The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-02-21
GROVER CLEVELAND.

turing representationA can be played up- on.
 No greater national fall from grace was | ever known than that of the government of the United States, when in the midst of high design. while still speaking words Of sympathy. with the weak who strug- gled against the strong, and while still protesting to exempllfy before the world a great Republics love for self-govern- ment and its impulse to stay the bloody hand of oppression and conquest, 1t em- braced an opportunity offered by the exi- gencies of it's beneficent undertaking, to possess itself of territory thousands of miles from our opast, and to conquer and govern. without pretense of their consent millions of resisting people-a heterogen- eous population largely mixed with ele. ments hardly within the light of civiliza- tion, and all far from the prospect of as- simiiation with anything American. 1 In one hand the party in power held aloft before our people the dazzling and misleading promise of commercial advan- tage and the glory of rfvaling monarchi- cal expansion while with the other it slaughtered thousands of tho abject pos sessors of the soil it coveted, and sent messages of death and disease to thou sands of American honest
 In the widest exhibition of partisan rancor the Democratic party cannot be accused of reactionary opposition to any movement within the lines fixed by our national mission and traditions that tends to increase our country's greatness It demands, however, that this mission and these traditions shall above all things be inviolably preserved as guides to our na- | tional activity and standards for the measurement of every national achieve ment' Democracy will not be cajoIed into silence by the transient appearance of a manufactured or needless public senti- Inent. but will speak. and trust for it's vndication to the sober second thought of our people Refusing to accept the shal- low and discreditable pretense that our conquest in the Philippines has gone so far as to he beyond recall or correction We insist that a nation as well as an in- dividual Is never So magnanimous or great as when false steps are retraced and the path of honesty and virtua Ia re- gained.
 The message of the Democracy to the American people should courageousIy en- join that. In sincere and consistent com 1 plianCe with the spirit and profession of our interference in behalf of Cuba's self government. our beneicent designs to- ward her should also extend to the lands which, as an incident of such iEterfer- | ence, have come under our control; that l be aided in the establishment of a gov ernment of their own; and that when this is accomplished our interference in their domestic rule should cease.
 The Democracy and the Interoceanic Canal.
 | The Democratic party has been consist ent and unremitting in it's advocacy of an interoceanic canal. and has with the | liveliest satisfaction looked forward to the day when such a highway of com merce, built under the auspices of our government, would be contributed by America to the worlds progress and civ l ilization. It is. nevertheless. not within tile mandates of the Democratic creed that. even in consummating so noble an enterprise as this. the territorial rights of any other nation should he disregarded. or that our own national good faith cion. Democracy instinctively insists that | should be subjected to reasonable suspi- cion. Democracy instinctively insists that all the methods of our government in the accomplishment of this great work shall be clean and free from the taint of national wrong-doing, and that the jus | tice or reasonableness of such conflicting claims and contested authority as may grow out of the step already taken for | the location and construction of the Pan | anna Canal shall be regarded as a spirit
 
 of broad conciliation and with ready and scrupulous care for the dictates of inter- national morality as well as the rules of | international law.
 It Is not my purpose to recapitulate all the topics that should find a nlsce in l Democracys message to the people bIt l rather to mention some of those that ought not to be omitted. They are such | as involve an appeal to the moral sensa of our countrymen and to their love of the elevating and ennoblng qualities of American free institutions. If the rising 1 wave of sordidness Is to he allowed to drown this moral sense. and if the nao- ple's attachment to our free institutions is only such as has it's origin in present or anticipated selfish advantage, Democ- racy cannot hope to dislodge existing government control.
 I have already said that my belief in Democratic opportunity is built upon an