cumbersome, inadequate and expensive. Some better system ought to be adopted. I, therefore, recommend to the legislature that the law providing for the appointment of a Board of Commissioners of Public Charities and also the law for the appointment of three trustees for each institution be repealed and, in the place of these statutes, a law be passed dividing the State charitable institutions into two classes and authorizing the Governor, by and with the consent of the Senate, to appoint three commissioners for each class, who shall receive such compensation as will secure the services of thoroughly competent business men, who shall be clothed with such powers, as far as practicable, as are now given by law to the Board of Commissioners of Public Charities and the local trustees. The law should also provide that the commissioners make annual reports to the Governor, and at the proper time prepare a careful and explicit statement of what legislative appropriations are required for the various institutions under their charge. It is believed that the adoption of this system or something similar to it will produce a more economical and efficient management than that now in force.

NATIONAL SUPREMACY.

Our people are blessed with a dual citizenship and double allegiance, but these are not, as some suppose, hostile and incompatible relations. They are harmonious and work together for our good. We are citizens of Illinois, but, in becoming such, we also become citizens of a potent and sovereign republic, the greatest and freest that history has known. Our State bears a near relation to us and touches our lives at every point, but our common country no less appeals to our patriotism, our pride and our love of true national glory.

There are certain great subjects, hitherto constituting matters of partisan controversy in this country, that ought now to be regarded as settled. For instance, the now oft-registered conviction of our people, concerning the powers and duties of our national and State governments and their reciprocal relations to each other, ought not again to be drawn in question, and I hope even partisan advantages will never again be expected from agitation of this once vexed but now happily settled question. Intelligent friends of our institutions would not, if they could, tear away these foundations which after long contention were laid in a people's anguish and cemented in their blood. To the proposition that our national government is sovereign and supreme in all national affairs and in the execution of national laws, we as a people are now thrice committed by interest, by ballots and by blood. We are proud of our State, and would be quick to resent an infringement upon its just rights. On the other hand we love our common country, which represents that sovereignty and dignity which alone gives us place and prestige among the nations of the world. In its sphere, our nation is as distinetly and completely sovereign as Russia or Germany, though without any admixture of Russian or German despotism. Its powers are distinctly defined, but no outside state authority ean suspend those powers on any inch of American soil, and while the monumental labors of our great nationalists remain as landmarks of American history, appealing to our national spirit, to our patriotism and our pride; while Andersonville and Libby are not quite forgotten, and Appomattox is still rapturously remembered, no puffed and bustling representative of the slaughtered heresy of state sovereignty can ever again order Uncle Sam to "keep off the grass" with the approval of the American people.

COURTS OF JUSTICE

Again, our courts of justice, State and national, have, from their first establishment, deserved and enjoyed the sincere respect of our people. Το wantonly destroy this respect would endanger our institutions. Courts are not infallible, and could not be, because they are composed of fallible men. Fortunately it is only upon rare occasions that they are thought to make mistakes. To merely disagree with the legal conclusions reached by courts, is a very different thing from impeaching their motives, crying down their integrity before the public, and seeking to place them in a position where their decisions may be dictated by the clamor of the multitude. Such an effort is beyond the limits of legitimate and decent politics. Our courts are as able as

any in the world. Only on the rarest occasions have they been suspected of corruption or of partisan motives. Public opinion, though not holding courts to be infallible or above legitimate criticism, should be taught to sustain rather than to angrily assail them; and all the more is this true because courts cannot, without a total loss of dignity, defend themselves against political assaults. They cannot stoop to notice assailants who appeal to ignorance and seek to incite passion against them, and because they cannot defend themselves, without destroying their own usefulness, they should find protection in that settled opinion of all fair and able minds which has so long held them sacred from partisan assaults.

MAINTENANCE OF LAW AND ORDER.

It is now, I think, also settled that the American people are in favor of the complete protection of private property and the firm maintenance of law and order. The teachings of a class of politicians, lately arisen, seem to imply that free popular government favors a species of communism. While clamorous for popular rule and alleging great devotion to free institutions, there is in all their utterances an unexpressed assumption that the successful members of society are no part of the people. Such men affect great solicitude for the rights of what they are pleased to term the "common people.' This phrase they do not, in terms, define, but from their harangues the meaning may be deduced that those who have done nothing, those who have nothing, and those who do not expect to have anything, through the exercise of either their labor or talent, are the common people, while all others are ranked among favored classes, "plutocrats" whose prospective despoilment in some way is held up as a political lure to the destitute, the ignorant and the dissatisfied. A political "Cave of Adullam" like that of old, is thus opened by these men, where every one who is in distress, and every one who is in debt, and every one who is discontented may gather themselves together, to the end that some arch-demagogue may become a captain over them.

