that "there is no cure for anarchy but education. There is no assurance that the most precious and useful lives will be respected unless we teach by example and precept that insignificant lives also are worthy of complete protection. The unsanitary tenement, the dangerous factory, the brutal police force, the drunken parent, the insensate mob burning its victim-these are seeds of anarchism."

THE

LIMITATION OF FREE SPEECH.

HE opinion is freely expressed in the newspapers and in public addresses that Czolgosz was incited to his crime by incendiary writings and speeches, and that if a law had existed to restrain such utterances, the crime would not have resulted; and not a few papers go on from this to argue that some step should be taken to prevent utterances that might cause a repetition of the Buffalo tragedy. None of these papers advocates, or even mentions, a censorship of speeches or public prints; but the feeling is widely expressed that no one should be allowed habitually or continuously to say or print things that might incite to murder. "To pillory a public man as an enemy of the common people, an oppressor of the poor, and the betrayer of his country," declares the New York Journal of Commerce, "may properly be regarded as an incitement to violence and dealt with accordingly." The Chicago Journal (Ind.) says similarly:

"We must not hereafter suffer men by speech or publication to disturb the public peace, or give utterance to language that tends to subvert the Government or destroy society. Established authority must not be attacked or brought into contempt. It may be sometimes difficult to draw the line where freedom of speech floods over and becomes license of speech, and regard must be had to time, place, and circumstances. What might be simple freedom of speech in one place would be gross license in another. 'I believe in free speech,' said the Duke of Wellington, 'but not on board a man-of-war.'

"The speech that makes such men as Czolgosz assassins, the cartoons that arouse the hatred and malice of ignorant men

against those in high authority-these must be stopped and ended forever. There is no longer room in free America for such freedom as this."

And the Topeka Capital (Rep.) says: "Free thought belongs properly to the intelligent and enlightened, the charitable and humane and right-minded. The harm

it is capable of when it is entrusted to the wicked, ignorant, and evil-disposed is a matter which deserves the attention of law-makers. There is

such a thing as throwing the gates open too wide or too soon. When the evilminded or the ignorant -The Milwaukee Journal. and degenerate take advantage of the privileges and immunities of law to destroy law, when anarchy runs amuck and treason is openly exploited, it is time to draw in the lines."

Just where the line should be drawn most of the papers hesitate to say, but the New York Tribune makes a suggestion in regard to it in the following paragraphs:

"There can be no question of the right of a citizen to criticize the President's policies most severely. For instance, Senator Hoar's remark that the subjugation of the Philippines meant 'the

abandonment of the principles upon which our Government is founded, and it will change our republic into an empire,' was within the limits of legitimate criticism. It was one view of the tendency of a public policy. Another orator, who, because the President carried out that policy, talked about 'McKinley, with his wicked and cowardly heart, raising his blood-stained hands to heaven in hypocritical prayer,' transcended those limits and descended not only to personal abuse, but to unpatriotic attack upon authority. It is

one thing to disapprove a war, quite another to call the officials who perform their duties at the head of a nation's armies thieves and murderers.

"Likewise, it is perfectly legitimate for those who think that the Administration's policy favors certain financiers to point out the grounds of that belief, but it is not legitimate daily to hold up to the hatred of the ignorant the President of the United States as the contemptible tool of repulsive villains engaged in imaginary atrocities."

EMMA GOLDMAN.

A number of papers, however, oppose limitation by any further law of our present freedom of criticism. Says the New Orleans Times-Democrat (Dem.):

"The talk of imprisonment for life or for a long period of years for a man's public avowal of his anarchistic principles is absurd talk. If we sacrifice an American's inalienable right of freedom of speech-freedom perfect save only when it incites to crimewe shall sacrifice one of the very dearest privileges, if not the dearest privilege, that a free American possesses; and that would mean purchasing immunity from anarchistic excesses at far too great a price.

"This proposed crushing of anarchists' freedom of speech would, moreover, if such an outrage on American personal liberty were tolerated, have no tendency to crush either anarchism or anarchists. It would merely make anarchists add the vice of hypocrisy to their criminal tendencies. And that would be a loss rather than a gain."

