but earn sufficient money to pay all or male and female students. The Instimost of their expenses. The Institute teaches the students the value of economy and gives them instruction in the transactions necessary to the acquiring of land, houses, live stock, etc. Account books are kept by every student showing monthly receipts and expenditures and every care is taken to inculcate the value of continuing such a habit through life. The pupils are taught how to work with and without expensive machinery in field, factory or home, so that they will be able to adjust their knowledge to the amount of money at their command. Over one hundred students go out on Sundays to the cabins, jail, poor-house and Sunday-school and read and comfort the sick, old, poor and criminal. They frequently mend fences or cabins or make gardens for the helpless. The King's Daughters prepare Christmas boxes for country schools and make clothing for orphans and old people. By these and various other means the missionary spirit is cultivated in both the tute issues an illustrated monthly magazine called The Southern Workman. The publication department of the Institute also publishes from time to time leaflets on topics vital to the evolution of the negro people. A vast number of subjects are treated in a lucid and simple style. Closely connected with the work of the publication office is that of the Hampton Negro Conference, which meets at the institution every summer. Five hundred teachers and prominent business and professional men club together to discuss questions appertaining to the morals, health, economic welfare and educational conditions among the AfroAmericans. The proof of the school is in its pupils. Out of the 6,000 graduates and undergraduates that the institution has sent out, only two have been recorded as criminals. The rest are engaged in useful work in the schools, factories, shops, farms and homes of the country. SAINT NIHAL SING. Chicago, Illinois. to call its "abuse." Those resolutions proceeding, and, seizing her in a ruffianly declared that the Constitutional guaran- manner, ejected her from the room. tees of free speech and a free press were His action was doubtless intended to not intended to permit the free discus- excite the audience to resistance. If it sion of slavery, either orally or in had been an audience of the old American print! type, his purpose would probably have been accomplished; but this audience was composed largely of Russians accustomed to submitting without protest to summary interferences with free speech, and no disorder resulted. This spirit of intolerance has revived to-day. While no one would think of denying to another the right to discuss the question of chattel slavery, all discussions of that subject being harmlessly academic now, yet a tendency to prohibit discussions of what may possibly be other forms of slavery is everywhere manifest. There are abundant indications, too, of utter indifference to the destructive effect upon the vitality of the principles of American government of such prohibitions. A similar though vastly more dangerous violation of the constitutional guarantees, is the recent one of the Post-Office Department, acting under Presidential orders, in arbitrarily excluding from newspaper mailing rights a New Jersey paper printed in Italian, because it has published "seditious libels." This is conviction without a hearing, and punishment without a trial. trial. It remits to a bureau at Washington absolute power to bar from newspaper mailing rights any newspaper which the political party in power chooses to suppress as "seditious." From such an assault upon freedom of the press, the distance to a licensing system with a censor is not far away. If a But away. If a Washington bureau may stop the publication of a paper because the bureau considers it "seditious," newspapers will have to ask for a censor to determine for them in advance what utterances the bureau will regard as "seditious." Sometimes this highly dangerous tendency asserts itself against public meetings of workingmen. A sensational instance was the recent dispersal by mounted police of a meeting of unemployed workingmen at Union Square, New York. This was upon pretense that no permit for the meeting had been obtained in accordance with the usual requirement for street meetings. But in fact the permit had been applied for in the usual way and refused. As the place was one at which large street meetings are commonly held, and for which permits are usually granted as matter of course, there could have been no other motive for refusing the permit than to restrain freedom of speech by and in behalf of workingmen in distress. In defending untrammeled freedom of speech and of the press, we make no apology for criminal utterances. This freedom is entirely consistent with responsibility for what is uttered. Libels are justly punishable, slander is justly punishable, exhortations to murder are justly punishable, and seditious utterances may be punished if the people so insist-all without prejudice to freedom of speech and of the press. But punishment for unlawful utterances after lawful trial and conviction, is a very different thing from prevention of utterances arbitrarily and without trial, upon the judgment of a postal or police official. If Emma Goldman, on the occasion