The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1900-02-28
MEDDLING WITH Hor IRONS.

his party and its chief. He took a time
when few Senators were present and
forced the resolution to passage by de-
strategy. OF course Mr.. Allen knew
that his work would be undone, but he
was more than willing, as Populist
| politician, to let the Republican major
ity take the responsibility for an act
that would give point to the campaign
charge that the Mckinley men are
hand in glove with England.
Fortunately for the peace of Amer
lea, foreign chancelleries are acute and
well informed enough about the poll
tics of the United States to view with
tolerance the attempts of Congress
men in both Houses to medd4e with
critical affairs abroad, even though the
attempts may have a majority of the
popular vote back of them. Were this
not so there would be no end of trouble
in our foreign relations. We are saved
by our organic political system. If the
States were obliged to follow dema-
gogues who happened to represent a
popular idea of the moment or were or
ganized themselves as pure democracy
we conceive that the country would be
on the brink of war all the time, for it
is undeniable that the dema gogue with
his resolution of protest and sympathy
o., FOR. n Of thu n
support Of the masses. Americans
caught fire when Citizen Genet came
to the infant republic with the demand,
supported by the treaty of revolution
airy alliance, that the United States
should take the part of France in the
war then raging with Great Britain.
The people wanted to meet Genet half
way and would have done so had the
power been actually, other than theo-
retically, in their hands. The wisdom
and authority of Washington and his
supporters in Congress J cid them hack
-whereupon Washington was de-
nounced on the hastings and IN the
yellow press of the period as q selfish
conspirator against liberty. He was
right, however, just as the Republican
Administration of the present day is
right in frowning down all efforts to
mix in the United States with the
South African i.nbroglio.
I'VE live under q government" said
Wendell Phillips, "of men and newspa-
pers." He might have added, "partic-
ularly OF men," Happily, the govern
ments we elect do not feel it their duty
to register every act passed in the ca
PRECIOUS forum of public opinion, and
TO that extent we are governed by in
dividuals. 1t Is better so than by an
absolute democracy. If great foreign
policies were referred to town meet
ings ruin would soon stare the coun-
try in the face. The town meeting
would have gone with Genet against
England; it would have fought Turkey
TO aid Greece in the latter's war Of in
dependence; 1t would have backed Kos
suth with guns in his effort to free
Hungary; it might have declared for
an Irish republic or an Armenian pro-
Lectorate. When it really got the up
per hand of the government, as it did
with the aid of the popular press in the
affair with Spain, it plunged the coup-
try into debt and unknown periis-for
what? To save the reconcentrado?
| Well, the reconcentrado turned out TO
be, in the main, Pigment of the Jour-
nalistic imagination? To free the Gu
ban revolutionist? That was much
like freeing a pursued fugitive from
Jail. Despite the rosy view taken of
him by the American people, the Gu
ban was about as much of a fraud as
a patriot as the Armenian is as a
Christian. Half the people who wept
salt tears for him in 1898 are now sor-
ry that he was not left to the tender
mercies of the Don. But they had
their way and now, with Cuban, Porto
Rican and Philippine troubles thicken-
Ing about them, and money going to
waste like water over a dam, they wish
they had left foreign affairs in the fall
Of 81 and the spring of '9S to those
charged with the Constitutional re-
sponsibility for them.
We shall not make the mistake oveI
again in connection with the Boert
and luckily the masses, with sense
gained from experience, are not press
ing the subject unduly. Allen has M
such backing for his resolutions a.
certain Senators had two years ago fo
theirs. But If he had, it would prob
ably make no difference with the Ad
. ministration which, though driven int,
the Spanish war by public sentiment
would rather lose it's existence than II
% plunge the United States into dificuI
ties with the only friend 1t has anon,
the Ola World powers, and all for tn,
sake of a parcel of Dutchmen who ar,
as much in the way of the progress O
South Africa as their ancestral kins