Mr. Bryan's Commoner says:

"Some of the Republican papers are suggesting limitations upon the freedom of speech as a cure for anarchy. The editor of The Commoner has as much reason as any living man to know of the abuse sometimes heaped upon candidates for office. He has been the victim of as much malice and vituperation as have ever been played against an American, and yet he is opposed to placing any additional restriction upon the freedom of speech or of the freedom of the press.

"First, because the evils of restriction are greater than the evils of freedom, and, second, because abuse does not harm the man or the party made the subject of attack. The death of President McKinley can not be traced to anything ever spoken or written against him. The assassin spoke affectionately of his victim and said that he killed him not because of his dislike of the man, but because of his opposition to government of any kind.

"Free speech and a free press are essential to free government. No man in public life can object to the publication of the truth, and no man in public life is permanently injured by the publication of a lie. That much is published that should not be is only too evident, but let public opinion correct the evil; that will be more effective than law and will bring no danger with it. If a paper abuses a political opponent stop your subscription and teach the editor to conduct his paper on respect

able lines. There is a sense of justice in the human heart, and he who violates it violates it at his own peril. This sense of justice ultimately turns abuse to the benefit of the man abused. The present laws against slander and libel are sufficient; leave the rest to a healthy public sentiment-and then help to create the sentiment."

CONVICTION AND SENTENCE OF CZOLGOSZ.

THE

HE speedy trial, conviction, and sentence of the assassin of President McKinley meet with much commendation from the press. The crime was committed on September 6, the President died on September 14, the assassin was convicted, after a trial lasting but two days, on September 25, and on the 27th he was sentenced to suffer, during the week beginning October 28, the extreme penalty of the law. The case was not only tried swiftly, but, as the Buffalo Express says, "it has all been done decently and in order, and with a calm dignity that gives new respect for the law and for the methods of courts of justice." "In the dignity, impartiality, and celerity with which the trial of Czolgosz was conducted," remarks the New York Herald, "the judiciary of this State has set an illustrious example for sister commonwealths and vindicated the majesty of the law as administered in this country." The Baltimore Herald thinks that the two prominent lawyers appointed to defend the assassin seemed more anxious to apologize for their appearance for the defense than to argue the innocence of their client, and it criticizes the speech of one of them, Judge Lewis, as "a remarkable exhibition of bad taste," because "it was, in brief, an elaborate and need

less defense of the counsel and a symposium on lynch law, instead of a defense of the prisoner." The newspapers seem to agree, however, that no defense was possible. The only paper we have seen that criticizes the verdict is the Boston Herald, which says:

"Our own opinion is that Czolgosz is insane, and, in fact, that all men and women are insane who believe, preach, and act on the theory that political and social reforms can be brought about by the murder of rulers. Insanity has a large variety of ways of exhibiting itself, but we hold that the safety of society requires that people of this class should be permanently confined as dangerous, because murderous, lunatics. Czolgosz will undoubtedly be condemned to death, and duly executed, but we do not believe that his death will make the life of any ruler any the safer, while the arrest and confinement as dangerously insane of the class of people we have referred to would go a long way toward bringing recognized danger to its minimum."

Many papers contrast the trial of Czolgosz with that of Guiteau, which dragged along for nearly three months, interrupted by remarks and harangues by the prisoner. Czolgosz will pay the penalty within two months after his crime; Guiteau lacked but two days of seeing his crime's anniversary. The New York Journal recalls the outlines of the Guiteau case as follows:

"Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881, and died on September 19. On October 4 the case was presented to the grand jury of the District of Columbia, and after some days an indictment was found. Meanwhile the prisoner was allowed to publish in the newspapers a long and impudent defense of his crime, in which he said that he had no legal liability because he had shot the President without malice.

"On October 14 Guiteau was arraigned and pleaded not guilty. The trial was set for November 7 and then postponed to the 14th. It took three days to get a jury, and Guiteau was allowed to publish two statements, one of them reviling his counsel and appealing for help to the legal profession of America.

"It took four days to put in the evidence for the prosecution, and the opening address of Guiteau's counsel lasted two days. The defense occupied nearly three weeks, with constant interruptions from the prisoner, in the introduction of expert testimony about insanity. Rebuttal testimony for the prosecution filled three weeks more. After the arguments began one address

to the jury lasted five days and another three days. "The trial ended on January 25, 1882, in its eleventh week, and the prisoner was sentenced to be hanged on June 30, five months later. Guiteau appealed for a new trial, which was denied, after long argument, and he was executed one year lacking two days after the commission of his crime, nine months and eleven days after the death of his victim, and eight months and sixteen days after the beginning of his trial.

