The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-02-13
TAFT ExTOLS
 MIR. LINCOLN
lCeatInued frem Psse one.l

! however. and as a reasonable war measure we invoked the assistance of Aguinaldo and his fellow insurrection- ists against the power of Spain. to assist us in obtaining control on the land until our army could traverse the 1000 miles between our ports ana the Philippines. With the assistance of Aguinaldo's army we took the City of Manila and then the peace came.
 The question which lay open to us. hould we turn our Philippines back to. the government of Spain and the oppression against which they had re- voited? Would Abe Lincoln have ad- vised that course7 I do not think SO. They had themselves in the nine months intervening, tried to establish a civil government and the tyrannies and the insufficiencies of that government in trying to maintain order would have made it crime against the whole peo- pie of the islands for us thus to dodge responsibility and seek to establish the burden which Providence seemed to have thrust upon us. It is true that the declaration of independence com pel1ed this course. It is true that the declaration recites that all just gov ernment must rely upon the consent of the governed; but that Is to be inter- preted as meaning a consent of the BONCAnCu WIO nave iHtclliE6Ht6 buUl- cient to enable them to discriminate as to what is government in their own in- teEest. Lincoln in his debates with Douglass did not insist that the colored men. as they were. should take part in the government as voters, but he treat ed the postulate in the declaration of independence as the ideal toward which all government should work.
 T affirm that the policy adopted by YfR fra1n nA ,n. <a Af. Republican party under which 1t Is pro- posed by gradual extending of self government to the people of the Phil tppines as they shall become better ed ucated by practice and by the school system, is following the true spirit and proper interpretation of the principles of the declaration of independence.
 No man would have been quicker to scout as impracticable dogmatism the bitter criticism, the unreaaonable op- position and the almost traitorous sympathy with the opposition to our government in the Philippines display cd by the anti-imperialists and their Democratic followers. than Lincoln.
 stepping now beyond the Philippine policy into the general policy of ex- pansfon, can 1t be properly assumed that Lincoln would have been opposed to this distinguishing characteristic of the Mckinley administration? If 1t were founded on military glory and the lust of power, 1t would certainly not meet his approval. but that is the last motive which can be properly attrib- uted to those who have supported and carried on the present national policy of expansion and world power infiu- ence.
 One of the reasons why Mir. Lfn- coin was so bitterly opposed to slav- cry was that 1t was an inconsistent blot upon our escutcheon as a free country and that 1t robbed us of our proper world influence in favor of freedom and liberty.
 C0untry's Great Growth.
 "The growth in the power of this country. even from the time of MT. Lincoln to the present day, has been enormous. The increase has been from about 30.00O.000 to S0.000,Ooo of peo- pie. The population of the country now extends solidIy from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. All of this in- creases the influence that we must wield in the world. whether we would or no.
 Finally can there be any doubt where Abraham Lincoln would have stood on the issues which peculiarly distinguish the administration of Pres- ident Theodore Roosevelt. I refer to the struggle which he and his admin istration have made for the elimination from our business and political fabric