American people as an expression of their conscience. They imposed them upon politicians and upon newspapers, upon legislatures and executive officers, as the final policy of pacification. It proved to be a policy of infinite healing in this country, and of infinite value to the world. It was the first attempt in the experience of mankind to compose civil strife by pardon instead of by punishment. It forms the proudest page in the history of the United States, for pacification by pardon was instantaneous and complete, while pacification by punishment had always bred new grievances and disturbances prolonged through centuries of discontent. We can little appreciate the statesmanship which converted the assault on the Union into a bond which makes it indissoluble forever-indeed, we must have read to little purpose the whole history of the United States if we can doubt that this question will be settled by the American people wisely, that is to say, justly, for justice is the highest form of wisdom.

I know of no organized government in the world to-day except the government of the United States that rises to the full conception of Christian civilization. This government was not created one hundred and twenty-five years ago. It has not been created even since the discovery of Columbus. The plan of this government was laid on the shores of Lake Galilee, when the Saviour of Mankind taught that in the sight of God all men are equal. From that day to this history is but the record of the movement of humanity toward the application of this principle to civil government. The general acceptance of a religious belief in the spiritual equality of man led irresistibly to the establishment of political institutions based on the political equality of man. This government is the inevitable result and culmination of the Christian revelation.

As the cross is the emblem of the truth on which

Christianity is founded, is the flag of our country the emblem of the fruit which Christianity has borne? Shall that flag be unfurled over the polygamy, and slavery, the nameless crimes and unspeakable infamies of the East? Shall that flag, unstained and unstainable, become the emblem of a slave-holding, oriental Sultan? Shall it be the emblem of autocracy in any form? Better ten thousand times that this government had never been established-better this continent had never been discovered; better that the savage still held its fertile fields as untilled hunting-grounds than that the experiment of a government founded on justice and freedom once tried should prove a failure.

The issue before the American people is the vindication of the Declaration of Independence. Can there be a doubt as to how it will be decided? When the Declaration of Independence is mocked and derided, when a political party proposes to divorce the American flag from the American Constitution and to clothe a Republican magistrate with autocratic powers, an issue is presented which involves the subversion or the maintenance of free government.

This is an issue which overshadows all other issues, not merely in this campaign, but all the issues of all the campaigns in all the history of this country. It is an issue old as the contest for human rights. It is a renewal of the irrepressible conflict between justice, which is freedom, and injustice, which is tyranny; between the Christian civilization, based on respect for the rights of the weak as well as of the strong, and the baser civilizations, which, ignoring the moral law, acknowledge no restraint but the coward fear of force; between the constitutional republic established by the election of Jefferson in 1800 and the corrupt and corrupting empire which will be erected upon its ruins by the election of McKinley in 1900.

In these hallowed precincts it is impossible to doubt

that this attempt to subvert the institutions of freedom will fail, as all others have failed. This This government shall continue to stand for the defence of human rights in this country and respect for human rights elsewhere. No administration and no party shall establish a new infamy under the shadow of Old Glory. The flag which typifies freedom and the Constitution which protects it shall never be divorced. Inseparable, indestructible, and invincible, they shall ever remain the priceless heritage of the American people, the hope and the inspiration of all mankind.

ROBERT G. COUSINS

TRIBUTE TO THE MAINE VICTIMS

[Delivered in the House of Representatives, March 22, 1898.]

THE measure now proposed is most appropriate and just, but hardly is it mentionable in contemplation of the great calamity to which it appertains. It will be merely an incidental, legislative foot-note to a page of history that will be open to the eyes of the Republic and of the world for all time to come. No human speech can add anything to the silent gratitude, the speechless reverence already given by a great and grateful nation to its dead defenders and to their living kin. No act of Congress providing for their needs can make a restitution for their sacrifice. Human nature does, in human ways, its best, and still feels deep in debt.

Expressions of condolence have come from every country and from every clime, and every nerve of steel and ocean-cable has carried on electric breath the sweetest, tenderest words of sympathy for that gallant crew who manned the Maine. But no human recompense can reach them. Humanity and time remain their everlasting debtors. It was a brave, and strong, and splendid crew. They were a part of the blood, and bone, and sinew of our land. Two were from my native State of Iowa. Some were only recently at the Naval Academy, where they had so often heard the

morning and the evening salutation to the flag, that flag which had been interwoven with the dearest memories of their lives and which had colored all their friendships with the lasting blue of true fidelity.

But whether they came from naval school or civil life, from one State or from another, they called each other comrade—that gem of human language which sometimes means but little less than love and a little more than friendship-that gentle salutation of the human heart that speaks in all the languages of man, that winds, and turns, and runs through all the joys and sorrows of the human race-through deed, and thought, and dream, through song, and toil, and battlefield.

No foe had ever challenged them. The world can never know how brave they were. They never knew defeat; they never shall. While at their posts of duty, sleep lured them into the abyss, then death unlocked their slumbering eyes for but an instant, to behold its dreadful carnival. Most of them, just when life was full of hope and all its tides were at their highest, grandest flow-just when the early sunbeams were falling on the steeps of fame and flooding all life's landscape, far out into the dreamy, distant horizonjust at that age when all the nymphs were making diadems and garlands, weaving laurel-wreaths before the eyes of young and eager nature-just then, when death seemed most unnatural.

Hovering above the dark waters of that mysterious harbor of Havana the black-winged vulture watches for the belated dead-while over it and over all there is the eagle's piercing eyes, sternly watching for the truth. Whether the appropriation carried by this resolution shall be ultimately charged to fate or to some foe shall soon appear. Meanwhile a patient and a patriotic people, enlightened by the lessons of our history, remembering the woes of war, both to the van