robber baron, but taking property by force has become one of the least profitable and the most speculative forms of enterprise upon which he could engage. The force of commercial events has rendered the thing impossible. I know that the defender of arms will reply that it is the police who have rendered it impossible. This is not true. There were as many armed men in Europe in the days when the robber baron carried on his occupation as there are in our day. To say that the policeman makes him impossible is to put the cart before the horse. What created the police and made them possible, if it was not the general recognition of the fact that disorder and aggression make trade impossible?
Just note what is taking place in South America. States in which repudiation was a commonplace of everyday politics have of recent years become as stable and as respectable as the City of London, and have come to discharge their obligations as regularly. These countries were during hundreds of years a slough of disorder and a never-ending sanguinary scramble for the spoils, and yet in a matter of fifteen or twenty years the conditions have radically changed. Does this mean that the nature of these populations has fundamentally altered in less than a generation? In that case many a