three per cent. and had wasted it all, the country would be financially about where it is now.  They have not borrowed this ten billions of dollars, but if Mr. Aldrich is right, they are spending the interest on it.  They have in effect mortgaged the wealth of the people to the extent of all their deposits in the savings banks, and all their investments in life-insurance companies, and are wasting the income of these funds faster than it is earned.  If anyone thinks this is stating the case too strongly, he may add the waste of our state and municipal rulers to that of those at Washington, and Mr. Aldrich’s figure will seem moderate enough.

* * * * *

People who are comfortably off will reply to all this that we are getting on pretty well, and seem to be on the whole doing better from year to year.  There is a well known passage in Macaulay’s History which may be thought to give support to optimism of this kind.  “No ordinary misfortune,” he said, “no ordinary misgovernment, will do so much to make a nation wretched as the constant progress of physical knowledge, and the constant effort of every man to better his condition will do to make a nation prosperous.”

No one will deny that the history of England justifies this statement; but let us remember the reason that Macaulay gave for this insuperable prosperity.  “Every man has felt entire confidence that the State would protect him in the possession of what had been earned by his diligence and hoarded by his self-denial.”

It is impossible to maintain that every man now feels this entire confidence.  The income “earned by his diligence” is henceforth to be taxed at a progressive rate, and the demagogues are already complaining that the rate is not high enough.  The inheritance of his family, “hoarded by his self-denial,” protected by the State until within a few years, now pays taxes which amount to the interest on a billion of dollars.  We are assured by a railroad officer that three measures of legislation have increased the expenses of his corporation alone by a sum equal to the interest on $32,000,000, with no appreciable benefit to the public.  The number of such laws is incalculable, and the cost of complying with them has become an almost intolerable burden.  The income of the railroads declines, while their taxes increase, in some cases two or three fold.  Lawyers and office holders thrive and are cheerful; investors suffer and tremble.

The people of New York seem just now to be in a way to find out how the enormous taxes which their rulers have levied on them are expended; but New York has no monopoly of corrupt rulers, and the cost of investigating extravagance is itself extravagant.  And yet people wonder at the increased cost of living!  Unfortunately the oppressions of government do worse than discourage business enterprise; they tend to demoralize society.  There are too many men who hesitate to marry because they do not have confidence in the future, too many married people who do not dare to have more than one or two children, if they dare to have any, to make it possible to maintain that there is now no dread of more than ordinary misgovernment.