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New York, 1905.
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3EP 20 1906
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SOME SOCIAL THEORIES OF
THE REVOLUTION, OUR PRES
ENT DAY RETROGRESSIONS,
.-.•.•.• THE STEPS BACK •.•.-.•.

AN ADDRESS BY
THEODORE OILMAN, Esq.
DELIVERED BEFORE
THE NEW YORK SOCIETY
OF THE
ORDER OF THE FOUNDERS AND
PATRIOTS OF AMERICA

JANUARY 31, 1905

SOME SOCIAL THEORIES OF
THE REVOLUTION, OUR PRES
ENT DAY RETROGRESSIONS,
.•.-.•.• THE STEPS BACK •.-.¦.•.

AN ADDRESS BY
THEODORE OILMAN, Esq.
DELIVERED BEFORE
THE NEW YORK SOCIETY
OF THE
ORDER OF THE FOUNDERS AND
PATRIOTS OF AMERICA

JANUARY 31, 1905

NOTE
The following address was delivered by Theodore Oilman,
of the New York Society of the Order of the Founders and
Patriots of America, at a meeting of said Society, held at the
Hotel Manhattan, New York City, Tuesday Evening, January
31, 1905. Its publication was directed by the Society.

THE NEW YORK SOCIETY
OF THE
Order of the Founders and Patriots of America

OFFICERS
FOR THE YEAR ENDING APRIL 1 9, I9O5
Governor
Hon. ROBERT B. ROOSEVELT
Deputy Governor
THEODORE FITCH
Chapl.ain
Rev. GEORGE BURLEY SPALDING, D.D.
Secretary
¦WILLIAM ALLEN MARBLE
Treasurer
GEORGE CLINTON BATCHELLER
State Attorney
HENRY WICKES GOODRICH
Registrar
TEUNIS DIMON HUNTTING
Genealogist
CLARENCE ETTIENNE LEONARD
Historian
HENRY LINCOLN MORRIS
Councillors
Hon. WILLIAM WINTON GOODRICH
THEODORE OILMAN
HOWARD SUMNER ROBBINS
JAMES LE BARON WILLARD
CoL. HENRY WOODWARD SACKETT
MILO MERRICK BELDING, Jr.
COLGATE HOYT

SOME SOCIAL THEORIES OF THE REVOLUTION
OUR PRESENT DAY RETROGRESSIONS
THE STEPS BACK
BY
THEODORE OILMAN

A traveler, especially a home comer, visiting the old towns of
New England, may well be impressed and refreshed by the gen
erous plan on which those towns were laid out by the pioneer
settlers. Time has brought to a luxuriant maturity the elms
which line the streets. The broad and parklike street, which
forms the central detail in the plan, is at once dignified, restful
and beautiful. It lends itself to adornment or business.
The town can never outgrow that feature of its plan. If it be
comes a city, the sp'acious roadway is its breathing place. If a
resort of fashion and recreation, the plain old street becomes an
elegant avenue, which blooms gracefully with flowers and smiles
broadly with lawns.
¦What kind of men were they who thus planned for the future
in this large-hearted, brainy way ? We can tell what they were
as we think their thoughts after them. The men who laid out
the towns of Litchfield, Stockbridge, 'Williamstown, North
hampton, Exeter and a host of others had a conception of what
a town site should be which belonged to themselves, as distinct
ively as a style of literature, art or architecture belongs to the
men who created their separate eras.
The town site was not the result of esthetic taste or of a
knowledge of landscape gardnening, though it included these.
It was rather the expression of theories of government and soci
ety. The unit was the town and the formative principle which
governed its development and its physical aspect was the social
compact. That which gave shape to the village was a theory of
equality as broad as the land and of representative government

