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soften these animosities, and in the future as in the past we will strive to keep the peace with our neighbors—especially with Russia. When I say "especially with Russia," I mean that France offers us no security for the success of our efforts, though I will not say that it does not help. We will never seek occasion to quarrel. We will never attack France. In the many small occasions for trouble which the disposition of our neighbors to spy and to bribe has given us, we have made pleasant and amicable settlements. I would hold it grossly criminal to allow such trifles either to occasion a great national war or to make it probable. There are occasions when it is true that the more reasonable gives way." I name Russia especially, and I have the same confidence in the result I had a year ago when my expression gave this "Liberal" paper here occasion for black type. But I have it without running after—or, as a German paper expressed it, "grovelling before Russia." That time has gone by. We no longer sue for favor either in France or in Russia. The Russian press and Russian public opinion have shown the door to an old, powerful, and attached friend as we were. We will not force ourselves upon them. We have sought to regain the old confidential relationship, but we will run after no one. But that does not prevent us from observing-it rather spurs us on to observe with redoubled care-the treaty rights of Russia. Among these treaty rights are some which are not conceded by all our friends: I mean the rights which at the Berlin Congress Russia won in the matter of Bulgaria.

In consequence of the resolution of the Congress, Russia, up to 1885, chose as prince a near relative of the Czar concerning whom no one asserted or could assert that he was anything else than a Russian dependent. It appointed the minister of war and a greater part of the officials. In short, it governed Bulgaria. There is no possible doubt of it. The Bulgarians, or a part of them, or their prince,-I do not know which,- were not satisfied. There was a coup d'état and there has been a defection from Russia. This has created a situation which we have no call to change by force of arms-though its existence does not change theoretically the rights which Russia gained from the conference. But if Russia should seek to establish its rights forcibly I do not know what difficulties might arise and it does not concern us to know. We will not support forcible measures and will not advise them. I do not believe there is any disposition towards them. I

am sure no such inclination exists. But if through diplomatic means, through the intervention of the Sultan as the suzerain of Bulgaria, Russia seeks its rights, then I assume that it is the province of loyal German statesmanship to give an unmistakable support to the provisions of the Berlin Treaty, and to stand by the interpretation which without exception we gave it—an interpretation on which the voice of the Bulgarians cannot make me err. Bulgaria, the Statelet between the Danube and the Balkans, is certainly not of sufficient importance to justify plunging Europe into war from Moscow to the Pyrenees, from the North Sea to Palermo-a war the issue of which no one could foresee, at the end of which no one could tell what the fighting had been about.

So I can say openly that the position of the Russian press, the unfriendliness we have experienced from Russian public opinion, will not prevent us from supporting Russia in a diplomatic attempt to establish its rights as soon as it makes up its mind to assert them in Bulgaria. I say deliberately-"As soon as Russia expresses the wish." We have put ourselves to some trouble heretofore to meet the views of Russia on the strength of reliable hints, but we have lived to see the Russian press attacking, as hostile to Russia, the very things in German politics which were prompted by a desire to anticipate Russia's wishes. We did that at the Congress, but it will not happen again. If Russia officially asks us to support measures for the restoration in Bulgaria of the situation approved by the Congress with the Sultan as suzerain, I would not hesitate to advise his Majesty, the Emperor, that it should be done. This is the demand which the treaties make on our loyalty to a neighbor, with whom, be the mood what it will, we have to maintain neighborly relations and defend great common interests of monarchy, such as the interests of order against its antagonists in all Europe, with a neighbor, I say, whose sovereign has a perfect understanding in this regard with the allied sovereigns. I do not doubt that when the Czar of Russia finds that the interests of his great empire of a hundred million people requires war, he will make war. But his interests cannot possibly prompt him to make war against us. I do not think it at all probable that such a question of interest is likely to present itself. I do not believe that a disturbance of the peace is imminent-if I may recapitulate—and I beg that you will consider the pending measure without regard to that thought or that apprehension, looking on it rather as a

full restoration of the mighty power which God has created in the German people—a power to be used if we need it! If we do not need it, we will not use it and we will seek to avoid the necessity for its use. This attempt is made somewhat more difficult by threatening articles in foreign newspapers and I may give special admonition to the outside world against the continuance of such articles. They lead to nothing. The threats made against us, not by the government but in the newspapers, are incredibly stupid, when it is remembered that they assume that a great and proud power such as the German Empire is capable of being intimidated by an array of black spots made by a printer on paper, a mere marshalling of words. If they would give up that idea, we could reach a better understanding with both our neighbors. Every country is finally answerable for the wanton mischief done by its newspapers, and the reckoning is liable to be presented some day in the shape of a final decision from some other country. We can be bribed very easily — perhaps too easily with love and good-will. But with threats, never! We Germans fear God, and nothing else in the world!