"Czolgosz will die within two months after McKinley was shot. It is a notable advance in civilized procedure, especially when we remember that the long disgrace of Guiteau's trial was perpetrated in the national capital."

Anarchy in High Places.-In the general search that is going on for anarchists and those who incite to violence, some of the Pennsylvania papers remark that the kind of government that Pennsylvania and Philadelphia have been having lately would come under some such head, and would afford an instance where the question of rooting out the breeders of anarchy and expelling them from the country would apply. The Philadelphia North American classifies the following persons, for instance, as "breeders of anarchy":

"The members of a legislature that openly sold a United States senatorship to a man who escaped conviction of the crime of misappropriating public money by pleading the statute of limitations-a legislature whose general scorn for common honesty gave it a disgraceful eminence even in a State accustomed to corrupt legislatures.

"A governor who became the accomplice of a band of politi cians and speculators and conferred on them by his official signature the legal privilege of stealing the streets of the State's cities. "An attorney-general who made one of a gang of marauders that tried, with the legislature's help, to steal the coal lands of the State.

"A justice of a supreme court, appointed by the governor whose former law partner he was, and who secretly revealed to that governor in advance how each justice would vote on a case in which the governor was politically interested.

"The mayor of a great city who turned blackmailer in the effort to protect himself from newspaper criticism, who habitually jobs in contracts, gives away enormously valuable franchises to his confederates, connives at the existence of illegal and profitable dens of vice, and from being a bankrupt when he entered office is reputed to have become a millionaire."

The Pittsburg Post (Dem.) adds approvingly:

"This does not require much explanation. It can all be found within the limits of Pennsylvania. And there may be added as the greatest of anarchists the political machine that carries elec

tions by fraudulent methods and educates the baser sort of the population in the science of repeating, personation, forgery, perjury, and ballot-box stuffing. Who are anarchists if they are not?"

distinguish himself as a reform President; and, in view of his excellent administrative record in this line, are we not justified in hoping that much will be done during his Administration for the improvement of the public service?"

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AND THE MERIT SYSTEM.

THEM

'HE friends of civil-service reform are expressing a belief that the spoils system has met a vigorous and uncompromising foe in the new President, for “with the merit system," as the Pittsburg Post (Dem.) points out, "the President has been associated from the time it became a great public question." His connection with it is sketched by The Post as follows: "He was largely instrumental in its adoption by the State of New York in 1884. As President of the United States Civil-Service Commission, from 1889 to 1895, under the administrations of President Harrison and President Cleveland, he applied it with the greatest fidelity, intelligence, and practical skill. As president of the police board in New York City he enforced it. As governor of New York he saw that it took no‘step backward,' but made progress. Therefore it is not too much to expect that he will apply his energies to its enforcement in federal administration as it has not been since Cleveland's time." The Chicago Journal (Ind.) remarks that on the question of civil-service reform the President is "absolutely sound," and that "the people may rest confident in the belief that the 'spoils system' is dead." Many other papers express the same view. The Washington correspondent of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (Rep.) says that not long ago Mr. Roosevelt, in talking with a confidential friend regarding the national civil service, pointed out where the merit principle could be still further introduced, much to the advantage of the nation, by bringing under it the consular service, the pension-examining surgeons, and later, with the consent of Congress, fourth-class postmasters. The Springfield Republican (Ind.), a strong advocate of the merit system, says of these three classes of public servants:

