principle was that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." We are now told that we have never fully lived up to that principle, and that, therefore, in our new policy we may cast it aside altogether.

But I say to you that, if we are true believers in democratic government, it is our duty to move in the direction toward the full realization of that principle and not in the direction away from it. If you tell me that we cannot govern the people of those new possessions in accordance with that principle, then I answer that this is a reason why this democracy should not attempt to govern them at all.

If we do, we shall transform the Government of the people, for the people, and by the people, for which Abraham Lincoln lived, into a government of one part of the people, the strong, over another part, the weak. Such an abandonment of a fundamental principle as a permanent policy may at first seem to bear only upon more or less distant dependencies, but it can hardly fail in its ultimate effects to disturb the rule of the same principle in the conduct of democratic government at home. And I warn the American people that a democracy cannot so deny its faith as to the vital conditions of its being-it cannot long play the king over subject populations without creating in itself ways of thinking and habits of action most dangerous to its own vitality

-most dangerous especially to those classes of society which are least powerful in the assertion and the most helpless in the defence of their rights. Let the poor and the men who earn their bread by the labor of their hands pause and consider well before they give their assent to a policy so deliberately forgetful of the equality of rights.

II.

OBJECTIONS TO EXPANSION

You may think that the introduction of more than thirty men in our Senate, over eighty in the lower house of our Congress, and much over one hundred votes in our Electoral College, to speak and act for the mixture of Spanish, French, and negro blood on the West India Islands, and for the Spanish and Indian mixture on the continent south of us-for people utterly alien and mostly incapable of assimilation to us in their tropical habitation-to make our laws and elect our Presidents, and incidentally to help us lift up the Philippines to a higher plane of civilization-is too shocking a proposition to be entertained for a moment, and that our people will resist it to the bitter end. No, they will not resist it if indiscriminate expansion has once become the settled policy of the Republic.

Our people, having yielded to such cries once, will yield to them again. Conservative citizens will tell them that thus the homogeneousness of the people of the Republic so essential to the working of our democratic institutions, will be irretrievably lost; that our race troubles, already dangerous, will be infinitely aggravated, and that the Government of, by, and for the people will be in imminent danger of fatal demoralization. They will be cried down as pusillanimous pessimists, who are no longer American patriots. The American people will be driven on and on by the force of events as Napoleon was when started on his career of limitless conquest. This is imperialism as now advocated. Do we wish to prevent its excesses? Then we must stop it at the beginning, before taking Porto Rico. If we take that island, not even to speak of the Philippines, we shall place ourselves on the inclined plane,

and roll on and on, no longer masters of our own will, until we shall reach bottom. And where will that bottom be? Who knows?

The people of those islands will either peaceably submit to our rule or they will not. If they do not, and we must conquer them by force of arms, we shall at once have a war on our hands. What kind of a war will that be? The Filipinos fought against Spain for their freedom and independence, and unless they abandon their recently proclaimed purpose for their freedom and independence, they will fight against us. To be sure, we promise them all sorts of good things if they will consent to become our subjects. But they may, and probably will, prefer independence to foreign rule, no matter what fair promises the foreign invader makes. For to the Filipinos the American is essentially a foreigner, more foreign in some respects than even the Spaniard was. Subjection to foreign rule is not to everybody's taste, and as to the question of their rights under principles of international law, you need only read the protest against our treaty of Paris by their representative, Agoncillo, to admit that they make out a strong case. Now, if they resist, what shall we do? Kill them? Let soldiers marching under the Stars and Stripes shoot them down? Shoot them down because they stand up for their independence, just as the Cubans, who are no better than they, fought for their independence, to which we solemnly declared them to be "of right" entitled? Look at this calmly if you

can.

The American volunteers, who rushed to arms by the hundreds of thousands to fight for Cuban independence, may not stomach this killing of Filipinos fighting for their independence. We shall have to rely upon the regulars, the professional soldiers, and we may need a good many of them. As to the best way to fill the ranks in the Philippines, General Merritt is re

ported to have said in a recent interview that Spaniards could successfully be employed as soldiers in our army. But the idea of engaging the same Spaniards, who but recently fought us and the Filipinos at the same time, to do the killing of the same Filipinos for us, or at least to terrorize them into subjection, because we want to possess their land, and to do this under the Stars and Stripes-this idea is at first sight a little startling. It may make the Hessians of our Revolutionary War grin in their graves. If anybody had predicted such a possibility a year ago, every patriotic American would have felt an impulse to kick him down-stairs.

However, this is imperialism. It bids us not to be squeamish. Indeed, some of our fellow-citizens seem already to be full of its spirit. If we take those new regions we shall be well entangled in that contest for territorial aggrandizement which distracts other nations and drives them far beyond their original design. So it will be inevitably with us. We shall want new conquests to protect that which we already possess. The greed of speculators working upon our Government will push us from one point to another, and we shall have new conflicts on our hands, almost without knowing how we got into them. It has always been so under such circumstances, and always will be. This means more and more soldiers, ships, and guns.

III.

RELATIONS WITH ENGLAND

A SINGULAR delusion has taken hold of the minds of otherwise clear-headed men. It is that our new friendship with England will serve firmly to secure the world's peace. Nobody can hail that friendly feeling between the two nations more warmly than I do, and I

fervidly hope it will last. But I am profoundly convinced that if this friendship results in the two countries setting out to grasp "for the Anglo-Saxon," as the phrase is, whatever of the earth may be attainable -if they hunt in couple, they will surely soon fall out about the game, and the first serious quarrel, or at least one of the first, we shall have will be with Great Britain. And as family feuds are the bitterest, that feud will be apt to become one of the most deplorable in its consequences.

No nation is, or ought to be, unselfish. England in her friendly feeling toward us is not inspired by mere sentimental benevolence. The anxious wish of many Englishmen that we should take the Philippines is not free from the consideration that, if we do so, we shall for a long time depend on British friendship to maintain our position on that field of rivalry, and that Britain will derive ample profit from our dependence on her. British friendship is a good thing to have, but, perhaps, not so good a thing to need. If we are wise we shall not put ourselves in a situation in which we shall need it. British statesmanship has sometimes shown great skill in making other nations fight its battles. This is very admirable from its point of view, but it is not so pleasant for the nations so used. I should be loath to see this Republic associated with Great Britain in apparently joint concerns as a junior partner with a minority interest, or the American navy in the situation of a mere squadron of the British fleet.

This would surely lead to trouble in the settling of accounts. Lord Salisbury was decidedly right when, at the last Lord Mayor's banquet, he said that the appearance of the United States as a factor in Asiatic affairs was likely to conduce to the interests of Great Britain, but might "not conduce to the interest of peace. Whether he had eventual quarrels with this Republic in mind I do not know. But it is certain that the ex