being "damned to everlasting fame!" Some legislative bodies of the old time "Know-nothing" type, furnish of this matter a few vanishing examples in the world's great history. Still it might be useful, all things considered, for them to make the experiment. It is altogether probable, if the selections should be made from their own membership, that they would fail to secure the best man, or even their best men. They surely could not be best served by mere partisanship, not even by the abandonment of an old, and the adoption of a new party. What they most need, and what the country most needs in its officers of goverment, is undoubted honesty and clear-headed intelligence of the highest order.

But whatever course may be taken in this matter, all efforts for improvement will be defective, unless, as already indicated, they encircle in their ample embrace all the wage-workers in the country. These constitute a great element in the business of the nation, which it will neither be safe nor politic to neglect. They may, indeed, by the indirect influence of their presence and their needs, serve to reduce the wages of labor; still they cannot safely be ignored. They are here; many of them are foreign-born; but while they remain peaceable citizens, they can neither be put to death nor sent back to their foreign homes.

Yet one very important effort can be made. The many workingmen's associations might unite in one great, good movement to secure legal enactments prohibiting further immigration. Here they might indeed meet with serious difficulty. The feathers of capitalists would at once, or very soon, be ruffled, and the attitude of resistance be assumed. The councils of the nation are so filled with millionaires who favor immigration, that to suppress it would be an herculean, if not a hopeless task. Those who employ workmen are naturally favorable to the increase of the laboring classes, because it bears a corresponding decrease in the price paid to each for labor. There is one thing more to be done, and perhaps their only alternative, they must turn capitalists themselves, originate new enterprises, and thus make available the sur

plus labor of the land. Perhaps, indeed, they might engage in some of the older industries under a co-operative system, and take their share of the profits.

Here comes another ground of complaint. Monopolists are always watchful of competition in their business. By their immense wealth they are able to crush out all small industries. They ask u tariff to protect themselves, while, like voracious sharks, they stand ready to swallow and devour all smaller and weaker efforts in the same direction. A thorough change in the tariff laws would be likely to do something for the laboring classes; it would serve at least to check the rapid flow of immigration, and prevent that great tide-swell which, if continued, is destined to bring down all wage-workers in this country to a level with those of other lands.

But laying aside for the present all these things which must be met by workingmen as best they may, there is another and more important matter now coming into view, which is actually more injurious to the poor and to laboring people than all others put together. These poor people are often very severe in their denunciations of rich monopolists, corporations, and especially railroads, banks, manufacturing and other interests" where wealth accumulates and men decay." But they seldom think and rarely talk, except in approval or in vindication of one of the worst, direst, most terrible and tyrannical of all the monopolies with which the country is cursed. The liquor-dealers' and the beer-dealers' monopoly does more to damage the people, more to crush out the life and spirit of the laboring classes, than all others put together; aye, all roiled up into one agglomerated mass, or huge heap of mountain size, mountain weight and mountain force. Its inevitable tendency is to bring them down to the lowest depths of poverty, shame, neglect, and perhaps actual starvation.

Let a "strike commence; laboring men quit work at once and perhaps in large numbers, and in great haste, leave their remunerative employment, though they may deem it poorly remunerative, and hurry away, yea, speed themselves to the

saloons! There, instead of earning money, they spend it, if not as fast as possible, yet all too fast for their own interest; and they give the liquor-dealers' monopoly, for the time being, a very brisk business. It is amazing how very blind and how very foolish in this respect is a very large portion of the laboring people of this country. They clamor for higher wages; they curse monopolists, but receive pay of them for work, receive it in substantial coin or its equivalent, and then hasten to the saloons and spend the same for nothing nothing of any real value to themselves or those dependent on themnothing, except what brings actual injury to themselves and all connected with them. They make themselves mere donkeys, beasts of burden, bearing the sum of their wages from the monopolist who employs them to the saloon monopolist who receives it and gives them nothing in return for the "value received." They might just as well go directly to the furnace, cast it into the fire and burn it.

