The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1900-10-17

to a heritage Of free gov
ernment and bred in the at
mosphere of well-regulated liberty,
could be coerced or cajoled into part
Ing with their freedom is not shared
by any citizen in a normal state of
health. We are unable to credit Mr..
Bryan and his local echoes with really
taking any stock in it beyond its
diminishing utility as campaign
! scarecrow.
| When a man is not in good health;
when his bodily functions are de-
ranged when the food he eats does
not supply requisite nutrition, when
his blood is watery, his nerves at ten
sion and his whole inward apparatus
consciously or unconsciously out Of
keller, then it not infrequently hap
pens that he is psychologically ripe to
catch just such epidemic vagaries as
this recent spawn Of Organism that the
men and women Of this great repub-
lie purpose, if Mckinley is reelected,
to turn oppressors, forego their civic
rights and set up a king. 1ntemper-
ate brooding on dire conjectures touch
| ing the remote and immeasurahle
| future tends to produce the condition
Of mind in which manlas are bred; but
manias are not the true basis of ma
jority rule.
The cry of imperialism has been
made every time a big undertaking
was in hand. 1t was bugaboo in the
convention which framed our consti.
tuition. 1t made a continual din in the
ears of Washington. 1t reverberated
in the days of jefferson. 1t was the
feature of the opposition's attacks
upon Andrew Jackson. And in later
years, when was it more intemper-
ately and abusively resorted to than
in the Democracy's onslaughts upon
those pillars of human freedom, Abra-
ham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant?
The American people are getting used
to this fake YELL 1t doesn't fool them
a little bit.
"1mperialism" in the Philippines
means doing as much as we can as
fast as we can for a mixed collection
of Malays thrown under our flag by
the fortunes of war and with a few
conspicuous exceptions as little fitted
to govern themselves as the Piute
Indians on our western plains. When
these untutored victims of Spanish
neglect are rebellious and homicda!
and inclined to repay kindness with
knife stabs and pistol shots it means
taking them by the nape of the neck
and administering paternal discipline;
but to all who behave it means in
struction, protection, encouragement
and development toward the goal of
unfettered self-rule. Hifalutin talk
about the consent of the governed"
and the "inalienablc rights of man."
coming from men who forget all about
the political fate of the disfranchised
southern negro, makes no difference in
the fact that we have got the Philip
pine bear by the tail and must hold on
until the animal is tanned. The treaty
of Paris made these islands property
of the United States and put upon the
president the duty of enforcing order
in them until he gets further orders
from the people. 1t is a big job and
not yet ended, but it's completion will
not be expedited by back-fring at
horne.
1t belongs to congress to say how
these new dependencies, when put in
order, shall be governed, If congress
shall show any tendency toward un-
American methods then will be the
time for our ant-mperialist fellow
citizens to arise and object. Just now
the proposition is the fiat one Of stand
Ing by the flag and the man who won't |
do that. however well-meanng, is to
every practical purpose traitor to his
country because an alder and abettor
of it's armed foes,
Bryan denies the report that he had |
promised a cabinet position to Croker. |
The fact seems to be that Bryan has |
promised nothing at all,except to kick |
the spinal column out of the gold |
standard and to make the American |
flag in the Philippines look like a |
baek-number porous plaster.
If American statesmanshlp had no |
better representatives than such men |
as Bryan, Altgeld, Pettigrew and Till |
man, the country would have to con-
fess that "the While mans burden" was |
too heavy, But the mantles of Jeffer-