The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1900-03-29
VOICE OF WEST.
CONTINUED from First Page.)

perial state of New York, or of Indiana.
the very heart of the nation; and that
ately and irrevocably, now and for all
the future. This is the alternative
forced upon US by the opposition to the
government. This is the alternative
which desperate faction, searching
for campaign issue, advances at one
of the critical periods of our history.
PRINCIPLE OF FREE HAND
STATED.
The opposition says that we shall be-
stow government now. The gov
eminent says that we must not at the
present time consolidate them with the
self-governing people of the republic;
the opposition says that they are this
already, by a constitution that travels
faster than our intentions and applies,
by its own force and in its entirety, to
situations for the control of which the
fathers wrote an apt and specific clause
in that very constitution itself The
government says that our power is as
ample as the necessities of any pos
Sible situation: that to unprecedented
conditions we may apply unprecedented
devices. just as our fathers applied new
methods to the novel conditions that
surrounded them; the opposition say
that our power is limited to a fixed and
certain method. not designed for the
emergency confronting US, not appli-
cable to the conditions before US. The
opposition says that in working out the
welfare of our island wards we have
no liberty of invention, no scope for the
exercise of common sense, no power to
apply to one situation that method
which is best for it, and to a different
situation another method which is best
for it.
OUR DESTINY AS A MASTER PEG
PIE INVOLVED.
Mr.President, that phrase is no vague
nor vain expression. 1t is the hottest
article of faith in the breast of the COM
mon American citizen. He believes that
this people is becoming and is to be
the sovereign and saving power among
the nations. He knows that human
progress is not steady and continuous,
but by succeeding mighty impulses inn
parted by the master people of each
great period of human development;
that those master peoples who have
been the successive guardians of the
progress of mankind have been endoW-
ed with a vitality, an organizing, adj
ministering, ruling power which made
them, in their day, the SOvere1gnS OF the
world; that no matter how cruel or I'M
just to the eye of the time, particular
and specific manifestations of that SOW
ereignty appeared, to the eye OF history
the work of each of these master peO-
pies was a necessary part in the devel-
opment of the human race. Senators,
the profundest faith of the American
people is that our day as the master
people of this world has daWned, and
their profundest resolution, so deep and
elemental that it is an instinct, is that
we will, in our great day of world do
minion, do our great work of world re-
generation better ever than England
did her vast and vet, compared with
ours, her lesser work in her day, which
now perhaps is waning; better even
than Rome did hers (and at her Titanic
achievements let no man Sneer); better
still than the Greeks did their work, in
to which the very roots of our civiliza-
ton and liberty sink and draw, through
the soil of three thousand years, some
of the most precious elements of our
moral and intellectual life.
THE HIGHER LAW OF NATIONAL
POWER.
Sir, it is time to announce the higher
| law of national power, and the duty it
! implies; of national aspirations and the
work that justifieS them. The American
| people were not made for mere pas
| sive example; we were made for an &C
tive, positive. constructive force among
mankind. Surely ours is not the base
| destiny of him who eats and drinks and
| is merry because tomorrow he dies.
! Surely our infinite energy, passing the
| power of any people in the v orld today,
| and, as 1 believe, of any people who
ever lived, is meant for a VaSter work
and a nobler than Self-adOrnment, self
indulgence and standardization. And If
! this is so, are we to be stayed by some
| quibbler'S strained construction of our
| constitution as a dead and merely writ
! ten lDSII anu IiOl DIS d 11NlAlSs VI
1 tai growing constitution. developing as
the American people develop, and like
| Christianity revealing new beauties and
| new powers as our sight becomes
stronger, clearer, more enlightened?
THE DANGER AND VALUE OF
PRECEDENTS.
The situation is, for US, unprecedent-
ed. Our action must be without exam
| pie. The decisions of our supreme court
| are not to the point, and where analogy
| that fraileSt of the methods of reason
| ing applies those decisions to the pres
ent situation, they are conflicting and
| confused. This is rather fortunate thar
the reverse New situations should be
| met with new methods. We should have
! the courage of our new condition, the
l frankness of our new difficulty,th con
struetive ability of our new necessity
Search for presidents where none car
exist, effort to apply opinions of judges
| to a condition neither before them MOI
| dreamed of when they wrote those
opinions, is a waste of intellect.
I admit and assert the authority o
| precedent; understand the philosophy
/ deep as civilization itself. upon which
the authority of precedent rests. Blu
that very reason demands that prece
dents shall apply only to like situation:
and that the solutions of new problem:
shall not be hampered and involved by
fitting them into ancient and inapplica
Bile precedents The very philosophy o
precedent demands the creation of new
| precedentS our of new occasions. Sure
" we can see more clearly the situation
before US with our living eyes. than witt
the dead eyes of the fathers, and ever
those dead eyes looking not at our pro
blems, but at theirs.
Can we, therefore, unaided by judicia
decisions, find in the Constitution tn
free hand needful for our new task
Have we the discretion of our own wis
dom? Are we to have the liberty o
our national manhood? Are we to hav
the power of our mission? Did the faith
ers, unthinking, put a period to GU
career as an administering people an
close the door of the future in ourfaces
Is this great movement, which ha
aroused the world to wonder, inspire
the American people with the mobiles
national feeling mankind has ever see
since the days of Elizabeth, and whic
makes US, for the first time, the master
of our fate because it makes US tn
master of the nations; is this most hope
full movement in the evolution of tn
worlds civilization; this awakening o
the American people to their power