TESTIMONY OF RICHARD OLNEY

307

The policy must go,

republic make a contradiction in terms.
or the emperor in some new form must come."

The following appeared in the Review and Herald (Washington, D. C.) of July 14, 1904

"Speaking at a dinner of the Harvard Law School Association recently, Ex-Secretary of State Richard Olney set forth a number of questions the earnest consideration of which by the lawyers of this day is, he said, imperatively needed. These questions relate to the governmental policy of the nation, in which the speaker saw a great departure from the pathway in which the nation has attained to its present position among the world powers.

"Where in the national Constitution, Mr. Olney inquired, is to be found the principle of altruism. Where is to be found in it any authority for purely philanthropic enterprises

any right of the government to turn itself into a missionary to the benighted tribes of islands in the South Seas, seven thousand miles from our shores, or any power to tax the toiling masses of this country for the benefit of the motley groups of the brown people of the tropics, between whom and the taxpayers there is absolutely no community either of interest or of sympathy.'

""Still another search is needed,' he said, 'to find in American law any right in a strong nation to appropriate the sovereignty or territory of a weak nation, either in the name of "collective civilization" or in any other name or on any pretext whatsoever. . . . It is for the men of the American bar to say whether there is a break with all our past which ought to be and is to be perpetuated; whether American principles as embodied in American constitutions and state papers, once deemed models of wisdom and inspiration to humanity the world over, are now to be relegated to the limbo of antiquated superstitions; whether the flag shall symbolize the ideas and the ideals of the great Americans who are identified with all that is glorious in our past history, or shall stand for the theories of the new guides and teachers of the present hour.'”

We have already quoted testimony showing the significance of the new governmental policy as viewed in England. Upon the lips of Frenchmen the inquiry was, "Are

the American people seeking a Napoleon?" And the following from the pen of the German Professor Niemand, quoted by the Countess Von Krockow, of Dresden, in a contribution to The Independent (N. Y.) of Oct. 19, 1899, shows that in the eyes of the German people it was no less plainly evident that this nation was breaking with the traditions of its past:

"If the American republic ever meant anything historically, it meant a protest against Europe. Its Declaration of Independence was a looking backward over European conditions, and a summing up of all the experience thus won. It corresponded politically to Luther's theses; just as the one was a renunciation of Catholicism, so was the other a renunciation and defiance of imperialism. Over one hundred years it has endured.

"Europe has not changed essentially meanwhile. It has forms of liberty, but the substantial reality is still militarism, or government by authority and the might of the strongest. S› if Europe be unchanged, why should America relinquish her avocation of protestation by turning round and becoming like her? . . . Oh, madness! I say, madness! They are doing they know not what,-giving up their birthright for a mess of pottage; surrendering their grand attitude of protest, wherein they commanded the respect of the powerful and the adoration of the idealists of the world, to scramble with the effete old nations for land! for land, although they already possess so much. They repudiate their Declaration in spirit and in word. for a strip of rich land! The fact seems incredible."

The theory of government held by the religious party who are pushing the movement for "national reform," is that governments derive their authority not from the consent of the governed, but from the will of God. In the conventions of this party the principle of government by consent of the governed has been held up to scorn as "that old Philadelphia lie." The following quotation from an eminent representative of "national reform," expresses the attitude of that party on the subject:

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE REPUDIATED 309

"And so to-day there are those that wave the Declaration of Independence in our faces, and tell us that the thing to do is to deliver over those islands of the Archipelago in the East to the people who are their rightful masters; for all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.' So wrote Thomas Jefferson. As to that hallowed document that declares that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, if that is to be literally construed, there never was a greater falsehood palmed off by the devil upon a credulous world. It is not true of the government of God."-Dr. P. S. Henson, D. D., pastor of the leading Baptist church in Chicago, reported in Chicago Times-Herald of May 8, 1899.

As showing the general attitude of religious teachers in this country toward this clause of the Declaration of Independence, some further testimony will be appropriate here.

In a baccalaureate address delivered at the Auditorium, Chicago, June 13, 1904, Dr. F. W. Gunsaulus, the popular preacher and orator, said:

"There never was a more interesting falsehood than 'all men are created free and equal.' The Declaration of Independence was the work of an hour of intense excitement, and on every national anniversary this phrase is misquoted, because when it is taken from its context, it is false."

Here the Declaration of Independence is both belittled and misquoted, since it does not contain the assertion that ali men are created free.

The Independent (New York) in its issue of Oct. 25, 1900, declared that the doctrine of natural rights, set forth in the Declaration of Independence as a self-evident truth, is only a "theory," and that "the revolt against it grows apace." And further, "We are hearing a great deal, these days, of the 'self-evident truth' that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . . This absolute generalization regarding consent . . . is likely to gasp out its last breath in the pending campaign."