The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-04-27
THE RIGHT
 TO SECEDE [. N. Shaw Speaks of the
 SOuth'S Action. BANQUET IN PITTsBURG
Secretary of Treasury Tells Of
 Nations Development.
Says the Civil War Decided That rsunited States" is Singular Instead of Plural-Attorney
 General Knox Presides


 r,al dinner of the American Republican Club of this city in commemoration or tne birthday of General Ulysses g. Grans was held at the Hotel Henry tonight. Hon. P. c. Knox, Attorney General Of the United States, was toastmaster. and seat ed about him were Hon. l.. M. shaw Secretary of the Treasury; Hon. H. c. Payne, Postmaster General; Congress- man Charles E. Littlefield of Maine and others Covers were laid for 600 and all the chairs were occupied.
 Secretary Shaw traced the development of the country from scattered colonies, each independent of the other and not in- frequently antagonistic. to it's present commanding position as unified sister hood of States.
 .The trend of thought" he said, ''has been ever towards central government
 He referred to the contending and an- tagoaistic schools of political thought that during seventy years of the national existence struggled for supremacy.
 He did not intimate a Justification of the attempt on the part of the eleven States to establish confederacy, but nenLlOneu dS n6 VhSfcus ttidt uuu HUI then been determined that a State did not pogsess the right to withdraw at pleasure.
 The Right to secede.
 He said it was by no means certain that the Supreme Court of the United States would have unanimously held, prior to the civil war, had the question been prop erly brought before 1t. that State might not seoede. Thomas Jefferson usually, if not always referred to the United States ii, the plural number. but" said he, the court of last resort rendered its eternal decree at Appomattox that the United states Is. not arc, one and inseparable. 7
 He then went on to show that follow ing this war came the period of interna- tional improvement and the trend of events were towards stronger central government and in one generation, fol- lowing the great war, i've achieved com merciaI independence, and became at once the greatest, the richest the wisest and best housed, the best fed. the best clothed and the most contented people on the earth
 AdvertinE to the war with Spain. the Secretary said the United States had be- come the undoubted owner of Porto Rico and the Philippine archipelago, and the voluntary guardian of Cuba.
 '"rhe trend of thought and of events had been toward a stronger central gov ernment. If the door set ajar in the spring of 1898 by unanimous vote of both Houses of Congress. ever swings wide on its hinges. the United States will police not only the street on which it lives, but tho entire western hemisphere, and with it all countries and all islands washed by the Pacific.
 Sequence of the Trend.
 'T give no audience to the thought with out misgivings, and I mention 1t only as the logical sequence of the trend Of our national development"
 As after the civil war. the nation en- tered upon an extensive policy of inter- state improvement" said Mr. Shaw. sub sidizing so long as necessary trans-conti- mental lines of railway and permanently continuing the subsidizing of rivers and harbors, so after this later war we ap- pear 10 be entering upon an equally pro- gressive policy of external improvement"
 Concluding. he said: Gentlemen, we must have the largest merchant fleet ever kissed by ocean breezes, and these carriers of international commerce must be built of American material in Ameri- can yards by American labor. They are to be manned by American sailors, fired by American coal. and more probably oil, and they are to float the Stars and Stripes. Whether this will be accom- plished through government aid or by American patriotism and American capi- tai and American energy, I cannot say American wealth. American energy, plus Hawaii, which is ours. plus the Philip pine islands, which are ours. plus the isthnlian canal. which we will surely con- struct. plus a merchant marine, which we shall surely build. transfers the sov- ereignty of the Pacific Ocean from the Union Jack to the Stars and Strips."