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INTRODUCTION

It has devolved upon the Democratic party in this new crisis of the nation's history to reaffirm the four cardinal truths of free government set forth by Jefferson, the great founder of the party, in the Declaration of Independence:

That all men are created equal;

That all men are endowed with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness;

That governments are instituted among men to secure these rights; That governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

These four principles, upon which the Republic was founded and upon whose permanence the integrity of free government depends, stand in greater peril to-day than at any time since they were first declared. The party which has been in power since 1865-since the death of Lincoln has pursued a course, from that time to this, of uniform hostility these fundamentals of republicanism in its true sense. That party has steadily led in the encroachment of the few, the rich, the favored, the exclusive, upon the declared rights of the common people. But only within recent months have its leaders reached the summit of their arrogance and dared openly to deny or condemn the principles they have long despised in secret.

It is only since the last presidential election that the American people have heard the equality of men before the law denied by their leaders; the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, pronounced a fiction; the purpose of government openly stated to be the extension of trade and territory without regard to rights, and the consent of the governed as a prerequisite to just government sneered at in high places as an exploded fallacy.

Never before, since the days when Hamilton was voicing his contempt for and distrust of the common people, have such sentiments found utterance upon American lips. Never before were the rights of the people in

such peril. For, while Hamilton and his fellow Federalists had power only to give verbal expression to their monarchical and plutocratic heresies, their successors, the imperialists of to-day, have been able and have dared to employ all the machinery of government, the army and navy, the power of the executive, the legislative function, and even the courts give force and effect to their damnable doctrines, both at home and abroad.

Having control of both branches of the congress, as well as of the presidency, the Republican leaders have used the occasion of a war, begun upon the pretext of humanity, to establish a standing army of such proportions as to menace the liberties of the people. The nation having by the fortunes of war come into possession of alien territory in both the East and the West Indies, these conspirators have denied the right of citizenship and the protection of the Constitution to those natives who came willingly to our standards. Those who resisted are being pursued with fire and sword, American arms being employed in the prosecution of an invasion wholly analogous to that which enlisted the fathers of this republic against the armies of King George III of England. The right has been claimed by Americans thus to enforce a government upon a liberty-loving people without the consent of the governed The suc cessor in the White House of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln has sought to exercise monarchical rights over "subject colonies," decreeing one form of government for Caucasians living under the American ag and another for Malays; republicanism for Americans in Florida and a "benevolent despotism" for Americans in Porto Rico.

"To me," wrote Franklin in an often quoted letter to Lord Howe, touching England's policy toward her colonies in America,-"To me it seems that neither the obtaining nor retaining any trade, how valuable soever, is an object for which men may justly spill each other's blood; that the true and sure means of extending and securing commerce are the goodness and cheapness of commodities, and that the profits of no trade can ever be equal to the expense of compelling it and holding it by fleets and armies. I consider this war against us, therefore, as both unjust and unwise, and I am persuaded that cool and dispassionate posterity will condemn to infamy those who advised it, and that even success will not save from some degree of dishonor those who voluntarily engaged to conduct it."

The American imperialists of 1900 do not shame to plead trade and

commerce in justification of their aggression in the Philippines or their denial of justice to the Porto Ricans.

An era of brutal aggression for the sake of wealth seems to possess the earth. England, inspired by her own plutocrats and imperialists, is engaged in an unholy war to throttle the gallant republic of South Africa, giving to the Boers the same taste of "Anglo-Saxon civilization" that our imperialists are holding to the lips of the struggling Filipinos. And the patriots of both nations have had to hang their heads while Christendom pointed the finger of well-deserved scorn at the spectacle. For Americans who love their country the disgrace has been made more poignant by the undeniable sympathy and abettance accorded by their own chosen rulers to the enemies of a sister republic in distress.

