Author . 
 
 *.i*°j> 
 
 Title 
 
 Imprint 
 
 1890 
 
 10--47372-2 OPO 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 OF 
 
 / 
 
 JOHN R. STRVRNS, 
 Ihtttcb States litmtstev, 
 
 BEFORE AMERICAN CITIZENS IX HONOLULU, H. L, 
 
 JULY 4th, 1B9D. 
 
 AMERICAN PATRIOTISM: PREDOMINANCE IN THE PACIFIC, 
 
 This is the one day of the year on which the American Min- 
 ister is allowed by his Government to put aside the pres- 
 cribed rules of his office and, as a citizen, to give public 
 expression to his opinions. It is in this character alone, 
 none Imt myself being responsible for my words, that I im- 
 prove the opportunity to speak as an American to Americans, 
 and to others present who would commemorate the birth of 
 my country. 
 
 Patriotism, Liberty, Independence these words stir the 
 
H 
 
 n n 
 
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 hearts of true Americans by a mighty inspiration. They Lift 
 American minds to an altitude where the. skies are clear and 
 brilliant and the air is pure and bracing. The great ideas 
 which these words transmit, should never be obscured by 
 individual selfishness, by cosmopolitan generalities, not 
 pushed aside by partisan ambitions. Patriotism, Liberty, 
 Independence— they are a people's life, and without them a 
 nation is but a blind, dumb, and hapless concretion in the 
 hands of its enslavers. 
 
 It is the first of these Patriotism, so dear to the souls of 
 free-men, which I desire to emphasize at this time, though 
 the other two are linked forever with the birth of American 
 Nationality, whose history is familiar to you all, a Btory 
 more stirring and heroic than anything in Grecian epic or 
 Roman fable. Omitting at this time eulogy where it seems 
 superfluous, turning from a past resplendent with historic 
 renown, let us bring before us the duties of the present, the 
 demands of the future. 
 
 Patriotism, born of the spiritual intuitions and christian- 
 ized conscience of the human soul, which impels a whole 
 people to unselfish sacrifice, and a Sidney, a Warren, and a 
 glorious host of Freedom's martyrs to think it " sweet to 
 die" — this noble sentiment cannot be satisfied by com- 
 memorating the past, by the tiring of cannon, and a pro- 
 longed explosion of India crackers and bombs. Real 
 patriotism is an inspiration to duty. It calls nam to do the 
 work well which is immediately before them. If there are 
 those who think that it means only the performance of il 
 of peril and courage on the field of arms, amid the smoke of 
 battle and the clash of bayonets, they are strangely mistaken. 
 It would not become us to underestimate the greatness of 
 the work done at Bunker Hill, Saratoga, Gettysburg, on 
 
— 3 — 
 
 hoard the little Monitor, and at Mobile Bay. But Patrio- 
 tism is far from ending with these. We should never forget 
 that the living sources of the heroism which was thus 
 illustrated on arenas of peril and death, were in the moral 
 education of the American people, which preceded those ex- 
 ploits on land and sea. The motive forces which gave direc- 
 tion to American councils and inspired American devotion to 
 duty in the war of Independence and in the wonderful 
 uprising for the Union from 1861 to 1865 — these had their 
 origin in a patriotism which had been nurtured in American 
 homes, schools, and churches, and but for these the world 
 would never have known of the two great contests for liberty 
 and good government, which have so lilted up America in 
 the eyes of men, and made her the continental beacon-light 
 among the nations. 
 
 That colossal fabric — the American Republic — the grand- 
 est structure of government ever reared amid the sands of 
 time- with its Federal Constitution, which the ripest states- 
 men of the Old World pronounce the most remarkable 
 creation of human wisdom known in all the ages — with its 
 admirably adjusted municipal, state and national institutions 
 — its Supreme Court, the final arbitrator of all questions 
 lie! ween the forty-two States — a complex, vet practicable, 
 system of government, so elastic in its legal bands and 
 machinery as to readily adapt itself to the fast increasing 
 population and varied interests of its immense domain. That 
 temple of human freedom and of law, the fairness of whose 
 proportions no Athenian or Tuscan architect ever surpassed, 
 has stood the trial of a century. Once the most terrific 
 storm that modern nations ever witnessed, burst upon it, 
 wrestled with its strong pillars, and spent its utmost force 
 to wrench its corner-stones from their places. But in vain. 
 
