hand that shall help them up and on. That were a fatal impeachment of democracy-from which, could it be sustained, democracy could not recover. That were to gainsay the first principles of education and of neighborhood, to make the half-wise man a better teacher of the ignorant than the wise man. If the republic cannot stoop without danger to its back, if we alone cannot take risks for civilization, then are we of all men most miserable. If our guiding, helping and protecting hand is needed in the Philippines, if Cuba needs it, then let us freely give it; and let us know that it means danger to our democracy only when it means danger to theirs. The instant that it does mean that, the instant that it ceases to be the fraternal hand and begins to be the grasping hand, that instant the gods detect it and trip us; that instant some voice is heard in the very midst of our own body politic speaking with new boldness the accent of oppression here, sounding the fatal warning that a democracy cannot serve two masters. When a democracy finds that for this task or that it has no natural or proper tools, it may not be always true, but it is almost always true, that it is not a task proper for a democracy nor proper for any men who love liberty and are really concerned with the welfare and progress of their fellow men. Our present question, we repeat, is not a question of our capacity; it is a question of our duty, of what we ought to do.

*

Not a question of expansion, of world power, of missionary opportunity, nor of political capacity; not these, but simply this,-whether America is to turn from a work like that of the Christian conquest of Asia to a work like the British conquest of India; whether military power and commercial gain are to become the dominant marks and motives of our democracy; whether we are to stretch

out a military hand for the subjugation of the Pacific seas; whether militarism and mammonism are to be allowed to grow up and determine the policies of this republic and finally choke its life, as they have choked the lives of so many republics in the past, or whether they are themselves to be checked and choked-and that now. It is, in a word, the simple question, whether the people of the United States love liberty, love it for themselves and love it for others; whether the republic really stands for the advancement of liberty in the world or stands for the advancement of its own power and gain.

A century ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men -not simply all Americans—are created equal, are God's children and to be treated everywhere and always as God's children. Now we are engaged in testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can endure in the high service of that truth, or whether our great pioneering work for freedom is to take the second place and the new standard raised a hundred years ago to duck itself before those hoary old standards of military power and commercial gain at whose fatal reappearance the hearts of hopeful men have again and again grown sick and nations called by God to leadership and high emprise again and again and again decayed and died.

We are doing no new thing, men plead. England again and again has done it, and England was never so strong as to-day. Yes, again and again England has done it, and England is yet strong; but Rome did it oftener than England, and Rome was stronger than England, and the present officials of the Roman Empire are not catalogued in this year's Gotha almanac. Two years ago every American said Amen as Gladstone showed how all this was England's weakness, not her strength.

Commerce is the great civilizer, the great sapper and miner for progress, the great stimulator and minister of men. "The world was made for honest trade," sings Emerson; and the heart of every strong man in Emerson's America swells and exults to see the busy railroads multiply upon the land and the ships upon the sea. Free trade with all the world is the desire of civilization in all lands. But commerce has its place, and its place is second, and not first; it is the servant, not the king, of worthy nations and of worthy men. When it becomes king, then the man and the nation cease to be worthy and to be the salt and the light of the world.

"And where they went on trade intent,
They did what freemen can;
Their dauntless ways did all men praise;
The merchant was a man."

This is the picture of the merchants whom New England loves to praise. When the merchant is only the merchant, when he does what freemen may not do, when he makes his trade subversive of freedom itself, then his trade becomes a curse and not a blessing.

"For what avail the plough or sail Or land or life, if freedom fail?" The baleful definition and the threat of the present crisis is the word, Commerce is king. The interests of freedom are subordinated to the interests of trade. Decadent and anæmic men talk of our seizure and subjugation of the Philippines for philanthropic and missionary purposes; but Mr. Frye and Mr. Reid and Mr. Davis talk of indemnity and China trade. The President's Philippine commissioner, Mr. Denby, believes in holding the Philippines only because he "cannot conceive of any alternative to our doing so except the seizure of territory in China." He scouts the pious sentimentalists. If the conquest of the Philippines will not help us to enlarge our markets, then "set them free to-morrow, and let their people, if they please, cut each other's throats."

