The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1899-12-15

slender resources Of our forefathers,
while now the opulent surplus is max
ing us the richest, most prosperous and
most progressive nation in the world.
"Washington's farewell address is
chart and compass for the twentieth
as it has been for the nineteenth CEN
fury. 1t is at once the sum and sub
stance of the principles of our ma
tional development and perpetuity and
the forecast of our fate. It's central
idea is that the liberty and happiness
of our people at home and our position
among foreign nations is wholly de-
pendent upon the preservation of the
union of the States. For that idea a
million Of citizens shed their blood, and
against it a half million died in battle
but the centennial of his death finds
us united people, and at every cross
roads, and in every hamlet all over
our land, the Stars and Stripes floating
from the school houses is eloquent tes-
timony that the present and coming
generations have one flag and one
country. He advised free, popular
education, by which law and liberty
should rest upon intelligence, and the
most complete and beneficient system
of common and high schools embrace
all our youth He warned against party
passion rising to revolution and when
the partisans of defeated candidate
for the Presidency believed him
wronged in the count, the strife was
settled not by civil war, but by a high
court of arbitration. He was strenu-
Gus that our Government should form
no permanent alliance with any Euro
pean power, and that we should keep
out of European policies, conflicts, and
politics. We always have been, and
we always will be, free from such en-
tanglements, and an effective treaty Of
offensive and defensive alliance could
never be confirmed. He zealously i'm
pressed the necessity and lesson of re-
ligion and morality. We have abolished
slavery, and extirpated polygamy, and
the churches never had so strong a
hold on the faith and understanding of
the people,
In the evolution of a hundred years
the Presidency has reached the dignity
and power desired by Washington but
denied by all his contemporaries. ex-
cept Hamilton. The possibilities of the
Chief Magistracy were discovered by
Jefferson when he surrendered consti-
tutional scruples for national safety by
the purchase of louisiana They
startled the county when General Jack
son seized the sovereign State of South
Carolina by the throat They received
the sanction of popular approval when,
in the stress of civil war, Lincoln, by
a stroke of his pen, confiscated four
hundred millions of recognized property
by freeing four millions of slaves. The
necessities of the situation in our island
protectorate and possessions have de-
volved still greater duties and graver
responsibilities on President Mckinley.
Extraordinary Capitalization and con-
centration of power at the Federal
Capital have created one of the fore
most of nations, without impairing the
rights, the proper independence or the
self-government of the States The
President of the United States is the
most powerful ruler in the world, but
only as the executive of a free people,
to whom every four years he surrenders
his office and prerogatives.
The peril of the nineteenth century
was disunion, that of the twentieth
will be congestion. The productive
power of invention, steam and cleo
tricity create surplus which endan-
gers the health, happiness and lives of
the people of Europe and America But
dependent races of the Orient and of
Africa, and the stimulating processes of
Western civilization upon their wants |
present limitless markets. The Unit
ed States, which stood on sufferance at