# The New England Magazine/Volume 5/Number 1/A Pan-Republic Congress

A PAN-REPUBLIC CONGRESS.
By E. P. Powell.
NEW ideas, or the larger applications of old ones, work silently for a while, and then startle us with a sudden assurance of their possibility. We have not yet become reconciled to the idea that socially and politically nothing is permanent. We have also to be come confident that movement of this sort is, in the course of each century, progress. The Darwinian idea has permeated physical science; it is slowly permeating social science, that the eyes of evolution are in its forehead. Monarchy may dread change republicanism need have no fear. Whatever is before us, in spite of blunders, is betterment. The last century closed up at the great Clearing House of popular opinion; the present opened with the application of those digested opinions to government. Jefferson, in 1800, completed the greatest revolution the world has ever known. The quick result has been half a world in which freedom of thought and of labor ​have taken the place of autocracy, dei gratit has yielded to vox populi, vox dei as the fundamental social and economic principle. This revolution was not the spontaneity of a day. It was the culmination of the work of the whole antecedent century. Philosophy did not do its work in vain. Revolutions were also evolutions. Poets involuntarily sang for a purpose. Educators like Rousseau and Richter were at the bottom of it. Washington and Franklin and Paine had first to be made, before they could create the Republic. The Republic at last was to be bottomed on Democracy by the greatest of our statesmen, Thomas Jefferson. So the nineteenth century came in as an idea.
A review of history will show us that mankind has busied itself in like manner in all the past. There have been no dark ages. Each century has in truth incubated a purpose of some sort and we inherit the same in the table of contents of our human biography. Luther began the sixteenth century with no novelty. He simply, in those theses on the cathedral door, wrote down what had already been thought out and felt out and worked out; what some had been burned for, but what, after all, was fairly well established. It was the consummation, not the inauguration of an evolution.
Has our own century been idle in thought and purpose? Do we go out without finding any columns of achievement to add up, and with no visions and hopes to make assured? Are the men in platoons right, that we are to march on without change of countersign until the old heroism grows stale in our hearts and heads, and politics becomes an automaton? On the contrary, no century ever pulsated with nobler purpose or more vigorous endeavor. The apparent drifting of our moral and intellectual life for thirty years past has been not only in appearance. We are in the last decade of the century; events do not crowd so much as ideas. These will hasten on to fulfilment. They cover every field of human energy. Education is at the bottom of all hope and progress; and out of education has just been born the enthusiasm called "University Extension," a term that fails wholly to convey to the popular mind the novelty and the greatness of the purpose conceived. It is a purpose that will totally transform, and in some ways secure our popular education and obliterate our present inchoate popular methods. Not less grand and natural as a result of the past is the conception of a "World-wide Democratic Church." This is only the application of republicanism to theology and religious effort. It means the displacement of a world-wide monarchical church by a church based on popular sentiment and individual liberty. It is possible. The pope himself begins to desert the monarchy. His recent encyclical is a plain effort to readjust the old church to modern progress. We still wait for a word to describe succinctly the social struggle which in different quarters has striven and strives to embody itself in Nationalism, Socialism, Communism—Utopianism, perhaps. The idea is not yet thought through; and it will be nameless until that is done. But the world throbs with the conviction that our inequalities are monstrous and largely needless. We have a fixed purpose to devise a remedy. These are some of the purposive trends of our age. The twentieth century will inherit a grand legacy.
