One of the first duties of the people will obviously be to simplify the cumbrous machinery of the Constitution, and to make it a more efficient organ of their will. In the two great crises of American history, nothing strikes us so forcibly as the high standard of character and intelligence which was shown. It may be regarded as a symptom of a really strong race, that they were so slow and reluctant to take decisive measures in the struggle for Independence and at the time of the Civil War. We may now see the same natural hesitation in deciding how to handle a problem of surpassing gravity. Such crises are the severest and truest tests of national character. All friends of freedom in every part of the world will fervently hope that the people of America may display their historic qualities of insight, high principle, energy, and resolution in the mighty struggle of Commonwealth against Wealth upon which they are entering. According to Liebknecht, late leader of the German socialists, ‘the social democracy is the party of the whole people, except 200,000 large proprietors, squires, middle-class capitalists, and priests.’ We need not discuss the exactitude of such figures in relation either to Germany or any other country. It is a fact which no reasonable man can dispute that economic and political power is in most civilised countries actually wielded by a very small minority. Nor need we stay here to inquire into the methods by which such power has been gained. Even as regards England we have not yet an impartial and comprehensive account of the rise of the present economic and political order since the liquidation of the mediæval system began about the middle of the fourteenth century. How labour legislation was carried on by the ruling class in its own interests for five centuries after 1349; how Henry VIII. took his courtiers and privy councillors into partnership for the dividing of the church lands; how commons were inclosed; how even the poor-law became an occasion for the subjection and degradation of labour; how for generations bribery was a normal instrument of government; how wealth was gained in the slave-trade, in the East Indies, in the jobbing of government loans and contracts, and by the imposition of corn-laws—all these we vaguely know, but they have not yet been presented in a form which can satisfy the canons of scientific history.