The Portland daily press., 1889-07-05
amendment II is this. rApplause. |

amendment, it is this Applause.1 J.,
But fellow citizens, there is nothing III
this which controyerts the principles Oh !ne
constitution. There is nothing In 1t WHICH
changed the fundamental principles govern
ing this nation.
In 1873 the Navigation Islands,Dow KNOWN
as the Samoan Islands. applied to the Un n;r
ed States to extend protect0rate IN tnoii
behalf Yielding undoubtedly to the senti-
ment which had become so firmly es!ap,
lished in the minds of our people, the United
States declined to accept the protectoia...es :
and we thought that we had rellevea Jul
selves of that subject matter. We nad com,
pleted our policy as between ourselves anu
Europe across the Atlantic, and we saw no
occasion for extending different poncy
across the Pacific but in 1884 Germany ana
England divided up the island OIL New
Guinea In 1886 they parcelled out the
Southern Pacific Ocean, covering an EXTENT
of nearly forty-ive degrees of Latitude ana
nearly as many of longitude, and we sudden
" found Europe. not beyond the Atlantic,
but in the Pacific, where the day OF the
Western hemisphere meets the day OF the
Eastern.
Mr.. Sherman, the chairman of the commit
tee on foreign relations of the Senate, DC.
at Samoa: 70 me it seems the smallest
controversy in which the United States could
be or has ever been engaged" But, fellow
citizens, whether the question concerns only
the Navigator Islands, with a population
about equal to that of Portland and terri
tory about equal to that of York county, or
whether it concerns any of the great nations
bordering upon the Atlantic ocean, IL it
touches this doctrine to which have called
attention. 1t deserves our careful and
thoughtful consideration. The question may
occur and we may yet be called upon to meet
it, whether or not we shall adhere to the
position that nOli me td1,gere covers the
fourquarters of our relations with foreigners,
whether we shall always ask, ARE we our
brothers keeper" or whether we shall main
tain that humanity will be better served by
maintenance of our traditional policy.
When that comes l have no doubt the
country will meet it properly; but for the
present all we can say, and so far l must
admit we have apparently grated upon our
constitution an unwritten law, that the
Monroe doctrine has SO fitted itself"into
the hearts of our people, that upon any
gross infractiOn of it the President would be
sustained in using at once the whole moral
power and perhaps the physical forces of the
nation. [Applause.J
Now, fellow.c citizens, l have given you.
briefly, sketch of the historical progress of
our constitutional experience. | have said
enough to you to illustrate the various pr0po-
sitions made by those who claim that we
have drifted away from the principles of our
fathers. have not spoken of many PROPOSE
ti0ns of minor character made in that
direction by him. | have given you the
salient illustrations; and l submit to you
whether the lesson of the century does not
show that the fathers awaited themselves of
their experience gathered during the long
war of the revolution, as we'll as before and
after it. of their great wisdom, of the tradi-
tions which came to them as descendants of
the freedom-loving race of history, the
Anglo-Saxon, whether they did not avail
themselves of all these to plant deeply the
tree of liberty, SO that it stands firm and I'M
shaken by the force of time? And / unite
here in the prayer of the revered Bancroft:
"Never may its trunk be riven by the light
ming, nor its branches crash each other in
the maddening storm, nor its beauty wither,
nor its root decay" Loud applause.l
AT the close, the band. quartette, and audi
ence joined in rendering America" and
the benediction was asked by the Rev. J. r.
Crosser.