What can account for his speeches in which the American people are advised to carry a big stick, in which policemen are praised for their swift running, and in which mighty valor, mighty deeds, great daring and such subjects are the changes which are rung? Sober people listen in amazement to these singular strains, well understanding that they cannot help but vitiate popular sentiment at home and produce anxiety and hatred abroad. A man who carries a stick or a pistol will more likely be attacked than the man who does not go armed. For the arming of one's self is the result of a feeling of hate and the very fact that he is armed makes him dangerous to those who are not. The impulse of self-preservation prompts the removal of the danger. These things are as true of nations as of men. To keep the country upon the edge of war because of some fancied contingency, and to depart into a path of danger for the sole purpose of greatly daring and bravely facing whatever peril may come, involve the overthrow of all this country has hitherto stood for, and that through a spirit of boyish bravado. Nothing more absurd has ever occurred in the history of any nation. To speak of mere form, there is a marked rhetorical difference between Mr. McKinley's apostrophic question "who will haul down the flag" and Mr. Roosevelt's crude declaration that "the flag will stay put." As an orator Mr. Roosevelt has nothing to say and says it as poorly as possible.

Court etiquette at the White House is only a reflex of more fundamental changes. The transformation of that historic building into a palace; the ruthless

removal and storage of cherished pictures and furniture; the galloping of cavalry through the streets of the capital attending upon officials or embassies; the designation of Mr. Roosevelt as "the presence" which is now done in the reports of the social functions of the White House; a rigid system of caste; a policy of militarism, inquisition and espionage in the executive department of the government are also significant things which cannot be overlooked.

It goes without saying that Mr. Roosevelt has never shown any regard for constitutional liberty; and that he seems to have little understanding of the real forces of civilization. Those who will attend to the lesson may learn that nothing can ever come of observing the little virtues while the weightier matters of the law are neglected. The lack of great principles and those firmly adhered to can never be compensated by intentions, however good or by private virtues however admirable. Sanguine spirits comfort themselves with the thought that if Mr. Roosevelt is given power on his own account that he will not carry out another's policy but will consider himself free to pursue one of his own. If he was looking for an immortality as glorious as any known to history he could achieve it by giving this country a new birth of freedom. The republic is groaning under the weight of sin. Its conscience is tormented with a sense of awful guilt, with a knowledge of duty forsaken and ideals discarded and shattered. Millions of men who love the republic and who took no part in its iniquities look forward with passionate hearts to a return of liberty. If Mr. Roosevelt should be able

to withdraw our control from the Philippines and assist these people in establishing a republic he would justly stand for all times as the most colossal figure of the twentieth century. Here is a field for his courage and his strenuosity. Here is an opportunity which a truly wise man would not pass over. But it is not likely that he will fulfill any such expectations. He abandoned his ideals to get office. He will reassure the master forces of his party in order to be elected president. He will go into office with the chains which are the price of moral surrender. He is too vain, too infatuated with the sophistry of privilege and glory to do differently in the future from what he has done in the past. He has robed the office of president, and the government itself, so far as under his control, in the splendor and pomp of monarchy. This is apparel which speaks the man. As he called Jefferson a "shifty doctrinaire," and Polk a man of "monumental littleness" he cannot complain if history shall write him down as one whose inordinate egotism and prostituted principles endangered for a time the hopes of mankind.

JOHN MARSHALL.

Among the signs of the times which bode ill for the purity of republican principles is the muchvaunted plan of celebrating the memory of John Marshall. This analysis of the movement is indisputably true-namely, if its patrons were devoted to the rights of men instead of the powers of government, if they were stirred by the principles of liberty instead of the glory of the state they would propose to celebrate by proper memorials the achievements and sacrifices of some one of the many men who pledged life and sacred honor in the cause of American liberty and who sought to bequeath it to posterity when it was attained.

Those thinkers who place the state on a higher plane than men are usually engaged in defending unequal rights. When rights are unequal the state must be strong enough not only to make them so, but to keep them so. It ought to be a plain truth to everyone that the only justification for government is the preservation of equal rights. Men are endowed with the love of liberty and with an intuitive sense of its axiomatic truth. And when the constitution was adopted its climacteric end was stated in the preamble to be the preservation of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. But in proportion as the government becomes strong men become weak. In proportion as

the functions of government are multiplied individual liberty is decreased. Therefore as we must have both government and liberty what powers shall the government have? There is but one answer to this question. When the government is strong enough to protect each man in the enjoyment of equal freedom it has attained the full measure of legitimate power.

One of the envious shadows that has fallen from the black cockade of federalism is the forgery of history against those who believed in liberty, and who, although favorable to the creation of a nation, endeavored to preserve individual freedom. Jefferson, who understood the science of government better than any American, has been so calumniated by monarchial writers that nothing has saved the purity of his fame except the voluminous documents and letters which he left behind him, making the attempt to belie his principles impossible to those who can investigate the question with care. And yet a vulgar impression exists that Jefferson was inimical to the constitution. By a skillful process of innuendo and sophistication his principles have been intermixed with the doctrines of Calhoun and the attempt has been made to place them in a fostering relation to anarchy and rebellion. By a like process Marshall is made to stand as the great friend of government and the effectual exponent of law and order. The minds of the American people have been greatly abused by these fictions, which are the creation of those monarchists who, as the miners and sappers of the constitution, in favor of themselves have thus falsely appealed to the Anglo-Saxon love of sound government.