regard them as heartless sharpers who fatten upon the
misery of their fellow-creatures. And it is sometimes hinted that such
"practices" ought to be stopped by legislation.

Now, so far is this prejudice, which is a very old one, from being
justified by facts, that, instead of being an evil, speculation in
breadstuffs and other necessaries is one of the chief agencies by which
in modern times and civilized countries a real famine is rendered almost
impossible. This natural monopoly operates in two ways. In the first
place, by raising prices, it checks consumption, putting every one
on shorter allowance until the season of scarcity is over, and thus
prevents the scarcity from growing into famine. In the second place, by
raising prices, it stimulates importation from those localities where
abundance reigns and prices are low. It thus in the long run does much
to equalize the pressure of a time of dearth and diminish those extreme
oscillations of prices which interfere with the even, healthy course of
trade. A government which, in a season of high prices, does anything to
check such speculation, acts about as sagely as the skipper of a wrecked
vessel who should refuse to put his crew upon half rations.

The turning-point of the great Dutch Revolution, so far as it concerned
the provinces which now constitute Belgium, was the famous siege and
capture of Antwerp by Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma. The siege was a
long one, and the resistance obstinate, and the city would probably
not have been captured if famine had not come to the assistance of the
besiegers. It is interesting, therefore, to inquire what steps the civic
authorities had taken to prevent such a calamity. They knew that the
struggle before them was likely to be the life-and-death struggle of
the Southern Netherlands; they knew that there was risk of their being
surrounded so that relief from without would be impossible; they knew
that their assailant was one of the most astute and unconquerable of
men, by far the greatest general of the sixteenth century. Therefore
they proceeded to do just what our Republican Congress, under such
circumstances, would probably have done, and just what the New York
Tribune, if it had existed in those days, would have advised them to
do. Finding that sundry speculators were accumulating and hoarding up
provisions in anticipation of a season of high prices, they hastily
decided, first of all to put a stop to such "selfish iniqui