which surrounded every hamlet with the dignity of a royal
court. The familiarity of the founders with constitutional law,
and the consciousness that they were shaping their government,
their land, their social customs, their very streets, for a brilliant
future, the magnitude and glory of which dazzled their imagina
tions, made them to feel that their every act was great and
freighted with heavy responsibilities for the future.
¦With this serious mind they laid out their towns, and we of
the present day who walk through those quiet and shaded streets
are compelled to acknowledge that the men who planned those
walks were great.
But there is another side to this picture. In many of these
towns it is to be noticed that the original plans have not been
maintained. Perhaps encroachments on the parklike street
have been permitted, or local contests over locations of public
and private buildings have arisen. It may be that those living
at one end of the town have become jealous of those at the other,
and the old church, which was placed in a commanding position,
has been a source of contention. A rival has perhaps been
placed in a location more convenient to a part of the towns
people, or, if the old church has burned, a new one has been
erected as a compromise on a site which destroys the unity of
the founders' plan. The visitor mourns over these changes and
laments that, while the outline of the plan remains, the custody
of these priceless heirlooms has fallen into degenerate hands.
The town is a type of the nation, and the retrograde steps
which may be noticed in the town may perhaps have happened in
the affairs of the nation. The present generation may well be
called upon to revive the spirit which moved the founders of town
and nation, by marking the departures from their principles which
are evident to the student of the past and the investigator of the
present, and by endeavoring to restore to its pristine beauty
that grand conception of which the plan of the town is the type.
If inroads have been made in the ideas which, like a broad thor
oughfare, map off the plan of the political and social systems
which our great forefathers drew, it is for us, the American
citizens of to-day, whether native or of foreign birth, to become
so imbued with their spirit that we can see the departures which
have been made from their fundamental principles of govern
ment and make restorations to conform to their original design.

, Where the early settlers got their design of constitutional
and representative government is a more difficult question to
answer than where they did not get it. They did not get
it from the aristocracy of England, or from the writings of
Hobbes, the philosophic apostle of royalty. We can read in
the history of the colonies the first appearance and the subse
quent development of their design. They first carried it into
effect when the House of Burgesses met in Virginia on the
30th of July, 1619, at which time representative government
was first established on this continent. 1 Their design was
again formulated in the combination made in the cabin of
the Mayflower, on the nth of November, 1620, before the
Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. « It again took shape in the pro
test by the minister, elder and people of Watertown in 1632
against a tax levied by the Governor and assistants on all the
plantations of Massachusetts, in which the colonists delivered
their opinion that " it was not safe to pay money after that sort,
for fear of bringing themselves and posterity into bondage.''^
It again was expressed when in the spring of 1681 Captain Will
iam Dyre, who held the positions of Mayor of the City of New
York and Collector of Customs by appointment of the Duke
of York, was arrested at his handsome residence, on the south
east corner of Broadway and what is now Liberty street, charged
with imposing on the citizens of New York "unlawful customs
and impositions on goods and merchandise." At his trial Dyre
entered the plea that, as he had a royal commission, he could not be
tried. The verdict of the jury, however, was that the arbitrary
levy of taxes under the sole authority of the Duke was illegal.
Dyre was sent to London under arrest, but there was released
without punishment, evidently because the horne government
was in sympathy with his acts.* The Duke of York was at
length compelled to yield to the wishes of the colonists and
Dongan was sent out as Governor, empowered to summon the

1. English Colonies in America, Doyle, Vol. i, page t^S.
Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Vol. 14, page 266.
2. Bradford's History of Plimoutli Plantation. Printed by order of the General Court,
1899, page no.
3. Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Vol. 12, page 387.
4. Documents relative to the Colonial History of New York, collated by John Romeyn
Broadhead, 1853. Vol. 3, pages 314-321.