It is the fear of God which makes us love peace and keep it. He who breaks it against us ruthlessly will learn the meaning of the warlike love of the Fatherland which in 1813 rallied to the standard the entire population of the then small and weak kingdom of Prussia; he will learn, too, that this patriotism is now the common property of the entire German nation, so that whoever attacks Germany will find it unified in arms, every warrior having in his heart the steadfast faith that God will be with us.

JEREMIAH SULLIVAN BLACK

(1810-1883)

EREMIAH SULLIVAN BLACK was born January 10th, 1810, in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. In the public affairs of the United States before and after the Civil War, from the time he entered politics as a supporter of Andrew Jackson until his death in August 1883, he stood for one of the great forces of minority opinion, seldom strong enough to control by mere weight of its impact, but always liable to assert itself in every great emergency as a controlling balance of power. When attacked by his last illness he was writing a reply to Jefferson Davis, suggested by a somewhat heated attack made upon him by Mr. Davis, because while declaring that "the States have rights carefully reserved and as sacred as the life, liberty, and property of the private citizen," he held Andrew Jackson's view of secession. If this closing incident of his career is kept in mind and brought to bear on his grim jest that "next to the original Fall of Man the landing of the Mayflower was the greatest misfortune that ever happened to the human race," the illustration will give a better idea than could be given by any definition of his attitude during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. Judge Black served on the supreme bench of Pennsylvania and in the cabinet of President Buchanan, but his great influence was never an incident of official prominence. As a man and as a lawyer he showed an individuality so marked, and in certain ways so representative, that men of all parties listened to him with an attention they seldom give the official utterance of any public man. When, in 1883, he went before the judiciary committee of the Pennsylvania senate and delivered an address on the State's power of eminent domain, and on the duties of corporations as public servants, the effect was felt throughout the country. It is doubtful if any other speech on a technical question of law and industrial economy ever produced effects so profound and so far-reaching. It is believed that the forces set in motion by sympathy with Judge Black's views thus expressed decided more than one presidential election and did more than anything else to make possible the radical changes which took place in the politics of the Northwestern States between 1883 and 1892.

CORPORATIONS UNDER EMINENT DOMAIN

(Delivered before the Judiciary Committee of the Pennsylvania Senate, at the Session of 1883)

Mr. Chairman:·

THE

HE irrepressible conflict between the rights of the people and the interests of railroad corporations does not seem likely to terminate immediately. I beg your permission to put our case on your record somewhat more distinctly than heretofore.

Why do I give myself this trouble? My great and good friend, the President of the Reading Railroad Company, expresses the suspicion that I am quietly acting in the interest of some anonymous corporation. I wish to contradict that as flatly as I can.

The charge that I am communist enough to wish the destruction of all corporate property is equally untrue. I think myself the most conservative of citizens. I believe with my whole heart in the rights of life, liberty, and property, and if anybody has struggled more faithfully, through good report and evil, to maintain them inviolate, I do not know who he is. I respect the State constitution. Perhaps I am prejudiced in favor of natural justice and equality. I am convinced that without the enforcement of the fundamental law honest government cannot be expected.

These considerations, together with the request of many friends, would be sufficient reason for doing all the little I can to get "appropriate legislation." At all events, it is unfair to charge me with any motive of lucre or malice.

It is not proposed by those who think as I do that any corporation shall lose one atom of its property. A lawful contract between a railroad company and the State is inviolable, and must not be touched by hostile hands, however bad the bargain may have been for the people. Mr. Gowen and all others with simi lar contracts on their hands are entitled each to his pound of flesh, and if it be "so nominated in the bond" the Commonwealth must bare her bosom to all their knives and let them cut nearest the heart."

But we, the people, have rights of property as well as the corporations, and ours are-or ought to be-as sacred as theirs. Between the great domain which we have ceded to them and that which still belongs to us the line is plainly and distinctly

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