feudal system Japan was not a poor country, it has labored under a considerable disadvantage with regard to its recent development. In America and in Russia, for example, much foreign capital has been used to develop the country; whereas in Japan, except for the small sum of £14,000,000, raised in London, nothing but Japanese capital has been used. This has necessarily made the development of the country and the subsequent necessary new enterprises fall rather heavily upon the Japanese people. Foreign capital is much needed in Japan, especially with a view to the development of the railways. It will be necessary to change the laws relating to foreign ownership of land before much capital can be attracted from outside. I have ever been an advocate of allowing foreigners to own land in Japan. Some years ago, when the excitement over this question ran high, my advocacy of this policy was the cause of a bomb being thrown into my carriage, which so shattered my leg as to lead to its amputation. Free Trade has been very good for the country, and the industries have developed without any protective duties. Formerly the import duties averaged six per cent., and now they average eight per cent.; but these have been simply for Government revenue and are without any protective intention. It is good to see how Japan's trade has developed under a free-trade system. From ten millions, sterling, the annual trade returns have reached fifty millions, and, at the past rate of increase, in fifty years Japan may hope to have trade returns equal to Germany. OKUMA. PUBLICITY OF ELECTION EXPENDITURES. BY PERRY BELMONT. I. THE total sum at the command of the Democratic National Committee in the Buchanan campaign was less than $25,000. The amount expended by the Republican National Committee during the Lincoln campaign of 1860 was a little over $100,000. The enormously increased campaign expenditures during several of the recent Presidential campaigns are to be estimated in millions. Does the contrast imply a corresponding increase of votes bought? Does the change mean that corporations have been brought into politics by assaults on the currency and on vested rights? Does it mean that money protects money, or that the. war-chest of protection is inexhaustible? Does it indicate that the destinies of the country are to be regulated by combined interests? If a remedy is to be applied, should it be by new laws, or by party organizations reforming themselves? Should the new laws be federal? Should corporations, should trades-unions, be permitted to give money in elections? Ought the people to know how much money is devoted to the defeat of a candidate, or policy, or party? Will publicity promote or impede such efforts? Would it not, if required under effective penalties, increase the efficiency of existing laws? II. Only well-instructed public opinion can correctly answer such questions. Party leaders in intimate touch with the conduct of political campaigns appreciate the intolerable burdens and growing evils of present conditions. Those who have contributed to campaign funds, and who have been closely identified with the more important corporate and political activities, are among the most earnest advocates of measures tending to restrain such contributions, especially on the part of corporations. Those who represent interests of stockholders, or who are themselves stockholders, in corporations have perhaps most keenly recognized the menace of such increasing exactions. It is true that nothing need be added to the present legal rights of the stockholder, a single stockholder having already a complete right of action in case of expenditure of any portion of corporate funds for political purposes. Owing in part to the present difficulties of obtaining necessary information, individual stockholders have rarely been disposed to vindicate their rights. The enforcement of publicity by Federal and State laws will assist in bringing stockholders' suits. Those who best know the danger lead in pointing out the practical avenues of escape. Unlike almost all other reform movements, this one has its origin among politicians. It starts in the very centre of politics. Usually, the reformer encounters objections arising out of the experience of those charged with party responsibilities. Jackson, Democrat of Democrats, in his contest with the Bank of the United States, first recognized as an issue the threatened domination of national politics by corporate influences, and conquered, in what Professor Sumner in his Life of Jackson calls one of the greatest struggles between democracy and the money power." The elements of that historic controversy seem now to be gathering for renewed conflict, but it is idle to attempt to identify the present movement, essentially non-partisan in its nature and national in its extent, with either of the great political parties. Close upon the heels of the Presidential campaign of 1892, in which, it is known, millions were expended on both sides, Mr. Root, speaking in the New York Constitutional Convention of 1894, in reference to the proposed incorporation into the State Constitution of an amendinent relative to Corrupt Practices, said (Revised Record, Vol. III, page 877): "The object of this provision is to require the Legislature to say what money may be used to procure the election of a candidate. Until that is done, there is absolutely no limit to the corruption, no limit to the purchase of votes, no limit to the improper influence of votes, or of parties, or of party men. 66 ... 