excusing him from payment until the market price | tility which added to his naturally angry support had risen to forty or fifty times the stipulated | of Georgia's action as a sovereign state. Neverprice, and then paying him the difference. - The publication of the act aroused an instant storm of indignation throughout the state. In every county but two the grand juries presented the act as unconstitutional and void; and when the state convention met in May, 1795, it was deluged with petitions, memorials and remonstrances against the land act. These it transferred to the attention of the next winter's legislature, so that the election of that body turned on the Yazoo question. When it met, the members who had voted for the act had disappeared from state politics; Jackson, the United States senator, had resigned his seat and entered the state legislature to lead the antiYazoo majority; and an act was passed, Feb. 13, 1796, revoking the sale as a violation of the state constitution, illegal and void, and directing the repayment of purchase money to all purchasers who should apply for it within eight months. The act of 1795 was then publicly burned in front of the state house, the two houses attending in a body: the committee handed the act to the president of the senate, he to the speaker of the house, he to the clerk, and he to the doorkeeper, who threw it into the fire. All evidence of its passage was expunged from the records; and the constitution of 1798, while forever prohibiting sales of lands to individuals or companies before counties were fixed, ordered the land companies' purchase money to be kept in the state treasury at the companies' risk, and subject to their order of with drawal. One would imagine that all these proceedings were a sufficient evidence of a cloud upon the companies' title to make intending purchasers exceedingly cautious. They seem to have had no great difficulty, however, in disposing of their lands at a sufficient advance to give them a handsome profit; and, as the third parties continued to sell, an army of claimants was gradually formed, particularly in New England and the middle states. When Georgia, in 1802, ceded her western claims to the United States, clauses in the compact confirmed Georgia's previous grants, and provided that not more than 5,000,000 acres should be appropriated for the satisfaction of "other claims,” if congress should act upon them within a year.

The commissioners, Madison, Gallatin and Lincoln, who had negotiated the compact with Georgia, reported, Feb. 16, 1803, that the present Yazoo claimants were innocent third parties, holders without notice, and their claims ought to be compromised; that they offered to accept twenty-five cents an acre, or a lump sum of $8,000,000; but that a sum of $2,500,000 with interest, or $5,000,000 without interest, payable out of the proceeds of Mississippi land sales, would be a fair compromise. The Yazoo claims now met the fiercest and most uncompromising opponent in the person of John Randolph. (See his name.) He had been in Georgia on a visit in 1795-6, and now took up the battle against the claimants with a rancorous sense of personal hos

theless an act was passed, March 3, 1803, one of whose clauses, after setting aside a part of the 5,000,000 acres for British claimants and squatters without title, appropriated the remainder to the satisfaction of such other claims, arising under "any act or pretended act of the state of Georgia," as should be filed in the office of the secretary of state before Jan. 1, 1804, and subsequently approved by congress. Among the claimants was the New England Mississippi company, successor by purchase to the Georgia company. Randolph's opposition has usually been attributed to a general hatred of New England, but its real basis seems to have lain in an honest belief that the New England company was an organized attempt to obtain $8,000,000 from congress by the same process of corruption and bribery which had originally been successful with the Georgia company. The company's principal agents were Granger, then postmaster general, and Perez Morton, a leading democratic politician of Massachusetts. Their chances in congress seemed to be fair, when Randolph anticipated them by offering a series of resolutions, Feb. 20, 1804, upholding the Georgia revoking act of 1796, and directing that no part of the 5,000,000 acres be appropriated to any claimants under the act of 1795. The second resolution contains the gist of Georgia's defense of her action, as follows: "That, when the governors of any people shall have betrayed the confidence reposed in them, and shall have exercised that authority, with which they have been clothed for the general welfare, to promote their own private ends under the basest motives and to the public detriment, it is the inalienable right of a people so circumstanced to revoke the authority thus abused, to resume the rights thus attempted to be bartered, and to abrogate the act thus endeavoring to betray them." His resolutions were postponed in March by a general majority of about 53 to 50; but his object had been obtained, for the claims were practically postponed with the resolutions. But Randolph always believed that his own fall from the leadership of his party in congress was directly attributable to the disappointment of members of congress interested in the claims, and backed by a strong and unscrupulous lobby. He was not alone in the belief: the evident conviction that bribery had been at work in congress makes the debates of the time quite unpleasant reading. — In January, 1805, the claims again came up for consideration, and Randolph, freed from any partial checks by his evident banishment from his party, gave loose reins to the powers of vituperation, in which he was unsurpassable. Every one who favored the claims in any way came in for a share, but most particularly the principal agent, Granger. Randolph, in a speech of Jan. 31, 1805, even accused him, without offering any direct evidence, of having prostituted his official power of making postoffice contracts to the purchase of members' votes for his

