treaty had not the best intentions in the world; but I have no hesitation in saying that their conduct amounted to something like criminal stupidity. It was the Senate debate, and nothing else, that precipitated the war which began more than a year and a half ago and is not ended yet. Mr. Bryan himself, let it be said to his credit, went to Washington and urged Democratic Senators to cease their fatuous obstruction and allow the peace treaty to go into effect.

The war has been prolonged because the Filipino people have been full of false apprehensions on the one hand and of false hopes on the other. And the Filipinos have derived their mistaken ideas principally from this country. It is not in the least true that Mr. McKinley or any one connected with his administration has ever had the slightest desire to subject the Filipino people to arbitrary rule under an imperialistic régime. This certainly would have been their fate if we had llowed Spain to sell the islands to Germany. It was not nearly so much due to the hope of commercial advantage to ourselves that the Philippine Islands were taken over from Spain, as to the idealism of the American people, who felt that, since we had been the sole cause of the destruction of Spanish power in those islands, we ought to make ourselves responsible for the substitution there of the highest possible forms of enlightened and just administration.

I do not believe that there is an experienced and thoroughly informed statesman in the world who supposes for a moment that the Philippine Islands are at present capable of being erected into an independent and sovereign member of the family of nations. If they are ever to have such a status, it must be after a considerable period during which the lessons of local self-government must be fairly learned, and the industrial development and modernization of the country must take place. And this must be under the auspices of some powerful and enlightened nation. The rapid sequence of historical events has seemed to assign that task to the United States. Even Mr. Bryan virtually admits all this, although there is the most hopeless inconsistency between his theoretical discussion of the subject and those meager practical prop

ositions in which he has indicated what his actual programme would be if he were elected.

In his theoretical arguments, to which he confines himself almost entirely, Mr. Bryan elaborates maxims as to the inherent political rights of men to choose their own form of government. But these maxims are of small value as a guide to conduct in a particular case, apart from circumstances and conditions. All of Mr. Bryan's abstract reasonings about the Philippine situation point to only one logical conclusion, namely, our duty of immediate, complete, and unqualified withdrawal from the Philippine Islands. Yet when Mr. Bryan discloses his programme, i turns out to be something wholly different He declares that we Americans must es tablish a stable government in the Philip pines; and that we must continue perma nently to maintain a protectorate over them, while retaining, as our own full possession, a suitable coaling-station-by which he means, as some of his very eminent supporters have frankly explained, the great city and port of Manila.

But surely the Filipinos, if free from all moral and physical restraint, would not choose to give up their metropolis and principal seaport to the one foreign nation which had been committing such crimes against their rights and liberties as Mr. Bryan and his friends declare. In the second place, it is inconceivable. that the Filipinos should, if they are to become an independent power, desire to have us remain indefinitely in the exercise of the task of providing them with a stable government. In the third place, it is almost equally inconceivable that we should assume before the world the responsibilities of protector of a new Philippine republic or kingdom, or whatever form of government Aguinaldo might choose to erect, without any authority on our part to regulate either the policy or the behavior of that government.

A far simpler and better plan, and one less likely to lead to future complications and strife, is the plan which has already been adopted of bringing the islands under the general sovereignty of the United States-just as Canada is under the general sovereignty of Great Britain— while building up in them the institutions of good government on modern principles,

with full local home rule at just as early a date as the people can and will exercise it. There remain in dispute, however, some purely technical and legal questions as to the relation of the Philippines to the United States under the Constitution. This venerable document was adopteda few years after the formation of our Federal Union-for the purpose of providing the sister commonwealths of the United States with an improved form of association. The various States which make up Germany are bound together by a federal constitution. This does not prevent the Germany thus united from exercising sovereignty over certain portions of Africa and certain islands of the sea; and those portions of Africa are not thereby made a part of Germany, nor do they come under the compact which binds together the partners in the German federation.

