The oasis., 1894-05-03

lil the rCCN COlUt duu liiuo Hidht tue next year nOt0f scarcity, but Of abso- lute famine There will be, | fear, spOlatiOn. The spOllation will in- crease the distress and distress will produce fresh spollation There IS nothing Co stop you. Your cOnstltu- tion is an sail and no anchor. As said before when society has entered upon this downward progress, either civilization or liberty must perish. Either some CHsar or Napoleon will sicze the rcins 0f government with a strong hand or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste bv barbarians In the twentieth century as the Roman empire was in the fifth. with this difference that the Huns and NandaiS who rayaged the Roman empire came from without. while your Huns and Nandals will have been cn- gcndered within your country by your own institutions"
 Every few years the foregoing pecul- iar prophecy is dug up from the must of the vanished generations and sent by some croaker for evil on a round of publicity through the press. as on the eve of fulfilment through the agency of some grave industrial crisis like that through which the country is now passing
 Such prophecies Of evil for our Amer ican republic, from titled aristocrats on the other side of the Atlantic have come as thickly 'as leaves in Nallam- brosa." and numerous have been the pitfalls in the path of popular govern ment they have pointed out Thirty years ago when General Grant was laundering at the gates of Richmond they pointed Co the fate of the Roman republic, overturned by itS own yicto- torious soldiery; and in the placid countenance of the silent hero of Ap- pomattox they affected to discern the lineaments of a modern Casar Yet the mighty legions he led Co glorious victory vanished into history as soon as the work they had been invoked to do was finished, and "the roll of his silenced drums has become but an an echo through the corridors of time. And the republic moved on in it's hath of progress and power. strengthened within itself and endeared to human ity by the crucial test through which it had passed.
 And the danger pointed out in the above extended quotation will prove as imaginary The gist of the great his- torian's argument against final com patibility between civilization and universal suffrage lies in the sentence: ''The day will come when the state of New York a multitude of people, none of whom have had more than half a breakfast or expects more than half q dinner. will choose q legislature. r In such a case the dire results spre- dicted by 'the noble lordn would very likely follow. But legislation can pre- vent any such condition precedent as that described, and it is the duty of legislation tO do so.
 The conditions between England, as depicted by Lord Macauley, and the United States are widely different. In England there is a limited area Of land and the variety of production is lim- ited by climatic conditions. Already has population outstripped production of even the naturally limited yield of the soil, and the food supply for mil lions must be imported That import ation must be paid by exchange of the productions from the mechanical arts of the millions SO fed. Such exchanges with foreign nations are always sub. iect to derangementm much more so than domestic exchanges and such Arrangements are much more keenly