constituents, the New England company. sentence will give some idea of Randolph's peculiar style: “You must know, sir, that the person so often alluded to maintains a jackal, fed not upon the offals of contract, but with the fairest pieces in the shambles; and at night, when honest men are in bed, does this obscene animal prowl through the streets of this vast and desolate city, seeking whom he may tamper with." Granger, the next day, wrote a naturally indignant letter to the speaker, demanding an investigation, which was not accorded to him. Randolph's object had been sufficiently attained, and he followed the same tactics for the future, making it so unpleasant for any one who introduced a bill to satisfy the claimants that no act was passed. Even in 1808, when the short-lived democratic legislature of Massachusetts unanimously asked congress to act upon the claims, no attention was paid to the request. — Failing before congress, the claimants arranged a conflict of title between holders of Yazoo lands under their grant and under the United States, and thus got the matter before the supreme court in the case of Fletcher vs. Peck. The decision was given in 1810, and fully sustained the claimants. It held that the law of 1795 was a contract between the state and the claimants; that the states were forbidden by the constitution of the United States (art. I., section 10) to pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts; and that the revoking act of 1796 was therefore unconstitutional and void. Still the matter languished until March 31, 1814, when an act was passed appropriating $8,000,000 in scrip, payable out of the proceeds of Mississippi lands, to satisfy the Yazoo claimants. Comparatively little of this, however, went to the claimants. Most of them had become discouraged by the long delay, and had sold their claims to speculators at a heavy discount. Some few subsequent acts were found necessary to complete minor details, but the end of the case was fairly reached in 1814. — It | is certainly true that the states were forbidden by the constitution to pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts; but it is equally true and clear that the contracts then intended were mere private contracts between individuals, and not those which are public in their nature and trench on the prerogatives of the state government. It is usually considered that the change of course was first made by the supreme court in the case of Dartmouth College vs. Woodward in 1819, though that case was only that of a private eleemosynary corporation, and the rule in its case has since been transferred to the maintenance, as irrepealable contracts, of the charters of corporations essentially public in their nature. A more apt illustration of this subsequent line of decision may be found in this Yazoo case in 1810. The contract was one which deprived the state of its public lands, which was obtained by a wholesale corrup-ity of the Dartmouth college case, may be found tion of legislative agents never effectually denied, and which was protested against by one of the principals, the people of the state, the instant their

