The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-05-01

east, viewed this initial expansion of the country with great alarm. Exactly
 as during the colonitl period many
 good people in the mother-country
 thought it highly important that set
 tiers should be kept out of the Ohio val
 ley in the interest of the fur compa-
 nies. so after we had become nation
 many good people on the Atlantic coast
 felt grave apprehension lest they might somehow be hurt by the westward
 growth of the nation. These good peo-
 pie shook their heads over the forma-
 tion of states in the fertile Ohio valley which now forms part of the heart of our nation; and they declared that the destruction of the republic had been ac-
 complished when through the Louisiana Purchase we acquired nearly half ot what is now that same republics pres-
 ent territory. Nor was their feeling un-
 natural. Only the adventurous and the far-seeing can be expected heartily to
 welcome the process of expansion, for the nation that expands is a nation which is entering upon great career,
 and with greatness there must of ne-
 cessity come perils which daunt all
 save the most stout-hearted.
 We expanded by carving the wilder
 ness into territories and out of these territories building new states when
 once they had received as permanent settlers a sufficient number of our own people. Being a practical nation we have never tried to force an any sec tion of our new territory an unsuitable form of government merely because it l was suitable for another section under different conditions. Of the territory covered by the Louisiana Purchase a | portion was given statehood within a 1 few years, Another portion has not been admitted to statehood, although a century has elapsed-although doubt l less it soon will be. In each case we ] showed the practical government gen. | jus of our race by devising methods suitable to meet the actual existing needs; not by insisting upon the appli- | cation of some abstract shibboleth tC I all our new possessions alike, no mat 1 ter how incongruous this application [ might sometimes be.
 l Over by far the major part of the , territory, however, our people spread ir
 such numbers during the course of the | nineteenth century that we were able | to build up state after state, each with exactly the same complete local inde- l pendence in all matters affecting pure ly its own romestic interests as in any of the original thirteen states-eacf
 owing the same absolute 'fealty to the 1 Union of all the states which each oi 1 the original thirteen states also owes and finally each having the same pro- 1 portional right to it's share in shaping l and directing the common policy of the
 Union which is possessed by any other state, whether of the original thirteen l or not.
 l This process now seems to us part o1 l the natural order of things, but it was wholly unknown until our own people devised it. It seems to us a mere mat, ter of course. matter of elementary right and justice, that in the delibera- I tions of the national representative | bodies the representatives of state which came into the Union but yester. day stand on a footing of exact and | entire equality with those of the com l moaWaalths whose sons once signed the