But are we at anchor politically? Evidently not. Omitting all notice of the crumbling of old autocracies and monarchies—brute force and imperial force—it is clear that democracy itself is capable of new expansions and applications. Internationalism is surely supplanting nationalism. Mr. Blaine showed his unequalled statesmanship when he desired the Pan-American Congress, to be followed by Pan-American enterprises, and unfettered Pan-American commerce. Here was a bold break with conservatism. Precedent is valuable to establish equilibrium in society; but the innovator is needed with far-sight to prevent a consequent stagnation of human purpose. Pan-Republicanism is another new phrase that covers an advance all along the line. It is the idea of a world-wide democracy instead of a duplication of republics although the latter idea may be covered by it. The question now is, have we ​faith enough in us for so grand a purpose. No forward movement of humanity ever was or ever can be achieved without an enthusiasm. Have we the optimism that can go forward against all opposition and achieve grand things? Generations come that can do this; but other generations cannot. For the most the world moves in routine work, and reveres red-tape. I have frith that our generation is able to comprehend the grandeur of the idea and to work successfully at its accomplishment. The proposition is to hold, in 1893, in conjunction with the Columbian Exposition, a congress "of the enlightened and liberal minds of the world to discuss the interests of free institutions, and the best means for their promotion among the nations of the earth." The movement is already in the hands of a committee of two hundred representative men in this country, together with committees in all foreign lands that are touched with aspiration for human progress. Among the foreign members are Louis Kossuth, Señor Castelar, the President of the Brazilian Republic Fonseca, Henry Labouchere, Herbert Spencer, Professor James Bryce, Bartholdi, and many more. In this country, prominent workers cover every field of life and every persuasion. Cardinal Gibbons cooperates with Rabbi Gottheil, Bishop Cheney, and Robert Ingersoll. The Executive Committee consists of Colonel Ethan Allen, Hon. Andrew Carnegie, General Russell Alger, Governor Hoard, of Wisconsin, and nine more equally representative men. The inception of the plan is due, however, to a man of rare combinations, of modesty equalled by his daring, and executive power equal to his hopefulness and enthusiasm, Wm. O. McDowell, of Newark, New Jersey. He is himself unable to tell when or how the idea of a Congress of Republics entered his brain. Perhaps Bartholdi did more than he thought when he sent the statue of "Liberty Enlightening the World" to our metropolitan harbor. It was not set there for the benefit of American commerce, but for the whole world, as it sailed in and out the waters of a democratic Continent. An interesting man is this McDowell, worth a moment's thought of ours. Some years ago he was sent for by Governor Tilden, to draft a will for him. Instead of the usual legal verbiage he began, "Whereas this is a natural conflict between the two forms of government that now rule the world, that which is based on the theory of the divine right of kings and that which is based upon the divine rights of the people, and in order that the men who will be called on to fight the intellectual battles of the future may be duly prepared,—I dedicate my fortune to the education of mankind in Statecraft, on the lines laid down in the Declaration of Independence." This is surely the most curious will drawn up in our generation; but it reminds us startlingly of the wills. of Washington and Jefferson. One hundred years ago they did such things. Washington willed his property to found a National University at the Capital of the States. It is not yet organized, but it will be. Jefferson founded a university for his native state. Franklin left endowments for the apprentices who read the maxims of Poor Richard and practised them. What we have lacked of late is the enthusiastic belief in great principles that characterized these men. To associate our Columbian Exposition of what has been done with a zealous proclamation of what shall be done, is to complete and round out what was but half an idea.
Mr. McDowall on Bunker Hill's Day of 1890, issued a manifesto from Faunce's Tavern in New York, Washington's headquarters of one hundred years before. He said, "Not only in the United States, but in other countries of the world, there are a number of great patriotic societies devoted to the principles that a century ago resulted in the birth of these United States. Has not the time come for the issuing of an invitation to the patriotic societies of the world to each send one or more delegates to attend a Pan-Republic congress?" With this interrogation went others as to time and locality to be chosen, and who should be invited to appear as delegates, or to be represented by delegates; also concerning the true functions of such an assembly. The idea at its conception was bold and full of enthusiasm, but discreet and timely. ​Copies of Mr. McDowell's letter were sent to every member of the Order of the American Eagle; to the President and Vice-Presidents, Generals of the Sons of the American Revolution, and to the president of each State Society; to the members of the late Pan-American Congress, and to the President of each Republic in the world; to the press, and to representative men everywhere in sympathy with democratic institutions.
This was the inauguration of the present scheme to bring the nineteenth century to a white heat of enthusiasm as it passes over its work to the twentieth. Hundreds of replies came from all over the world favoring the suggested Congress. The movement, after a few preliminary gatherings, took the form of a committee of two hundred representative citizens of the United States, acting under the name of the Pan-Republic General Committee. Its first meeting was held in New York City in December of 1890, for the purpose of planning its work and dividing the same among sub-committees.
The outline of the work accomplished was to settle upon a name, and to define the object of the Congress; also to suggest in more specific form the work to be attempted. The general scope of the proposed Assembly was defined to be "the consideration of the welfare of free institutions, and the best means of promoting the same." In the consideration of questions civil and political, the Congress will discuss Constitutional and administrative reform; the establishment of legalized arbitration among all civilized peoples; the amelioration of severities, and the extinguishment of injustice in administering government; the dissolution of standing armies, and the substitution of the reign of intelligence and morals in place of brute force international intercourse on the basis of common and universal justice; the general distribution of knowledge without hindrance, thus creating international intelligence; the moral welfare of all peoples, and none the less the sanitary and general physical well-being of mankind.
