The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-02
A Broadside Against Expansion" :"

10 the Editor of The AgeHerald.
 Every enlightened statesman is obliged to see that while a "colonial" policy may. perhaps, under exception ably favorable conditions, be safely adopted and wisely administered under monarchy still, under d republican form of government the obstacles against such a policy are well-nigh insuperable.
 The British statesmen have had long generations of experience in admin istering a colonial policy, and yet no man of sense and candor can read the speeches or the writings of Edmund Burke without having his faith in such policy even under a monarchy, very seriously shaken. and it is a fact per fectly well known to all competent students of British political history. that not a few of the ablest British statesmen since Burke's day have seri- ously questioned the wisdom of that policy. while some of the most enlight- ened of them have expended all the powers of their eloquence of tongue and pen in denouncing it as unwise and injurious to the best interests of their country
 But at the present period in the hs- tory of America, there are some very
 
 and "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind" should make us slow to accept imperialism. During the wh ole of our history we have been nome bodies" and so far as we know it was the unanimous opinion of the fathers of the republic that we should always be so. The warning against "entrangling alliances" sounded more than cen tury ago, in the very infancy of the republic. came from one of the wisest, purest, most unselfish and most far seeing statesmen that ever adminis- tered any government since Moses led the Hebrews out of Egyptian bondage. That warning has become d househ old word in our politics, and the very horn book of American statesmen of all parties.
 We have for more than a century been almost worried out of our lives In our struggles with the mighty prob lem, how to govern alien races. No man who has really studied the polit ieal history of this county. in the debates of the Federal convention, Ben toms Thirty Years View, Blane's Twenty Years in Congress" John Quincy Adams diary, or any other authority, can help seeing that nearly everything which we call American politics" has, during the whole course of our his tory, grown out of, or been closely connected with, the questions, 'What shall we do with the negroes? and How shall we manage the Indians?' And on neither of these questions does any thoughtful man believe that any approach to a settlement is anywhere in sight.
 Now, with such a history behind us. and such problems before us, right here at home 1t should seem proper answer to the "imperialist' to say. "'rhs is the very coinage of your brain."
 Virginia planter had field skirt ing the public road. Near the road was cabin inhabited by an old free negro woman, with q whole tribe and generation of children. for whom she found 1t a hard task to provide One day she sent one of her boys mile and a quarter to her landlords house to notify him that the fence was down. Now our friend was an ardent pro- slavery man; so he said, jocularly, "Tell your mother I'm very much obliged to her, and I'll give her negro" The halfstarved, ragged urchin promptly replied "She got more niggers now than she know what to do with.' J. C. HlDEN.
 Idlewild. Birmingham Ala.