In America, as in England, become the new charter of With us militarism and

The conspiracy has spanned the ocean. the cynical apothegm of Cecil Rhodes has rights: "The flag is a commercial asset." plutocracy have all but abandoned pretense. The full malignity of their purpose now stands revealed. Wars of aggression in distant islands are to be but the prelude to a steady war of oppression at home. The standing army raised to persecute the Filipinos is to be maintained to check the righteous protests of American labor against the despotism of monopoly and enforce the supremacy of organized wealth. Already in the Coeur d'Alenes this purpose has been disclosed. In partial return for the money with which his office was purchased, the President has been forced to send the army of the United States into a peaceful district, suspend the Constitution and substitute a ruthless martial order for the civil law.

In a hundred other ways less openly violent, but no less menacing to the popular liberties, the same power manifests itself with increasing boldness. The term of the incumbent administration has witnessed the subjugation of American industry to a new and insidious form of monopoly. The price of virtually all the staples of life has been removed from the domain of supply and demand and been made a creature of the greed or caprice of individuals who defy at once the protests of their victims and the law.

The agents of these new giants of industry invade the halls of congress and fix the terms of legislation. Even the White House is not closed in their faces. Within a few months their power has had its most odious and most startling manifestation in the shameful spectacle of a President

of the United States publicly recanting his avowed principles upon a plain question of moral and constitutional right.

Seeing these infamies practiced at home and abroad in the name of patriotism and the "old flag," we realize what Dr. Johnson meant when he spoke of patriotism as "that last refuge of scoundrels." The standard of the Republic has been used to stimulate the "war spirit" and mask the sinister purposes of its worst enemies. Greed for new territory and new wealth has justified any and all means by which they can be obtained. The lover of his country who has dared to call a halt to this headlong course has been denounced as "traitor" and "copperhead." "Everywhere," said Sir Thomas Moore, describing a state of affairs not wholly unlike the present, "do I perceive a certain conspiracy of rich men seeking their private advantage under the name and pretext of the Commonwealth."

Happily for the Republic, the Democracy has been neither blind to these perils nor daunted by their magnitude. To the present situation the Party of the People brings the experience of a full century and the record of more than one victory over the power of monopoly and organized greed. It is a hundred years since Thomas Jefferson, having aroused the friends of human rights and civil liberty, led them to victory at the polls. The American Democracy, thus organized into a party, lived upon the impetus given by its great founder until a new champion was found, in Andrew Jackson, to lead its hosts against a new enemy. The National Bank marshaled in aid of its gigantic monopoly a host of politicians, subsidized newspapers, financiers and wealthy men of business, as powerful, as arrogant and as contemptuous of popular rights as is the similar army which swarms to the support of the administration now in power.

But the genius of Jefferson, reinforced by the courage and sagacity of his great successor, once more sufficed to rally the hosts of the people. The contest which ensued was the bitterest known in American politics, but the result was never really in doubt. In the end the victory came, as it always must, to "human rights against inhuman greed." In the message accompanying his veto of the National Bank act, President Jackson used these words which recur with startling force at this time:

"In the full enjoyment of the gifts of heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the law undertakes to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities and exclusive

privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society-the farmers, mechanics and laborers-who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as heaven does its rain, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing."

The struggle has never ceased from that day to this-the struggle of the dollar for mastery over the man. Lincoln himself had it in mind. when he warned the country of a "greater conflict" to follow the fall of black slavery, in which a new and no less hateful serfdom would menace the poor. It was during his first administration that he wrote:

"Monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at as a possible refuge from the power of the people. In my present position, I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism. It is not needed or fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government."

Thus the encroachments of the plutocracy upon the rights of the common people are not a new or an unreal danger. They have been recognized and combated from the beginnings of the Republic by its wisest and most patriotic leaders. That they are more real and more menacing to-day than ever before is a natural evolution of the years of Republican ascendency following the civil war. From that time until the present, the party of special privilege and plutocracy held undisputed control of the federal government, virtually unbroken by the interregnum of false democracy under Grover Cleveland.

During this period class legislation became the order of the day, and wealth not only sought favors from the government, but secured exemption from just burdens. When war taxes were to be reduced, the taxes bearing upon the rich were taken off first. The income tax was repealed in the face of protests even from the more conservative members of the ruling party. High duties were placed upon the necessities of life on the ground that infant industries required assistance, with the result that the owners of the aided industries grew rich, while home-owning

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