ease its efforts to check by law the present alarming increase
of lascivious printing.

Case IV. is an election bill in California which prohibits independent
nominations except upon petition of five per cent. of the voters, and
thus disfranchises four per cent. of the voting population. If this
mad device proves anything, it proves that the leaders of the old
parties are in such consternation at the uneasiness of the people that
they have lost their heads. It proves no more than the denial of the
right of petition in Congress during anti-slavery days; and it proves
as much as that attempt to ignore the voice of reform. Earthquakes are
not far off when such things happen.

Case V. is the suit for damages which one Powell brings against
Pennsylvania. Under a statute authorizing the manufacture of
oleomargarine, he had undertaken the business, to find himself ruined
by a later legislature making its manufacture a misdemeanor. This is
very noteworthy, for it proves too much. It shows a vested money
interest controlling legislature and voting a rival business into
outlawry. This is a kind of instance socialists like to get hold of.

Yet these instances are used to illustrate "a growing spirit of
intolerance" in our country; they are said to exhibit a State tyranny
which is already blossoming under paternalistic legislation; they
emphasize, it is claimed, the fact,--"That all the majority wishes is
the sanction of law to make its crimes against the minority assume a
show of respectability. All that retards persecution is the limit of
the sanction of law; and I submit that, in the light of history, and
in the face of the wrongs of the present, all increase in governmental
power menaces the liberty, the happiness, and the growth of the
individual."

This is a pretty large indictment to hang on such debatable evidence.
Its audaciousness fairly takes one's breath away. Our heaviest battery
is turned against ourselves. Every cherished dream of the good time
coming goes up at a blast. Instead of freedom at last to do that for
which we are made, and to fit into the niche where we belong, we are
shown a State's-prison. Instead of an age of joy and of elastic step,
we are pointed to an iron rule of repression and cheerlessness.
Instead of leisure to ripen, of a full summing of our powers, of the
exhilaration of new truth, we have disclosed to us a stunted
individuality treading a dull and monotonous round of existence. And
all t