taxation which places the burden of government on the shoulders of poverty. Popular ignorance of public affairs has tolerated this, and has tolerated a financial system far worse, which has given capital all possible advantage of labor. We are drifting in the rapids; how far off is our Niagara? But labor is roused, and a change in our system of taxation is imminent. Unlimited wealth and unlimited poverty are the necessary results of the warlike stage of progress, which develops the conquerors and the conquered in the great battle of life. Unnumbered centuries of tribal and international war have developed to high perfection the wolfish and tigerish instincts of humanity. What is called peace is a state of financial war. Beneath the smooth skin of the civilized man, we find the wolf in undiminished vigor. The triumphant wolf rides in his chariot; the conquered wolf sleeps in the open air along the alleys, wharves, and streets; but what cares the wolf triumphant for that? for the 30,000 homeless in London? The policeman's club, or the bayonet, is the only thing that keeps down riot and arson, and the uncertainty of the result is all that hinders the French, German, and Russian wolves from turning a continent into a pandemonium. Is Europe truly a civilized country? Not if tried by an ethical standard. VON MOLTKE, the great man of Germany, who has so recently passed away, considered war a _permanent_ institution. In this wolfish stage of human development, altruism is almost unknown, except as an eccentricity. It is safe to say, as a general rule to which there are not many exceptions, that _no man is fit to be entrusted with any more than he needs for his own comfortable existence_. Every dollar beyond that sum is wasted in his hands. He has not the faintest conception that he is a trustee of all such wealth, responsible to heaven for its use. As he cannot consume it, he can but squander it to gratify his vanity, and lift himself to a position from which he can, or thinks he can, look down upon his fellows. The leading idea of the average citizen is to construct a palace that will cost ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred times as much as the residence that would be amply sufficient and pleasant.[17] His talent for the destruction of wealth grows by indulgence, and thus the millions that the financial conquerors have won from the conquered are thrown into the blazing flame of ostentation, and might as well be thrown into a literal conflagration. Such is the humanity with which we have to deal at present. Wealth, no matter who holds it, does not restrain the destruction of the resources of the commonwealth, but the growl of the suffering millions may, and may lead to a recognition of the grand truth that everything beyond the demands of human comfort is a sacred trust for humanity, and with the millions thus aroused, I believe it may be possible to introduce laws which will gradually change the entire condition of society, and leave