the principle of protection to colonial commerce, the principle which all the world employs, to-day; the principle which England uses whenever she fears for a market and which she has put into practice against us in Canada. That, and the excellence of our goods and products; that, and the convenience of traffic; that, and the kinship of interests and destiny, will give the monopoly of these markets to the American people.

And then-then, the factories and mills and shops will call again to their hearts of fire the workingmen of the republic, to receive once more the wages and eat once more the bread of prosperous times; then the farmer will find at his door, once more, the golden home market of those who work in factory and mill, and who want flour and meat and butter and eggs and garments of wool, and who have once more the money to pay for it all.

It means new employment and better wages for every laboring man in the Union. It means higher prices for every bushel of wheat and corn, for every pound of butter and meat, for every item that the farmers of this republic produce. It means active, vigorous, constructive investment of every dollar of moldy and miserly capital in the land.

It means all this, to-morrow, and all this forever, because it means not only the trade of the prize provinces, but the beginning of the commercial empire of the republic. And, amid these great events, will you march forward with the endless column of prosperity, or, sit with Bryan, Bailey, Bland, and Blackburn on the rotten and crumbling rail-fence of dead issues and hoot at the procession as it passes by?

I said the commercial empire of the republic. That is the greatest fact of the future. And that is why these islands involve considerations larger than their own commerce. The

T-Orations.

Vol. 25

commercial supremacy of the republic means that this nation is to be the sovereign factor in the peace of the world.

For the conflicts of the future are to be conflicts of tradestruggles for markets-commercial wars for existence. And the golden rule of peace is impregnability of position and invincibility of preparation. So, we see England, the greatest strategist of history, plant her flag and her cannon on Gibraltar, at Quebec, the Bermudas, Vancouver, everywhere, until, from every point of vantage, her royal banner flashes in the sun. So Hawaii furnishes us a naval base in the heart of the Pacific; the Ladrones another, a voyage farther into the region of sunset and commerce; Manila, another, at the gates of Asia-Asia, to the trade of whose hundreds of millions American merchants, American manufacturers, American farmers, have as good a right as those of Germany or France or Russia or England; Asia, whose commerce with England alone, amounts to billions of dollars every year; Asia, to whom Germany looks to take the surplus of her factories and foundries and mills; Asia, whose doors shall not be shut against American trade. Within two decades the bulk of Oriental commerce will be ours,-the richest commerce in the world. In the light of that golden future, our chain of new-won stations rise like ocean sentinels from the night of waters,-Porto Rico, a nobler Gibraltar; the Isthmian canal, a greater Suez; Hawaii, the Ladrones, the Philippines, commanding the Pacific!

Ah! as our commerce spreads, the flag of liberty will circle the globe, and the highways of the ocean-carrying trade of all mankind, be guarded by the guns of the republic. And, as their thunders salute the flag, benighted peoples will know that the voice of Liberty is speaking, at last, for them; that civilization is dawning, at last, for them-Liberty and

Civilization, those children of Christ's gospel, who follow and never precede, the preparing march of commerce!

It is the tide of God's great purposes made manifest in the instincts of our race, whose present phase is our personal profit, but whose far-off end is the redemption of the world and the Christianization of mankind. And he who throws himself before that current is like him who, with puny arm, tries to turn the gulf stream from its course, or stay, by idle incantations, the blessed processes of the sun.

Shall this future of the race be left with those who, under God, began this career of sacred duty and immortal glory; or, shall we risk it to those who would scuttle the ship of progress and build a dam in the current of destiny's large designs.

And now, on the threshold of our career as the first Power of earth, is the time to permanently adjust our system of finance. The American people have the most tremendous tasks of history to perform. They have the mightiest commerce of the world to conduct. They cannot halt their imperial progress of wealth and power and glory and Christian civilization to unsettle their money system every time some ardent imagination sees a vision and dreams a dream. Think of Great Britain becoming the commercial monarch of the world with her financial system periodically assailed! Think of Holland or Germany or France bearing their burdens, and, yet, sending their flag to every sea, with their money at the mercy of politicians out of an issue.

Let us settle the whole financial question on principles so sound that a revolution cannot shake their firm foundations. And then, like men and not like children, let us on to our tasks-on to our mission and on to our destiny. We are speeding up the shining rails of an immortal history; yonder,

in the rear, is the nightmare swamp of free silver. Why go back to it, like the victim of opium to his deadly pipe?

Why not accept the gifts of nature and events—events, which have made the oceans our servants, the trade winds our allies, and the stars in their courses our champions?

Nature, which has thrown the wealth of Klondike, the new found gold of the Philippines, the unsuspected and exhaustless mines of Colorado and the Cape into the crucible of financial agitation, and thus dissolved the last excuse for war upon the golden standard of civilization, the excuse that the gold supply is insufficient and is failing.

Now, when new rivers of gold are pouring through the fields of business, the foundations of all silver-standard arguments are swept away. Why mumble the meaningless phrases of a tale that is told, when the golden future is before us, the world calls us, its wealth awaits us, and God's command is upon us?

Why stand in the fatal stupor of financial fallacies muttering old sophistries that time has exploded, when opportunity beckons you all over the world-in Cuba, Hawaii, the Philippines, on the waters of commerce, in every market of Occident and Orient, and in your factories and stores and fields, here in our own beloved country, holy America, land of God's promise and home of God's providence?

There are so many real things to be done-canals to be dug, railways to be laid, forests to be felled, cities to be builded, unviolated fields to be tilled, priceless markets to be won, ships to be launched, peoples to be saved, civilization to be proclaimed and the flag of liberty flung to the eager air of every sea. Is this an hour to waste upon triflers with nature's laws? Is this a season to give our destiny over to word-mongers and prosperity-wreckers? Is this a day to

think of office-seekers, to be cajoled by the politician's smile, or seduced by the hand-shake of hypocrisy? No! No! my fellow citizens!

It is an hour to remember your duty to the home. It is a moment to realize the opportunities fate has opened to this favored people and to you. It is a time to bethink you of the conquering march of the flag. It is a time to bethink you of your nation and its sovereignty of the seas. It is a time to remember that the God of our fathers is our God and that the gifts and the duties he gave to them, enriched and multiplied, he renews to us, their children.

And so it is an hour for us to stand by the government at Washington, now confronting the enemy in diplomacy, as our loyal hearts on land and sea stood to their guns and stood by the flag when they faced the enemy in war. It is a time to strengthen and sustain that devoted man, servant of the people and of the Most High God, who, patiently, silently, safely is guiding the republic out into the ocean of world interests and possibilities infinite. It is a time to cheer the beloved President of God's chosen people, till the whole world is vocal with American loyalty to the American gov

ernment.

Fellow Americans, we are God's chosen people. Yonder at Bunker Hill and Yorktown his providence was above us. At New Orleans and on ensanguined seas his hand sustained us. Abraham Lincoln was his minister and his was the Altar of Freedom, the boys in blue set on a hundred battlefields. His power directed Dewey in the East and delivered the Spanish fleet into our hands on the eve of Liberty's natal day, as he delivered the elder Armada into the hands of our English sires two centuries ago. His great purposes are revealed in the progress of the flag, which surpasses the inten