The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1899-12-22

ton, and against which we most earn
estly and honestly protest, as being
conceived in the worst passions of the
human heart and fraught with grave
and threatening dangers to the repub-
lic.-H. C. Bell, in Jeffersonan Demo-
crat.
The condition which confronts lis
today finds d deadly parallel in the
history of the early Roman republic.
For nearly 500 years before the dawn
of the Christian era, Rome was a re-
public in name, and more or less, in
varying fortune, in fact. Then, as
now, there were two contending par
ties-an arlStocracy and democracy.
or as they were sometimes called, the
patricians and the plebeians. The
former held the Offices and made the
laws, while the latter paid the taxes
and fought the battles. There was an
irrepressible conflict continually exist
ing between them So great was the
gulf that divided them that at first it
was unlawful for plebcians to inter-
marry with patricians, and this was
masse and forced from the aristocracy
the Laws of the Twelve Tables"
which were written on twelve tables
of bronze and fastened to the orators
platform in the Forum, and every
school5oy was required to learn them
by heart. Under these laws the people
for time secured reasonable sem
al
rights. But the conflict between the
classes only smoldered for awhile, to
break out afresh ring as it was
then called, sprang up, and by the use
of money secured all the offices, and
by grants of special privileges concil-
ated the armies, so that in a few years
nothing more was heard of patricians
and plebeians, but Rome had become
a commonwealth Of millionaires and
beggars." Then the ring determined
to extend its jurisdiction. and so a pol
icy of expansion was adopted. large
armies, amounting to hundreds of
thousands of soldiers. were raised.
war of conquest followed. extending
not only over surrounding and adjoin-
V.
The rights and privileges of the de-
mocracy dwindled into the right to
pay taxes and to die as soldiers, which
their patriotism and their war spirit
caused them to do. Tiberius and
Gracious and Cicero vainly strove and
died for the right of the people
against the power of the ring" repre-
mi
until in the reddening dawn of the
birthday of the Christian era, the
Roman republic. after struggle for
nearly 500 years, was forever extin-
guished at the battle of Actium.
Compressed into a moral, the lesson
thus taught may be expressed in two
words-trusts, expansion TRUSTS"
whereby great riches are concentrated,
until the Offices of the government are
hlled at their dictates, and public Off
GERS are their manacled slaves.
trusts whereby the rights of the
people are taken away, their holdings
con1iscated by the slow but sure sys-
tenn Of taxation and usury, and the
standing army is the only refuge from
perjury. Trusts" and tramps, the tan
dem team of Imperialism. Trusts nat
urally breed expansion. For when the
trusts have drained dry the sustenance
of their own people, they must have
new fields to deplete. Expansion means
large standing armies, for expansion
and conquest are synonymous terms,
and conquest means the sacrifice of the
lives of thousands of our own people,
in order that the trusts may gather
into their insatiate maws the property
and riches which God has given to the
people Of other nations Trusts. ex-
pansion. large armies, the three in
separable, insatiate and inevitable
forerunners Of imperialism. Gov Ste
phens OF Missouri, in St. Louis Speech
Against Trusts.