supremacy upon the assertion that the people are the only and original force from which government is derived. Himself a product of the meanest conditions, he arose early in his public life to a full appreciation of the supreme doctrine that there is no law except that which the people decree. His homely sayings, now familiarly quoted by all lovers of popular government, all tend in this direction. It is perhaps the greatest heresy of our times that these sayings so right, so pregnant of the principles of Democracy, should be cited by the degenerate sons of his party in defense of their undemocratic, their federalistic, their aristocratic breaches of the constitution. These sayings, like their great author, belong to the Democratic party.

The forty years following Mr. Lincoln's death need no characterization here. They have constituted from their inception a carnival of crime, perpetrated in the name of liberty against the liberties of the American people. In that unhappy struggle which arrayed the States against each other was born the spirit of imperialism, and imperialism begot the new plutocracy. The fever of false patriotism succeeding the surrender at Appomattox has been the excuse for more crimes against the constitution than ever were perpetrated in any period of our history or, God willing, ever will be perpetrated again. A quarter of a century ago, this riot of lawlessness reached its climax in the crime which unseated a President, chosen by an indignant people in protest against the lawlessness of that time. To this high-handed act the Democracy, ever careful of the law and the forms of law, submitted rather than provoked a fresh struggle. But the sense of that outrage has survived unto the present time. It was keenly alive four years ago when the organized forces of plutocracy again came to the front to thwart the will of the people.

This was a critical time for American liberty. The Democracy found itself arrayed not only against its open foes, but against the more insidious but not less dangerous traitors within its own house. Twenty years of shameless equivocation upon the all-important doctrine of the currency had sufficed to align the American people on one or the other side of this great question: Whether the people should own and control their own money, or delegate that great function to a small but ar rogant coterie of bankers. This is the so-called "silver question" of 1896. It had this significant effect: It drove from the ranks of the Democracy all its false friends. It made the plutocrats, the monopolists

It

and the friends of monopoly avow themselves for what they were. also gave to the American people the regenerated Democracy of which Mr. Bryan was then and is still the head. It rallied to the standards of popular liberty all those who hated and still hate class legislation, favoritism in government and the discrimination of the law in favor of the few against the many.

One does not hesitate to reiterate these familiar terms because they are the original and fundamental precepts of our governmental existence. They cannot be repeated too often. They find their expression in the platform of the party which convened at Kansas City in July. Their antithesis is asserted with cynical frankness in the declaration which brazenly chose Philadelphia as the place for the convention of the plutocratic forces.

The Democracy has never hesitated and it does not now hesitate to come before the people upon such an issue. Now as in Jefferson's time,

as in the time of Jackson, as in the time of Lincoln, it is the many against the few, the "plain people” against the plutocracy. The issue cannot be in doubt.

CHAPTER III.

BEGINNINGS OF IMPERIALISM

The war with Spain created a new issue of paramount importance to the liberties of the people and the integrity of the republic.

That conflict, begun upon the pretext of relieving the patriots of Cuba from Spanish oppression, long ago degenerated into an effort to continue Spanish oppression against the patriots of the Philippines.

This change of front has been accomplished with startling rapidity. The condition of Cuba four years ago was such as to move the sympathy of all humane people, and the Chicago platform voiced this sentiment when it said:

"We extend our sympathy to the people of Cuba in their heroic struggle for liberty and independence."

No other sentiment was then entertained within the republic. The declaration of war against Spain was adopted by the Congress, April 18, 1898. It set forth the policy of this government at that time in these words:

"First, that the people of the Island of Cuba, are and of right ought to be free and independent.

"Second, that it is the duty of the United States to demand, and the government of the United States does hereby demand, that the government of Spain at once relinquish its authority and government in the Island of Cuba and withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban waters.

"Third, that the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, directed and empowered to use the entire land and naval forces of the United States, and to call into the actual service of the United States the militia of the several States to such extent as may be necessary to carry these resolutions into effect.

"Fourth, that the United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control over said islands, except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the island to its people."

This resolution clearly and forcibly expresses the principle of the Declaration of Independence: "These united colonies," declared the fathers of the republic, "are and of right ought to be free and independent States." "The people of the island of Cuba," the Congress declared, "are and of right ought to be free and independent."

This declaration of war, moreover, demands that the Cubans shall be free and govern themselves on the ground of right, exactly as the fathers demanded freedom for the people of these United States. In these respects the attitude of our government towards Spain at the opening of hostilities was unique in the history of war. Under the old regime it had been the practice to wage war either for or against aggression without regard to principle involved. It well became the great republic of the west to rise to a higher plane, and to take up arms, if needs must, solely for "humanity's sake."

This was the spirit of President McKinley's message to the Congress delivered in April, 1898, in which he explicitly defined the position of this government in the war in these words:

"In the cause of humanity and to put an end to the barbarities, bloodshed, starvation and horrible miseries now existing there, and which the parties to the conflict are either unable or unwilling to stop or litigate."

As lately as October, 1898, at the Peace Jubilee at Chicago, President McKinley, the war being then at an end, said:

"The war with Spain was undertaken, not that the United States should increase its territory, but that the oppression at our doors should be stopped. This noble sentiment must continue to animate us, and we must give to the world a full demonstration of the sincerity of our purpose."

In his message to Congress of December 6, 1897, the President had said even more forcibly: "Of the untried measures there remain only recognition of the insurgents as belligerents, recognition of the independence of Cuba, neutral intervention to end the war by imposing a rational compromise between the contestants. I speak not of forcible annexation, for that cannot be thought of. That by our code of morality would be criminal aggression."

The code of morality of which the President speaks is happily well defined in the authentic documents recording the history of liberty and self-government in this republic. In the Declaration of Independence it is written that: "Governments derive their just powers from the consent

of the governed," and that these United States "have full power to do all acts and things which independent States may of right do."

President McKinley thus in his own words framed an indictment of the subsequent policy of his administration. His entire course has been one of "criminal aggression," not only against the late subjects of Spain, but against the American people, their liberties and their best traditions. The Democracy holds the latter to be by far the greater offense.

Having won an easy victory at arms over a decrepit monarchy, the administration, at the commission in Paris, concluded a bargain whereby this nation acquired Spain's rotten title to her island possessions. Porto Rico, which had offered no resistance to our arms, gladly came to our standard, confiding in our explicit promises of full fellowship in the republic. Cuba became an unwilling McKinley satrapy, and so remains, upon terms which bode no good for the Cuban liberties in whose interest the war was avowedly undertaken.

The Paris bargain was, and is, utterly hateful to the people of the United States. The Democracy believes that Spain had no valid title to the Philippines. The people of those islands whose intelligence, bravery and patriotism had enabled them for centuries to resist Spanish aggression, stood at the outset of our war in a position entirely analogous to that of the American colonists when they declared their independence of England. If at that juncture France, for example, had paid to Great Britain twenty million dollars for the British interests in the colonies, the title passed would have been of equal value with our title to the Philippines and no more. And the treatment of the invaders under such nefarious bargain by the fathers of this republic would have been exactly that which the "little brown men" in the far East have accorded to our armies. They are fighting as the Revolutionary fathers would have fought, to the death, to extermination, rather than acquiesce in the barter of their liberty.

Yet it is in defense of this shameless bargain that the armies of the United States have been waging a costly war for eighteen months. Even now, after vast expenditure of blood and treasure, there is no prospect of an end. The American people long since ceased to give credence to the inspired reports of administration agents that the "war is over,” “all resistance is at an end." Another rainy season impends, bringing with it another indefinite postponement of peace. There is no reason to doubt