8
freeholders of New York to establish a representative govern
ment.! The same determination to resist taxation without representa
tion showed itself in the Province of New Hampshire in the year
1683, when Thomas Thurton, Provost Marshal of the Province
under appointment by Lieutenant-Governor Cranfield, attempted
to collect a levy under authority of the Governor.^ He was
told by John Foulsham, Constable of the Town of Exeter, that
if he, Thurton, came to levy any execution at his house he should
meet with a hot spit and scalding water. And the wife of Hon.
John Gilman, who was appointed Councillor of the Province of
New Hampshire by Charles the Second, ^ said she had provided
a kettle of scalding water if he (Thurton) came to her house to
demand rates, and the wife of Moses Gilman did say that she also
had provided a kettle of boiling water for him, which had been
on the fire for two days. Also, John Cotton, minister of Exeter,
did come with a club in his hand, and they asked the Provost
Marshal and his deputy what they did wear at their sides,
laughing at them for having swords and being afraid to use
them. The Marshal and his deputy said that the Governor had
his commission from the King and he had his commission from
the Governor to be Provost Marshal. They replied that his
commission signified nothing, for they knew the law of England
as well as any of the rogues, meaning the Governor and his
Council. Afterwards they fell upon him and his deputy, and
did beat him, and put him on their horse and tied his legs under
the horse's belly and carried him out of the Province of New
Hampshire into the jurisdiction of Massachusetts.* These
sturdy colonists thereafter made their complaints to the King
against the Governor, chief among which complaints was the
accusation that the colony had few laws but those made by the
Governor and his Council, when his commission directed that
the General Assembly, elected by the people, should make laws.
By these and similar occurrences in the various colonies, in de
fiance of the autocratic acts of the Governors, the principle of
I. Documents relative to the Colonial History of New York, collated by John Romeyn
Broadhead, 1853. Vol. 3, pages 331-334.
Spencer s History of the United States, Vol. i, page 92.
a. Thomas Thurton's visit to Exeter occurred 29th of December, 1683.
Provincial Papers of New Hampshire, Vol. i, page 551.
3. Provincial Papers of New Hampshire, Vol. 1, pages 374 and 434.
4. Provincial Papers of New Hampshire, Vol. i, pages 551 to 554.

representative government became the broad avenue around
which all our early commonwealths grew up and on which they
were established. Here was manifested the spirit of Magna Charta,
the spirit of Anglo-Saxon love of freedom, the spirit of the theo
cratic doctrines of the Old Testament; here was the spirit of the
Roman and Greek republics, the teachings of Moses and perhaps
of Hamurabi, his predecessor, and of countless unknown law
givers before and after, through whom came down to the present
age the true principles of human liberty which were to have at
last a glorious opportunity to flourish and bear fruit in a con
genial soil.
Bancroft remarks: "Popular assemblies burst everywhere into
life with a consciousness of their importance and an immediate
capacity for efficient legislation."! Before 1700 practically all
the colonies had free legislative assemblies. ^ It was early
urged that "there was more likelihood that such as were ac
quainted with the clime and the accidents thereof might on
better grounds prescribe their advantages " than " such as sit at
home" in England. ^
Business considerations had their weight in the formation of
the scheme of government, for settlers were invited into the dif
ferent colonies by a promise of legislative freedom and a share
in making the laws. We have only to remember how corpora
tions now flock into a State whose laws are favorable to recog
nize what a great inducement it might have been to immigrants
in those early days to locate where the laws and taxes were made
and administered by the people themselves. At the Revolution
this self-government was regarded as an invaluable right pur
chased by toil, treasure and blood.*
The resistance of the minister, elder and people of Watertown
to unjust taxation in 1632, to which reference has been made,
presaged the defeat of the aristocratic Winthrop at the next
election for Governor of Massachusetts. This resistance to taxa
tion without representation was the beginning of the strife be
tween the colonies and the King. Bodies of laws which were
enacted by the colonies, which were equitable, wise, progressive
and just, and, as we look back at them, were in the spirit of
I. Bancroft's History of the United States, 17th Edition, Vol. 1, page 250.
y.. Frothingham's Rise of the Republic of the United States, pages 18 to 2r, note.
3. Frothingham's Rise of the Republic of the United States, page 21.
4. Frothingham's Rise of the Republic of the United States, page 27.

