In June, 1859, a benevolent Swiss gentleman, M. Henri Dunant, finding himself in the vicinity of Solferino, visited the battlefield, and his book, the Souvenir de Solferino, aroused the profoundest commiseration for the suffering of the forty thousand wounded for whose care the regular sanitary service was utterly inadequate, and for whose succor the unorganized efforts of limitless charity were unavailing. M. Dunant urged on the public attention measures for the amelioration of the condition of the sick and wounded, first through the Genevese Society of Public Utility, of which he was a member, and later through the Swiss Federal Council. The Council eventually called an international conference and after a brief session in Geneva this conference adopted The Geneva Convention of August 22d, 1864.

It was speedily recognized that the rules needed amendment, and should be extended to maritime warfare, and for this purpose the so-called Additional Articles were adopted by a second Conference which met in Geneva in October, 1868. The Additional Articles were never ratified, but nevertheless they repeatedly served as a rule of conduct in war and it should always be borne in mind that a well digested body of rules, such as the Additional Articles, or the Brussels Convention of 1874, although they may never be ratified, yet serve as a basis for humane consideration and for future conferences. No such labor is lost.

The first great example of the relief of suffering in war was that given by our own Sanitary Commission, constituted by the President's order of June, 1861, at the instance of a committee of delegates from various earlier societies who met in Washington in May.

Newport, with the exception of three years, was until 1853 administered under the town-meeting system. It had, in 1784, made a trial of a city charter, but it was so unsatisfactory that it reverted to the town meeting three years later. The reason of this reversion in March, 1787, as given in Rhode Island Schedules for 1786-1790, is worth quoting. The petition to the Legislature complained that since the incorporation, about two years since, they had “experienced many Inconveniences and Indignities unknown to them before said Incorporation, injurious to their Property and civil Lilberty and incompatible with the Rights of Freemen: That the Choice of the Mayor, Aldermen and Common Council is effected by a few leading, influential Men, who when chosen, have the Appointment of all the City Officers, independent of the Sufferages of the People, which they conceive to be a Derogation of those Rights and Immunities, which Freemen are indisputably entitled to, and for which so much Blood and Treasure has (sic) been exhausted.” It reads uncommonly like a complaint of to-day.

The “town meeting” may thus be taken as Newport's form of government for two hundred and more years. In 1853, when a new trial of a charter was made, the place had about 12,000 inhabitants, half its present number. That it was still not too large for the town-meeting system is showtn by the fact that Boston remained a town until 1822, at which time it had 43,000 population. Brookline, perhaps the most admirably administered community in the United States, remains a town, although with a population of 25,000, and an electorate of about 4,100.

The Constitution of the United States is one of the greatest monuments of human history. It was not a sudden creation, according to Mr. Gladstone's hasty generalization; for our scholars agree that it was a growth essentially. It is perhaps the greatest achievement recorded of compromise, which is the genius of political development. Cherishing theories of Aristotle and Montesquieu, nourished by the Common law and English political experience, strengthened by the steady progress of the colonies, the statesmen assembled in the convention of 1787 embodied the knowledge of their time. The serene Washington, the practised and facile Franklin, the far-seeing constructive Hamilton, with Madison, Wilson, Morris, Sherman and their fellows filing in; these makers of the constitution brought the largest capacity to the conformation of a written instrument, which embodied the widest experience in the art of government.

The pregnant phrases of the Preamble—forged out by Hamilton and Madison—though they soon became important guides to the meaning of the whole instrument, do not appear to have attracted much attention or excited discussion.

It may be instructive to consider the ideas of J. Randolph Tucker, expressed after the facts of the Civil War had illustrated the genius and force of the original Constitution. Liberty if the “gift of God!” and the body-politic is “man's trustee, not his master.” As the body-politic rests on rightful sovereignty, the de facto institution must be taken to be the sovereign power. His great authority, Bluntschli, says “each man is at the same time member of the sovereign and subject to the sovereign.”

The risks or hazards to which man and his economic interests are subject may be separated into two classes: (1) speculative risks resulting from general price fluctuations, and (2) the risks of production and consumption. The former fall upon a class as a whole, and hence are not readily transferred by insurance. The latter affect either individuals or small classes. They may therefore be borne by those upon whom they originally fall, or they may be shifted to other shoulders, or finally they may be distributed over the group as a whole. Primitive races are not only largely under the dominion of the aleatory forces, but they have no systematic method of distributing the losses arising from this source. Consequently the weaker individuals and those less endowed with foresight are rapidly eliminated. Nevertheless, the natural law of survival has never been allowed to operate without restraint. The family, the tribe and the nation in ancient times provided more or less effectively for the weak and unfortunate. Christianity introduced a new ideal and a new institution: the ideal of a universal brotherhood and the church as the active agency by which the burdens were alleviated. The church came to regard the care of the unfortunate and distribution of alms as its duty if not its inherent right. It thus gained a hold upon medieval society which it could probably never have attained upon purely religious grounds—a fact which may partially account for its early hostility to all forms of life insurance.

To the individual physical life there is no end more certain than death, and in turn nothing more uncertain than when that end may be reached. In a group of lives sufficiently large for the fair operation of the laws of average, it will be found, however, that, while no intelligent or safe prediction may be made concerning the length of any individual life, it can readily be told how many of the group will die each year. In other words, it will be found that there is a law of mortality, whose operations are so exact that, while they are subject to slight fluctuation from year to year, it is possible to predict in advance with practical certainty what will be the average lifetime of the group and the rate at which the lives will fail.

As with the advance of civilization the life of the individual became more complex, and his responsibility to those around him more marked, with an increasing necessity of adequately equipping dependents if they were to conquer in the struggles of life, men, subject to the same hazards and facing all an ultimate event, the only uncertainty affecting which was the moment of its occurrence, combined together for mutual protection, that from a fund created by the contributions of the many provision might be made for those dependent upon the few lives (their individual identity not known) which experience indicated might be expected to fail year by year.

