e
verdict has gone for the prisoner on a point of law. This matter,
upon President Roosevelt's recommendation, was embodied in an act of
Congress.

The legislation making it criminal to advocate assassination or
anarchism has been adverted to when we were considering the rights of
aliens. In England, it is treason to imagine the death of the king.
There is no constitutional reason why it should not be treason to
imagine the death of the president, or perhaps even the subversion by
force of organized society. Such laws have been passed in Washington,
Wisconsin, and other States.

It has, in some States, been made a capital offence to kidnap a child,
and, as has been elsewhere said, the rigor of the common law is very
generally preserved for the crime of rape. The most active effort
to-day for legislation in matters quasi-criminal is that to extend
jury trial over cases of contempt of court, particularly when in
violation of a chancery injunction when the act itself is criminal.
The greatest need of criminal legislation is in the writer's opinion
in matters of business or corporate fraud, and in revival of our older
English law against the extortion or regrating of middlemen, the
engrossing of markets, the artificial enhancing of the prices of the
necessaries of life, and the withholding, destruction, or improper
preservation of food. But most of all, as President Taft has urged,
greater speed and certainty and less technicality in court trials for
crime--a reform of our legal procedure.

XIX

OF THE GOVERNMENTAL FUNCTION, INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS, AND THE PUBLIC
DOMAIN

The matter of most interest in modern American legislation for
municipal government is probably the home-rule principle. That is,
statutes permitting cities or towns, or even villages, to draw and
adopt their own charters and govern themselves in their own way. The
charter thus adopted may, of course, be the old-fashioned government
of mayor, aldermen, common council, etc., or it may be the newly
invented government by commission, based substantially on the theory
of permanent officials chosen at infrequent intervals, and officers,
in so far as possible, appointed, and not elected. The one makes for
efficiency, the other for democracy. At present the American
people seem to have a craze for efficiency, even at the expense
of representative government, and of principles hitherto thought
constitutional. It is impossible to tell how long it will