10
modern progress and enlightenment, were disallowed and re
turned from England without the royal approbation. These
conflicts and rebuffs created an irrepressible contest between an
avaricious and profligate aristocracy and a liberty-loving people.
The colonists tried to comfort themselves with the belief that
" against the rapacity of foreign pretended claimants of their
soil they could find protection in the known laws of the realm
and the undoubted right of Englishmen and the favor of a gra
cious prince."! Their loyalty to the King was true and strong and
it held out with marvelous tenacity against rebuffs, injustice
and cruelty, until at last the cords which bound them to their
King were cut by the sabre strokes that shed the first American
blood at Lexington.
In colonial law there was no higher title than that of Freeman,
and no higher privilege than to vote. It was so high a privilege
that it was withheld from the convicts with whom the colonies
swarmed, and given only to those whose respectability was
vouched for by church membership. ^ 'Voting, therefore, was a
religious act and duty.
Primogeniture, that stronghold of class distinction in England,
did not long survive the free air of the colonies. In Massachu
setts it was provided by law as early as 1641 that estates should
be divided equally among children, except that the eldest should
have a double share. ^ Restriction to navigation and travel were
alien to a vast, new country. "Let there be no Scheldts," said
Timothy Pickering, when they were preparing the Ordinance
of 1787.
So, with a representative government, with a uniform citizen
ship, with an equal division of property in families, and with no
hindrance to travel on land or sea, after the great struggle of the
War of the Revolution, the new republic was organized and
established and sent on its mission down the ages.
These general principles, which preserved the rights of the
individual, were reflected in all laws, social customs and business
enterprises. The town, its site, plan, arrangement and order,
were the nation in miniature. It was an ideal condition which
I. Provincial Papers of New Hampshire, Vol. r, page 410. Address of the General Court
to the King, Charles the Second, dated March 29, 1680.
2. Johns Hopkins University Studies on Representation and Suffrage, Vol. 12, Chap. 4,
page 416.
3. Am. and Eng. Ene. of Law, 2d Ed., Vol. 27, page 294.

existed at the close of the Revolution, and it was no wonder that
some of the baser sort, who were rude and uncultivated and
hardened by the cruelties of war, should have misapprehended
their rights and by an exhibition of force should have given the
enemies of the republic occasion to blaspheme against its insti
tutions. The Congress of the United States was obliged to
leave Philadelphia where it was sitting and remove to Trenton,
to escape the anger of a mob of the unruly creditors of the na
tion. No wonder Alexander Hamilton's confidence in a govern
ment by the people was shaken, for on that occasion he' urged
Congress " to think on eternity, for he believed that in an hour
not an individual of their body would be left alive."! The legis
lature of New Hampshire was, at the same time, only protected
by force from an armed attack of advocates of an issue of fiat
paper money.* At the same time a still more serious outbreak,
known as Shay's Rebellion, occurred in Massachusetts, when the
malcontents clamored for State issues of paper money and en
deavored to interfere with and control directly the machinery of
the State government and Courts. It was a carnival of an at
tempt to govern by persons and to overthrow and disregard the
rights of property.
These disorders contributed much, if not chiefly, to the adop
tion of the Federal Constitution. They were prototypes of other
disorders which have threatened the life of the Republic from
that time to the present. Shay's Rebellion was a petty affair
compared with the Rebellion of i860, but they belong to the
same class. In each case representative institutions were
brought to the test. The question was, can they continue to
exist when men are oppressed with poverty, when they are in
flamed with anger, when any considerable number wish to throw
off an allegiance which they have found irksome and no longer
love. There has been but one question presented to the people
since the organization of this government, but though the same,
it has been presented in many different forms. It always re
solves itself into this, can the government survive disaster, pov
erty, internal dissensions, temptation to do wrong, and in these
last days a new danger has arisen, can democratic institutions
stand the increase in wealth and luxury.
I, Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War, by Alex. Garden, 1822, page 431.
2. History of Exeter, N. H., by Charles H. Bell, page 97.