One | voice could be heard, as not their act and deed, Surely it would seem that here there was no contract at all; or that, if there was a contract, it came with the implied condition of the state's power to revoke or alter it. Whether we take the standpoint of state sovereignty (see that title) or national sovereignty, it is clear in either case that the state legislatures in 1775 were left, either by the will of the people of the state or of the people of the nation, the same supreme power of revocation or alteration of their public charters or public contracts which has always been possessed by the British parliament. He who asserts that they have since lost that power may fairly be asked to put his finger on the place where the decree of the state or of the nation has taken it from them. It is hard to side with John Randolph against John Marshall, but it is infinitely harder to see any such sweeping decree in the contract provision of the constitution. We can only see a series of stepping stones, beginning with the Yazoo decision, and ending with a general judicial decree that the state legislatures have no power to revoke or alter charters. So that, as the law stands, any corporation has only to be unscrupulous enough to purchase our legislature, and to obtain from that body an irrepealable charter granting it any privileges, however enormous or however opposed to the self-government of the people of the state, and it obtains at once a vested right which must be sustained by the judicial power and physical force of the United States. In this aspect, the case has a far more dangerous appearance now than in 1810 or 1819, owing to the rise of a class of corporations whose powers, ambitious and perilous rivalries could hardly have then been imagined. It may be dangerous in some degree to expose our corporations to the meddlesomeness of state legislatures; but it can hardly be denied that it is still more dangerous to hang the safety of popular government by states upon the small chance of the unanimous and perpetual scrupulousness of an infinite number and variety of corporations. When the danger shall appear in practice for the first time it will be too late to avoid it, for the court in the Yazoo case very naturally decided, as it must always decide, that it could not examine or even recognize any allegation of corruption in the supreme legislative authority of a state: it must take the legislature's action as the voice of the state. Judge Jameson, in the pamphlet cited below, speaks as follows: "It may be heresy, but, if so, the heretics are a large and increasing company who maintain that the decision in Dartmouth college vs. Woodward has been carried much too far, and been made to sustain grants which neither law nor justice nor sound political principle can sanction. * * But in some of the very cases in which our courts have sustained that species of contracts, upon the supposed controlling author

the law which is ultimately to rescue us from the bondage that case has brought upon us. In many of these cases there are dissenting opinions, giving,

in the judgment of many, the better law in regard to the proper application of the principles of the Dartmouth college case. By going back, therefore, to the path which was abandoned when the rule in that case, that of a private eleemosynary corporation, was perverted to the maintenance of corporate institutions invested with great public functions, not only congress but the states will be left free to bring the needful legislation to bear against those monster establishments deeming themselves impregnable behind the barrier of the constitution."- See authorities under GEORGIA; 4-6 Hildreth's United States (index); 2 Schouler's United States, 74; 2 Tucker's United States, 186; 1

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Garland's Life of Randolph, 66; Adams' Life of Randolph, 109; 3 Benton's Debates of Congress, 142 (Randolph's resolutions), 333 (Granger's letter and defense); 2 Stat. at Large, 235, and 3:116 (acts of March 3, 1803, and March 31, 1814); 1 Stat. at Large, Bioren & Duane's ed., 460, 512 (evidence collected and published by Georgia); Fletcher vs. Peck, 6 Cranch's Reports, 87, or 2 Peters' Reports, 328; Jameson's Grounds and Limits of Rightful Interference by Law with the accumulation and use of Capital, and authorities cited. ALEX. JOHNSTON.

YEAS AND NAYS. (See PARLIAMENTARY LAW.)