mentioned above, had been permitted to proceed with her speech, and had counseled assassination, she would have been lawfully subject to an orderly prosecution for crime. If the Italian newspaper in New Jersey has published criminal matter, its proprietors and editors are subject to prosecution. The right to speak and print is subject to responsibility for what is said and printed. But the right itself is absolute. No American court would prohibit the publication of a libel by injunction, whether the libel were seditious ог otherwise, and though it threatened property rights. Neither would any court enjoin a publication advising crime. Every court would instantly say that such publications are for the consideration of the grand jury after they are made. If it is so important, then, that courts shall not prevent free speech with injunctions, how much more important that postal officials shall not prevent it with an arbitrary censorship nor policemen with their clubs. When Emma Goldman stepped forward to explain anarchism, she should have been protected by the police, not assaulted by them. If her explanation had comprehended advice to murder she should have been arrested in an orderly way upon an appropriate accusation under the law, and in due course placed upon trial for criminal utterances. The same course should be followed in the case of the New Jersey editors. But if her explanation of anarchy, or their exhortations in behalf of anarchy, consisted of arguments against the right or the expediency of coercive government, the arguments are not answered by calling them "seditious." Although I believe in coercive government-the less the better, however, within the limits of necessity-yet I am not immodest enough to insist that my belief shall settle the matter. If Emma Goldman believes otherwise, why may not she be right instead of I? To answer that question I must know to what extent and why she believes otherwise. And I cannot know this unless her right of utterance is faithfully conserved. As of Emma Goldman and her opinions, so of everybody else and their opinions. So of the Union Square meeting which was dispersed as it assembled. So of the New Jersey paper which has been suppressed without a trial. So also of the people whose meeting to protest against this lawless act was riotously dispersed by a lawless police order. No harm can come from the free expression of opinion, but only good. Is that government best which governs least? Let us listen to its advocates. Is that society best in which there is no government at all? Let us listen to its advocates. Or, if we will not listen ourselves, let us at least prove our confidence in our inerrant opinions by tolerating freedom of debate. Above all things, let us not be so mean as to deny to the advocates of weaker opinions that freedom of speech which we claim for ourselves, nor so cowardly as to see this done without our protest. Do we fear deadly crimes from incendiary utterances? Let us learn from experience, as we may already from historical study and reflection, that incendiary utterances in the open are harmless. Do we fear riots from street meetings of the "lower classes"? Let us send the police there to preserve the peace instead of breaking the peace. Do we fear wholesale lawlessness by any class of the people? Let us insist upon rigid law abidingness by the servants of the people. It is in faithfully conserving that great inheritance of ours-free speech and a free pressand in the spirit largely, as well as in the letter narrowly, that we shall find our best guarantees of peace and order and progress. Chicago, Ill. LOUIS F. POST. II. THE GROWING DESPOTISM OF OUR JUDICIARY. BY THEODORE SCHROEDER. HE FOUNDERS of our Republic thought they had established here a government of fallible men by fallible men. Because of the proneness of such to err, and in the interest of political betterment, all our constitution (so it was thought) guaranteed us the right of free speech and a free press, among other reasons, that our servants, the public officers, might have their official acts subjected to criticism and the public, by ballot, express its approval or disapproval. It was thought that rule by divine right had been abolished forever, and criticism of officials was no longer to be a punishable affront to the Almighty whose proxy they impudently had assumed to be. We also thought we had established government according to law, as distinguished from the despotism according to the arbitrary edicts of men. It was provided by our constitutions that no man should be deprived of life, liberty or property, except by due process of law, which meant by prior known, general, uniform and certain rules. However, the lawlessness and despotism of our judiciary is slowly but surely entrenching itself behind a steady growth of precedents, which are fast converting these "servants" of the people into lawless masters, who may arbitrarily punish all who dare to criticise their official conduct, even though such criticism is unprohibited, even by an unconstitutional statute. The latest outrage of this sort to come under my notice is about to be perpetrated in the Supreme Court of Minnesota...,One Francis B. Hart, a prominent lawyer of Minneapolis, was guilty of believing that the courts of his state were not above its constitution