'That is a very small step in the direction of the Corrupt Practices Act in force in England, which has worked such admirable results. . . . If you enumerate the ways in which money may be used, . . . and then confine candidates for office, party committees, party agents, the agents of candidates, to those uses, and, as a penalty for any knowing departure from those limitations, forfeit the office, you will have a very different state of affairs in respect to what. has become one of the great and crying evils of our politics. The use of money has come to such a pass at the hands of both of the great political parties in this country that we find enormous contributions necessary to maintain party machinery, to conduct party warfare, and the effect is that great moneyed interests, corporate and personal, are exerting yearly more and more undue influence in political affairs, . . . and political parties are every year contracting greater debts to the men who can furnish the money to perform the necessary functions of party warfare." ... The amendment reported from the Judiciary Committee was as follows: "Article 2 is hereby amended by adding the following sections: "Sec. 6. The Legislature shall, by general laws, declare the uses which may be lawfully made of money or other valuable things by, or on behalf of, any person, to promote his nomination as a candidate for public office, and by or on behalf of a candidate to promote his election. "The use or promise of money or other valuable thing to promote the nomination for, or election to, public office of any person otherwise than is expressly authorized by law, is prohibited, and the person by whom or for whose benefit, with his consent, connivance or procurement, the same is so used or promised, if elected, shall forfeit his office. "Sec. 7. No corporation shall directly or indirectly use any of its money or property for, or in aid of, any political party or organization, or for, or in aid of, any candidate for political office or for nomination for such office, or in any manner use any of its money or property for any political purpose whatever, or for the reimbursement or indemnification of any person for moneys or property so used." The third reading of the amendment was ordered by a vote of 72 to 21, but it did not pass, mainly because, power being already lodged in the Legislature, it was unnecessary to incorporate in the Constitution of the State what was practically a statute. Mr. Root, referring to the proposed restriction of corporate contributions, said: "I think some qualification would have to be inserted, otherwise the general language would apply to such corporations as those which publish newspapers. . . . The idea is to prevent . . . the great railroad com panies, the great insurance companies, the great telephone companies, the great aggregations of wealth, from using their corporate funds, directly or indirectly, to send members of the Legislature to these halls in order to vote for their protection and the advancement of their interests as against those of the public. It strikes at a constantly growing evil which has done more to shake the confidence of the plain people of small means of this country in our political institutions than any other practice which has ever obtained since the foundation of our government. And I believe that the time has come when something ought to be done to put a check to the giving of $50,000 or $100,000 by a great corporation toward political purposes, upon the understanding that a debt is created from a political party to it. . . . I apprehend that many corporations, which are now called upon before every election to contribute large sums of money to campaign funds, would find in an absolute prohibition, with the penalty of the forfeiture of their charters, a reason why they should not make such contributions. I think it will be a protection to corporations and to candidates against demands upon them, and a protection to the people against the payment of consideration for contributions by them, to the injury of the representation of the people. It is, I repeat, because of the difficulty of proving and punishing the crime of buying votes that some other measures seem to be desirable" (p. 897). President Jackson, in a communication to his cabinet in 1833 condemning the use of the funds of the Bank in its attempt to secure a renewal of its charter, said: "Having taken these preliminary steps to obtain control over public opinion, the Bank came into Congress and asked a new charter. The object avowed by many of the advocates of the Bank was to put the President to the test, that the country might know his final determination relative to the Bank prior to the ensuing election. Many documents and articles were printed and circulated at the expense of the Bank to bring the people to a favorable decision upon its pretensions. Those whom the Bank appears to have made its debtors for the special occasion were warned of the ruin which awaited them should the President be sustained, and attempts were made to alarm the whole people by painting the depression in the price of property and produce and the general loss, inconvenience and distress which it was represented would immediately follow the reelection of the President in opposition to the Bank."—" Messages and Papers of the Presidents," Vol. III, p. 6. The president of the Bank was, by resolution of its directors, "authorized to cause to be prepared and circulated such documents and papers as may communicate to the people information in regard to the nature and operations of the bank." The expenditures purporting to have been made under the authority |