as the Interstate Commerce Commission will safeguard the legitimate
claim of the railway companies to a "reasonable" rate of earnings on the
capitalised value of the presumed earning-capacity of their property.

* * * * *

Again, in view of the unaccustomed freedom with which it is here
necessary to speak of these delicate matters, it may be in place to
disclaim all intention to criticise the established arrangements on
their merits as details of public policy. All that comes in question
here, touching these and the like features of the established law and
order, is the bearing of all this on the material fortunes of the common
man under the current regime, as contrasted with what he would
reasonably have to look for under the projected regime of Imperial
tutelage that would come in, consequent upon this national surrender to
Imperial dominion.

* * * * *

In these democratic countries public policy is guided primarily by
considerations of business expediency, and the administration, as well
as the legislative power, is in the hands of businessmen, chosen
avowedly on the ground of their businesslike principles and ability.
There is no power in such a community that can over-rule the exigencies
of business, nor would popular sentiment countenance any exercise of
power that should traverse these exigencies, or that would act to
restrain trade or discourage the pursuit of gain. An apparent exception
to the rule occurs in wartime, when military exigencies may over-rule
the current demands of business traffic; but the exception is in great
part only apparent, in that the warlike operations are undertaken in
whole or in part with a view to the protection or extension of business
traffic.

National surveillance and regulation of business traffic in these
countries hitherto, ever since and in so far as the modern democratic
order of things has taken effect, has uniformly been of the nature of
interference with trade and investment in behalf of the nation's
mercantile community at large, as seen in port and shipping regulations
and in the consular service, or in behalf of particular favored groups
or classes of business concerns, as in protective tariffs and subsidies.
In all this national management of pecuniary affairs, under modern
democratic principles, the common man comes into the case only as raw
material of business traffic,--as consumer or as laborer. H