There is nothing in the present situation more melancholy than the easy acceptance of Mr. Denby as the representative of the national policy in the Philippines, and the general indifference to the ideals and ambitions which through him dominate our operations there. For Mr. Denby, our former minister to China, a zealous student of Oriental trade and politics, is the real head and hand of the President's commission, the only man of political, diplomatic or commercial experience, the man of purpose and of power, the man who will settle the commission's policy and was chosen for that purpose. Were the people of the republic alive as they ought to be to their vital interests and their honor, they would learn by heart the words which commended this man to the government as the fittest instrument for its work in the Philippines. In truth, how many remember well those words, uttered only seven months ago? Here are a few of them:

"We have become a great people. We have a great commerce to take care of. We have to compete with the commercial nations of the world in far-distant markets. Commerce, not politics, is king. The manufacturer and the merchant dictate to diplomacy and control elections. The art of arts is the extension of commercial relations-in plain language, the selling of native products and manufactured goods. I learned what I know of diplomacy in a severe school. I found among my colleagues not the least hesitation in proposing to their respective governments to do anything which was supposed to be conducive to their interests. There can be no other rule for the government of all persons who are charged with the conduct of affairs than the promotion of the welfare of their respective countries.

"We have the right as conquerors to hold the Philippines. We have the right to hold them as part payment of a war indemnity. This policy may be characterized as unjust to Spain, but it is the result of the fortunes of war. All nations recognize that the conqueror may dictate the terms of peace. I am in favor of holding the Philippines, beacuse I cannot conceive of any alternative to our doing so, except the seizure of territory in China.

"The cold, hard, practical question

alone remains: Will the possession of these islands benefit us as a nation? If it will not, set them free to-morrow, and let their people, if they please, cut each other's throats, or play what pranks they please. To this complexion we must come at last, that, unless it is beneficial for us to hold these islands, we should turn them loose."

•Crasser, more grasping and more brutal still were the words of the President's commissioner in the interviews published in the San Francisco newspapers on the eve of his sailing; and the newspapers of latest date bring the advices of the Denby interest in the great American syndicate which is already laying out railroads in China-that China whose conquest and partition, as we have remarked, the ex-minister proposes, failing the alternative holding of the Philippines.

Honest Tom Reed, whom New England loves, and who has chosen to leave public life while present policies obtain, once in his heat, we have been told, dubbed the administration a "syndicated administration." It is not strange that many said it was

a

harsh word; but it would be strange and it would be melancholy if any man, whatever his party, any man save him who believes that indeed "commerce is king" and ought to be, ought to "control elections," "dictate to diplomacy," and direct the dogs of war, should feel that even Mr. Reed could find too harsh a term for the proposals and the purposes of the politician sent to represent and help determine the policy in the East of the republic of Washington and Lincoln.

It is this absorbing and merciless commercialism which has betrayed us into the militarism and indifference to the rights and aspirations of men lower than ourselves struggling for freedom, which two years ago or one year ago we should all have united to decry, and which, in any other nation, we should all decry to-day. For none

of us surely in cool blood can doubt what we should say were England, Germany or Kussia acting our part in the Philippines, had either of these powers taken the islands as indemnity at a time when their people, after years of oppression and heroic resistance, had almost achieved success and independence, and then, retusing even to discuss with them, proposing to them the sole alternative of unquestioning submission or "ruin," dubbing them "rebels” when they had never owed allegiance and the only claim to their allegiance was that of conquest or purchase-there is no doubt, we say, what America would have said to England or Germany playing this part. Should we have thought worse of the Philippine people, or better, for resisting to the death in such a situation? Should we not have said that their resistance was the best proof of their character and of their right to a chance? Certainly we should have said it; it is a menace to our freedom, it is a menace to our souls, for any of us to say that we should not have said it. If some Under Foreign Secretary had replied to an interpellation in the House of Commons, that the purpose of the government was simply to train these people rightly to self-government, America would have reminded England that she was destroying the prestige and power of precisely that body of the people which had evinced capacity for government, capacity to organize and lead, to rise against oppression, to command enthusiasm, to command money, to maintain armies, and to wage long war against overwhelming odds. She would have reminded her that to the disinterested and impartial eye her course seemed calculated only to make sure her own supremacy, not to promote in this people self-reliance, self-help, a free spirit and a hopeful growth. She would have mocked her efforts to minimize and vulgarize the struggle by dubbing it a "Tagal riot" or what not; and she would have told her that

it was more creditable to herself and to her armies to recognize that the force which proved a match for them. so long, so successfully and with such ever-growing energy was a large thing than to label it a little thing, a force that had strong popular support rather than a force that could give but half its attention to the enemy in front.

Let us not juggle with ourselves. All that is vital in this unhappy people, all that commands the future, all that we should name were the case not our own, is animate with the passion for liberty and independence. The question is not of them; the question is of us. The question is, how has it become possible that the spectacle of such a passion and such a struggle should fail to stir any American heart? How is it possible that this democracy, a century after Washington, should prostitute itself to the mouldy and poisonous doctrine that "sovereignty"-sovereignty over unconsulted, unconsenting and protesting millions of men-is something to be bought and sold?

Abraham Lincoln once said:

"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent. When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government-that is despotism. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us; our defence is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it."

