the future is not free from the danger. The very possession of power excites a desire to use it, and it is an admitted characteristic of our human nature that those vested with power, political or other, are prone to exercise it unduly, to abuse it. Men in authority are often said to be "drunk with power." Hence to ensure justice the governmental organization should be such that the limits of the various powers of the government be carefully defined and its administrators be kept within those limits.

Some years ago I might have pointed to our own federal and state governments as the best in form and character for establishing justice and rested there. In later years, however, the superiority of our system is questioned, and radical changes are urged, and indeed some have been made, in the federal system and in that of some of the states. I feel, therefore, that I should make some defense of the system, believing as I do that in its general form and character it is best adapted to secure firmly as much

individual liberty of action and equality of right as is consistent with the welfare of the whole number, or, in other words, best adapted to secure justice.

It has become a familiar maxim that the functions and powers of government may all be grouped in three classes or departments, corresponding to the duties already named: (1) that of determining what rules and regulations should be observed, what restraints and duties should be imposed upon its subjects; (2) that of determining whether in a given case any of these rules, etc., have been violated; and (3) that of punishing their violation and otherwise enforcing their observance. These three groups have come to be called the three powers of government and to be designated as the legislative, judicial, and executive, though they are usually named in another order as the executive, legislative, and judicial.

The most efficient form of government for good or evil, and the quickest to act, is undoubt

edly that in which all of these powers are united If that individual were

in a single individual. always strong, yet peace-loving, self-controlled, sagacious and exclusively devoted to the welfare of his subjects, that form of government would perhaps secure them justice most surely and speedily. Such men, however, are rare and such governments have been found to be invariably and almost inevitably arbitrary in their dealings with their subjects, and in the plenitude of their power to become oppressive. While they may effectually protect their subjects from foreign aggression and domestic anarchy, their tendency is to impose burdens and restrict individual liberty more than necessary, and to disregard the innate desire of men for liberty or at least for equality of restraint. This form of government has already largely disappeared and is further disappearing, though it may again be resorted to for the restoration of order, should the present forms of government fail to prevent violence and preserve the peace.

But other forms of government have not been and are not yet wholly free from the same objectionable tendency. The vesting of all these governmental powers in a group or class of persons instead of one person has been followed by the same results. Aristocracies or oligarchies have the same tendency and even in a greater degree. They have proved even more selfish and tyrannical than the single ruler. They, like all crowds, are less sensitive in conscience, less moved by appeals to reason, than is the single individual. They offend more the sentiment of equality. The French Revolution was not so much against the king as against the nobility, who with their oppressive feudal exemptions had excited the resentment of the people at large. It was not till after he had cast in his lot with the emigrés that the king was deposed and guillotined.

Nor have pure democracies, in the few instances where they have undertaken to exercise directly all the powers of government, showed less ten

dency to be arbitrary and inconsiderate of individual freedom and desires. The nearest approach to such a government was that of ancient Athens where the populace sent into exile, practically without trial, Aristides, called the Just, Miltiades, the victor of Marathon, and Themistocles, the victor of Salamis. The excesses of the Paris Commune of 1870 during its reign, the lynchings of today by mobs of socalled "respectable citizens" who assume the power to accuse, judge and execute all at once, indicate how much regard unrestrained democracies would have for the rights of their individual members.

Nevertheless, despite the danger of more or less arbitrariness, of more or less oppression of the individual, any government must be made strong enough perfectly to maintain order and peace among its subjects. Order is earth's as well as heaven's first law. The goddess Themis in the early Greek mythology was the goddess of order as well as the supplier of themistes or de