Ever since presidential campaigns began, the country has been
told that the Constitution was in danger, and that our liberties
were threatened. In a sense that has been true, and perhaps
some of our liberty has been taken from us, and more might
have been. There are many who now smart from a feeling of
injustice from national and local legislation, who are angry at
the tariff and are envious of those who they think have been
made rich by robbery. Public questions have often been decided
by might, not by right, arbitrarily and not according to justice
and equity. Such results are inseparable from human affairs
where mixed motives govern and the sense of right is often
swayed by emotion and personal interest. Popular favor is
fickle and the hero of to-day may be inglorious to-morrow.
The question has been whether popular government can survive
the crisis, not whether the principle of such government is right.
Therefore the object of a patriot should be to provide against
the crisis, to anticipate the dangers which might overtake the
country, to cut out the decaying spots from the body politic.
Thus the plan of the town and of the nation would be preserved.
The object is not to change the plan, but to carry out the orig
inal design.
We must, therefore, seek to know what will defeat the original
design, or, in other words, what is subversive of popular gov
ernment. The answer must be, whatever will take away from
the freeman his vote, or will tend to nullify his vote by giving
to others not legally authorized the power to command its use,
or will tend to reduce the voter from his position of equality
and exalt property powers and qualifications at his expense.
These are the dangers to which popular government may be
and is exposed. Reduced to their last analysis, the one is the
danger from the political organization called the machine and
the other is from the financial combination called the trust. The
machine takes from the voter the control of his vote and uses
it according to its judgment. Its twin ally is the trust, which,
in copartnership with the machine, wields a vast money power
to overwhelm the individual voter, circumvent his wishes and
overthrow his independence.
That the machine is not to be found in the original plan of
the town, and is no part of the representative government estab
lished by the founders and patriots of America, is evident on

13
the slightest inspection of the ancient plans and documents.
The colonists antagonized their Governors when they promul
gated laws without the consent of their General Assemblies,
which were duly elected by the people and were truly represent
ative. The consent of the governed, as evidenced by the votes
of freemen, and the power to originate legislation and levy taxes,
were held by them as inalienable rights.
After representative government has been established in our
country for two hundred and eighty-six years, after our fore
fathers won the fight for self-government in the battles of the
Revolution, and after many political struggles since then, to
confirm and perpetuate a government of, by and for the people,
it is strange that we should find a condition nowadays existing
by which we have a form of popular government and are denied
its reality. But the word machine is too vague a term for us to
use without explanation and definition before we attack it and
suggest remedies. It is a modern word applied to describe a
condition which already exists. There is no thought in the parts
of a machine. The fire burns, the steam is generated, the pis
ton moves and the power is developed at the will of the one who
controls the machine. He does all the thinking and the parts of
the machine are subservient to him. A political machine has
like characteristics. It necessarily involves the idea of a boss,
at whose word of command the machinery of the party starts and
stops. I have the greatest respect for a competent engineer. I see
him with his oil can with its long spout deftly dropping a little oil
first on one crank and then on another. I see him increasing the
draught and piling on the coal and with his hand on the throttle
and his eye on the road ahead bringing his train through on
schedule time. There is nothing lighthearted or gay about him.
When he brings his train to a stop he looks at you with a solemn
face, as one who knows that great interests have been under his
care. The political boss is much the same kind of a man, and
usually does the work committed to him in an equally satisfac
tory manner. He would not hold his position for one moment
if not commissioned to do so by his party. The boss is a neces
sary part of the machine and it is not the boss but the machine
which is arraigned before us as a fungus growth on the tree of
liberty.

