Sir, when this fair country was drenched in the blood of brethren engaged in bitter strife; when the thunderbolt of war was launched by Titan hands; when marching squadrons of armed men bestrode the land, boding no guerdon for liberty, if not threatening it, another apostle, fit to wear the mantle of the great Jefferson, arose in our midst. Inspired, as it were, from on high, amid the havoc and ruin, and the pomp and circumstance of war, Abraham Lincoln uttered a sentiment and announced a truth which have immortalized him. He proclaimed that this was a government" of the people, by the people, and for the people," that liberty might not perish from the earth.

Sublime utterance! Noble expression! The twin declarations of Jefferson and Lincoln fill the whole conception of the Republic of the fathers. Both were made when war was imminent or flagrant. But these great men, inspired by the love of their kind, not blinded or swept along by the alluring enticements of military prestige and power, clung fast to the bulwarks of human liberty and announced to their countrymen these great political laws. No thought of aggrandizement; no heed to the whispering of ambition, or power, or vainglory, or lust of conquest! No, sir! But with steadfast faith in the capacities of human nature they turned their eyes, not to foreign shores inviting accession; not to alien peoples cast up by the storm of battle and conquest, but to the great, primal, everlasting principles of the American Constitution.

These great men thought that while the minds of the people were excited with thoughts of blood and battle, when the glare and trappings of war and the glow of patriotic ardor were at their brightest and highest, then was the time to divert the eye from militarism, in all its seductive power and strength, to the great principles of liberty. They thought that the highest duty of the American citizen was to enjoy his liberty; they

thought his supreme duty was to preserve inviolate that liberty and to transmit it to his posterity.

Were they "little Americans," Mr. President? When Washington besought his countrymen to avoid all foreign complications and entanglements was he a little American? Who had greater opportunity to advance the sword above the ploughshare and to wrench from Britain and Spain their contiguous territory? Sir, he counselled that sobriety and considerateness of conduct and bearing toward the world which Solomon taught us to practise in our prosperity. And when the marvellous valor of our countrymen has thrown into our lap possessions which have been a thorn in the side of our defeated foe, let us carefully and patriotically weigh ourselves in the scale of our Constitution, of our principles of government, of our honor, our race, our interest, and our duty.

II.

FAILURE OF SUB-TROPICAL REPUBLICS

MR. PRESIDENT, if we had the right to incorporate the Philippine Islands, inhabited by strange and singular people, it is impolitic and unwise. Cast your eye over the map of the globe and find where freedom exists. Does it exist in the sub-tropics? Has it ever existed in the sub-tropics? Can it exist in the subtropics? When I look at the condition of the world, when I review the history of the past, I am unalterably convinced that no permanent sway can ever be held by the white man over the colored races of the tropics; and if sway is held, it is held under the power of unlimited, cruel despotism. That is the only way the white man can rule in the tropics. It is the only way he has ever ruled. Whether it is providential or whether it is not, it is a fact.

Sir, what element of strength is it? Does Great Britain fear the incursions of the Russian bear elsewhere than on the Afghan frontier of India? Every single one of these distant possessions is an enormous element of weakness. After the acquisition of distant territories the pride of the nation is roused and the people of the nation will shed the last drop of their blood to retain them. That is the military instinct of the races. The great weakness of any free people is holding subject peoples as distant colonies. No greater weakness can be imagined. No greater crime can be conceived than to recklessly incur it. We are told, and sometimes from the pulpit, that we have a holy mission to perform; that we must evangelize the heathen; that we must spread the blessed precepts of Christianity, the doctrines of Christ, over the dark places of earth, and we must do it by the sword.

Mr. President, have we gone backward in civilization? Have we gone back to the doctrine of Islam, when religion had to have paths for its entrance into heathendom hewn out by the sword? In order to Christianize these savage people we must put the yoke of despotism upon their necks; and that is said to be the doctrine of Christ; that is the message of the Saviour; that is the message from Him who preached peace on earth and good-will to men. Sir, Christianity cannot be advanced by force, and the twin-sister of Christianity, the free government of a great people, cannot be advanced by force.

Do we know, does anybody know, that these people want our power over them? Are we to proceed, by an overpowering military strength, to force upon an unwilling people the beneficence of a Constitution which they reject? We have been the exemplars of liberty, and we have taught the world that the best government upon the earth was the freest government upon the earth. There is no doubt that the advance toward

parliamentary reform and a greater exercise of the right of suffrage in European countries is due to the example set by the United States. Manhood suffrage in England has proceeded at a rapid pace. Even the despotisms, as we call the governments of continental Europe, have advanced in parliamentary reform, and the people have their rights in the Reichstag, and in the Cortes, and throughout Europe in every direction. This is largely the fruit of our example.

There is a difference between extending nationality and extending empire. You can extend your power, but if you want to extend your nationality, extend your institutions, extend your liberty, you must do it with people of your own kind. They are the ones to be governed by your law. Every other extension is a weakness. Every extension of the sort that is contemplated in this case is a crime. You cannot obliterate the nationality of 10,000,000 Malays.

Great Britain has held India for two hundred and fifty years, and yet there are there but six hundred thousand Englishmen all told. Wherever there has been a strong nationality in the tropics adapted to the soil and to the climate, no other nationality has ever been able to exterminate or govern them except by physical force. Our nationality cannot extend to this Pacific group of islands. Our power can go there; our flag can float there; but the genius of American liberty will remain upon our shores. It cannot be implanted there. The material is not there for it to flourish and grow upon.

Is that the sort of "expansion" we want? Is that the sort of empire we are derided as old fogies and little Americans for not desiring to establish? Mr. President, we are told that duty and destiny and some undefinable power are pushing us on to a splendid and magnificent future that the fathers never dreamt of. This evil thing we are called on to do cannot be painted in

such bright, dazzling colors as to deceive the American eye. It is nothing but a wanton stretch of power. It is lust for power and greed for land veneered with the tawdriness of false humanity. You cannot hide its hideousness with the clothing of high-sounding phrases. You cannot prostitute the flag made to float over freedom by driving under its folds millions of slaves.

I want no despotism, sir. I do not want our country to be poisoned at the core. I do not want our people to be accustomed to the exercise of unlimited authority by Congress. That is a poison which has sapped the life of all republics, and it will sap the life of our Republic. If you destroy the germ of our institution you destroy the government built on the germ.