"One of the crying needs of American foreign commerce is a reform of the consular system. It should be so reorganized that entrance to it could be gained only by special qualifications, and so that efficient consuls could be retained in the service and from time to time promoted from the less important to the more important posts. The contrast, in this respect, between our system. and that of Great Britain's was illustrated by two recent events.. United States Consul-General Stowe of Cape Town retired after a few years of service, just when he had become efficient in his duties, because the system offered no permanency of tenure and too little reward for faithful, hard-working men. About the same time the British consul-general at Shanghai, Mr. Brenan, retired in the fulness of the honors and the rewards that came to him after thirty years of continuous work in the consular field. President Roosevelt will soon have an opening to take some action in this line, for the State Department is now engaged in preparing data concerning our consular system for presentation to Congress. "As for the pension-examining surgeons, Pension Commissioner Evans has already advised that they be brought under the classified service. The striking abuses now prevalent in physical examinations for pensions, owing to the present method of appointing medical examiners for political reasons, need not be enlarged upon. Mr. Evans has accumulated a great amount of evidence on this point, and it is all at the disposal of the President. The fourth-class postmasters present a more complicated question, and the President could not deal with them except in cooperation with Congress. In view of the extension of rural free delivery, it ought to be easier, perhaps, to take the fourthclass offices from the politicians, since their importance and attractiveness are bound to decrease with rural free delivery invading the field.

"It is not expected that President Roosevelt will try to accomplish these extensions of the merit principle in a precipitate manner. He will necessarily be guided by conditions to no small degree. It is clear, however, that he has a rare opportunity to

MR. LOW'S PROSPECTS IN THE MAYORALTY RACE.

Now

OW that the race for the mayor's chair in New York City is fairly begun, the newspapers are beginning to forecast the result. A few papers predict positively that Mr. Low will win; but most of them content themselves with saying, at more or less length, that he ought to win. The most hopeful feature of the situation, from the anti-Tammany standpoint, is the union of the organization Republicans with the rest of the forces arrayed against Tammany, for the figures show that a similar union four years ago would have defeated the Tamamny ticket. As the New York Evening Post (Ind.) says:

"The figures of 1897 are full of encouragement. Four years ago Tammany cast only 233,997 votes, against 253,413 by the Citizens' Union and the Republicans together (151, 540 for Low and 101,873 for Tracy). Here was a plurality of nearly 20,000 against Tammany, if the votes divided between the two great opposing organizations had been concentrated upon one man. But the real plurality against Tammany was more than twice 20,000, for Henry George had run as an independent, and even after his sudden death, on the eve of the election, 21,693 votes were cast for his son and namesake. Mr. George was as strongly opposed to Tammany as Mr. Low, and not long before the end declared that, 'If I can not be elected, I would prefer that Mr. Low should occupy the chair of mayor of Greater New York. If I thought I could not win, I would say, vote for Low.' The chief supporters of Mr. George in 1897 are prominent in the Citizens' Union now, and one of them is a candidate on the fusion ticket." Senator Platt, in an interview, says of Mr. Low's candidacy: "The Republican organization, if I understand and represent its temper and purpose, stands with respect to Mr. Low precisely where it was prepared to stand in the event of any other respectable candidacy, whether that of a Republican or Democrat. He will be supported heartily, enthusiastically, and with its utmost strength. If he is elected we shall expect him to do just as the platform adopted Friday night declares-give to the city a 'progressive, business-like, and non-partizan administration' of its affairs. Nobody representing the Republican organization will ask him before election for any 'pledges,' nor, after election, to do any act which his judgment as a magistrate does not approve. If those who voted for him in 1897 will so vote again, the reproach of Tammany government will soon be at an end."

And the chairman of the Republican county committee said, in the Republican city convention:

"The Republican city convention represents a partizan organization. We believe that the federal and state governments can be conducted only by the party system. But we feel that the case is different with the administration of municipal affairs. The great city is a great business corporation. There should not be such a thing as a Republican or a Democratic way of cleaning the streets, of collecting the taxes, of arresting the poolroom and dive-keepers, and it makes no difference whether a man is a Republican or a Democrat when his duties are to manage the police department, to conduct the finances, or to supervise the whole municipal administration.”

The press of New York City do not seem ready to predict the result as yet, but the papers in some other parts of the country are not so conservative. The Rochester Post-Express (Rep.) thinks that Mr. Low's victory is sure, while the Boston Herald (Ind.) thinks that the odds are the other way. The Boston Transcript (Rep.) fears that Mr. Low has not the popular qualities that catch the votes of the masses, and the Chicago Inter Ocean (Rep.) goes so far as to say that he is "marked for defeat." Says The Inter Ocean:

"To reach such a conclusion we have but to consider the char

acter of Mr. Low and what are the forces behind him. Seth Low has never given any proof of possessing the qualities demanded of an efficient administrator of a great city. He is a man of wealth, not earned by himself, but obtained by marriage and inheritance. He has never given any evidence of possessing those talents by which men acquire wealth, and which are so necessary to efficient and honest management of a city's business. His inherited wealth made Mr. Low head of Columbia University, a post requiring only the commonest sort of business judgment to fill.