14
The political machine is a development which takes its origin
in the system of delegating the duties of a large body to special
persons or committees. That system is a good one and indis
pensable for the prompt discharge of the business before any
organized gathering of men. The first duty of a political or
ganization is the appointment of committees and it is an easy
step to the appointment of a committee to boss the whole or
ganization. Such a committee may be a necessity for the super
vision of the general interests of a party, but when it assumes
dictatorial powers and reduces the other members of a party or
organization to puppets to obey its commands, and sends up
orders to Albany or Washington to push one measure through
and to sidetrack another, whether they appear to legislators
beneficial or otherwise, then its actions become harmful. A
general committee might, within limits, be most desirable, while
a machine might be most disastrous to the welfare of the
country. The political machine works in the dark with no public ac
countability. It is therefore necessarily exposed to the tempta
tion to make trades and deals. A still greater danger lies in the
temptation to make issues for the party, not because those issues
are demanded for the good of the country, but because they
form the best basis on which to conduct a political campaign.
Politics in the hands of the machine becomes a game. Econ
omic questions have only an academic interest unless they are
advocated by the machine. The machine surrounds our legis
lative assemblies as his courtiers surrounded King Charles the
Second, or as the bureaucracy surround the Czar.
But the chief danger from the machine lies in the still further
extension of its power to control the appointment of commit
tees. Committees are said to be the hands, eyes, feet and ears
of legislative bodies. How is it at Washington now ? Is it not
known that the appointment of committees is controlled by a
few men and that the general membership of the Congress has
very little to say about it ? These few are no doubt very
excellent men, and their one thought is to bring the subservient
train through on schedule time. They do their work so well it
would be graceless to complain, if they did not practically
nullify the representative character of Congressmen and bring
Congress under the suspicion of compromising deals. A repre-

IS
sentative who arrives at Washington for the first time, and who
is ambitious to do work on committees, finds that it is not fitness
but pull with the machine which will get him the desired place.
He is demeaned by being required to submit his recommend
ations and letters. The machine settles the matter by selecting
committeemen not primarily for worth or capacity, but for
serviceability to the party organization. Thus the committee
man, when appointed, finds his allegiance must be largely
transferred from his constituents, where it rightly belongs, to the
machine to whom he owes his appointment. The considerations
which influenced the machine in giving the appointment are a
hidden mystery and find their explanation either in legislation
favorable to certain interests or in legislation which was stifled
on its way to the statute book.
Where can we find authority for this method for the control
of legislation? It was not in the plan of the founders and
patriots. We read in the first section of article one of the
Constitution of the United States, "All legislative powers herein
granted shall be vested in a congress of the United States, which
shall consist of " what ? a Speaker and a machine ? No : " of a
Senate and House of Representatives.'' Nowhere in the Con
stitution do we read that the Speaker of the House is second
only in authority and power to the President of the United
States. Nor do we read that any one Senator shall have power
to stop legislation on any subject. There has been a slow
evolution by which at last the appointment of committees and
the control of legislation has been taken away from Congress
men and placed in the hands of the machine, and thus the whole
theory of government devised by our forefathers has been
defeated and subverted. Such changes come on us slowly and
unawares and the true situation is only revealed to us when we
wake up to find that we have broken away from our moorings
and are drifting on a sea full of dangers.
There is then a loud call for reform and for an indispensable
change in our legislative methods to bring them back to the
pure standards of the founders and patriots. This required
change is to restore to Congress the power given to it by the
Constitution and taken away from it by the machine and to
place again in the hands of Congressmen themselves the ap
pointment of their own committees. This would restore to the