ZE

ZEITGEIST. Its Nature and Power. The Zeit- | the beginning of a century, and hence our Chrisgeist is a German word, meaning the spirit of tian chronology does not correspond with the the times, or the spirit of the age. In the follow-chronology of the periods of the world's history ing article it will be frequently rendered literally (weltperioden, world-periods). With the ages, by the English compound Times-Spirit. - Every new ideas, like stars, rise above, and again sink one feels the power of the times-spirit, but no one below, the horizon of humanity. In one century, explains to us on what that power depends. All an idea has a powerful attraction for men; in anspeak of the times-spirit, or of the spirit of the other, that same idea exercises no influence whatage; most men pay homage to it; yet nobody tells ever. In one age, men wax enthusiastic over it, us what the times-spirit which they worship and in the next they pass it by coldly and indifferently. which they sometimes unwillingly obey, is. The In the twelfth century (including the last decade idea of the times-spirit did not originate in our of the eleventh) all Christian Europe was stirred day. It was given expression to, even by the to its very centre by the desire to rescue the sacred brahmans of ancient India. The old Romans were sepulchre of Jesus from the infidel. To effect that acquainted with the "spirit of the century" (the end, millions of men with fiery ardor rush into sæculum). (Tac. Germ., 19.) But our age has the arms of unknown danger, privation and death. grown more attentive than any former one to the But this fanatical impulse loses its power over drift of the spirit of the times. Hence the ques- minds in the thirteenth century, and, later, dies tion, What is the times-spirit? imperatively de- out entirely. The second half of the fifteenth mands an answer. I. Let us first see by what and the first of the sixteenth century, favor the external signs men think they can recognize the renaissance of ancient ideas, and the reformation times-spirit, and what qualities they ascribe to it. of the church, which had previously been at-1. The times-spirit manifests itself chiefly in tempted, without success, by individuals; while, the definite character and the special intellectual from 1540 onward, the spirit of reaction and tordirection by which the different ages and the dif- pidity rose up and was just as victorious. In the ferent phases of the times are distinguished from seventeenth century, princely absolutism everyone another. The contrast noticeable between the where celebrated its triumph over the estates sysgreat periods of the world's history, marks also the tem; and in the eighteenth, beginning with 1740, changes or transformations of the times-spirit, in the craving for enlightenment and the freedom of a general way. Even the spirit of the middle ages the middle class of citizens raged with the viowas once present in the world as the spirit of the lence of revolution. The nineteenth century cortimes, as the times-spirit; and in its time it crushed responds with the growth of representative conout the spirit of the ancient world, just as it had stitutional government and the national (see Naitself to yield subsequently to the spirit of modern TIONALITIES, PRINCIPLE OF) current in politics. times. Again, in these great periods of the world's In one age, the fundamental feature of the timeshistory the spirits of the centuries, and even of the spirit is liberal; in another, conservative; while in half-centuries composing them, are surprisingly a third it is either radical or absolutist. — The same different. Only, the century must not be reck- changes or transformations of the times-spirit are, oned according to our Christian system of chro- besides, visible in miniature, in any one age. nology, for the experience of history everywhere Here, too, there is an upward and a downward shows, that the spirit of the new century becomes movement to be distinguished. The spokes of observable in all its youthful impetuosity even in the great wheel of the world's history consist of the last decade (according to Christian chronology) smaller wheels which have a rotation of their own. of the previous century. Christ was not born at The very same men grow enthusiastic, in one

phase of the times, over popular freedom, and in another call for a dictatorial power; but, in both instances, they appeal to the spirit of the age with which the direction they follow is in harmony. When Napoleon I. undertook to re-establish Cæsarian authority, he tried to discover, by means of pamphlets which he caused to be scattered widespread, whether the time for it had come, just as Noah, according to the Jewish record, once tried to find out whether the waters of the deluge had subsided; and Napoleon repeatedly postponed carrying his design into execution, because the time had not yet come for it. At last the signs of the times seemed favorable to him; he then cast aside the veil of the consulate, and founded the new empire. Such an undertaking would have been as impossible later, at the time of the restoration after 1815, as it would have been earlier, in the turbulent time of the revolution. This changing of the times-spirit seems to protect mankind from the lasting, all-crushing despotism of a single, onesided tendency or direction, and of one sole pow