In Chapter 13 of the Leviathan on “The Natural Condition, of Mankind” is found Hobbes' doctrine of the state of nature as it is generally known. This may be briefly summed up as follows: In faculties of mind and body, men are, on the whole, so nearly equal that one cannot claim for himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he. From this equality of ability arises equality of hope in attaining ends desired. “And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.” There are three principal causes of quarrel among men; first, the desire for gain; second, for safety, and third, for glory. Hence where there is no common power to keep men in awe, “they are in that condition called war, and such a war as is of every man against every man.” This war need not be constant conflict, since “the nature of war consists not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary.” In such a state of war, actual or potential, the condition of man is most unfortunate and deplorable. “The life of man in such a state,” says Hobbes, “is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

In connection with every phase of thought and activity among men there have appeared two distinct classes of minds, the optimists and the pessimists. The former are naturally Conservatives as the latter are Radicals. These minds are always considered as extremes in their day and generation and we find these opposite poles of thought protruding in either direction beyond the settled convictions of the masses.

First, let me point out a distinction between Radicalism and Conservatism in ihe most general idea of them. There is a sort of Conservatism which stands only upon advantages held in possession. It says: “I have wealth, I have respectability, I am well off here and well guaranteed for the hereafter. Any change, good or bad in itself, will be bad for me. Change is my enemy: I bolt and bar my doors and, so far as I can, the doors of the world against it.” There is, on the other hand, a sort of Radicalism which, though often a fair thing in the mouth, means in the heart of it; “You are in place and I am: out. You have and I want. Any change gives me a chance, and the more change, the better are my chances.”

The other day I read an article oh India, in one of our popular magazines, in which the writer gave the British Indian Government much severe advice, asking why they did not abolish caste, why they did not introduce democracy, and so forth, and summing up the whole venture as a huge failure. The writer headed his article with “Fighting for the Common Cause,” or some such phrase; and as I read, a former occasion on which I had heard the same words came back suddenly into my mind.

It was at the junction of the Nalhati State railway, amid the illimitable rice fields of Lower Bengal, where I was waiting, far on in the night, for a train that was to take me to my first post. The engine driver had some doubt as to his skill, so he spent an hour or two practicing, running his little train back and forward a hundred yards or so, and whistling shrilly till the jackals barked back at him. I was in the only first-class compartment, some six feet square, and as I dozed uneasily, I was conscious of high-pitched voices in the next compartment, talking the Bengali tongue, which I had studied industriously at home for the last two years. Finally, with magnificent rhetoric, one of the speakers cried “Amra fighting-for-the-common-cause hoilam!” And all the others applauded vehemently. They were on their way home from the Indian National Congress.

The administration of Philippine commerce stands in sharp contrast to the Spanish policy in South America. In the one case all imports and exports under the national flag were encouraged to the utmost. In the other a definite limit was placed upon both not only as to the means provided for transportation, but also upon the value of the trade to be allowed. The trade of South America was protected by the squadrons of the royal navy, but the struggling commerce of the Western Islands, as they were called, had to fight its own battles against English, Portuguese and Dutch freebooters as well as the pirates of the surrounding Asiatic nations. Unjust as this treatment seems, from the Spanish point of view it was admirably well planned and consistent. In both cases the impelling motive was the same—the advancement of the interests of the home country.

The mines of South America contributed to the national wealth without interfering with the industry of the mother land, and the growth of the settlements there led to an ever increasing demand for the products of Spanish vineyards and the looms of Andalusia. The trade with America was considered highly desirable, for goods went abroad and precious metals returned. But the Philippines could offer no such advantages. They had no important mines and the undeveloped native industry did not allow of great trade, even in goods for goods. The only possible basis of development was the trade to China. This commerce, however, was of a kind least to be desired. Since there was no return trade it meant that the cargo of Asiatic goods would be paid for in coin and would incur a constant drain of the precious metals to the countries of the far east “whence it never returned.”

A nation, in its immaturity, is prone to look only at the more apparent features of its existence; as it grows in power it views with complacency the respect paid to its prowess, the authority which it is able to enforce and the volume of commerce it maintains. By its conduct and attitude the policies of foreign states are fixed; its navy controls the seas; its army threatens its neighbors; its merchants roam through the more remote quarters of the earth; its legislators establish laws for multitudes without its borders; its ambassadors are consulted at every Court; its rulers gain the regard and affection: of rival potentates and princes. How to achieve these results, so patent to the observer, forms the theme of many arguments; but how few of the people realize what obligations and effects are reciprocally imposed upon them themselves; how their development, temperament and institutions may be varied, favored or thwarted by their relations with foreign states.

Those who have had occasion to make a special study of colonial affairs cannot have failed to observe that the subject of colonial administration is one which is assuming from year to year a higher degree of importance, and is drawing to itself a constantly increasing share of public attention.

This access of interest in a branch of investigation hitherto very generally regarded as a curious by-product rather than as a vital part of Political Science, has served the useful purpose of disclosing to the student in this neglected field the failure of the great majority of recent writers to approach the colonial problem in that scientific spirit which in other departments of study is alone held to justify a public expression of opinion.

Indeed, so wide is the range of occupations which have added their followers to the ranks of writers upon colonial government—a range which embraces lawyers, doctors, soldiers, sailors, politicians, presidential candidates, ministers of the gospel, labor leaders, poets, geologists, engineers, and professors of subjects as wide apart as ethics and zoology—that one is almost tempted to believe that a knowledge of calligraphy is regarded as the only qualification necessary for a writer on colonial topics.