No word was ever truer, nor more immediately true. No democracy can play the emperor and remain democracy; the mere temptation to it is evidence of taint. The moment that it exercises an outside oppression, that moment oppression asserts prerogatives within. Doubly threatening to ourselves is our denial of rights and of recognition to the Malays of Luzon; for it will be believed-and be believed for it is true-that had it been not Luzon but Bermuda, white

men and not brown, we would have shown a different hand. The nation has come in 1899 to act upon the principle which it took up arms to suppress in 1861, that liberty belongs of right only to white men, and that black and brown men must take what white men give. The Civil War was a life-and-death struggle between "Black men down!" and "All men up!" It was, as the thronging spirits over Gettysburg and Vicksburg and the Wilderness are still solemnly chanting, whether or not we listen, "to settle once for all that men are men." The logic of events was making this the common gospel of the nation. The logic of Luzon has brought back to new life the warring philosophies of 1861. Not in these thirty years-is this not clear to all-has there been in the South such denial of the black man's rights as in these months since the nation has denied the brown man's rights; there has in the thirty years been no such assertion of the doctrines which 1861 called treason and which in those terrible four years shook the very pillars of the state.

We refer to this sudden renaissance of secession sentiment and race hatred in the South only as illustrative and symptomatic, the quick and natural home fruitage of false doctrine applied in the antipodes, the warning to patriots in South and North alike of the crop inexorably sure in the whole domain if the seed is sowed in any

corner.

When General Wheeler, in 1861, felt that his country was wrong, he took up arms against her,—and still declares his cause was true and just. His text in Boston on Memorial Day was, "My country, right or wrong!" He was a nobler figure far in 1861 than as the preacher of this devil's doctrine. There is no doctrine which is poisoning the blood of this republic to-day like this. There is no man

so hopeless as he who knows nothing higher than his country and who feels it his duty to stand by his country in any cause to which she is committed, whether it be right or wrong. This republic is full to-day of this paralyzing fatalism, full of men who believe the country is in error, even in sin, but who believe it must still be kept on its course, because the course has been decreed. It is the ultimate political scepticism; but it speaks in the home and on the street, with the preacher's tongue and the editor's pen. It speaks from the chair where George William Curtis used to sit. We have made a great mistake,thus it is written, we are wronging the people of the Philippines, we are false to ourselves, we have turned our backs upon American principles; but we must stand by the administration in fighting it through. "The country is at war. When that is said,"—this is the monstrous conclusion,-"the duty of every citizen is at once evident. He must support the government, whether he differed from it or not as to the propriety of the conduct which brought on the war. It is immoral to do otherwise."

There are men in this country who believe that our course in the Philippines is thoroughly right; that, going there by accident or sudden military need, we found an unforeseen opportunity to destroy Spanish rule, and it was a good thing to do it; that the Aguinaldo government is not competent to govern well, and so it is a good thing to destroy that and subject the people to ourselves, not simply in the interests of our industry and trade, but in the interests of general peace and progress. The leaps in the logic of this position, the astigmatism of its look at facts, its sense of what is great and what is small, of what progress is, and of what right and wrong are, are to us appalling; but we can respect the position; we do at least respect a hundred noble men who hold it. They seem to us faithful blind

men.

But the position of this "journal of civilization," the position of the multiplying thousands of men, in the republic for whom this journal speaks with a boldness and brutality only one degree greater than what is common, is the position of faithless men who see. It is faithlessness to civilization, faithlessness to humanity, faithlessness to our democracy itself,to that higher, law through love of which and fear of which and obedience to which alone can this democracy or any state continue to stand at all. It is a state of mind, says Ruskin, greatly to be dreaded, not to know the devil when you see him. More dreadful is the state of the mind whose "immorality" is obedience to the higher law.

Immoral to turn back from recognized error and undo confessed wrong -immoral to do right! It is expedient, it is hard necessity, it is sometimes solemn duty, when in some dreadful strait the very life of the state is at stake, for the citizen to be silent when he would else protest, because diversion to a little wrong might weaken a great right. But such occasions are rare indeed in history; it is impious even to remember them in the vicious escapades of nations revelling in insolent power. Immoral not to "support the government" in wrong and folly! Say it to Chatham and to Burke, to the great company of the English immortals who rejoiced in London at the news from Bunker Hill and Saratoga! Say it to Victor Hugo when to "support the government" meant to support Napoleon the Little in subjugating Mexico! Say it to Charles Sumner when the government meant the Quays and Platts and Hannas of James K. Polk!

"The

Support the government! We, the people, are the government. People is the sovereign of this country," how often we need to remember that great word of Edward Everett Hale's; "the People is sovereign here, the People is the fountain of honor here; the President is the ser