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and chief cause. The best liberal government can not prevent the return of the time of a conservative tendency. And when, even an absolutistic government makes no gross mistakes, the times-spirit does not always persist in the same direction, but from time to time ventures a leap in the way of radicalism. But the spirit of the times does not propagate itself in entirely the same measure among different peoples. It changes, too, the principal representatives of its character for the time being. At one time one nation, and at another time another, appears as the especial organ of the times-spirit, according as the peculiar nature of such a nation harmonizes with the most prominent quality of the spirit of the times. The spirit of the times in this way lifts up the nations, and lets them fall again. The principal seat of the times-spirit in Europe, in antiquity, was first Greece, and, later, Rome. During the middle ages the Germans, although unconscious of the fact, were the representatives of the spirit of the times. In the age of the reformation of the church the German nation was the chief organ of the times-spirit, just as the French nation was in the age of the revolution. In the former instance, the times-spirit swept from Germany over northern and western Europe; in the latter, like a storm, from Paris over the European world. The full power of the moving times-spirit, like the crest of a wave, becomes perceptible only in the land or among the nation which is its principal seat or principal representative; and its force in other lands and among other peoples decreases in intensity, until the wave reaches its trough. — 3. The great power of the times-spirit shows itself mainly in the multitude. It comes over the masses, they know not how themselves, and gives them the direction which they follow. The greater number of them surrender themselves up to its

Time causes one force to set again, which it had previously called on to rise, and summons other sleeping forces into life and operation. With time the wheel of destiny turns round, and now new hopes and cares awaken, and now again old sorrows and old joys approach their end. In the change of human things the change of the timesspirit has a great share. Not our globe alone is round and must turn on its axis; the times-spirit too revolves, and, by its revolution, exercises a changing influence on the opinions and doings of men. - 2. A second noteworthy observation is the propagation of the times-spirit. Were it limited to a single country, or to a definite nation, we would suppose we discovered it in the peculiar spirit of that country or that nation. But it is evidently not confined within the boundaries of a country; it moves, in the same current and direc-impressions, and allow themselves to be filled by tion, over different nations. Like the currents of the wind, in the atmosphere, it now moves from the east to the west, and now from the north to the south, and vice versa. The religious, believing, and, in a political sense, feudal, fundamental feature of the medieval times-spirit, spread not only over Christian Europe, but, simultaneously, over the Mohammedan east. — It is often thought that the changes in the spirit of the times can be explained by certain definite experiences of a people, or by certain measures taken by its government. The explanation is a wrong one; for the spirit of the times changes among other peoples also, with different experiences and different governments. We must not think that the change in the spirit of the times was caused for the reason that this thing or that thing happened, or for the reason that this thing or that was left undone. It may be that such happening or leaving undone of a thing may, as a secondary cause, have helped the efficiency of the change of the times-spirit, or put obstacles in its way. The change itself, however, is not dependent on such happening or leaving undone, and has another

it. As plants, at certain seasons of the year, shoot forth and blossom, then stand still and fade, nations are now stirred to action by the current of the times-spirit, and again are relegated by it to rest. The times-spirit wakes up and slumbers according as these qualities or those appear in it. Its course is mysterious. It forces itself in like the wind; it communicates itself from one man to another just as heat does from one body to another. At times, it spreads like an epidemic, and, in a moment almost, transforms the hopes and moods of men. But there is a great difference between the times-spirit and the cosmic influences of the seasons and the changes of the wind. There was a time when men sought to explain the strangest effects of the times-spirit by cosmic causes. Astrologers calculated the destiny of men from the constellations of the heavens. They thought that by the position or movement of the planets especially they might discover men's plans and acts, and measure the change of the times-spirit. Fruitless and foolish endeavor ! Were the cause of the change of the times-spirit to be found in the external nature of our globe,

