to destroy. It lives, moves, and has its being under the auspices of a free constitution, but it is restrained from suicidal acts by fundamental laws which circumscribe its power and confine it within bounds.*

As to the plan of lay delegation incorporated in the body of the constitution in 1872, we are unable to determine to just what extent the General Conference authorized either the language or the editing. But whatever bears the stamp of General Conference authority and is in harmony with the constitutional amendment then effected is certainly not out of place in the body of our free constitution, the action of the last General Conference to the contrary.

We may say that the action of the General Conference at Omaha did not change the character of the constitutional sections or section. They were as much a constitution before as they were after the vote. If they were not a constitution at all before, they are not such now. Constitutions are neither made nor unmade by the sole vote of the body constituted. The General Conference could declare certain paragraphs to be constitutional and certain other paragraphs to be unconstitutional, but unless the Annual Conferences concur by a constitutional vote the declaration is of value only as a supreme court decision. In the present case the General Conference made a declaration by mere show of hands, and rested. It rested perfectly, too. It could not be induced again to take up the subject. As we have seen, a learned judge labored hard to elicit a further expression, but he could get no further than the committee. The thoughtful editor of the Daily Advocate likewise called attention to the occasion for further action, showing that while what had been done was valuable in itself it left matters in an awkward shape for the next Discipline. The paragraph pertaining to lay delegation had been declared unconstitutional, and should therefore have

* In his great speech on the case of Bishop Andrew before the General Conference of 1844 Dr. L. L. Hamline (afterward bishop) said: "We cannot by our enactments divest ourselves of constitutional powers, no more than man made in God's image and about to inhabit God's eternity can spurn the law of his being and divest himself of free agency and immortality." Yet Dr. Hamline believed that under the six restrictions, "slender restrictions" he inappropriately called them, the General Conference "can make rules of every sort [italics his] for the government of the Church." His whole speech is brimming o'er with this idea.

But that would have

been ordered out of the constitution. left the document mutilated. The Advocate editor would therefore have had a "constructive rule" framed in harmony with the existing restrictive rule, which would have restored the symmetry of the document and helped to give it completion. But the General Conference did nothing to place such a rule upon its passage. Practically it said, "Thus far and no farther."

We are glad it did so. We all need years for the study of this great question. Our General Conference is a unique body and requires a unique constitution. It must have large liberty and as much power as is consistent with safety. It meets but once in four years. It remains in session for less than one month. It is composed exclusively of professed Christians chosen by other adult Christians for special considerations of fitness. It is thus removed a step from the plane of ordinary legislatures, and cannot in reason be subjected to all the restrictions and difficult processes which characterize the charters under which they convene and act. The experience of nearly a century justifies the wisdom of the men who gave the General Conference its being so nicely equipped for prompt, speedy, and comprehensive legislation, and at the same time so effectually restrained it from extravagant and revolutionary proceedings. The practically hurtful errors of the General Conference in the past would not have been avoided had it been restricted to the full extent proposed in the waiting constitution, but on the other hand its free and helpful action might frequently have been retarded.

We restate a few important points:

1. The constitution of 1808 is basal in character, a foundation plank contributed by the pioneers for use in a grand organic platform yet to be framed.

2. As a constitutional beginning it is designed to be and to do exactly what its terms specify. It is just as comprehensive and powerful as its language and character make it, and not more so. The words of a constitution are to be understood by their plain and evident meaning.

3. The hewers of this constitutional plank understood the meaning of the terms they employed, and we allege, therefore, that they did not design to limit the powers of the General

Conference further than they specified. They meant just what they said, and they said exactly what they meant.

4. It is, therefore, further evident that they did not intend to limit the body of the document to the constitutional process, far less to exclude it altogether from the possibility of change by any process. If they had so intended they would have so stipulated.

5. It follows that such changes as have been made in the body of the instrument by formal enactments of the General Conference are constitutional in the sense of being in harmony with the constitution, and, therefore, are entitled to a proper place in the constitution.

