lenient in matters which involve the payment of fees. It is evidently
desirable that a check should be put on the reckless incorporation of
companies with unlimited share capital, the usual form of such a check
being, of course, the graduation of the fee for incorporation in
proportion to such capital. One State which has laws more generous than
any of its neighbours in this particular is likely to attract to it the
incorporation of all the companies of any magnitude from those States,
the formal compliance with the requirements of having a statutory
office, and of holding an annual meeting, in that State being a matter
of small moment. Similar considerations may govern one State in enacting
laws facilitating the obtaining of divorce.

There are, then, obviously many causes which make the attainment of
either an uniform or a satisfactory code of jurisprudence in all States
alike extremely difficult of attainment. It will only be arrived at by,
on the one hand, the extension of the Federal authority and, on the
other the increase in population and wealth (and, consequently, a sense
of responsibility) in those States which at present are less forward
than their neighbours. But, again, it is worth insisting on the fact
that the faults are faults of the several States and not of the United
States. They do not imply either a lack of a sense of justice in the
people as a whole or any willingness to make wrong-doing easy. But it is
extremely difficult for the public opinion of the rest of the country to
bring any pressure to bear on the legislature of one recalcitrant State.
The desire to insist on its own independence is indeed so strong in
every State that any attempt at outside interference must almost
inevitably result only in developing resistance.

* * * * *

And again I find myself regretfully in direct conflict with Mr. Wells.
But it is not easy to take his meditations on American commercial
morality in entire seriousness.

"In the highly imaginative theory that underlies the reality of an
individualistic society," he says (_The Future in America_, p. 168),
"there is such a thing as honest trading. In practice I don't believe
there is. Exchangeable things are supposed to have a fixed quality
called their value, and honest trading is I am told the exchange of
things of equal value. Nobody gains or loses by honest trading and
therefore nobody can grow rich by it." And more to the same e