The Lafayette gazette. [volume] (Lafayette, La.) 1893-1921, 1898-07-23

Whatever the ultimate IeSulkS may
be, there must be temporary retro
erosion, If not decay. A people
habltuated to monarchial govern
ment will never become a race of
| freemen, nor a race of freemen
prosperous and happy people under
| a despotism. France has never
| been more and never will be more
than the mockery of a republic, and
Spain is utterly unfit for any other
sort of government than that under
which she exists now. The great
ness of a nation, Ike that of a
flower or fruit, is in the seed. If
the seed be sound the fruit will be
rich, otherwise not.
The fathers or founders of our
republic understood these principles,
and their purpose was to found
republic on principles entirely diff
ferent from those that constituted
the basis of any other nation or
republic that ever existed on the
face Of the globe. They had
studied history to good effect. They
understood the history of Greece
and Rome and knew that spoliatiou
and conquest were their undoing;
and, hence, Washington and Jeffer-
son end Hamilton and Madison
solemnly warned the American peo-
pie that, if they desired and hoped
to maintain their free Constitution
and the liberties and happiness of
the country, they should have no
entangling alliance with other ma
tons. Mr.. Jefferson specifically
warned us to seek no extensions of
territory that could not be defended
without a navy, and later Andrew
Jackson was equally earnest and
emphatic in his warnings to our
people to beware Of new territories,
of standing armies and navies.
But, say these imperialistic states
men, Washington, Jefferson and
Jackson were men of past age;
they lived and acted in different
times and conditions and could not
foresee the situation that prevails in
this age. Narrow delusion. They
were all sages and patriots, and
with a clear and unclouded ken
they saw the very conditions that
surround us now. They appre-
hended that the time would come
when sound and conservative
theories would yield to human
weakness; when greed and ambition
and folly would assert the m selves
precisely on the lines on which ti-ey
are moving today; and. hence, their
solemn and repeated warnings.
The fathers Of our republic lived,
it is true, under different conditions,
but their vision was clearer than is
that of the poppinjay, pothouse
demagogues and jingoes of today
American statesmen.
The "new policy" may not, as we
have said before, mean at once
throne and scepter, but it does mean
a brutal and selfish despotism in the
very near future. The iebas ed cit
liens of Rome, long after their wives
and children, their property, their
liberties and their lives were at the
nod Of the emperor, were foolish
to talk of sthe republic" and it's
glories; and, in the course of time,
the same degraded populace came
to love the fercest of the btutal en-
Der0rS becauSe these enlDerOrS Mum
dered the treasury, the provinces
and the wealthy classes to amuse
the mob with shows and supply
them with free corn. When Rome
in her madness, the same kind of
madness that now infects the Ameri-
can people, abandoned her time
honored policy of Italian unity and
adopted that of conquest and col
Onia1 DOSseSSiOnS her liberty was