to train him for the function. It must, however, be admitted that the circumstances of that little republic and its cantons are too peculiar to make it safe to draw inferences from Swiss experience to large countries like Britain and France, the political life of which is highly centralized. The States of your Union may appear to offer a better field, and the results of the various experiments which some of them (such as Oklahoma) are trying will be watched with interest by Europeans. In considering the harm done to civic duty by selfish personal interests we were led to observe that the fewer points of contact between government and the pecuniary interests of private citizens, the better both for the purity of government and for the conscience of the private citizen. How far government ought to include within its functions schemes for increasing national wealth, otherwise than by such means (being means which a government alone can employ because to be effective they must be done on a great scale) as the improving of education, the diffusing of knowledge, the providing means of transportation, the conservation of natural resources, and so forth, may be matter for debate. But at any rate government ought to avoid measures tending to enrich any one person or group of persons at the expense of the citizens generally. Common justice requires that. Accordingly, all contracts should be made on the terms best for the public, and if possible by open bidding. Franchises, if not reserved by the public authority for itself, should be granted only for limited times and so as to secure the interests of the community, whether by way of a rent payable to the city or county treasury or otherwise. Public employees should not be made into a privileged class, to which there is given larger pay than other workers of the same class and capacity receive. All bills promoted by a private person, firm, or company looking to his or their pecuniary advantage ought to be closely scrutinized by some responsible public authority. In England we draw a sharp distinction between such bills and general public legislation, and we submit the former to a quasi-judicial examination by a Parliamentary committee in order to avoid possible jobs or scandals or losses to the public. As respects general legislation, i. e., that which is not in its terms local or personal, it may be difficult or impossible to prevent a law from incidentally benefiting one group or class of men and injuring another. But everything that can be done ought to be done to prevent any set of men from abusing legislation to serve their own interest. If there be truth in what one hears about the groups which in France, Belgium, and Germany have, through political pressure, obtained by law bounties benefiting their industries, or tariffs specially favourable to their own commercial enterprises, the danger that the general taxpayer, or the consumer, may be sacrificed to these private interests, is a real danger.