But Mr. Morgan's indignation rises to the highest pitch in his discussion of the Interstate Commerce Act. He fears that it will cause the downfall of our liberties and sees in the background the Venetian Bridge of Sighs and the French Bastille. He asks: "Why should for any public reasons--for any reason of public safety--the Interstate Commerce Law have come to stay?" He then berates the act as follows: "To begin with, the present act abounds in punishments for and prohibitions against an industry chartered by the people, but nowhere extends to that industry a morsel of approval or protection. It bristles with penalties, legal, equitable, penal, and as for contempt, against railway companies, but nowhere alludes to any possible case in which a railway company might, by accident, be in the right, and the patron, customer, passenger or shipper in the wrong.... The constitutions of civilized nations, for the last few centuries at least, have provided that not even guilt should be punished except by due process of law, and have uniformly refused to set even that due process in motion except upon a complaint of grievance. But the Interstate Commerce Law denies the one and does away with the necessity for the other. That statute provides that the commission it creates shall proceed 'in such manner and by such means as it shall deem proper,' or 'on its own motion,' and that 'no complaint shall at any time be dismissed because of the absence of direct damage to the complainant.' Even the Venetian council often provided for a certain and described hole in the wall through which the anonymous bringers of charges should thrust their accusations. Even the court of star chamber was known to dismiss inquisitions when it found that no wrong had been done. But the statute of interstate commerce appears to issue _lettres de cachet_ against anything in the shape of a railway company--to scatter them broadcast, and to invite any one who happens to have leisure to fill them out, by inserting the name of a railway company. It says to the bystander: 'Drop us a postal card, or mention to any of our commissioners, or to a mutual friend, the name of any railway company of which you may have heard, and so give us jurisdiction to inquire if that company may have by chance omitted to dot an i or cross a t in its ledgers, or whether any one of its hundreds of thousands of agents--in the rush of a day's business, or in a shipper's hurry to catch a train--may have named a rate not on the schedule then being prepared at headquarters, or charged a sixpence less than some other agent 250 miles down the line may have accepted a week ago for what might turn out to be a fraction more mileage service in the same general direction. No particular form is necessary. Drop in to luncheon with our commission any day between twelve and one, and mention the name of a railway company. The railway company may have done you no damage, nor