No system of government is perfect. I doubt very much whether a system of laws can ever be devised that will be perfect. But human nature is weak and selfish, and law, with its pains and penalties, is necessary to restrain its passions and subdue its violence. Until the sublime lessons of the Sermon on the Mount become the inspiration of every human heart—that is, until the millennium shall come—mankind must be governed by law, and the laws must be made by human beings who have all the frailties and imperfections of their fellows. Wisely and honestly as they may legislate, they will make mistakes. Carefully and intelligently as they may frame codes, they cannot fit them to deal with every vice, and folly, and imperfection, and passion of poor humanity, and so injustice may be done in the very temples dedicated to law. But, after all, the law-makers of America, State and National, have done and are doing fairly well. Wrongs exist that should be rooted out. Selfishness, and greed, and rapacity, are always active and aggressive, and when they are curbed or beaten back in one direction, they seek new fields and pastures in which to gorge themselves. Corporate power and privilege needs to be firmly and effectively limited and regulated. Those latter-day crimes against the people, the so-called “trusts,” should be prohibited, in every section of this country, by National as well as State laws. Men who combine to regulate the supplies of this country; who purchase or lease, and then lock up a manufactory of linseed oil, as was done in this city only a brief while ago, and thus not only destroy an important municipal industry, but destroy the products of thousands of farms in half a dozen surrounding counties—the men who are responsible for such things as this, no matter what excuse they may make, are criminal in the sight of God and man, and should be punished, not by fine alone, but by imprisonment. The meanest horse thief who ever invaded a farmer’s stable at midnight is not more dangerous than are the men who organize and manage such “trusts” as these. Let us have laws, severe, far-reaching, swift, and merciless in their operation, to punish the greedy cormorants who are, under the guise of regulating production and supply, organizing “trusts” to control everything that is produced in America. And, if necessary, let us have “Protective Associations” everywhere, to “assist the civil authorities in the enforcement of law.”