The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1903-12-09
DEMOCRACY AND EXPANSION.

the Republican party, the Democracy
made when it was itself progressive
Particularly is this true of its hostility
to expansion as a political doctrine
Whenever a Democratic paper begins
to talk about imperialism and land
robbery and the oppression OF weaker
races it is confronted by the map
and by its own history. Jefferson, the
father of Democracy, bought of France
the vast empire known as the Louisi-
ana Purchase and he did it without
asking the consent of the inha bitants
many of whom were civilized, thereby
making a precedent for the Republi-
can purchase, from Spain. of the Phil
ippines without a local plebiscitum.
The Democratic war upon Mexico was
an act of pure conquest-the seizure OF
a vast domain in which to provide for
the extension of slavery; seizure pre-
ceded by a revolution in Texas carried
on by American adventures, inspired
from Washington. The Democrats
wrested California from Mexico by
military force-the invasion beginning
before. a. declaration of war. Nor
were these projects disguised by soft
words. The Democracy, for all its
insincere mounting now, had then the
merit of eandor- and frankness. 1t
condescended to no disguise. When it
was plotting the seizure of Cuba IT
said so in the explicit terms, of the
Ostend Manifesto-"and after We shall
have offered Spain a price far beyond
it's (Cuba,s) value. and this shall have
been refused, the question will remain
whether Cuba, in the hands of Spain,
does not, endanger our internal peace
and the existence of our Union If so,
we should be justified by every law,
human and divine, in Wrestling IT
FROM SPAIN IF WE POSSESS THE
POWER"
Nor was the Democracy less forth
right in the matter of the Isthmian
canal. Lewis Cass, Secretary of State
in the Buchanan administration, writ
ing in 1858, said:
The progress of events has rendered
the interoceanic route across the mar
row portions of Central America vastly
important to the commercial world
and especially to the United States,
whose possessions extend along the
Atlantic and Pacific coasts and de-
mand the speediest and easiest modes
of communication. When the rights
of sovereignty of the states occupying
in a spirit BETTING the occasion and
the wants and circumstances that have
arisen, sovereignty has it's duties as
we'll as its rights, and none of these
local governments, even if admins
tered with more regard to the Just de-
Inands of other nations than they have
been, would be permitted, in a spirit of
Eastern isolation, to close the gates
Of Intercourse on the great highways
Of the world, and justify the act by the.
pretension that these avenues of trade
and travel belong to them and that
they choose to shut them, or, what is
almost equivalent, to cucumber them
with such unjust relations as would
prevent their general use.
Here was an explicit Democratic
declaration that the government con-
the isthmus of Panama would
not be permitted to stand in the way
Of a canal. Democrats laid down this
doctrine; Republicans are carrying it
out; and yet Democrats have the
audacity to say that it is un-American.
oppressive and an affront to the prin-
ciples upon which the government of
the United States is founded.
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