STATE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY IN THE

BY

FOURTH CENTURY.

Y the middle of the fourth century that centralizing process which had been silently going on in the Roman empire ever since the days of Augustus had reached its consummation. The state had become everything, the individual nothing. All the various powers and functions of the free community had been gradually concentrated in the person of the emperor. In the several departments of administrative, judicial, military and even religious life, not only was all power ultimately derived from him, but an active control was actually exercised by him, through his agents, over the smallest and most trivial concerns. And what was true in the sphere of law, of government, and of religion,1 was equally true in the field of economics. All industry, from that of the petty colon who tilled the soil to that of the great corporations who had charge of the provisioning of Rome and Constantinople, was under the direct control, and was conducted in the interest of the state. Nay more, the state itself had become producer. It had an almost complete monopoly of all mines, quarries and salt-pits; and while great companies of shell-fishers sought for its sole use the murex or celebrated purple dye, its great workshops turned out every year vast quantities of silken, woollen, and linen cloths for the use of the emperor and the army.

This revolution in the nature of the state had not been brought about without effecting a corresponding change in the status of the individual. In the fourth century a man's position was no longer determined by his own free choice, but was already fixed for him by the conditions of his birth. This was true in all departments of life. The son of a senator or a curialis stepped alike into the honors and the duties of his father's

1 See Burckhardt, Die Zeit Constantin's, S. 369, 370.

position. The son of a soldier was forced to enter the army, and the colon carried on the cultivation of the land tilled by his father. So in the field of industry. The workmen in the state manufactories were bound to their position for life, and when they died their places were taken by their sons. Nor were the members of the so-called "free" colleges of workmen - the architects, builders, locksmiths, stone-cutters, brass-workers, wood-carvers, potters, etc.—any less closely bound down. If any one of them deserted his work, he was sought out, even to the remotest provinces, and dragged ruthlessly back to his post. In all departments of industry the iron hand of the state was felt, assigning to each workman his special task and forcing its accomplishment. Never has the world seen the socialistic experiment tried on a grander scale. Only in this case the state was not, as the modern socialistic ideal would represent it, a beneficent power, assigning to each according to his ability his share in the common work and wisely dividing the common product, but a purely selfish power, forcing from each man the maximum of labor, and confiscating for its own purposes the greater part of the fruits. I shall consider presently the causes which brought about this singular state of affairs; but in order to understand them fully, it will first be necessary to consider briefly the nature and history of the Roman colleges of work

men.

The exact nature of the Roman collegium is by no means clear. Mommsen himself1 hesitated to attempt a definition of it. In its later history certainly, it appears to have been a legal person, like our modern corporation, and as such entitled, under certain restrictions, to hold property and to receive legacies. Mommsen 2 likens the collegium to a miniature republic-a state within a state- having its own laws for the regulation of its members, its officers elected from the whole body of freemen, and its capital fund recruited both from the dues of the members and from outside sources, of the income of which each member received his share (emolumentum), but from the body of which (arca) no one could under any circumstances remove any.

1 De Collegiis Romanorum, p. 117.

2 Ibid.