practice, has been deposited, for the convenience of all, with the State, from which, as the maker, guardian, and executor of Law, and as a common fund for the use of all, the rights of each are derived, and man thus made as free as he can be without harm to his neighbor. It was this surrender of private jurisdiction which made civilization possible, and keeps it so. The abrogation of the right of private war has done more to secure the rights of man, properly understood,--and, consequently, for his well-being,--than all the theories spun from the brain of the most subtle speculator, who, finding himself cramped by the actual conditions of life, fancies it as easy to make a better world than God intended, as it has been proved difficult to keep in running order the world that man has made out of his fragmentary conception of the divine thought. The great peril of democracy is that the assertion of private right should be pushed to the obscuring of the superior obligation of public duty.” Having thus discoursed upon what is most fundamental in political thinking, he passes, after a brief reflection upon the growing function of the press, to enquire into that new factor in the problem of the future which takes the name of Socialism. He distinguishes here, as elsewhere, between socialism as a new reading of the law of rights and duties, and State Socialism. He repeats his warning against this form which he holds destructive of a genuine democracy, for he distrusts the robbery of man’s freedom of development in character for the sake of paying him back in the paper promises of security from misfortune. The whole latter part of this Introduction, in spite of its hurried manner, is a footnote to the history of Lowell’s thought on some of the greatest of themes.