ital is taking the place of men,
and is valued more than men. Property is becoming sacred, human life
profane. Laws are being made not for the good of humanity, but for the
sake of property. One instance may be mentioned here: in the spring of
1896 a bill was before Congress to remove all criminal cases from the
jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States. It was argued by
those in favor of the bill that much of the time of the Supreme Court
was consumed listening to criminal cases (cases involving life and
liberty), while high-priced corporation lawyers, whose cases involved
millions of dollars, were required to wait in Washington until the
criminal cases were disposed of. The bill naturally passed the Senate,
but was defeated in the House.

This bill was but one of many indications that, in the eye of the law,
property is becoming of more value than life or liberty.

In Benjamin Franklin's time it was proposed to make the possession of a
certain amount of property a prerequisite for voting. The amount would
at the time have bought one ass. Franklin characteristically argued: If
a man with an ass could vote, and did vote, but when the ass died the
man could not vote, who was it, in fact, voted--the man or the ass?
Franklin's argument would hold good against many of the laws advocated
to-day--laws in which the object is the stability of property rather
than the freedom or happiness of man. This condition of affairs, this
conflict between the right of liberty on the one hand, and the right of
property on the other, has created a great political problem. Has the
state a right to limit wealth? Is there a limit to the accumulations of
individuals and corporations? Has the state the power to tax
concentrated wealth out of existence when such wealth has become
detrimental to the public peace and prosperity? In other words, has the
state the power to prevent the acquisition of wealth from becoming a
public curse? Government, if it stands for anything, stands for the
public interests, and one of the objects of government should be the
protection of its citizens from the encroachments of accumulated wealth.

Great individual wealth is an anti-social interest. It is the ascendency
of individuals over the interests of the public. Individuals have, it is
true, a certain amount of liberty, but it cannot be denied that society
has the right to modify the liberty of the individual where such liberty
is but the slavery of