It would seem to be clear, both in the principles that underlie the science of government and also in the text of our Constitution and in the course of our legal and constitutional history, that the United States may suitably and lawfully exercise sovereignty over outside territory, just as any other government in the world may do the same thing. Whether or not our acquisition of the Philippine Islands legally carries the Dingley tariff there is in any case not a question that can be settled on the stump, because it lies wholly and finally within the jurisdiction of the United States courts.

It must not be forgotten that the ratification of the peace treaty with Spain made the Philippine Islands American territory, in a sense which President McKinley could not ignore without being liable to impeachment. Any relaxation of purpose and endeavor on his part to compel submission to American authority would, in the eyes of the law, be an offense of the same nature as would have been President Lincoln's in 1861 if he had calmly acquiesced in the secession of the Southern States. As commander-in-chief of the army and navy, it is the duty of President McKinley to defend the authority of the United States.

The attempt of some of Mr. Bryan's supporters to find an analogy between the Philippines and Cuba falls entirely short. The two situations are unlike in almost

every respect. It was not, in my judgment, wise or statesmanlike for Congress to pledge in advance that we would not annex Cuba. That question should have been left open for subsequent decision upon its merits. We are not doing the Cubans any real kindness by making haste to cast them adrift. Annexation to the United States is the most desirable consummation that they could possibly seek. The anti-imperialists, probably without intention, are constantly juggling with the different meanings of the word government. It is ridiculous to say that the Republic of San Domingo is self-governing and that the State of Massachusetts is not. It is desirable that every community, great or small, should exercise self-government in those matters touching which it has a reasonable degree of capacity to manage its governmental affairs with success. There is far more danger that we shall give self government to the Philippines too rapidly than too slowly.

As to the Congressional resolution regarding the future of Cuba, it was at least not a partisan matter; and President McKinley was not responsible for it. If the Cubans had made war against us while we were trying in good faith to guard their interests and at the same time to protect such rights and interests as the Spaniards and others possessed in Havana, we should have been obliged to subdue them by force. And in that case it would hardly have been possible to do otherwise than annex the island. But the Cubans, who are a brave people, and who held the Spaniards at deadlock for three years, have conducted themselves very decently toward the Government and people of the United States.

Such a question as that of the Porto Rico tariff, about which the Democratic Campaign Book makes much ado, has little proper place in party controversy. The Porto Rico tariff bill had two aspects: (1) that of legal principle; and (2) that of practical financial policy. About the legal principle there is a wide difference of opinion. So high a Republican authority as ex-President Harrison believes that, in the intent of the Constitution, all territory subject to the sovereignty of the United States ought to be included within our zone of domestic free trade. This is a point of constitutional interpretation

which belongs to the Supreme Court of the United States, and cannot be settled on the stump.

As a matter of policy and general expediency, I believe heartily and strongly in full freedom of trade between the United States and all its outlying possessions. And this is exactly what the Porto Rico bill gives to that island-only that it defers free trade for a few months, and enforces a very low temporary tariff rate as a revenue measure for the sole benefit of the Porto Ricans themselves. My friend Dr. Hollender, of the Johns Hopkins University, now Treasurer of Porto Rico, says that this temporary low tariff was highly desirable for Porto Rico, be cause it afforded a ready means of necessary income while a system of internal taxation was being established to provide for the expenses of ordinary administration, schools, roads, and other public improvements, after the disappearance of the tariff.

In short, I think that in the Porto Rican tariff bill the Republicans did the best thing possible for the islands, in a way which has not, apparently, brought them the credit to which they are entitled. Porto Rico is to have absolute free trade with the United States at the very first moment when it would be of any general benefit to the island to have it.

Finally, as for the Filipinos, I believe that the sense of nationality, with the aspiration for an independent place in the family of nations, must be something more than a momentary whim or the growth of a day if it is to be taken seriously. There has never been, in the historic sense, a distinctive attitude of nationality in the archipelago which we call the Philippine Islands. If there had been, the whole world of international affairs and of the higher politics would long ago have taken it into account. The present Filipino movement was a mushroom growth in that period of interregnum between the signing of the peace protocol and the ratification of the peace treaty, when Spain's active authority had ceased and that of the United States had not begun. Dr. Rizal's movement of 1896, in which Aguinaldo was a military leader, was soon suppressed by a force of Spaniards of the most insignificant strength as compared with the Spanish army in Cuba.

