The semi-weekly messenger., 1901-05-14
AN ARTEUL PHRASE-MAKER

The Messenger lately referred to Nc
Kinley as a phrase-maker. He thinks
felicitious saying that might become
automatic settles a principle and that he
might violate pledges and opinions at
will under changed conditions of policy
or necessity. His latest dodge in the
aphoristic vein was to tell people in the
far south Don't be alarmed about
militarism or imperialism" he said at
FL Passo. I'VE know no imperialism
in the United states except the imperi-
alism of a sovereign people, No one
who has watched his tergiversationS
and acrobatic political ring perform
ances for the last few years can believe
that he meant seriously to go against
his recent record as to Imperialism,
but was simply trying to deceive the
thoughtless listeners by the use of
familiar words that might convey
covet meaning. If Mckinley is not
really for militarism and empire then
he is a hopeless demagogue and hum
bug in politics. His using the term
sovereign people is well understood
in the mouths of genuine. simon-pure,
JefferSonian democrats who hold stead
fastly to the constitution and states
rights. Even Lincoln appears to have
spoken of the people in the usual dem
ocratic sense. But Mckinley is no
democrat. but a republican of republi-
cans. politician who always voted for
force bills aimed at the SOUTH and was
the main author of the worst tariff this
country or the world ever saw until
it was changed later by the republican
party and made more drastic, more op-
pressive, more of the intense robber
kind. The republican supreme court
said that tariff levied for any purpose
other than revenue was robbery
And so it is. and will ever be.
The able. scholarly independent New
York Evening Post sees McKinley's s
duplicity in the use of the deceptive
phrase sovereign people as he means
it at heart. 1t was of course applaud
ed. The Evening Post says with lucid
ity and directness:
imperialism as here used, and as
forming a feature of current political
debate, means the government of a
people by external authority in which
they have no share. 1t makes no diff
ference whether this external author
ity consists of one man or many, wheth-
er it is of a single sovereign or of "a
sovereign people, The Imperialism of
ancient Rome did not begin with
Julius Caesar. The imperialism of
modern Russia is not restricted to the
Gar or to the imperial family. 1t is
a system. These facts enable us to
gauge Mr.. McKinley's glib saying at its
true value. 1t is as though he had said:
we have no imperialism in the United
States except the government of one
people by another without the consent
Of the governed If he had put it in
those words. his hearers would have
said. Well. that is Imperialism.
Whether they would have greeted it
with continued applause is doubtful"
If there is a more dangerous mall
living now in the United States than
this gilded phrase-maker and distribut-
er Of taffy and Office, we have no know
ledge of him. He may not be so abb
solutely mean and corrupt as Mark
Hanna. his boss. but he partakes of the
results that follow Marks system of
governing by bribes and purchase
How was Mckinley twice elected? By
buying hundreds of thousands of white
and negro voters. The country would
be extremely happy If it could be pre-
cisely as it was in 1896, when the willy,
plausible. insinuating manipulator went
into the chair of the presidency.