The stock explanation of this growth of expenditure is that with the advance of civilization the cost of government must increase in like degree; there must be more regulation and supervision of the activities becoming more numerous and complex. But this means, if it means anything, that the more enlightened and humane people are, the more difficult it is to maintain order and enforce justice, the more inclined are they to attack and plunder one another--in a word, the more barbarous they are. Preposterous as this theory of civilization is, it is precisely the one upon which the American people are acting with unparalleled energy. While we should naturally think them moving toward a point where they could get along without government, they are moving toward a point where they will have nothing but government. Referring to the increase of expenditures already mentioned, Mr. Roberts says it “corresponds almost exactly with the increase of the number of commissions and departments.... These departments and commissions,” he continues, “are largely for the purpose of extending social supervision and regulation over many things which, in the earlier days of our Commonwealth, were left to the localities or to self-regulation.” Again he says: “The amount of State inspection has become very great, reaching out constantly over new fields, and employing in the aggregate an army of inspectors.... The system of _laissez faire_, which was the rallying cry of democracy and free government at the beginning of the century, has yielded gradually to a system of supervision and control which monarchies never attempted.... What our State has done in this line can not probably be undone,” he says in a repetition of his warning, “but this tendency to expand and multiply and differentiate and segregate State supervision and regulation must cease, or the burden will soon become too grievous to be borne.”