i6
office of Representative its former dignity and take Congress out
of the valley of humiliation in which it has traveled too long.
This change would be no experiment. English, French and
German precedents can be cited in its favor. It is impossible to
think of a Presidential Convention organized on any other
plan, short of autocracy. It is only necessary to refer to the
example of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church,
which adopted this system a few years ago at the original sug
gestion of Col. James M. Rice, of Peoria, Illinois. The
Presbyterian Church in the United States of America had its
birth in the same city and the same year as the Constitution of
the United States and its church government is of the same rep
resentative character.
Following the principle of the plan which governs our Presi
dential Conventions, as well as some of the English, French and
German legislative assemblies, Congress could be districted and
the right to appoint their proportion of committeemen given to
the representatives of each district, the dominant party holding
its majority in each committee as now. Committees would
thereby become representative of their true constituents, the
voters who elected them. All underhanded combinations and
influences are thereby prevented, and the office of Representative
restored to its former dignity. Issues before the country would
then be raised to the highest plane, the welfare of the entire
nation and the dominant and pernicious reign of the machine
would be brought to an end.
A large part of the danger from the trust would vanish with
its twin conspirator, the machine. If committees, the hands,
feet, eyes and ears of legislative bodies, were truly representative
of the country instead of the machine, it would be impossible
that bargains could be made. But the trust has its economic
side as well as its political. The value of a trust to its promoters
is in proportion to its nearness to a monopoly. To Anglo-
Saxon thought a monopoly is odious. In an environment of
the Latin race it is not so. The good that may come from a
monopoly overbalances in the Latin mind the evil that it may
occasion. Caste never had a substantial foothold on this continent. As
has been said, the founders and patriots early discarded primo
geniture and established representative government under which

17
all freemen possessed equal rights. All the tendency of legisla
tion in this country has been to give every man a fair and equal
chance. But the trust intervenes to prevent this result, and it
uses the power given by the State, that is, of incorporation, to
accomplish its ends. The trust gives to capital the power to
overthrow weaker rivals and dictate to whole communities the
terms of their existence. The development of whole areas of
the country is made subject to the will of absentee proprietors.
It has been said that the danger to our liberties is from mili
tarism, and the examples of Greece and Rome have been
appealed to by the high authority of Dr. J. G. Schurman, Presi
dent of Cornell University, to maintain the assertion. But did
not the Heroic Age of Rome exist under the Republic ? Were
not then the Samnite wars carried on which paved the way to
the future greatness of Rome? Did not then the Roman Senate
possess its greatest power and majesty? Was it not during the
Punic wars that Rome's naval power reached its preponderating
influence? Was it not during the Macedonian wars that Rome
became the arbitress of nations ? All these military movements
took place under the Republic. It was only as the military
power gained for Rome her proud position that wealth corrupted
the habits of the people, and their stern virtue and loftiness of
purpose was exchanged for every species of vice and profligacy
that a corrupt imagination could suggest.!
Wo to the land to hastening ills a prey,
'Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
Rome's greatness was attained under a warlike Republic, and
lost under the dominance of an effete, moneyed aristocracy. If
Dr. Schurman will take down his Pliny, he will see that it was
his opinion that it was the trusts of those days that destroyed the
Republic. Pliny was a near observer, and he wrote these three
words which give his explanation of the decline and fall of the
Roman Empire, "latifundia perdidere Italiam," the broad estates,
the vast combinations of capital, sent Italy to perdition. "The
economic condition of ancient Italy," writes the translator of
Blanqui's Political Economy, in a note on page 51, "presents a
most remarkable fact which has only been brought into full relief
by recent writers, notably by Dureau de la Malle, in his Economic
Politique des Romains. It is the depopulation of Italy caused
i. Oxford Chronological Tables of History, 1838, Tables VI., VII. and VIII.

by the disappearance of small estates and the concentration of
the lands in the hands of a small number of families who finally
possessed all the peninsula. Before the Punic wars, Italy was
covered with a close population of hard-working people who
themselves cultivated their little capital in lands, and from
whom those Roman armies were recruited which conquered the
west. In the time of the Gracchi this vigorous population had
sensibly diminished and the end to which, above all, the reform
ers of the democratic party tended, was to re-establish it by a
division of the lands of the State. But this end was not
attained. On the debris of small proprietorships were formed
immense domains (latifundia) ; cultivation on a small scale
was superseded by exploitation on a large scale by means of
slaves; the fields of grain were converted into pasturage; the
same lands which had supported loo to 150 families of freemen
were cultivated by about 50 slaves, for whom there existed no
marriage and consequently no posterity. Under these circum
stances the depopulation was necessarily rapid and it was easy
to comprehend the causes. Pliny said, 'latifundia perdidere
Italiam,' " which I may translate in modern language, "the trusts
killed Italy."
The steps in the decline of Rome are very plain. Before the
large aggregation of capital was combined in the hands of a
few Italy was covered with moderate estates, over many of
which presided a Roman citizen. In this indomitable, intelli
gent and patriotic population was the strength of the nation.
From it Rome could call a Cincinnatus from his plow to lead
their armies to victory. A change came when capital bought
up these small properties and merged them into great estates
which were controlled from Rome, for then throughout the
length and breadth of the land the Roman citizen was replaced
by a tenant or a slave, and the strength of Italy departed. The
decline and fall of the Roman Empire then began.
So it will be a lamentable event in the economic history of
the United States when our modern latifundia, the trusts, shall
replace the intelligent and patriotic owners of moderate finan
cial and industrial concerns with their agents or their clerks.
The vigorous class of American citizens from which we draw
our great men, the leaders in politics, the able class of moderate
bankers, the industrious merchants and traders, would then

