structure. The broad slack-water estuary at Washington was transformed into a rushing tide which the most powerful steam tugs were unable to stem, and which carried schooners into the broader estuary below in spite of the aid of tugs and anchors; and the water rose in the city until boats plied on Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capitol and the Treasury, and until cellars and basements were flooded and stores of goods were destroyed in the very heart of the capital. Measurements showed that the discharge was at the rate of more than 600,000 cubic feet per second—a discharge at least one and one third times that of the greatest freshet previously recorded, nearly 40 times that of the average for the memorably wet season of 1889, and nearly 600 times that of minimum low water in the same river. Fully to appreciate this flood, it should be remembered that while the drainage basin of the upper Potomac is less than one per cent. of that of the Mississippi, the discharge during this flood closely approached the mean annual outpour of the great river. The builder of a bridge is not satisfied to make his structure strong enough to bear the expected load, but provides for the unexpected by applying "a factor of safety " of three, or five, or even ten times the anticipated strain; and unprecedented floods like that of the Potomac during 1889 remind builders upon the flood plains of rivers that their structures too require a factor of safety.

The lessons of a millennium of observation, those of scientific principle, and those of current experience, are all the same; but they are either carelessly conned or recklessly ignored by shortsighted men. The spider weaves her web across the well-trodden pathway, to be rent and destroyed by the next passer; the ant, despite its high insect intelligence, persistently burrows in the roadway, unchecked by the passing wheels, until its little life is crushed out; the field bunting busies herself in building a nest in the stubble, regardless of the approaching turns of the plow, which must shortly wreck the tiny domicile; the squirrel hides his hoard of nuts a rod from the brink of an advancing railway cut, where it must be undermined on the morrow. Better things might be expected of reasoning man; yet, with equal faith in the fixity of the earth and with equal blindness to the inevitable, he builds his house upon the river sands below nature's unmistak

able flood mark. The contemporaries of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett located their log cabins on the flood plains a yard below lodged driftwood, and their descendants still defend the preemption despite the annual inundation. Along the Ohio and in the lower Mississippi region, scores of pioneers made their homes on the very spots on which their flood-borne flatboats grounded, and were naively surprised when the waters of the succeeding Spring washed their floors. During the past Summer a residence on an island in Reelfoot Lake was placed 10 feet above lowwater mark, while the mud of the 1890 flood still coated the neighboring cypress boles 18 feet above the lake. Verily, the short-sighted dumb creatures may find exalted precedents!

The first requisite for protection against a maleficent agency is just appreciation of its magnitude; the second is acquaintance with its mode of operation. The magnitude of the evils of fire, famine, war, and pestilence has long been appreciated, and their modes of operation have been so thoroughly studied that means of protection have been devised; but, while the magnitude of the flood was appreciated in the olden days, its operations were not analyzed until men, blinded by the conceit born of successful conquest in other directions, forgot its power and crowded into its proper paths, much in the same way that the devotees of a ghastly cult threw themselves before their Juggernaut.

Yet the ways of the flood are now so well known that its ravages may easily be escaped, if only its potency is appreciated. River floods may be controlled, expensively by storage reservoirs for storm waters and melted snows (which should be utilized also for irrigating lands and as sources of power), partially by forest-planting about head waters and by deforesting the deltas and lower flood plains, and temporarily by levees and cutoffs. But, under existing social and commercial conditions, these methods, which might indeed be applied locally, will probably not be adopted, either during this century or the next, over the 150,000 square miles of bottom lands skirting the minor rivers and mill streams in the eastern United States. Still, floods may be successfully opposed or escaped. Railways and wagon roads may and must be laid on the flood plains of rivers; but the embankments, and trestles, and bridges should be raised not only

above the latest freshet mark, but well above the great natural flood mark found in the plain itself, and the reciprocal effects of embankments and other structures on future freshets should be cautiously reckoned. Farms may be and ought to be located on fertile bottom lands enriched by annual or decennial overflow; but the farmer should dig deep for his foundations and build his superstructures strong and high. On every flood plain of eastern America he should provide for the loss of crop and fences once in three, or five, or ten years; and both common humanity and economic policy urge that dumb beasts should be pastured and fed on the uplands, so that the fertile river bottoms may be devoted to their best use, namely, the production of plant crops. Cities and towns ought not to be built on the flood-ridden and miasmatic lowlands; yet as they have been in the past and will be in the future, the townsman, like the farmer, should build high and strong, and hold himself ready to remove his family and carry his goods to upper stories. And the flood-swept bottom lands of the American rivers afford opportunity for a kind of business curiously neglected in the past, though destined to success at no distant day; namely, insurance against floods.

The great desideratum is general recognition of the factswhich are demonstrated by the observations of thousands and gainsaid by none, though ignored by multitudes-that rivers bear their own flood marks in the alluvial plains by which they are skirted, and that men occupy these plains at their peril.

W J MCGEE.

The Forum.

MAY, 1891.

STATE RIGHTS AND FOREIGN RELATIONS.

"Polonius-My Lord, I will use them according to their desert. "Hamlet-God's bodykins, man, better; use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity; the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty."

To the people of the United States and their government has been committed the great charge of maintaining peace and order over a vast domain, and to-day the mass of human interests in our land and the responsibility for their proper care and conduct are not exceeded, if equaled, in any other empire on earth.

The unit of our system is the individual man, and to preserve him in the possession of absolute civil and religious liberty we have adopted a system of government which, by limiting and distributing its powers, prevents their consolidation and the growth of tyranny. Ours is a government of laws, and to quote from the golden opinion delivered by the late Mr. Justice Miller -clarum et venerabile nomen—in the Arlington case:

"No man in this country is so high that he is above the law; no officer of the law can set that law at defiance with impunity; all the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law, and are bound to obey it. It is the only supreme power in our system of government, and every man who, by accepting office, participates in its functions, is only the more strongly bound to submit to that supremacy and to Copyright, 1890, by the Forum Publishing Company.

observe the limitations which it imposes upon the exercise of the authority which it gives. Courts of justice are established not only to decide upon the controverted rights of the citizens as against each other, but also upon rights in controversy between them and the government, and the docket of this court is crowded with controversies of the latter class."

One of the chief and enduring purposes for which the Constitution of the United States was ordained is the establishment of justice. Indeed, this was the great end of the system as organized, and if it should ever fail the system would perish. All persons within the territory of the United States under the sanction of admitted public law owe it allegiance: the citizens owe it permanent allegiance, the resident foreigners owe it temporary allegiance. All alike are subject to its laws and all alike are entitled to the protection of those laws. It is believed that this great function of administering justice has on the whole been honorably and fairly executed by the officials into whose hands the duty has been committed. Our courts of justice have been open to all. No discrimination by reason of nationality, or race, or condition of fortune, can be found upon our statute books or is indicated by the recorded judgments of our courts. With or without treaty stipulation, no case can be found of denial of justice, either by administration or by color of the statute, against a foreigner; on the contrary, no more patient, laborious, and learned decisions upon the rights of person and property can be adduced than those in which foreigners have been interested parties.

I am aware of no case until the present time in which indemnity for personal injuries inflicted upon a foreigner within our jurisdiction has been demanded by a foreign government from the United States by reason of the failure of justice in its judicial courts. Of the case in which indemnity is stated to have been demanded very lately by Italy of the United States for the killing of possibly two alleged Italian subjects in the city of New Orleans, I intend to say nothing at present, as the matter is pending in negotiation and is still undergoing the usual and proper investigation by the Executive Department. I desire to discuss, upon principle, the measure of our liabilities for injuries inflicted upon individuals by other individuals within our juris