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of human life, and sought by them to explain the changes of the times-spirit, were happier. But Frederick Rohmer investigated the law of the times-spirit more deeply and more comprehensively than any other writer, and explained it by psychology. His own nature, which was very sensitive to, and had a fine feeling for, all the changes of the times-spirit, constantly spurred him on to observe its course, and follow it, like the minute-hand of a clock, with strained attention. In this way he at last found an accurate measure for the movement of the times-spirit. — This prevalence of law in its movement distinguishes the spirit of the times from the changeable fashion. The times-spirit, indeed, exercises its power on the fashion too. It manifests itself by way of preference in the art style of different ages, from which even the fashion can not free itself, and most clearly in the architectonic style, but in music and in literature also. Thus the fashion only followed the times-spirit, when, in the seventeenth, and to some extent in the eighteenth century, it gave its preference to rococo forms, and delighted in queues and hair-bags. Again, it was led by the spirit of the times when the French revolution revived antique fashions, corresponding to the republican models of Grecian and Roman antiquity, which then had great influence on the renovation of public life; and when it afterward, in the Napoleonic period, turned to the aristocratic and severer forms of Cæsarian Rome. To the extent that the fashion follows the times-spirit, it, too, is determined by law. But side by side with this law, the individual inclinations, whims and moods of persons and social centres, operate very powerfully on the fashionpersons and centres which are looked upon by the rest of society as authorities, and in whose footsteps the rest of society is accustomed to follow. The lions and lionesses of fashion in Paris and London are not always led to their resolutions and choices by the general movement of the timesspirit, but are determined in great part by their own freedom. We know, for instance, what kind of a personal cause it was that brought crinoline into fashion; and, in men's adhesion to the dress coat and silk hat, we perceive not so much the changeableness of the times-spirit as the supremacy of French style. -II. What, then, is the times-spirit, the qualities of which we have been considering? Is it really, as many suppose, the sum of individual human minds existing at a given time? When Goethe once wished to ridicule the false times-spirit, he wrote the well-known lines:

that same cause, like the seasons of the year, like | which pointed to the succession of the age-stages the changes of heat and cold, like the currents of the wind, would necessarily exercise an influence on men and on all other creatures, at the same time on plants and on animals. But of this there is no trace. No matter how the times-spirit changes, the growth of plants and the life of animals do not follow the change. They do not feel it. The power of the times-spirit manifests itself only in the life of man; it is connected with human nature, and is scarcely explainable except by the facts of human nature. —As the times-spirit is confined to the world of men, its power is enhanced by the intercourse of men with one another, and in many ways weakened and checked by the isolation of men from one another. Nowhere is the times-spirit stronger than in great cities, in which men live closely packed together in constant and active intercourse with one another. It rules much less in the country, with its small villages and scattered farm-houses. The seclusion of a monastery can not withdraw itself entirely from it, but it only slightly feels the transforming power of the times-spirit. -4. Its power over men is not an absolute one. Some, especially individuals of energetic character and determined mind, resist its influences, and sometimes endeavor, with success, to swim against its stream. Many combat the times-spirit which they hate. Many more, vexed and defiant, repel its rule. The world's history is determined only in part by the times spirit. The individual freedom of men, as well as the times-spirit, leaves its impress on the history of the world, and in it another spirit besides that of the times reveals itself to us. The latter we recognize only where the spirit of the masses moves. Hence the times-spirit does not fill the whole of human nature, and is not identical with the mind or spirit of man in general.-5. But neither can the changes of the times-spirit be explained by the play of caprice. That change is not like the varying pictures of a revolving kaleidoscope. Rather is there an intrinsic connection between the character of a preceding and of a succeeding section of time; we may perceive an organic succession of ages, and again an organic succession of phases of the times within the same age, which strongly reminds us of the succession of the age-stages in the life of man. The transformation of the times-spirit, too, begins with childhood, and rises to the height of youthful consciousness, to subsequently, after wise work and careful preservation, sink again into aging routine and prudent calculation, and to prepare for a new revolution. In all this there is regularity and law, not chance and caprice. - A great many modern philosophers have endeavored to discover this law. Hegel's endeavor to find it in the dialectic movement of the faculty of thought necessarily failed, because human faculties are manifold, and because the self-conscious mind of thinkers does not at all always determine the direction of the masses. The presentiments of Fourier and the speculation of Krause

"Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten nennt, Das ist der Herren eigner Geist." [What the gentlemen call the spirit of the times, is their own spirit.]-And, indeed, men frequently palm off their own spirit for the times-spirit; sometimes they deceive themselves about it, and sometimes they wish to deceive others about it. But the true times-spirit is something different from