From the few and precious writings that have descended to us from the early period of the American republic we get a clear if fragmentary view of the disorders and lawlessness affecting that strange and unhappy nation.  Leaving the historically famous “labor troubles” for more extended consideration, we may summarize here a few of the results of hardly more than a century and a quarter of “self-government” as it existed on this continent just previously to the awful end.  At the beginning of the “twentieth century” a careful study by trustworthy contemporary statisticians of the public records and those apparently private ones known as “newspapers” showed that in a population of about 80,000,000 the annual number of homicides was not less than 10,000; and this continued year after year to increase, not only absolutely, but proportionately, until, in the words of Dumbleshaw, who is thought to have written his famous “Memoirs of a Survivor” in the year 1908 of their era, “it would seem that the practice of suicide is a needless custom, for if a man but have patience his neighbor is sure to put him out of his misery.”  Of the 10,000 assassins less than three per cent. were punished, further than by incidental imprisonment if unable to give bail while awaiting trial.  If the chief end of government is the citizen’s security of life and his protection from aggression, what kind of government do these appalling figures disclose?  Yet so infatuated with their imaginary “liberty” were these singular people that the contemplation of all this crime abated nothing of the volume and persistence of their patriotic ululations, and affected not their faith in the perfection of their system.  They were like a man standing on a rock already submerged by the rising tide, and calling to his neighbors on adjacent cliffs to observe his superior security.

When three men engage in an undertaking in which they have an equal interest, and in the direction of which they have equal power, it necessarily results that any action approved by two of them, with or without the assent of the third, will be taken.  This is called—­or was called when it was an accepted principle in political and other affairs—­“the rule of the majority.”  Evidently, under the malign conditions supposed, it is the only practicable plan of getting anything done.  A and B rule and overrule C, not because they ought, but because they can; not because they are wiser, but because they are stronger.  In order to avoid a conflict in which he is sure to be worsted, C submits as soon as the vote is taken.  C is as likely to be right as A and B; nay, that eminent ancient philosopher, Professor Richard A. Proctor (or Proroctor, as the learned now spell the name), has clearly shown by the law of probabilities that any one of the three, all being of the same intelligence, is far likelier to be right than the other two.