Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1901-01-11
Gen. Benjamin Harrison's address

Gen. Benjamin Harrison's address at
Ann Arbor on the constitutional question
arising from our recent conQuests being
quite imperfectiy reported by wire and in
the local papers, he has furnished a copy
of it to the North American Review, and
1t appears in full in the number for this
month. The closing passages are as fol.
lows:-
1--WE are now having it dinned into our
ears that expansion Is the law of life.
and that expansion is not practicable if
the Constitution is to go with the flag.
Lord Salisbury some years ago stated
this supposed law of national life. In a
recent address, Mr.. James Bryce saws,
by way of comment:
=" HE thinks it like a. bicycle which
must fall when it comes to a standstill
1t is an awkward result of this doctrine
that when there is no more room for ex-
pansion. and a time must come, perhaps
soon, when there will be no more room.
the empire will begin to decllne.'
"lf Great Britain, with her accepted
methods of territorial growth, finds the
problem of growth by expansion ncreas-
ingly hard. it will be harder for us, for
we are fettered by our traditions AS to
popular rights, at least-if not by our
Constitution.
"3ut expansion Is not necessarily of a
healthy sort; it may be dropsical If
judgment is passed now, the attempted
conquest of the 2oer republics has not
strengthened Great Britain. She has not
gained esteem. She has not increased
her loyal population. She has created a
need for more outlaying garrisons-al-
ready too numerous. She has strained
her military and financial resources, and
has had a revelation of the need of larger
armies and stronger coast defences at
home. The recent appeal of Lord Sails
bury at the Lord Mayors banquet for
! more complete island defences is most
significant. Did the South African war
furnish IA truer measure of the empire S
land strength than the familiar cam
paigning against half-savage peoples has
done? The old coach, with its power to
stand as well as to move, may after all
be safer carriage for the hopes and in-
terests of great people than the bicycle.
"Some one Will say increasing years
and retirement and introspection have
broken your touch with practical affair
and left you out of sympathy with the
glowing prospect of territorial expansion
that now opens before us; that-it has
always been so; the Louisiana and the
Alaskan purchase were opposed by some
fearful souls. But | have been making
no argument against expansion. The
recent acquisitions from Spain must pre-
sent widely different conditions from al
previous acquisitions of territory. since
it seems to be admitted that they cannot
lie allowed to become "A part of the
| United States without loss that over
balances the gain; that we can only
safely acquire them upon the condition
that we can govern them without any
cons titutional restraint.
zone who has retired from the service
but not from the love of his country
must be pardoned if he finds himself uu
able to r, iOice in the acquisition of lands
aud forests aud mines and commerce.. "A
the cost of the abandonment of the ole
American idea that government o
absolute powers is an intOlerable thing
and under The Institution of the United
States an impossible thing The view o
the Constitution have suggested vii
not limit the power of territorial eXpan
sion; but IT will lead Us to limit the Us,
of that power to regions that NAV safely
become part of the United States, anC
to peoples whose American CITIZENSHIP
may be allowed. 1t has been said tina
the flash of Dewey's guns in Manila bay
revealed to the American people a new
mission. like rather TO think of then
as revealing the same old mission tina
we read in the flash of Washington
guns at Yorktown.
God forbid that the day should eve
come when, in the American mind, tn,
thought Of man as consumer shall
submerge the old American thought o
man as a creature of God, endowed witt
'unallenable rights.