ot, that justice was really a one-sided pastime, in which the rich
man could easily wear out the poor contestant. This, however, is not the
place for a dissertation on that most remarkable of noteworthy
sorcerer's arts, the making of justice an expensive luxury, while still
deluding the people with the notion that the law knows no preferences.
The preferences which are more to the point at present are those in
which government force is used to enrich the already rich and impoverish
the impoverished still further. At the very time that property was
bitterly resisting enlightened pleas for the abolition of imprisonment
for debt, for the enactment of a mechanic's lien law, and for the
extension of the suffrage franchise it was using the public money of the
whole people for its personal and private enterprises. In works dealing
with those times it is not often that we get penetration into the
underlying methods of the trading class. But a lucid insight is
inadvertently given by Walter Barrett (who, for sixty years, was in the
mercantile trade), in his smug and conventional, but quaintly
entertaining, volumes, "The Merchants of Old New York." This strong
instance shows like a flashlight that while the success of the shippers
was attributed to a fine category of energetic qualities, the benevolent
assistance of the United States Government was, in a large measure,
responsible for part of their accumulations.

THE SHIPPERS' HUGE GRAFT.

The Griswolds of New York owned the ship, "Panama." She carried spelter,
lead, iron and other products to China and returned with tea, false
cinnamon and various other Chinese goods. The duty on these was
extremely high. But the Government was far more lenient to the trading
class than the trader was to the poor debtor. It generously extended
credit for nine, twelve and eighteen months before it demanded the
payment of the tariff duties. What happened under this system? As soon
as the ship arrived, the cargo was sold at a profit of fifty per cent.
The Griswolds, for example, would pocket their profits and instead of
using their own capital in further ventures, they would have the
gratuitous use of Government money, that is to say, the people's money,
for periods of from six months to a year and a half. Thus the endless
chain was kept up. According to Barrett, this was the customary attitude
of the Government toward merchants: it was anything but unusual for a
merchant to have the free use of