19
have deteriorated or vanished. No longer then could the nation
call a man from his country store or bank to take control of a
state or the management of the federal finances, for the race of
our Cincinnati would then be extinct.
Our founders and patriots delighted in the story of Cincinnatus,
for they saw in it a true picture of the state of society at the
Revolution. Adam Smith wrote of them in 1776: "The persons
who now govern the resolutions of what they call their conti
nental congress feel in themselves at this moment a degree of
importance which perhaps the greatest subjects of Europe scarce
feel. From shopkeepers, tradesmen and attorneys they are be
come statesmen and legislators, and are employed in contriving
a new form of government for an extensive empire, which they
flatter themselves will become, and which indeed seems very
likely to become, one of the greatest that ever was in the world."!
They saw the analogy between themselves, the embattled farm
ers and Cincinnatus. They established the order of the Cincin
nati and gave the name to a future great city in commemoration
of their admiration of his example. In so doing they also set
the stamp of their approval upon a state of society where trusts
do not exist.
It may be questioned whether it is in the power of the govern
ment to prevent the formation of trusts. That is a problem to
be solved in the future by the efforts of Congress and State leg
islatures. It is evident that trusts are corporations or combina
tions of corporations which receive their lives as individuals from
State or National Governments. The question then is, have in
dividuals the right to demand from the public incorporation
when the corporate powers conferred will be used against the
interest of the State ? This is an untenable hypothesis. No in
dividuals have such rights when their use is against public pol
icy. If it is agreed, therefore, that trusts are inimical to the
welfare of the State, then it is evident that the State should not
allow their formation. This principle is recognized in those
State laws which forbid the union of parallel competing railroad
lines. The fact that some railroad companies have circumvented
the law and have combined parallel and competing lines has
never prevented a State from putting such a law on its statute
books. I. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Fifth Edition of J. R. McCulloch, Edinburgh, r86i,
page 281.

A great step in advance towards the solution of these questions
was taken in the recent report of Commissioner of Corporations
James R. Garfield, in which he proposed the incorporation under
federal law of all corporations doing an interstate business.
There is but one step more to accomplish the prevention of the
formation of trusts, and that is the placing in the proposed fed
eral corporation law a provision modeled after the railroad law
and made to apply to corporations doing a competitive business.
It is as easy to follow a line of business as it is to follow aline of
railroad. The argument against the combination of competing
lines should apply as fully in one case as in the other.
Thus would we strike down by these simple, effective and
practicable means the double-headed hydra which threatens the
life and liberties of the nation. The machine is an evil which is
present in local, municipal. State and national politics. The
trust is an evil which must be arrested and overthrown or it will
hold the nation in its grasp. The one thrives and fattens with
the other. They were unknown evils to our forefathers, and if
we, the people of the United States, would preserve the pure
form of government and society which they conceived and
handed down to us, we must prove ourselves their worthy suc
cessors by carrying into effect these indispensable measures of
legislative reform and thus bring back our government to the
lofty and grand ideals of the founders and patriots of America

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