As it is, there are eight stores, eight stocks of goods, eight sets of clerks, eight insurance policies, eight computations of interest, eight gas or electric light bills, and probably eight many-other items of expense chargeable to the profits on the sales, and supported by the public, when one establishment would serve all the people of Montgomery better than the eight do now. If these stores were scattered about the city, the matter of convenience could be urged for their existence. To support such prodigality, profits ranging from one hundred to one thousand _per cent._ have to be charged, and the public evidently pays them, for their existence from year to year is evidence of support from some one. Suppose the Corporation of the City of Montgomery were to vote an appropriation of fifty thousand (or perhaps only twenty thousand) dollars, for the purpose of establishing a first-class dispensary of medicines, etc., and should put it in charge of a competent chemist, who would know what medicines were good, and what compounds were not good? The patronage of the citizens would support such an establishment on a ten _per cent._ basis of profit, and pay ten _per cent._ interest on the investment without doubt, and the citizens would not be at the mercy of chance or imposition, in a matter of prime importance to health, as they are liable to be, under any but the most perfect system of selecting and dispensing drugs and patent medicines. [Sidenote: Slavery to Waste] This is a single instance among thousands, of the unintelligent application of the doctrine of _laissez faire_ to matters of vital social interest; and is given here to illustrate a form of slavery to inconvenience and waste, that would be cleared away like mist before the sun, as the result of evolution, from the standpoint of Emancipation. It required a million guns, and the assistance of several million men, with all the waste and blood which war carries with it, to free the negro; and the advance of humanity the world over, was a fruit, worth the cost of the war; but slavery of the individual to the parasite passions, will not enlist the rescue of arms, although it entails greater hardship than was ever suffered by the average negro slave. Each individual must gain for himself this freedom; no one else can aid him except through suggestion and moral help. It is his birthright however, and awaits his call. [Sidenote: The Martyr] The face of the martyr glowed with radiant happiness, when he exclaimed to his jailers from the confines of his chains, "You have bound my body, but you cannot bind my soul! Kill my body if you like! it will only give greater freedom to my soul." But the so-called free citizen of to-day; who smothers himself under the blanket of worry; or, who spits angry injustice at a self-created-phantom-cause for resentment, is a weak and pitiable wretch, as compared with the bonded martyr or negro of long ago. [Sidenote: Axiom of the Circus]