and that therefore under the latter he had a right at least to make a respectful criticism of some decisions of the Supreme Court. Accordingly he prepared a lengthy and dignified review of officially reported judicial opinions, the net result of which was to exhibit such contradictions and manifest disregard of elementary principles as to demonstrate at least the intellectual bankruptcy of the politicians who hold the judicial job. This lengthy document was sent to the chief justice of the state, to the Governor, and published in the daily newepapers of the state about December 7, 1907. I repeat that though severely critical and very convincing, it was dignified in tone and judicial in spirit. Accompanying that copy of the indictment of judicial "intelligence," which was sent to Governor Johnson, was a special letter containing this statement: "My object in preparing the paper is to present in an orderly manner the character of alleged grievances existing against the court, and to advise the court thereof that proper inquiry may be made (1) as to whether they are in fact grievances— that is, are the decisions referred to, or any of them, right? (2) If not right, is it possible in the making of them for the court to have been honestly wrong? (3) If not, is such flagrant disregard and violation of the rights of litigants without warrant of law or any apparent honest purpose or excuse, a just cause of impeachment?" express convincing reasons for his conviction. Had these reasons not been so very convincing Mr. Hart would only have seemed ridiculous, and, of course, it is not thinkable that any self-respecting court would then have dignified such a silly performance by giving it any attention. It must be therefore that the disbarment proceedings were instituted precisely because Mr. Hart's criticism was not foolish but forceful to the damnation of the court. It must be interesting to the public to know by what pretenses the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech and of the press is to be explained away by the proposed judicial amendment of the constitution of Minnesota. Are they going to disbar Mr. Hart for misquoting their opinions or telling untruth about the court or for maliciously making groundless inference about their competency or intellectual honesty? Not at all! The special court has held that these issues are not involved. Here is the proposition on which disbarment is urged. Every lawyer in Minnesota takes an oath to conduct himself "with all good fidelity to the court," and the statutes declare it his duty to "maintain the respect due to the courts of justice and judicial officers." It must be remembered, however, that the statute does not inform us as to how much respect is due to a court such as Mr. Hart has shown to be a court of injustice, or to judicial officers who clearly are not "learned in the law," as required by the Minnesota constitution, and who are, of course, unable to discern their own defects. Neither does the statute prescribe disbarment as a penalty for not respecting judges even when their intellectual supereminence ought to inspire a very high respect. So then we ask what is fidelity to the court? Heretofore I had thought it meant only uprightness in conducting causes before the court; that is honestly helping the court to avoid error and promote an ever-refining sense of justice. Such fidelity to courts, as a means of justice, might make it the duty of attorneys to expose the injustice and incompetence of judges, so as to secure their impeachment and defeat at coming elections. But now we are confronted with the contention that a lawyer's "fidelity to the courts means faithfulness in concealing from the general public judicial errors and ignorance, especially if of such a character that intellectual dishonesty or corrupt motives might possibly be inferred therefrom. It is in effect upon such monstrous contentions that it is proposed to disbar a lawyer who assumed to exercise his right of free speech, by submitting to the Governor and the electors the question as to whether impeachment charge should be filed before the legislature. What is meant by the statutory direction to lawyers to "maintain the respect due to the courts of justice and judicial officers"? Heretofore this has been thought to mean that in the presence of the court, that such respectful demeanor shall prevail as is essential to the orderly ascertainment of truth and the ensuring of justice. Now it is proposed by the Supreme Court of Minnesota, sworn to uphold the constitution of that state, to ignore that constitution's provision guaranteeing freedom of speech and of press, and to establish a precedent which in effect says that lawyers outside of court, by a sworn conspiracy of silence, must keep the public in ignorance of the facts which would prove that a particular court has done great injustice and therefore is not entitled to respect, and to keep from laymen and voters the facts which might show that not very much respect was due to particular judicial officers. Unfortunately several states have already established judicial precedents which come very near to compelling such a conception of professional loyalty to the judiciary. A court or judge, respect for whom is maintained, or maintainable, only by suppressing criticism of official conduct |