"Mr. Low was once mayor of Brooklyn. He went into office with a great flourish of trumpets as a 'reformer.' He came out of office leaving all the old abuses practically untouched. His personal integrity had enabled him to check public plunder to some extent while in office, but he lacked the ability really to root up abuses. He lacked it because he knew nothing of practical politics, and would not, or could not, learn that art. His politics is essentially of the kind that is always firing in the air, and then is intensely surprised because the enemy walks away uninjured. He is always talking about 'reform,' but when it comes to doing he fails.

"He has failed before, and would fail again, because of the forces behind him and the men by whom he would necessarily be surrounded. For it must be remembered that supporting Mr. Low are large numbers of impractical idealists who sincerely desire reforms, but have not the least notion how to get them.

"Behind and about him are also some of the very worst elements of New York's civic life-men whom even Tammany has cast off as unendurable, or who have left Tammany because their own greed was not sufficiently assuaged, and who now hope by posing as 'reformers' to get either revenge or the plunder hitherto denied them.

"It was these elements which wrecked the Strong administration of New York-these and the impractical reformers. The one plundered in spite of Mayor Strong's best efforts. The other affronted the sentiments of the masses of common-sense men. Between them they made the Strong administration cost more and do less than Tammany's worst, and the people in disgust returned to Tammany. And these very elements would be three times as numerous and influential about Mr. Low as they were about Mayor Strong.

"With these facts in view it is absurd to suppose that the average citizen of New York, who desires his government to be neither weak nor oppressive, who desires it to be efficient but not meddlesome, honest but practical, will support Mr. Low."

men.

General Daggett on the Army Canteen.-Brigadier-General Aaron S. Daggett, who retired last spring from the United States army after forty years of active service, has written a letter on the army canteen which the New York Evening Post describes as “the strongest testimony against the canteen that has yet appeared." General Daggett bases his opposition to the canteen on the ground that it saps the morale of the "It presents the saloon to the men in its least objectionable form," he says, and its atmosphere is such that it "makes the soldiers feel that the thing to do is to spend their money at the canteen." The credit system increases the evil, and men who enter the service free from both drink and debt habits are often discharged with both fixed upon them. It offers a temptation, too, to the soldiers to keep slightly under the influence of liquor all the time. "It was no unusual thing," declares the General, "to find a company on inspection with a majority of its men more or less under the influence of liquor." Is it right, he continues, to keep a constant temptation before the total abstainers and moderate drinkers for the purpose of controlling the few drunkards? While it may be true that, in the absence of the canteen, saloons will spring up just beyond the military reservation, yet as a rule "they are of so vile a character that they keep respectable men away, and the majority are respectable." Commenting on General Daggett's letter, the Chicago Tribune says:

"Such testimony at least calls attention to the fact that there

are two sides to the canteen question. It also must be remembered that the army now contains an unusual percentage of raw and undisciplined recruits, whose pay-day carousings may not. be safe data upon which to judge the effects of the anti-canteen law. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that a large majority of active army officers, including some total abstainers, believe that it would be wisest to restore the canteen. Before Congress acts again upon the subject it should weigh the evidence on both sides carefully."

J

EFFECTS OF INTOXICANTS AND OPIUM
UPON NATIVE RACES.

OSEPH CHAMBERLAIN, British Secretary of State for the Colonies, said recently that the liquor traffic among native races "is not only discreditable to the British name," but it is also "disastrous to British trade," as it destroys all trade by destroying the population. An interesting book on this subject of the effect of intoxicating liquors upon native races has just been issued by the Reform Bureau in Washington, in which the testimony of scores of missionaries, travelers, and newspaper correspondents in Africa, Asia, and the islands of the sea is given. A reading of all this mass of testimony, prepared independently by so many witnesses, seems to show that the worst curse of Africa and the islands of the Pacific is American liquor, and that the worst curse of India and China is British opium. The American Government has been very slow to join in the treaty to prevent the sale of liquor to the natives in Africa (twelve countries, including Spain and Turkey, signed the treaty before the United States signed it); and while England has forbidden her subjects to sell liquor to the natives of the Pacific islands, the American traders continue to sell it unchecked. In India and China, however, the British Government is given the lion's share of the blame for the sale of opium, which is said to be demoralizing millions of the people.

