Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1900-11-02
WHOLE NUMBER 2,1O9.
The Issue Upon Us.
Men % National Repute. Who Have Always
Been Republicans. Sound Warning Against
imperialism.

uWPCttohStSs
The American Anti.ImperialistiC
League issued an address tonight tc
all independent voters in the United
States, asking them to support William
J. Bryan for President.
Among the names attached to the
document are those OF George s. Bout
we'll, Boston; ID. II. Chamberlain
Massachusetts,; Joseph +. Fowler
Washington, D. c.; ex-United States
Senator; Edwin L. Godkin. New York
William Lloyd Garrison, Boston; Jud.
son Harmon, Cincinnati, ex-Attorney.
General; Bishop F. D. Huntington,
Syracuse, N. "; Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, Boston; ex-Congressman
Henry u. johnson of Indiana; William
R. Lord, Portland, Or; Charles Eliot
Norton, Harvard University; Franklin
Pierce, New York; Arthur Latham
Perry, Williams College; Edward M.
Shepard, New York; Morfeld Storey,
Boston; Edwin F. Uhl, Grand Rapids,
John J. Valentine, President Wells
Fargo Express Co.; United States
Senator George L. Wellington, Mary
land, and ex-Congressman John Dewett
Warner of New York. The address
says:
"We regard with profound appre-
hension the course of the present Ad-
ministration in Porto Rico and the
Philippines. Our prior acquisitions
were of adjacent territory, the extern
sion of the area of constitutional gov.
ernment and the creation OF new
States of the Union. We made their
few inhabitants citizens; our people
settled them: we there established the
institutions Of freedom. For the first
time in our history it is now proposed
that the President and Congress shall
rule vast territories and millions OF
men outside of our constitutional sys.
tenn. Officials sworn to support the
Constitution and deriving all their
powers therefrom have acquired COL
onies and assumed arbitrary authority
to govern their inhabitants without
consent; and to tax them without
representation. This policy offers to
the people of Porto Rico and the
Philippines no hope Of independence,
no prospect of American citizenship,
no representation in the Congress that
taxes them. This is the government
of men by arbitrary power; this is i'm.
perialism.
"We believe it is the fiist duty of
the American people to stamp with
disapproval doctrines so hostile to
liberty and dangerous to constitu.
tional government. Ii they are to re-
main free and their government is to
continue representative, their servants
must not have or exercise any but
constitutional powers. Between the
claim of freedom that all men are en-
titled in equal political right and the
dogma OF tyranny that might makes
right, there is no middle around.
"We have not prior to this year sup
ported the candidacy OF Mr.. Bryan.
We do not now concur in certain of
his views on minor issues. Yet his
position on the supreme issue of the
present campaign is so sound, and his
advocacy of it has been so able and
courageous that we now favor his elec-
ton as the most effective way of show
ing disapproval OF Mr.. McKinley's
course. Without claiming any spe.
cial political influence we unite, for
what our example may be worth to our
fellow citizens, in this statement of
proposed action in the presence of a
greater danger than we have encoun-
tered since the Pilgrims landed at
Plymouth-the danger that we are to
be transformed from republic, found
ed on the Declaration of Independ.
ence, guided by the counsels of Wash
ington, into . vulgar, commonplace
empire, founded on physical force.
We invite the cooperation of all in
dependent voters to avert this great
and impending danger"