FREE POPULAR GOVERNMENT.

These false teachings render it not improper to consider for a moment the question, "What is the object of free government?" Free popular government has never undertaken, and, in the nature of things, could not undertake to make any man rich, or to give any man a competence, or to even keep any man out of the poorhouse, provided his personal sloth, intemperance or folly render him a fit subject for that place. All the law can do, even in the freest country in the world, is to give to each citizen an equal opportunity with every other citizen. An equal chance and equal protection to all, is the motto of free government. How well and with what judgment these opportunities will be improved is necessarily an individual matter. It is only the visionary and impractical socialist, who dreams of a community of goods and of effort, whereby the individual, it is claimed, will be relieved from the fierce competitive struggle through which alone human progress has come in the past.

It is certainly very desirable that those who have much should be generous toward those who, for any cause, have little or nothing; that those who are fortunate should open their hearts to all the children of misfortune; and that the strong should be swift to protect and succor the weak. But I am not aware that a popular government, any more than any other kind, can set bounds to what thrift and industry may acquire under its laws, or can so change human nature that some of its citizens will not fall into poverty and degradation in the intense struggle of life. I admit that progress through competition is often a severe ordeal, and many good men fall by the way. Their sad lot appeals to all the kindness, philanthropy and charity of the human heart, but what can law, acting within the domain of human justice, do in such cases?

To illustrate, two young men start on equal terms in the business of farming. One, exercising a natural shrewdness, which he is so fortunate as to possess, contracts for a productive farm in a healthful climate. He is an in

dustrious and superior husbandman, and uniting good judgment and good sense with energy and skill in the business, he, of course, prospers. The other, through bad judgment, or we will say bad fortune, locates a farm in a place where floods will wash out half his crops and the proceeds of the other half will be needed to cure his family of malaria. He lacks energy, is not so good a husbandman as the other, and the cockle burs are found growing in his corn field. Now, the first of these men will be almost certain to pay for his farm and improve and stock it, while the other will, of course, lose his farm to the mortgagee, who forecloses and takes it. What could the government have done to equalize the results of the labors of these two men and to make their respective lots in life equally pleasant? The law cannot stay floods or stop fevers or supply lacking personal energy or endow the foolish with judgment. Shall it then undertake in some way to make the more prosperous farmer divide his abundance with the other? If the latter is to be done, then why should one husbandman ever try to procure a better farm than another, or to till it in a better manner, since all the fruits of superior judgment, skill and energy are to be taken from him anyhow, leaving him in the end no better off than if he had been thriftless or foolish. A policy which should attempt to do this would certainly degrade the higher members of society, but could never raise up those who are at the bottom. It would be a levelling downward and nothing more.

My illustration will apply to all other occupations as well as to farming, and I give it for the sole purpose of showing that a free popular government no more undertakes to make men equal in the amount of property they acquire than any other form of government. It simply proposes that every man shall have an equal chance, and that no man shall rob, despoil or defraud another. Exercising these legitimate functions, it does, as a matter of fact, indirectly tend to make men equal in the good things of this world.

The flippant demagogue will not fairly meet these problems, because his purpose is not honest. He is cunning enough to know that the man who, for any reason, fails in life is generally quite willing to believe that he has been cheated or oppressed by law, or that the law has unduly favored his more prosperous neighbor. The discontent of the unfortunate portion of society thus becomes an instrument to be played upon by every conscienceless demagogue who wishes to gain power and place and who has no scruples as to the manner of obtaining them.

PROTECTION OF LIFE AND PROPERTY.

Every man has a legal right to hold what he can lawfully acquire, and if he has this right the government must fully protect him in it. The power of the state is lodged in an executive, a judicial and a legislative department, for the sole purpose of protecting life, liberty and property. It is the province of the executive department to enforce the law as made by the legislature and construed by the courts. When lawlessness lays its hands upon its neighbor's goods, it is to be repressed by force whenever and so often as may be necessary to render private property absolutely secure.

When men go forth to toil upon the farm, or into the marts of trade to embark in commerce, or when they set up manufacturing enterprises, they must have the absolute guaranty that what they acquire by lawful means shall be secured to them by all the power of the government. Unless this is done, our government is a farce, and should give place to one that will perform the first functions demanded by civilized society. I will only add that while I am Governor, it is my purpose to make private property as secure within the limits of this State as anywhere on the civilized earth, so far as my personal efforts can secure that end.