Bishop Hartzell, of the Methodist Church, who has been in Africa four years, is quoted as saying that seventy-five per cent. of the demoralization of the natives in their home life and character comes from the use of intoxicating drink; and Rev. Charles Satchell Morris, who has traveled extensively in Africa, declares that "no fewer than 2,000,000 savages go forth to die every year as a result of the traffic." Rev. James Johnson, a native pastor of the island of Lagos, is quoted as saying, similarly: "Negroes have proved themselves able to survive the evils of the slave trade, cruel as they were, but they show that they have no power whatever to withstand the terrible evils of the drink. Surely you must see that the death of the negro race is simply a matter of time." And Rev. David A. Day exclaims: "In a few decades more, if the rum traffic continues, there will be nothing left on the west coast of Africa for God to save. The vile rum in this tropical climate is depopulating the country more rapidly than famine, pestilence, and war." These testimonies are corroborated by many more of a similar tone; but it seems not unlikely that the conditions they describe will be greatly ameliorated by the treaty mentioned above, which was ratified by the United States Senate last December. This treaty protects the natives. in Central Africa; the natives of the northern part of the conti-nent are protected by Mohammedan prohibition, those of the southern part by British prohibition. These prohibitory enactments protect the natives only; several missionaries state that seventy five per cent. of the deaths of European traders and other white inhabitants of Lagos and the west coast of Africa are due to the excessive use of intoxicating liquor, and nothing is being done to decrease this ratio.

John G. Paton, the celebrated missionary pioneer who has spent nearly forty-five years in the islands of the Pacific, says that the gospel has pacified the natives and thus prepared the

way for trade, only to be followed by the introduction of rum and brandy, which make the natives anything but peaceable. "A savage, drunk on traders' rum, and armed with a trader's musket," he says, "is a thing of horror. My son would have been killed by a bullet from an American gun, sold by an American trader to a native, if the noble chief before mentioned [one of Mr. Paton's converts] had not thrown himself between the half-drunk native and the missionary, only to fall dying with the bullet in his own body." He adds:

"I have been sent to remonstrate with the American traders' agent not to give to the young men, the natives, this maddening liquor, and he would stop it for a short time, and then again'return to it. At last we sent a deputation to him, and he said he could not stop the business; to do so would ruin him and his wife and children. Instead of the drink saving him and his family, it nearly proved the death of them all. Natives maddened with his own rum, and in some way offended, would have shot him with rifles he had sold them had not the missionary's helper stood between him and them, pleading in his behalf. Meantime

his wife and children escaped by flight."

Great Britain has forbidden her subjects to sell liquor to the natives in these Pacific islands, and "France has said she will enact the prohibition if the United States will do so, and Germany would almost surely follow." Mr. Paton continues: "I have appealed to the President and I have appealed to Congress through the President, but it all seems of no avail-at least it has not accomplished anything up to this time." The President expressed his sympathy with the movement in his message of December 3 last, but Congress did nothing in the

matter.

In Alaska liquor may be sold to the whites, but not to the Indians; but, says Rev. H. P. Corser, a missionary at Fort Wrangel, "with the present law any Indian can get liquor who wants it," and he continues: "The effect of liquor upon the natives of Fort Wrangel has been something horrible. The population is not one-fourth what it was twenty years ago, and I think that I can safely say that there is not a score of perfectly healthy natives-young men and women-in the town.”

