inated from the world it would require no great degree of prescience to foretell the ultimate fate of the United States. For up to this time the trend of affairs with us bears such a resemblance to the march of events in the Roman republic up to the reign of Augustus Caesar that the similarities cannot be overlooked.

The constitution is a plastic receptacle into which either democracy or despotism can be poured. The insular acquisitions furnished the opportunity for a gigantic stride toward despotism. These islands, according to historic precedents, according to the spirit of the constitution, which is the declaration of independence, were bound to be treated as territories advancing toward statehood. But those who had become strong through special privilege overthrew the ideals of the republic. If these islands were under the constitution then special privilege could not enjoy its spoils in the form of tariff laws, and then a more astute set of reasoners, greedy for power, saw the longlooked-for chance to greatly centralize the government, and not only the government, but the executive branch of it. The Spooner bill which invested the executive with powers equal to any sovereign on earth was the proper sequence of the plan. And, moreover, it was brought about by the congress as the Roman senate surrendered its powers to Augustus. True, the congress might repeal the Spooner bill, but the - executive might veto the repeal. So how is the congress to retrieve its constitutional vigor,

Heretofore the United States have been humanitarian in their spirit, but now they are governmental. Imperialism is anti-humanitarian; the conquest of peo

ple is anti-humanitarian; the taxing of people as the Filipinos are taxed is anti-humanitarian. In short, the republican party now stands for might, for power, for glory, not realizing—or if realizing not caring— that the anti-humanitarian spirit and the passion for glory and power destroyed the governments of the past and is hastening the destruction of those of the present. That at the bottom was the real trouble, and that is the virus that has found lodgment among us. For while life is essentially selfish as a condition of self-preservation it consists with the passion for justice which both men and nations must observe or suffer the sure penalty. At last it will fully leak out and be understood by all men that the supreme court upheld the new policy on apparent grounds of expediency. It will be generally understood that the influences which had set in and which had affected every department of the government were too powerful for so worldly a tribunal to resist. For that court said in about so many words that the Porto Rican tax must be constitutional, because otherwise the United States could not safely retain the islands, and, besides, any other construction might obstruct future acquisitions. The supreme court asks how can the Porto Rican tax be unconstitutional, since to hold it so would be to deprive the government of that discretionary power absolutely necessary to profitably hold to the islands. The spirit of this reasoning will eventually produce wide national consequences.

All things having worked out so well to this pass, the accession of Mr. Roosevelt to the presidency was dramatically fitting. If made to order it could not

have been better. He will pass into history as the contemporary of Kipling and William of Germany. He is of them and of their spirit and day. Some hoped that Mr. Roosevelt would throw his power on the side of idealism and progress. But they should have remembered that he repudiated his literary productions in the campaign of 1900. All his fine pretensions went the way of the world; nor in any event is he the man to stand out against the accumulated influences of imperialism. He has and will add to them. For, unspeakable as was the assassination of Mr. McKinley, it was not political, and it cannot in candor be made the popular opportunity for suppressing the freedom of speech. It is very significant also that Mr. Roosevelt should inform us that such tragic episodes will merely result in the accession of men to the presidency who are merciless and resolute. How is such a deplorable change to come about? How shall we descend from a Washington to an Alexander of Farnese? And why should he tell us that the one lurid moment of anarchistic triumph would be followed by centuries of despotism? Is the republic on so rocking a foundation as this?

And how is that despotism to come about? Will he be a party to it, or will he in any supreme moment of moral trial return to the apothegms of his books and say, as he has often said, "We have work to do and the only question is whether we will do it well or ill?" It is now his time to invoke the humanitarian spirit and turn from power and glory if he would give the world the moral impulse that men of his own race gave to the world centuries ago. Otherwise, if cen

tralization in government continues and the people are more generally deprived of the chance to obey the better instructions of their natures what may be expected? Not merely a return to the method of selecting presidential electors by the legislatures, as was formerly done, and the rise of a man merciless and resolute to the presidency. A greater reaction than this may be expected.

There is a commonplace optimism which insists that either everything is for the best or that the right is predestined to triumph. Both propositions are false. Very many things are for the worse. Whole nations have gone down to destruction as the result of the excesses, the follies and the villainies of aristocracies.

That nothing can be hoped for from the present administration; that its ideals are wholly wrong; that its desires are selfish, reactionary and despotic, and that it is capable of any perfidy, is a pardonable pessimism. The optimism to be cherished consists in the belief that democracy is not the battle cry of a fraction of men, but that it is a passion, a philosophy, an ineradicable aspiration of the human heart. Armies and navies may be created and the people may be taxed to support them; expensive flummery and glitter may be maintained out of the sweat of labor. All of this may be used to trample down justice and to despoil a helpless race. And yet in the heart of the humblest man there remains the belief that he has a right in this world to live, to labor, to earn and be free. The most ignorant tribes of the Filipinos are equal in intelligence to the natives of Britain in the

days of the glorious Julius. Who knows what use the Filipinos may make of our ideals and the spirit of freedom which vibrates in their hearts today? And who knows what will be the relative positions of the Philippine islands and what we now call the United States 1,000 years hence? The thought should teach humility. For did Augustus imagine that the unconquerable Belgae would found a great republic, or that the savages in the worthless islands north of Gaul would produce those great luminaries of civilization before whom Cicero and Virgil pale their ineffectual fires?