6. The constitution as it stands has the nature and force originally given to it, and no more. The history of eight decades of legislation under it contains no illustration of a subserviency by the General Conference to a "force" not described or even hinted at in the original document.

7. The development of a complete and satisfactory constitution is now the special responsibility of the Methodist Episcopal Church, but no constitution should ever be accepted by either the Annual Conferences or the General Conference the terms and provisions of which do not comport with the wisdom, freedom, and generous conservatism represented in the useful little document handed down by the fathers.

James # Prate.

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ART. V.-WANTED, AN ETHICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY. In its principles and in its practical workings our present political economy is inequitable and injurious to the last degree. This statement is not made from the standpoint of the socialist, who would substitute for the present order a "paternal government," which should be the sole proprietor of all the means of production, the sole manager of all industries, and distributer of all wealth. Nor is it made from the standpoint of the land reformer, who would nationalize all land by confiscating rents. But the statement is made in the conviction that Christian ethics were divinely intended to govern the conduct of men in the pursuit of wealth, and that not until political economy is written and taught in the schools in conformity with this fact will the evils of our economic system be eliminated.

In insisting that an ethical political economy must be written and taught as the indispensable condition precedent to the removal of economic wrongs, it is not assumed that those wrongs are caused solely by unethical economic teaching. They are the fruit of human greed which, unrestrained by any humanitarian considerations, has enriched the few at the expense of the many. So enriched, these few have dominated the utterances of thinkers and writers, and have shaped in their own interest the prevailing economic teaching, which has, in turn, become the authority for their unjust methods. The unethical teaching thus serves to justify and perpetuate the unethical conduct of men in pursuit of wealth, and stands as an obstruction to the reformation of that conduct. The first thing, therefore, to be done is to correct the teaching. It is true that where that is done human greed will still remain, but it will be stripped of the supposed scientific sanction to which it now appeals in defense of its evil practices.

The political economy which is taught in our schools and colleges and helps to shape the economic life of the nation was written and is taught with a decided bias of sympathy for the interests of capital. In his Economic Interpretations of History Professor Thorold Rogers says:

Most writers on political economy have been persons in easy circumstances. They have witnessed with interested or sympa

thetic satisfaction the growth of wealth in the class to which they belong, or with which they have been familiar. In their eyes the poverty of industry has been a puzzle, a nuisance, a problem, a social crime. They have every sympathy with the man who wins and saves, no matter how, but they have not been very considerate for the man who works. They lecture the poor on their improvidence, their recklessness, on the waste of their habits; but quite overlook the fact that these habits are the fruit of centuries of oppression and injustice in the division of the products of industry.

Most of the standard works on economics have been written by incumbents of chairs of political economy endowed by capitalists who, to a very large extent, control the utterances of the teachers they support. These "patrons of learning" heartily believe in the accumulation of great fortunes by all means not illegal that are used to that end. They are usually opposed to profit-sharing, to labor organizations, and to lessening the hours of labor. It would require more than ordinary courage and independence for a professor of political economy, in a chair endowed by such men, to write or teach anything that would materially traverse their views and interests. It is not in human nature for a man who is profiting by the present industrial system, and by taking the lion's share of the products of industry, to support a teacher who would insist that the system is wrong and the division unjust. The incumbent of a chair supported by monopolists, or by employers of labor who believe in the ten-hour day, would, if he indulged in very strong denunciation of monopoly or advocated the eighthour day with much earnestness, soon pay for his temerity by the loss of his place. The removal of Professor Thorold Rogers from the chair of political economy in Oxford University, "of which," he says, "I was unjustly deprived because I traced certain social mischiefs to their origin," shows what it costs to be a conscientious thinker and writer in such a position.

It is a fundamental principle of the school of political economy which is standard in this country that it is no part of its functions to show what ought to be; that its only office is to explain what is. The standing contention of the leading authors of this school is that political economy has nothing to do with questions of morality or justice, or with any ethical question whatever. These writers are Ricardo, Mill, Cairnes, McCulloch,