A purely sentimental and therefore very popular argument against property qualification is that the rights and claims of humanity are separate from and superior to those of property. This statement has really nothing to do with the case, since it is not proposed to exclude humanity from the polls, but merely to select for admission thereto a superior and more representative class. It is said by these sentimentalists that the rights of man are absolute and transcendent and must first be satisfied, while those of property are inferior and may be disregarded. This is on the absurd assumption that civilized man and his property are separable and distinct forces; and that a conception of civilized man without property is possible. And so we are assailed with the catch phrase, popular with penny papers and platform ranters: “Man is superior to property.” This, like most catch phrases, is found, when examined, to be rather empty. Man is superior to property just as the head is superior to the stomach, as the fruit of the tree is superior to the roots. But when the stomach is neglected the head dies; when the root is not nourished the fruit perishes; the only way to preserve the head is to feed the stomach; the only way to produce the fruit is to fertilize the roots. Man in a state of civilization cannot exist without property; if you sacrifice his property you sacrifice him. The imagined comparison of the value of human life in its entirety with human property in the aggregate is absurd, it presents an impossible choice. How, for instance, can you balance the value of human life against that of the New York Croton Aqueduct system which conserves the life of millions? Carry out the notion that all property should be sacrificed rather than that one man should perish, and you have the spectacle of a people without food, fire, clothes, shelter or medicines, whereof not merely the one sacred man, but the whole lot would perish forthwith. On the other hand, a comparison of the value of individual life with that of individual property depends on the character of the life and of the property referred to. Whatever we may pretend we do not practically treat the life of a human being as such, say for instance, that of a savage, as equivalent in value to the highest forms of property such as our great works of art, our great public works, or the material equipment necessary to our subsistence. It is probable that the aggregate of the accumulated treasures of wealth and art which existed in Europe at the time of the discovery of America was worth to civilization and to the moral and religious universe a million times more than all the savage human life on the North American continent at that time. To the existence of this accumulation of property and this organized society not only the well-to-do, but the most ignorant man, be he ever so poor, owes whatever enjoyment he has in his daily life. The little naked child is brought into the world by the aid of