principles of the Declaration of Independence, any more than has the most devout Christian lived up in strict letter to the Ten Commandments, yet the important thing is that the Nation has always held to these principles and striven toward them just as the Christian has always kept before him the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule as his cloud by day and his pillar of fire by night. Nations and individuals make mistakes, take false steps; but these are never serious as long as we stand by our ideals and principles, because the mistakes will simply serve as examples and object-lessons to point out dangers and warn us against making other such false steps in the future. But whenever a nation or an individual deliberately disregards its high ideals, and deliberately turns its back upon them all in order to commit a false step, then such a false step is fatal and the individual and the nation taking it is lost.

So the policy upon which the Syndicates and the Monopolists and Franchise-Grabbers have forced this country to embark, in open repudiation of every principle of the Declaration of Independence and of every fundamental principle underlying a free Republic, is fatal to the government unless the people themselves realize the enormity of the crime committed, drive from power their false representatives, and restore the government into the hands of the followers of Jefferson and Lincoln.

CHAPTER XXIV.

A REPUBLIC CAN HAVE NO SUBJECTS.

BY HON. ADLAI E. STEVENSON,

EX-VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

During the century now drawing to a close America has given to the world its best lessons in liberty and in law. Near its beginning to Great Britain-no less than to Spain at its close-it has given a never-to-beforgotten lesson in the dread art of war. The brilliancy of recent victories, the splendid achievements of our arms upon foreign shores and upon distant waters, can not obscure or dim the glory of the triumph of American valor at New Orleans upon the proud day of which this is the anniversary. The 8th of January is one of the sacred days of our calendar.

Each recurring anniversary recalls a bloody struggle which will for all time hold its place in history. Upon that day Jackson, with a handful of militia, with a loss of seven killed and six wounded, defeated and captured the splendidly equipped regulars of the British army. The disgraceful surrender of Hull at Detroit, the wanton destruction by fire of the public buildings at Washington, with all the insults and wrongs which had precipitated the second war with Great Britain, were more than atoned for by the victory we celebrate. It was the last battle of the war; the last fought—the last, I trust in God, that will ever be fought-by England against the United States. The events which inspired, together with the glorious culmination of a struggle forced by a powerful upon a weak nation,

belong now to the domain of history. No American will forget that the British courage, before which a few months later the old guard of Napoleon went down at Waterloo, was unable to cope with Jackson and his heroic comrades at New Orleans.

The treaty of Ghent, establishing peace-which I trust will endure with the ages-between Great Britain and America, had been signed on the 24th of December, fourteen days before the great battle was fought. For many days thereafter, its existence was. unknown to the real actors in the great drama. We stand in awe as we contemplate the marvels which have been wrought out by man in the years that lie between that great event and the present hour.

We celebrate each returning 8th of January-as each returning Fourth day of July-in no spirit of unfriendliness to the land from which we derive our language and in a measure our laws, but that the noble deeds of the illustrious dead, the founders and defenders of the Republic, may not perish from the memories of the living. Responding and rejoicing as we do at every manifestation of good will upon the part of the mother country toward her once dependent colonies, yet it is not meet that the truths of history be forgotten. Earnestly as we desire that for the future "the battle flag be furled" between us and our kindred beyond the sea, yet may the day be far distant when the recurrence of our national anniversaries fail to touch a responsive chord in the American heart.

Upon this historic anniversary and this coming together of such as are of the political faith of Andrew Jackson, it may not be out of place to note in brief words some of the achievements of the great party of which during a stormy career he was the acknowledged chieftain and defender. The Democratic party, under the leadership of its immortal founder, Thomas

Jefferson, after a memorable contest, came into power on the 4th day of March, 1801. The intervening years that stretch back to that masterful hour make up almost a century of our national life. No age nor country within so brief a span has witnessed events so stupendous, achievements so marvelous along all pathways of human thought and endeavor. All that genius in the ages past has contributed to the world's treasury of knowledge-to whatever tends to human. comfort and to the lessening of human distressdwindles in the presence of the marvelous achievements of the nineteenth century.

The United States of America-its form of government still an experiment-containing a few millions of people, with but scant population west of the Alleghenies, its frontiers in constant menace from the savage, without army or navy, was struggling for place among the nations. The hour that witnessed the inauguration of Jefferson witnessed the first advent to power of the great political party which for more than one-half the years that make up our constitutional history has controlled the destiny of the Republic. In his brief address to his countrymen upon his induction into the great office Jefferson gave expression to his views upon the salient principles of government, and formulated that confession of political faith which for almost a century has been the touchstone of all Democratic platforms and creeds.

As the key to constitutional interpretation, as the corner stone of our governmental fabric, he proclaimed: "Equal and exact justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights as the most convenient administration for all our domestic concerns; the

preservation of the General Government in its whole. constitutional vigor as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burdened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture and of commerce as its handmaid, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected."

During fifty-six of the ninety-eight years that have passed since this "creed of our political faith" was declared, the Democratic party has been in control of the General Government. With the deathless principles here enunciated as its evangel, it has kept the faith. In victory and in defeat it has held inviolable the tenets of its great apostle. It celebrated its advent to power by the repeal of the odious alien and sedition laws; enacted by the Federal party during the Administration of Adams. The champion of "equal and exact justice to all men," it stands to-day, as in the past, the relentless foe of special privileges, of organized greed, of high protective and prohibitory tariffs, of all unlawful combinations, monopolies and "trusts”—of whatever tends to oppress or to enrich a class at the expense of the people. Deprecating whatever deprives the accused of his guaranteed right of trial by jury, it held with our great court-amid the storm and stress of civil strife-"the Constitution of the United States the supreme law of the land, in war as well as in peace." Recognizing the wisdom of the fathers in the creation of the great co-ordinate departments of the