Not all wage-workers, indeed, belong to this great herd of human donkeys. There are many brilliant exceptions to this general rule. But the places of those who leave the herd, or never enter it, are soon filled, and often more than filled, by the women who join it. It is a sad fact that many women are inveterate beer-drinkers, and keep in countenance the laboring men who spend much of their earnings at the monopoly of saloons.

If, then, monopolists must be condemned no doubt in most cases they richly deserve condemnation - why not take the broad ground and condemn the whole, especially the worst and meanest of them all! But no, that must not be done. Many wage-workers would almost run crazy with madness if the saloons were suppressed. They countenance, sanction, sustain all monopolies for the sale of intoxicating drinks. By this support, these monopolies have at length become so powerful, so rich and arrogant, as to spurn public opinion, and hold it in utter defiance. They are worse than all other monopolies, because they ruin mind, soul, health, reputation, and even destroy the lives of those who submit to their influ

ence. Why, then, should workingmen demand higher wages of one class of monopolists to hasten away and spend the same on another?

The "

eight-hour" demand, so earnestly agitated in some places, cannot be discussed here. It is a question of political economy, embracing the relations between employer and employee. No legislation can compel an employer to hire his workmen by the day; and even if it could, the advantages might be easily lost by its perversion into furnishing a little more time for reveling and spending more money with the saloon monopolists.

Let the "eight-hour" question, then, with all its imaginary incidents, pass by. The wage-workers by their saloon haunting, lose surely very much sympathy which they might otherwise receive. Who can extend sympathy to a man that degrades himself and wastes his substance in the interest of the liquordealers' monopolies ? These are monopolies, not of income, but of waste to the mechanic, the artisan, the agriculturist, and the laborer in general. To these they yield no wages, but take away even what they have. The workingman pays the grain monopolist for bread, the pork and cattle monopolist for meats, and the railroad monopolist for carrying these and other necessary articles to his home. Dealing with monopolists in this way, he gains, as a wage-worker, something besides the wages he receives for his labor. "Bread is the staff of life;" meats are extensively consumed, and all minister to the health, strength and happiness of the people.

They inebri

But when wage workers turn to the beer monopoly, or any other liquor monopoly, the whole scene is changed. gain nothing. There follows only a series of losses ation, weakness, misery. Yet they go; they walk on, oh, so lamb-like! no fuss, no groans, no complaints, no boiling over with anger, no deep-toned profanity, turning the whole atmosphere darker than cerulean blue! They go, not to receive the smallest wages, but to hand over wages already earned, and take "hell broth" in return, or "liquid damnation," as the modern phrase is.

Then, if they do not actually abuse

their families, they have wasted what was necessary to give them pleasant and plentiful homes. The liquor monopolies cost the people of this country, and the wage-workers among them, more than the bread they eat. The Knights of Labor, and similar associations, must pay their part of this stupendous tax, running into millions, as in all probability they take their portion of the useless drinks.

Sickness and misfortune may bring many people to penury and want, with no blame for their own misdeeds resting upon them. In such cases they may need more wages to relieve them from actual distress. But those who waste their earnings in useless drinks have really no good ground of complaint. Let all workingmen, then, keep clear of the saloon monopolies; let them break the bands that bind them to the poisoned cup, and form associations of their own, or cause to be inserted in those already existing an article forswearing all intoxicating liquors, and "boycotting" at the same time all manufacturers and venders of such drinks. If they must leave their work and stand as idle lubbers anywhere, let it be around the dark places where drunkards are made, but be sure not to fall into the holes and the habits themselves.

Rev. R. O. Williams.

ARTICLE VIII.

The Christian Consciousness.

A STUDY IN MODERN THEOLOGY.

SINCE the time of Schleiermacher much has been written and said about the Christian consciousness. As to a definition of the notion, no agreement has been reached; indeed, none is possible, unless we use elastic terms; for the thing meant is in process of growth, and an exact and full definition made to-day might not be adequate to-morrow. The friends of this phrase have seldom attempted to define; and one distinguished