Iron County register., 1900-05-10
UNDER THE CONSTITUTION.
The Republican Policy of Expansion
Is at Variance with Jeffer-
sOnian Principles.

To justify the criminal aggression"
If William Mckinley. which has be-
come the settled policy of the repub-
lean party, its advocates are COM
PEELED to malign the memory Of
Thomas Jefferson and his succeeding
American brethren of the same states
nenlike qualities by putting false
construction upon their acts through
which alone this nation has grown to
be a world power. Senator Hoar
points out their misconception of the
meaning of expansion under the con-
stitution, and shows that their per-
version of the meaning has brought
them to imperialism. In his great
speech in the senate against the i'm
perialistic policy of the Mckinley ad-
ministration and of the republican
party, the senator says:
ITO Justify the denial of the equality of
individual manhood and equality of indi-
vidual states, the advocates of the policy
of imperialism are driven to the strange
affirmation that Thomas jefferson did not
believe it and contradicted it when he pur-
chased Louisiana; that John Quincy Adams
did not believe it and contradicted it when
he bought Florida: that Abraham Lincoln
he put down the rebellion; that Charles
Sumner did not believe it and contradicted
it when he bought Alaska. They say that
because with the full and practical con-
sent of the men who occupied them, these
men bought great spaces of territory occu-
pied by sparse and scattered populations.
neither owning it nor pretending to own
it, not ca pahle of occupying 1t or govern
ing it, destitute of every single attribute
which makes or can make a nation or
statesmen & of designing
/ to make the territory acquired into equal
sta tes, to be dwelt in and governed under
our constitution by men with rights equal
to our own-that therefore you may get
by purchase or by conquest an unwilling
people occupying and governing a thickly
settled territory, possessing every at
tribute of a national life enjoying free
dom they have themselves achieved; that
you may crush out their national life; that
YOU may overthrow their institutions; that
you may strangle their freedom; that you
may put over them governors Whom you
appoint and i'll whose appointment they
have no voice; that you may max laws Tor
them in Your interest and not IN theirs;
that you may overthrow their republican
liberty and in doing this you appeal to the
example of Thomas Jefferson and John
Quincy Adams and Abraham Lincoln and
Charles Sumner.
Thomas Jefferson comes down in his
tory with the Declaration of Independence
in one hand and the title deed of Louisiana
in the other. Do you think his left hand
knew not what his right hand did? Do you
think these two immortal transactions con-
tradicted each other? Do you think he
bought men like sheep and paid for them
in gold? 1t is true the men of the Declara-
tion held slaves. Jefferson felt the incon-
sistency, and declared that he trembled
for his country when he felt that God was
just. But he lived and died in the expecta-
ton that the Declaration would abolish
slavery, as it did.
I'm every accession of territory to this
country ever made we recognized fully the
doctrine of the consent of the governed
and the doctrine that territory so acquired
must be held to be made into states. The
men who say that Jefferson violated the
doctrine of the Declaration when he bought
Louisiana, and John Quincy Adams when
he acquired Florida, and Summer when he
made his great speech for Alaska, might,
with as much reason, justify a rape by cit
ing the precedent of every lawful marriage
that has taken place since the beginning
of time