The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1900-09-04


which should be cured by legislation.
To support permanent army of 1907
900 men requires approximately one-half
as much money as is annually expended
for education in the United States. How
| the gentle and peaceful process of intel
| lectual development than to blow them
UP with powder and dynamite?
DANGER OF IMPERIALISM.
Imperialism involves a departure from
principles which were universally ac-
copied in this country until within two
years. To know that all men are created
| equal one needs not the wisdom of
sage or the learning of the schools. 1t
was declared to be a self evident truth;
it was evident to those who pledged their
lives to the maintenance of the Declara-
ton OF independence, and it is evident
still to those who are not blinded by the
glamor of wealth and the glittering
promises of a colonial system. If all
men are created equal and endowed with
nalienable rights, it follows as logical
and a necessary sequence that govern
ments were instituted for the welfare OF
all and derive their powers from the
consent of the governed. On the pres
ervation of this doctrine our hopes de-
pend; if it is abandoned there is no
foundation upon which a government like
ours can be constructed. Do not al
low yourselves to be deceived by those
who question the capacity of this people
or that people for government
Macauley, in his essay on John Milton
points out the folly of attempting to
prepare people for self-govcrnment by
DENYING them the right to participate IN
their own government. He said:
"Many politicians of our time are in
the habit of laying it down as self
evident proposition that no people ought
to be free until they are fit to use their
freedom. The maxim is worthy or the
fool in the old story who resolved not
TO go into the water until he had learned
to swim. If men are to wait for liberty
until they become wise and good in slaV-
ery. they must indeed wait forever"
THE WARNING OF LINCOLN.
When 1 say that those who distrust the
capacity of the people for self-govern-
ment tend directly toward monarchy, l
am only repeating what Lincoln delib-
| erately declared in his first annual mes
| sage. He said:
Monarchy itself is sometimes limited
| at as a possible refuge from the power
| Of the people. In my present position L
| could scarcely be justified were l to
omit raising a warning voice against the
approach of returning to despotism. 1t
is not needed nor fitting here that a
general argument should be made in ia
| vor of popular institutions; but there is
| one point, with its connections not SO
hackneyed as most others, to which l
| ask brief attention. 1t is the effort to
place capital on an equal footing with,
| if not above labor, in the structure OF
government. No men living are more
worthy to be trusted than those who toll
! up from poverty; none less inclined TO
| take or touch aught which they have not
honestly earned. Let them beware Of
| surrendering a political power which
| they already possess and which, if sur
rendered. will surely be used to close the
| door of advancement against such as
they. and to fix new disabilities and bur-
| dens upon them till all of liberty shall
| be lost"
The warning is even more needed now
than it was forty years ago. The army
! and navy journal is already justifying
! the colonial idea, and declaring that fate
! has decreed for us destiny in which an
| imperial executive, free from the re-
| straints of written constitution, will
| govern subjects according to his own
pleasure.
| The United States Investors Review,
published at Boston, in its issue OF July
| 2S, says:
only blind person can fail to see
| that remarkable transformations of one
! kind or another are in store for the race;
hence the folly of asserting that the
| the policy of this country which is des-
| tined to play such leading part in human
| affairs of the future shall be governed
| for the most part by political maXims
uttered more than q hundred years ago.
| The greatest evil which now confronts
| this republic is the clamor raised by a
| certain faction for a settlement of prob
| lens of State by just such method as
we have been deprecating. Considerably
more than a century ago a certain no
| table declaration was made in this coun-
| try to the effect that all men ought to
| a generalization Of the French school of
| Voltaire and the encyclopedias. 1t is a
! diction absolutely lacking foundation In
| history and incapable of syllogistic 1usti-
| fication. 1t was, however, handy phrase
| fCr us 10 employ Wnen asserting our
| right to break away from the mother
country; it suited the exigencies of our
situation in 1875 admirably, though in it
self but habit of sublimated demagog-
| ism. The declaration was a serviceable
means to the end that was at that time
desired. To bring forward this declara-
| ton in this year, 1900, in connection
| with our treatment of the Filipinos and
| the Cubans, is as gross an absurdity as
ever was practiced. To do so is to offer
an insult to the intelligence of the peo-
| pie who first subscribed to the declara-
| ton in qestion.'
DESTINY OF THE NATION.
But why quote from newspapers as 10
what may be done hereafter in the pres
| ence of a law already enacted which
makes subjects of the Porto Rlcans,
withdraws from them the guarantee or
the Constitution, and asserts the power
of the President and Congress to govern
them without their consent and tax them
without representations power as UNI
limited and tyrannical as ever was as
| serted or exercised by any ruler in all
the history of the human race? This doc
trine has not yet been approved by the
| people; it furnishes the supreme ques-