It may be that there is a sinister motive in this; it may be that there are those who contemplate the rapid approach of the time when this debased population can be brought here and thrown in deadly contact with the laboring men of our country. I ask the Republicans of this Chamber what will become of your tariff laws under such circumstances? You have said to the laboring man of this country for more than a quarter of a century that a protective tariff is a blessing to him. You have made many of them believe it. Of course it was never intended to benefit the manufacturer, according to your argument. The manufacturer, the man who reaps the benefit from a protective tariff, has been sedulously excluded from the argument; but the tariff was to reach its strong arms around the laboring men and protect them and their families.

You said to them in 1896 that you wanted this country protected from the pauper laborer of Europe and the manufactured articles of pauper labor, and yet by annexation you will open wide the door to an endless horde of nondescript population that can come to your very doors in spite of all you can do, in deadly contact with the laborer of this country, debasing the civilization of himself and his family. You will simply move the factory from the United States to Manila. and the Hawaiian Islands. And what, too, will become of the Chinese-exclusion acts? They will be swept away and a resistless tide of cheap labor admitted.

I may disagree with the distinguished gentleman who is at the head of this Government at the present time, as I do. But, I do it honestly, because I believe many of his policies are wrong. I am not to be driven from my position because some portion of my constituency may not approve of my views.

I would rather take my station in the obscurest community of my State and devote the remainder of my life to eking out an existence by the most onerous manual labor than to surrender to any man, high or low, or to any organization or party, an honest, conscientious conviction of duty.

We must not shut our eyes to the dangers that confront us. Let it be once understood that we are to abandon the domestic policy that has been ours throughout the years of our national existence and embark on the uncertain sea of imperialism, to become "a power," whatever that may be, of the world, and our institutions that have been held dear for more than a century and a quarter, our flag that has floated in triumph over every foot of our common country and that has ridden the storms of the sea in triumph and in glory will be hauled down not only in Manila, but in this country as well. Can we afford to take the risk? Can we afford to incur the danger?

I hold that the foreign policy to be pursued by this Government must inevitably be a policy incident to and in aid of a strong domestic government. Such was the declaration of Hamilton himself. It was said. in one of his articles in the Federalist that in the very nature of things a republic can never have an aggressive foreign policy. He said its safety was to be found in its isolation and in its compactness, for, said that great man further, in a republic like the United States, where the administration is changing every four years, a policy that is aggressive, that believes in the forcible colonization of other lands, may, by the election of a Chief Magistrate holding different views, be overturned and changed.

The news has come to us within the last few hours of a conflict between the American Army and Navy and the Filipinos. To my own State has fallen much

of the loss of life and limb. Ten out of twenty of the young men who lost their lives in the battle that has been fought in the last forty-eight hours were members of the First Nebraska Infantry. There is mourning in Nebraska to-day; there will be weeping at the hearthstone of many a Nebraska home to-night. This ought to be a warning to us.

We are in the Philippine Islands as a conquering military power. We hold them to-day by virtue of the power to make war, and in no other sense, and there those islands and those people must remain respecting the law, respecting the dignity and the sovereignty and the flag of this nation until their status among the nations of the earth shall be defined. But if we are to hold them, if in time they are to come completely within our jurisdiction, we must not refuse them the ordinary privileges and immunities of an American citizen.

If prayer be a sincere desire of the human heart, I fervently pray that this great danger may be averted and this complex question may be solved in justice. and in honor to our nation and in justice and in honor to the conquered. Those islands and those people must not be surrendered to Spain. Spain has lost her jurisdiction over them and over the islands of the Western Hemisphere forever. God grant the day may speedily come when Spain, unless she changes her civilization, shall be blotted from the map of nations. God grant the day when the Filipinos and the inhabitants of Porto Rico and Cuba may rise to a true conception of the duties and obligations of citizenship; when they, too, with the encouragement of this great and powerful Republic, shall take their station among the civilized republics and peoples of the earth.

CHAPTER XXVI.

"LEST WE FORGET."

BY CHARLES A. TOWNE,

EX-REPRESENTATIVE OF CONGRESS FROM MINNESOTA.

Not so much by formal provision of law as by the grateful and reverent affection of the American people, this anniversary is consecrated to the memory of Washington. A name not unknown or unadored in the world that is even older yet, though it make our newest problems for us, for out of Asia comes to-day a cry startling the silence of abysmal centuries and echoing a prophecy of long ago, when our Aryan progenitors began their restless progress round the globe, the cry of a struggling people imploring the freedom wherewith we ourselves are free and invoking the venerated shade of Washington to witness between us and them.

This day, 167 years ago, George Washington was born, and ere this year be passed time will have marched a century from his grave. It is my humble but firm opinion that not since his death has the advent of his birthday been marked by circumstances so novel, so interesting, so momentous and sinister as now. Not in all that time has there arisen a crisis in the history of this country so needful of his wisdom, so apt to his counsel, and so menacing to his glory, as that which to-day confronts the Republic that was founded by his valor and that has touched the heights of greatness through obedience to his precepts.

Profoundly convinced that as a democracy we have reached the parting of the ways, and that upon the decision by the American people of problems now imminent depends the future weal or woe of our country, and hence that of the human race for ages to come, I propose to speak out plainly and emphatically as to what, in my judgment, the present situation is and means and as to what it is incumbent on the citizens to do in respect of it. I adopt this course the more freely to-day, inasmuch as the main question has not yet become a partisan issue and thus rendered, as to many persons, unapproachable by honest inquiry and insusceptible of unprejudiced consideration; albeit, as I have observed with infinite regret, a very great number of people have already jumped at conclusions in this important matter, actuated solely by what seemed. to be from day to day the tendency of their party leadership.

I am quite aware, my friends, that by a considerable proportion of the public press the language of distrust of present tendencies is ridiculed as a form of hysteria or denounced as an attack on the Government, and that a man who ventures to raise a cry of warning is either charitably characterized as a fit candidate for a lunatic asylum or violently assailed as an enemy of his country. It has been long, however, since such opposition lost its terrors for me; and I shall bear with cheerful resignation my share of whatever opprobrium shall continue to be heaped upon those, who on this subject, are outspoken and resolute.

It is usually difficult to estimate the drift and force of the currents of social and political change. Their ordinary flow is so still and regular as not to attract the attention of any but the closest observer, so that