These are phantom dangers. Neither have we a right to say that the Philippine people must be held to be incapable of independent government if they cannot form an ideal republic, in which liberty and peace and order and honesty will reign in unclouded sunshine. They may easily be as orderly as Kentucky and as honestly governed as the city of New York. What if they have their troubles and turmoils? They may be like some South American republics, or develop into something like the orderly dictatorship in Mexico. Do we question the title of those countries to their independence? Let us not indeed "scuttle away" from the Philippines, like baffled thieves, but assist and protect them until they stand upon their own feet; and if this is done in perfect good faith, difficulties now deemed ever so formidable will vanish like morning mist.

Besides, it is not the most important question how perfect their government will be. More important is it that their government should be their own, and more important still that the American people should not become unfaithful to the fundamental principles of their democracy; that they should not lose their high ideals of liberty, right and justice, and that they should wash from the escutcheon of the Republic the foul blot with which the great perfidy to our late allies has defiled it.

I entreat you soberly to contemplate the alternative now before us. If we permit the great wrong attempted by the Administration to be consummated, our moral credit with the world will be gone forever. Having started in our Spanish war with the solemn proclamation that this would be a war of liberation and not of conquest, and then having turned that war into one of land-grabbing and self-confessed "criminal aggression," nobody will ever again believe in any profession of virtue or generosity we may put forth. It will be hooted down the world over

as sheer hypocrisy disguising greedy schemes. We shall be guilty of the meanest as well as, in its consequences, the most dangerous iniquity a nation can commit-the betrayal of an ally. There is nothing so perfidious that thenceforth we shall not be thought capable of, and other nations will prudently take care not to make common cause with us for anything upon a mere assurance of good faith on our part. This is the "glory" we shall have won. Our sister republics in this hemisphere have looked upon the United States as their natural protector, and they were our natural friends. Since we have dishonored our professions of disinterested motive, they will always suspect us of a design to stretch out our rapacious hands also against them. Already they speak of this Republic no longer as their strong and trusty friend, but as the "peligro del Norte," the "danger in the North." And they will do this so long as we hold any of our conquests. In constant fear of our greed and perfidy, they will, in case of critical complications, be inclined to coalesce even with old-world Powers against us, and we shall have secret or open enemies instead of trustful friends at our very doors. We shall have the Philippines with a population bitterly hating us, and, in case of trouble with some foreign Power, eager to kindle a fire in our rear. We shall, instead of enjoying the inestimable blessing of exemption from the burdens of militarism, be obliged to keep up large and costly armaments to hold down our discontented subjects and to provide for our own security. And more. shall have a bad conscience. We shall have betrayed the fundamental principles of our democracy, robbed the American people of their high ideals and beliefs, and thus destroyed the conservative element without which a democracy based on universal suffrage cannot long endure.

We

And all this to gain some commercial advantage and naval facilities which we might have had just as fully, and

much more securely, had we kept good faith with ourselves, with our allies and with the world.

Now contemplate the other side of the alternative. If the American people, even after the monstrous aberrations of their Government, repudiate the policy of criminal aggression and renounce their conquests; if they declare that their profession of unselfish motive and generous purpose in the Spanish war was sincere, and must be maintained at any cost-what then? They will forever put to shame the detractors of the American democracy. They will show that, although the powers of their Government may some time be put to base uses by men of misguided ambition, the American people are honest, and can be counted upon to resist even the strongest of temptations, the intoxication of victory, and to submit even to the mortifying ordeal of a confession of wrong done in their name, in order that right, justice and liberty may prevail. Such an attitude will secure to the American people the confidence of mankind as it has never been enjoyed by any nation in the world's history, and with it the fruits of that confidence. Our democratic institutions will issue from the trial with a luster they never had before. By so splendid a proof of good faith this Republic will achieve a position of unexampled moral grandeur and influence. It will naturally become the trusted umpire between contending states, a peaceable arbiter of the world's quarrels. It will not only be a great world-power by its strength, but the greatest of all existing worldpowers by its moral prestige.

It may be asked whether this is not an ideal picture. Well, this is the idealism cherished by George Washington, the soberest and most practical of men. This is what he wished and hoped the Republic of the United States, which he loved so much, would become.

But is there any chance of its accomplishment? Are

not present circumstances rather discouraging? So they appear. But we old anti-slavery men have in our days seen darker situations than this. I remember the period after the compromise of 1850 which was accepted by both political parties as a finality never to be disturbed. The popular conscience concerning slavery seemed absolutely dead. Those who still spoke against slavery were on all sides, by commercialism and by the politician, denounced as bad citizens, incendiaries, traitors to their country. A prediction of a speedy anti-slavery triumph would have sounded like the freak of a madman. But the conscience of the American people was not dead. A new condition soon illumined the question as with a flood of new light. The popular conscience suddenly rose up in its might and did not rest until slavery was wiped out.

Let the imperialists not delude themselves. If the present Congress fails to undo the great wrong that has been done, appeal will be taken to the people. And it will be kept there, and, if need be, renewed year in and year out. It will give you no rest, as the slavery question gave us no rest, until finally settled aright. And-take heed!the longer the right settlement is delayed, the greater will be its cost. You may call the upholders of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution, the followers of Washington's and Lincoln's teachings, "traitors" or "bores"-no matter, they will not give up the belief that the American people are an honest people, and, like the anti-slavery men, they will not cease to appeal to the popular conscience, fully confident that the time will come when on Washington's Birthday we may feel that we are again worthy of him, and that his great monition has not been in vain:

Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all; religion and morality enjoin this

conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened and, at no distant day, a great nation to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.

FROM WILLIAM JAMES'

CARQUEIRANNE, FRANCE, March 16, 1900. I came near sending letters of "bravo" to both you and Mr. Cockran after your Chicago speeches last summer [autumn], but I did n't; but now comes the Nation with a brief account of your Philadelphia address, which stirs my heart to overflowing. Thank God that you exist in this crisis! We shall of course be beaten; but your warning that we shall never abandon the fight, no matter how many generations of agitators it takes, is the right kind of talk for McKinley and the people to hear. The instincts of adventure and of mastery, and the pride of not receding, are of course in the way of every honest solution, but in the long run the higher conscience prevails even over these passionate forces. You can go to your grave with the sense of having been, with these speeches of yours, a pivot round which the future is bound to turn. What a rôle our country was born with-what a silver spoon in its mouth, and how it has chucked it away! I think the Administration talk, Dewey's talk, about never having committed ourselves in any way to Aguinaldo-he has, forsooth, no writing in our hand, can call no witness to any promise is the most incredible, unbelievable, piece of sneak-thief turpitude that any nation ever practised. "Yankee trick," indeed-after this that old sarcastic designation should be embroidered on “Old Glory" and introduced into the Constitution as our chief claim to conceit.

The Republican party is fattened to kill. I should vote for Bryan with both hands.

Were I at home
There might in

the next following election be a chance for the organizing of a

The philosopher and Harvard professor.