The Aguinaldo movement has been subsequently kept alive largely, if not principally, through the inability of the Filipinos to understand the real inwardness of American politics. Outside of what we call the "solid South," Mr. Bryan is not wholly sure even of two dozen electoral votes. His only absolute reliance is upon the votes of the Southern States. And yet it is true that there is no part of the United States in which the real sentiment of the influential elements of the community is so strongly for expansion and for holding the Philippines as in these very Southern States. The only other group of States now regarded as reasonably sure for Mr. Bryan are in the silverproducing and mountainous regions of the West; and those, next to the Southern States, are the most ardent for territorial expansion and the least troubled about the metaphysics of imperialism. I venture, then, to say that if the States which will give their electoral votes for Mr. Bryan next month should be allowed to decide in any representative manner as to our Philippine policy, it would be made very clear that they have even less com punction about asserting and maintaining our sovereignty than the very States which are going to declare their confidence in Mr. McKinley and their preference that he should continue for four years more to preside over our National affairs.

The South is supporting Mr. Bryan, not because it believes this year in Mr. Bryan's free silver, and not because it believes in the applicability of Mr. Bryan's metaphysics about imperialism, but solely because it has not yet broken away from the tradition of supporting the Democratic partya tradition due to the old-time sectional questions and to the race problem. The new industrial South prefers sound money and wants commercial expansion; but it does not see how to give up its nominal loyalty to the Democratic party.

Under all these circumstances, is it not fair to say that Mr. Bryan is not sufficiently representative of definite and positive elements of American public opinion to entitle him to be President? His monetary policy, entertained by him with unquestionable depth of conviction, is contrary to the interests and to the feelings of almost the entire country. I believe that the same thing is true of his Philippine policy,

in so far as he has disclosed it in any practical form. The only real strength that might bring about his election lies in that undercurrent of class feeling and prejudice that brings him his greatest

T

applause when he inflames labor against capital, and denounces "trusts" without discrimination. I do not believe the time is ripe for electing a President of the United States upon that kind of sentiment.

HE perennial struggle in the politics of the world is the struggle between the few and the many. Under preceding forms of government the few held power from the beginning, and the many constantly strove for a share in it. The institutions of the United States, however, were founded upon the admitted principles that the welfare of the many is the object of the laws, and that the will of the many is the source of all just authority; and the great contests of our history have been waged, not to establish popular rights, but to maintain them. The defeat of the few has been sought only to return the Government to its ancient practices. All the phenomena of our politics may be grouped about this central principle. Thus, we witness the establishment of the Nation by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; the gradual drift of the Government, under the influence of Hamiltonianism, into the hands of the few; its rescue by Jefferson a hundred years ago, and a return to first principles under the Democratic party; the slow but sure submission of the old Democracy to the power of the few, in this case an oligarchy erected upon the institution of slavery; the second rescue, forty years ago, under Abraham Lincoln, whose party, in its first National platform, at Philadelphia, in June, 1856, declared itself in favor" of restoring the action of the Federal Government to the principles of Washington and Jefferson;" the recreancy of the Republican party to this early impulse, and the progressive commitment of its leadership to the interests of the few as against the general welfare.

This brings us to the necessity of a new political salvation. Once again must we return to first principles. The phenomenon witnessed under the leadership

of Jefferson a hundred years ago, and under that of Lincoln forty years ago, is once more to repeat itself under the leadership of Bryan: at the dawn of the twentieth century the people are coming to their own again.