Mr. McDowell has published a valuable epitome of the work that is possible. Much of this is borrowed from the final recommendations of the Pan-American Congress. (1) Measures that pertain to universal peace. (2) The formation of a customs union for all governments. (3) The union of all the great ports of Republics by closer commercial ties. (4) The establishment of uniform customs regulations. (5) The adoption of uniform weights, measures, and copyrights. (6) A common system of coinage. (7) A definite plan of arbitration. He would have discussed questions of human brotherhood, of labor and capital, of sanitation and health, of machinery and corporations, of banking, of stimulants and narcotics as effecting human degeneration, of economy and taxation, of education, of universal disarmament. "I desire that the flag of every Republic, wherever seen upon the face of the earth, shall be looked upon and welcomed by mankind as a pledge, promise and hope of a brighter future for all people." Dr. Porrifor Fazer says, "The Congress might organize an international Bureau as distant from governments as are the trade federations of capitalists, to which all grievances of the oppressed in all nations should be addressed when not righted at home. It might provide for triennial sessions in the different republican countries, and make itself the organ and mouthpiece of the victims of injustice everywhere, entirely independent of the diplomatic complications which frequently prevent governments, even in the settled conviction and desire to do right, from speaking frankly to their fellow powers. The Siberian outrages of Russia, the evictions in Ireland, the Jewish wrongs in Russia and Austria, the penalties of free speech in Germany, could be sternly rebuked by a voice—the voice of the people—which would command universal attention." Another suggestion is that the people can thus be educated to peaceful revolution. It is not improbable that such an international concourse might, in time, become a legally constituted Court of Inquiry into such popular questions as are suggested above, with certain powers to arbitrate.
It is clear that such a Congress as is proposed will have before it work enough of a characteristic sort. Nor will it have ​at all clear sailing and harmonious co-operation for the good of humanity, There will be ambitions and conflict of opinions with no little prejudice, and undoubtedly a large amount of "spread eagleism." There will be out of the inchoate beginnings certain clear-cut ideas and purposes brought to the sur face; and men of clearest intellectual power and moral determination will finally come to the front and shape internationalism into a world-wide democracy. There is little doubt but that the history of previous centuries will be, in great measure, repeated. The Franklins and Jeffersons and Hamiltons will agitate with characteristic and distinctive form, each from his own standpoint; and the end will be, as it always is, the triumph of judicious democracy. Extreme and revolutionary measures will find advocates; conservatives will wax eloquent over the grooves of the past. There is sure to be a clash with the relics of absolutism, the dei gratia in Church and State. Anarchy and Nihilism will manage sooner or later to be heard. Those who now lead may retire in alarm before the third triennial session of the Congress. We may be sure that the day is approaching for measures as startling as those of 1776 and 1800. The one need now is enthusiasm and faith. These alone have carried the world's greatest ideas forward to realization.
That such popular and special enthusiasm is not lacking, the letters and speeches of the ablest men in this land and in Europe attest. Cardinal Gibbons writes, "It will strike down the barriers that separate nation from nation and race from race. I look with satisfaction upon the first steps to be taken in this direction by the assembling of the Pan-Republic Congress." General Sherman wrote, "America is only on the threshold of her history. The whole world turns to us to see the result of our experiment." Ex-President Cleveland writes, "I assure you I am in accord with this movement which has for its object the drawing of the republics of the world into closer bonds of sympathy." Professor Geikie of Edinburgh writes, "I am in hearty sympathy with the objects of the Congress, although I am a loyal subject of this old monarchical country." John Boyle O'Reilley wrote just before his death, "If popular liberty is good, and enthusiasm a virtuous force, such a congress ought to be held. The nineteenth century could not close with a nobler work." Bishop Potter writes, "I wish success to every wise effort to draw closer the republics of the world." Bishop Cheney responds, "Taught by the policy of the kings let republics of the world unite, not by the alliance of ruling families or conjunction of great armies, but by such conferences as may lead to a wider spread of free principles, and a concerted action in all that tends to advance the rights of men." The grandson of Patrick Henry, Hon. Wm. Wirt Henry, writes, "I am in full sympathy, and consider the movement most timely." Miss Frances Willard responds, "It is in the air,—the great word fraternization." Professor Winchell wrote, "It fires my enthusiasm to think of such a gathering for the practical recognition of the fraternity of nations." These are but a handful of the responses, cordial and glowing, that have come in, indicative of the popular sentiment. Our century will forever be known for our great deed, the obliteration of the principle that it is right for man to be held as property by man. This was an inevitable consequence of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence. But the destruction of slavery only cleared the ground. We are now free to lead on. We have as yet done nothing in the way of establishing new and broader principles, such as our forefathers thought out, felt out, and established at the close of the last century. Our opportunity is at hand.