But we should not forget that property is not represented alone by large accumulations. Many good citizens have but little, and the man who has little must be protected as well as he who has much. Nay, more, the man who has nothing in the way of accumulations, still has property, for the right to labor is to him property. The opportunities inuring to him from free and equal laws, which invite him to effort and inspire him with hope, are to him

property, and, if possible, a more sacred property than any other, for labor and opportunity, as has been well said, are antecedent to property and creators of it. Flesh and blood are far more precious than silver and gold.

LABOR ORGANIZATIONS.

A just care for the rights of our laboring people is one of the highest objects of government. Of late years the mechanics and laborers of our country have formed extensive organizations, through which they have secured to themselves important rights and benefits. The object of these organizations is entirely legitimate, and results have demonstrated their great value to the wage-earners of the country. When capital aggregates itself and forms vast combinations, surely labor has a right to do the same thing, and all legitimate efforts of the wage-earners of our country to better their condition should receive both moral and legal encouragement. This is particularly true for the reason that it is much more difficult for laborers to combine for industrial and moral ends than it is for capital.

The fact that there have been in the past abuses growing out of labor organizations ought not to blind us to the great value which they have often conferred upon their members, through that concerted action which organization enables them to take. Of course, where combinations of labor degenerate into mere agencies of oppression; where they listen too much to the voice of socialism and anarchy, which are, in fact, their worst and most dangerous enemies; where they seek to dictate that others who desire to do so shall not accept employment; or where, in more extreme cases, their more violent members wantonly destroy private property, they are to be curbed and suppressed by all the force of the government, exactly the same as those who engage in other forms of lawlessness.

ness.

THE LESSON OF OUR LATE ELECTION.

Faith in the stability of American institutions receives a powerful support from the grand spectacle witnessed during the late campaign, and at the election which concluded it. Such deep interest in the event of an election has not before been seen in our generation. It is not too much to say that, at the beginning of the campaign, a large majority of even the more intelligent voters were uninformed upon the main issue of the canvass and their conclusions were matured during the progress of the campaign. A more hotly contested political battle has never been fought upon American soil. Each side seemed persuaded that the triumph of its opponent meant the ruin of busiThe excitement, when the time came to vote, had almost reached the point of frenzy. Almost every voter who could get to the polls cast his balfot. Yet all this intense heat and pent-up vehemence subsided at the polling booths, and the day on which thirteen millions of intent and eager American voters registered their enlightened judgment at the ballot box was as serenely peaceful as any other day in American history. Though all were excited, no one thought of appealing to force, and no man has been found hardy enough to counsel resistance to the verdict of a sovereign people. The day following the election found us all united as brethren, with our faces turned toward new and higher achievements, and over us all, as our common inspiration and shield, still floated that noblest, most revered of emblems-the sacred flag of our fathers. Such a spectacle as this, exhibiting so wholesome a respect for law and order, could be witnessed in no land but ours, and by it we are given just ground to be proud of American institutions.

'Of course after every political contest there will be heard the voices of a few ill-natured counsellors of discord, disappointed politicians who will not be comforted for the loss of office which seemed within their grasp. Such men affect to believe in the anguish of defeat, that the country is ruined, because their plans of personal ambition have been thwarted. But the discordant notes of these political night-ravens no more resemble the sane voice of the American people than the howl of a famishing coyote resembles the enchanting strains of a popular melody. Let no one be alarmed by such selfish outcries for in this glorious land, even croaking, like everything else, is free.

I would speak no bitter or unkind word here of any man, because of political differences. The bond of common citizenship is far stronger than the bond of party. We are all citizens of a great commonwealth; we are all proud of the title "American citizen." We have a common interest, far higher than mere partizanship, in the perfection and perpetuation of free institutions. Let us resolve that in all great emergencies we will, as in the past, forget that we are Republicans and Democrats and remember only that we have a common country, in whose destiny is bound up the most sacred interests of all the American people.

At the hour of 2:30 p. m., on Monday, January 11, A. D. 1897, Mr. Needles moved that the joint assembly be now dissolved.

And the motion prevailed.

At the hour of 2:31 p. m., on Monday, January 11, 1897,

On motion of Mr. Nohe, the House adjourned, to meet at 10 o'clock a. m., Tuesday, January 12, A. D. 1897.