In our domestic policy the "principles of Jefferson," to which the first Republican National Convention desired to restore the action of the Federal Government, were embodied in the apt and characteristic Jeffersonian adage: "Equal rights for all, special privileges to none." This adage the modern leaders of the party of Lincoln have gravely dishonored. That party has absolutely reversed its policy on each and every great question now occupying a prominent place in political discussion, and in so doing it has removed itself further and further from the people, and has come more and more under the influence of special interests. A brief recital will make this clear: The party was formerly for bimetallism and greenbacks; now, at the dictation of the great speculative banks, it is for the single gold standard and bank money. It was formerly for an income tax, paying part of the expenses of the Civil War with the proceeds of such a tax; now, in the interest of the selfish wealth of the country that objects to bearing the burdens of government reciprocally to its benefits, it is opposed to an income tax. It was formerly, as enunciated by the platform of 1860, for protection as incidental to revenue; now, in obedience to the great trusts and monopolies, it is for protection for protection's sake. In 1888 and 1892 it denounced the trust in its National platform; in 1896 it was silent on the subject; and since then, with the Government Republican in every branch and department, these combinations, which notoriously furnished the bulk of the

party's vast campaign fund four years ago and are doing the same thing to-day, have increased so rapidly that the number formed in the United States since March 4, 1897, is greater than all that had been previously organized in all countries since the beginning of the Christian era. At its birth the Republican party believed in the partnership of the Constitution and the Flag, for in its platform of 1856 it complained that the people of the Territory of Kansas were being violently and fraudulently deprived of their "dearest constitutional rights;" to-day it is building a huge and incongruous system of colonialism and empire upon the proposition that the flag may be permanently planted where the Constitution of its own force can never follow.

These manifold treasons of recent Republican leadership to ancient Republican principles will cost that party many hundreds of thousands of votes at the coming election. Many who could not sympathize with the demand for the free coinage of silver in 1896 now realize that the campaign of that year was very much more than a contest over the opening of the mints; that it was, in fact, the initial skirmish in a new great battle between the few and the many for the possession of the Government. The specific issue that dominated that campaign is subordinated this year, but its spirit remains. Republican party leadership that surrendered to the banks has consistently surrendered to the trusts; and the influences thus enthroned in the country, following the analogies of all history, are now seeking to intrench themselves behind standing armies and to demoralize the people with wars of conquest and with colonial administration, preparing the way for fundamental and imperialistic changes in the very structure and theory of our institutions.

The

Unquestionably the trust question, as it is called, will cost the Republican party many votes this year. Not alone will these be found among the commercial travelers and other employees whose services the combinations have dispensed with, but among the small business men whose existence is menaced, and also in the masses of society to whom the trust means constantly narrowing opportunities and to whom the spirit of monop

oly is essentially hateful. This is not the place exhaustively to corsider the confessed difficulties of the practical treatment of this evil. ment of this evil. It is only important here to observe that to the vast majority of our people the trust monopoly is an evil, and that these are not likely to commit the duty of devising and applying a remedy to a party that has had absolute control of the Government for three years without doing anything in that direction; to a party whose sinews of war are avowedly furnished by the trusts, but whose great dictator has recently strenuously denied that any such thing as a trust exists.

However, the controlling issue of the campaign is not that of money, nor yet that of trusts. These discussions relate to policies for the Republic. But the overwhelming question of the hour is, Shall the Republic itself endure? We are not immune from the perils to which all former experiments in democracy have succumbed. We have thus far succeeded because we have remained true, in the main, to the fundamental principles of our Government; and when we have wandered from them, we have returned to them in time. Reason and all history approve the observation of Richard Henry Lee, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." The principles of the Declaration of Independence consecrated our institutions at the beginning, and we have influenced mankind just in proportion as we have illustrated and confirmed them. It is significant that when the Republican party first met in National Convention at Philadelphia, in June, 1856, the first resolution of its platform reaffirmed that Declaration, and pronounced its doctrines necessary to the preservation of republican institutions; and that its latest National Convention, though meeting in the same historic city, and as nearly as might be on the forty-fourth anniversary of that first Convention, adopted a long platform that contains no mention of the Declaration of Independence. President McKinley says that it was not necessary for the Republican party to reaffirm the Declaration. Whether necessary or not, it certainly was impossible to reaffirm it in this latest Republican platform, because such a reaffirmation would have conflicted with a certain other statement therein