In India, opium and intoxicating drink are busy among the natives, with the usual results. The testimony of the missionaries seems to show that in some districts the sale of these commodities has been encouraged for the sake of the revenue, and in others prohibited for the sake of the natives. In Assam, says F. P. Haggard, a Baptist missionary, “I am sorry to say also that my observation has been that most of the British officers of whom I have known anything have encouraged rather than discouraged the use of opium and liquor among the people"; and in Ceylon, according to the testimony of two missionaries, the liquor traffic is "thrust upon" the natives against their wishes for the sake of a revenue. In China, says J. Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, opium "is doing more harm in a week than the united efforts of all our Christian missionaries are doing good in a year." He declares: "The slave trade was bad; the drink is bad; the licensing of vice is bad; but the opium traffic is the sum of all villainies. It debauches more families than drink; it makes more slaves directly than the slave trade; and it demoralizes more sad lives than all the licensing systems in the world." Many other missionaries in China give similar testimony, and there seems to be a general disposition among them to blame the British Government for the evil that opium has done in China.

J. M. Thoburn, Methodist missionary bishop of India and Malaysia, says:

The whole tropical world is rapidly coming under the control of nations which profess to be Christian, in a high acceptance of that word. It is, in my opinion, one of the most important questions of the day whether the millions of the Eastern tropics are to be received as helpless wards, and elevated in civilization and

enlightenment, or debauched and crushed by a traffic which recognizes no conscience, shows no mercy, and is amenable only to a gospel of financial greed."

Success of Convict Farms:-Mississippi's successful experiments in convict farming would seem to indicate that that State has gone a long way toward solving the problem of prison labor. Twelve large convict farms, mostly devoted to cottongrowing, have been established in the Yazoo delta, from which the State derived last year an income of more than $125,000. Louisiana and Alabama have followed the example with similar success. Says the Chicago Evening Post:

"This plan of working convicts in Mississippi seems to have proved a great success, for it is about to be extended by the addition of 12,000 acres of land the State has bought recently, from which it is expected a revenue of $100,000 a year will be drawn. Convict farming has also been tried by some of the counties with success and profit.

"But how about the convicts themselves? It scarcely needs argument to show that they are much better off working out their sentences for the State direct than they were under the old leasing system. They are better cared for, better housed, under better discipline, and more permanently located. They are never idle, and they labor all day in the free air and sunshine of the fields. In earning their own board and lodging they are also, in a sense, making restitution to society for the wrong they may have done. The effect of this can not be other than salutary.

'What effect this convict cotton-growing may have ultimately upon the market it would be difficult to say, and upon this largely hangs the permanency and expansion of the system. At present the cotton produced by the State of Mississippi is not sufficient to affect the price, and it will require a much wider application of convict labor to State-controlled cotton-fields to determine whether all the convict labor of the South can be employed in cotton-growing without upsetting prevailing values.

“It is possible that society may come in time to realize that it is not only humane but eminently reformatory and common sense to make convicts self-sustaining, if not an actual source of revenue, and Mississippi may be blazing one of the paths leading to such a rational general system."

TOPICS IN BRIEF.

So far as proclamations go, Kitchener certainly beats the Dutch.-The Detroit News.

TAKING WHAT?-Florida politicians are now taking it very easy.-The Atlanta Constitution.

COLOMBIA'S revolution is ending-presumably to give the next one a chance. The New York World.

ABOUT this time look out for a deluge of rough-rider candidates for postoffices.-The Baltimore American.

WE should all take a good look at the new allied third party, for we may never see it again.-The Chicago News.

No great interest attaches to the fact that the Chinese protocol has been signed. There is nothing left to loot. -The Detroit Free Press.

KINETOSCOPE privileges of President Roosevelt's first round with an office-seeker no doubt would bring a high price.-The Chicago News.

MR. ADDICKS is quoted as saying that he will be a candidate for the Senate as long as he lives. Let us hope so. -The Philadelphia Ledger. AFTER all, the Czar may be in more danger from being run over by an automobile while in Paris than from being struck by a bomb.-The Atlanta Constitution.

THE South American republics do not give themselves time enough between fights to permit any extended controversy over where the glory be longs.-The Washington Star.

CZOLGOSZ.-His name begins with a hiss, ends with a hiss, is a hiss-a serpent's voice. Let it never be mentioned among men except as a hiss!Rev. Dr. D. S. Gregory, in an address in Brooklyn.

THE Colombian authorities claim that the revolutionists are anarchists of the worst type. This looks somewhat like an effort to invest a small affair with international importance.-The Washington Star.

IF George Washington could have suspected the disrepute into which some Kansas people would bring the hatchet he would probably have refrained from chopping down the cherry-tree. - The Washington Star.