since shrewdly observed: "The American people love to be fooled!"
But I must pass on; I still have far to go. As respects legislation, I have said that sixty years ago, when my memories begin, the American ideal was the individual, and individuality. This, implied adherence to the Jeffersonian theory that heretofore the world had been governed too much. The great secret of true national prosperity, happiness and success was, we were taught, to allow to each individual the fullest possible play, provided only he did not infringe on the rights of others. How is it to-day? America is the most governed and legislated country in the world! With one national law-making machine perpetually at work grinding out edicts, we have some fifty provincial mills engaged in the same interesting and, to my mind, pernicious work. No one who has given the slightest consideration to the subject will dispute the proposition that, taking America as a whole, we now have twenty acts of legislation annually promulgated, and with which we are at our peril supposed to be familiar, where one would more than suffice. Then we wonder that respect for the law shows a sensible decrease! The better occasion for wonder is that it survives at all. We are both legislated and litigated out of all reason.
Passing to the other proposition of individuality, there has been, as all men know and no one will dispute, a most perceptible tendency of late years towards what is