— 4 — 
 
 There it stands in the azure, serene heavens, with no crack 
 in its walls, no clouds around its summits. To it the exiles 
 of all oppressed lands look with earnest hope, and under its 
 peaceful shade foreign millions, weary with unrequited toil, 
 are seeking new homes. That wonderous civic- and political 
 edifice belongs to a nation which numbers more intelligent, 
 liberty-loving men, has a larger aggregate of annual products 
 of mine, field, factory and workshop, and more wealth, than 
 any other in the world, and along whose iron and water ways 
 on land, river, lake and ocean, moves a greater volume of 
 commerce than has any other on the globe. No Foreign 
 armies are threatening its gates. No hostile Meets cross the 
 seas to strike down the starry Hag which floats on its lofty 
 turrets. That the sunlight of future centuries may linger 
 and play upon it, and its proud walls continue to stand 
 firmly as the hope of civilized mankind, patriotic dut\ is 
 ever imperative. 
 
 The American Nation has no occasion to be afraid of any 
 external foe. If in her infancy she had fears in this regard, 
 that period has passed. She has the means of putting into 
 the field a larger effective army than has any other nation, 
 and possessing within her borders half of the railroads of 
 the world, she could readily move it to the necessary points, 
 and for home defense can command the services of seven 
 million citizen soldiers. She has the money, iron, steel. 
 coal, shipyards, skill and men, to create a navy more power- 
 ful than any which has ever floated on the seas. Stretching 
 across a vast continent and fronting the two great oceans, 
 she has an impregnable position. Her commercial allies can 
 repose in security and have no fears as to their independence. 
 The foes against which America needs most to secure her- 
 self, are those within. 
 
— — 
 
 Thus we are brought to consider what patriotism demands 
 of the Americans of to-day, and of those in other lands who 
 share their sympathies and hopes. I repeat, we have no 
 right to insist in living by what our fathers did. American 
 institutions cannot be maintained by burning gunpowder and 
 inditing brilliant periods over what George Washington, 
 Abraham Lincoln, and their Illustrious associates dared and 
 wrought. Patriotism is a living force. Patriotism is an 
 nndying flame, which lights the path of duty of individuals 
 and of States. It is a perennial inspiration to effort and to 
 sacrifice. It demands unsleeping vigilance. It seeks to discover 
 the real dangers which imperil society and government. It 
 would be vain and delusive for us to deny, that America 
 has dangers to-day as she had in former periods of her his- 
 tory. Among these are the corruptions which spring from 
 commercial greed and concentrated wealth, and those which 
 have their origin in the massing together of vast populations 
 in our cities, increasing in enormous proportions and with 
 a rapidity without a parallel in other nations. How shall 
 these be governed so that they bring not the same terrible 
 consequences which were the fate of the great cities of 
 former centuries? Babylon, Tyre, Carthage and Rome, did 
 not fall for want of military force. Jerusalem, with her 
 great natural and fortified strength, was conquered by her 
 moral corruptions and internal dissensions, even more than 
 by Titus and his legions. True patriotism has its founda- 
 tion on the solid substratum of Christian ethics. It does not 
 scorn the Bible. It does not repudiate the Sabbath. It 
 sternly opposes the sweeping demands in the name of amuse- 
 ment and roistering license. It refuses to make use of the 
 wonderful forces of iron, steam, and electricity to break 
 down Christian institutions, the bulwark of free nations. If 
 
— 6 — 
 
 the vast network of railroads, taking in the continents and 
 the islands, with their mighty agencies of capital, commerce, 
 and labor, is to be used to abolish the Sabbath and to des- 
 troy Christian institutions, then those who own the fields, 
 the factories, and the workshops will think it expedient to 
 do likewise If bonds, stocks and corporations repudiate 
 the laws and rules of religion, the demons of anarchy and 
 vice will speedily follow the example. L<aw-breaking and 
 immoral commercial License are contagions. Repudiation of 
 
 the Sabbath is professedly urged in the interests of the 
 working-man. If he accepts this repudiation license he will 
 be shamefully deceived. To him it will prove a delusion and 
 a snare. If there art 1 men in the world who need the quiet 
 rest of the Sabbath and a chance to give the mind and heart 
 full play in what is pure ami elevated, they are those who 
 earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. If capital, 
 commerce, and corporations combine to abolish the Sabbath 
 ami turn it into a day of noise and tumult, then the men of 
 labor will have taken from them fifty-two days of the year, 
 winch the laws and customs of Christian lands heretofore 
 have given them, for their physical welfare, and for the 
 moral and social improvement of themselves and families. 
 Amusement and hilarity are well as incidental helps to good 
 living, but those who are always talking about them are 
 seldom good for anything else. We were not made and placed 
 in this wonderous world merely for play, like kittens and mon- 
 keys. The poet never spoke a truer word than when he said — 
 "Life is real, life is earnest." Genuine patriotism does not 
 encourage irreligion in any from. It clings to Christianity 
 as its everlasting chart. Patriotism is reverential. It loves 
 Liberty with an undying love, but it repudiates license as a 
 deadly foe to good government and to human welfare. Man 
 
— 7 — 
 
 has the right to do what he pleases, provided he does not 
 infringe on the rights of others, nor violate the laws of God 
 and his country. The Liberty which Patriotism teaches and 
 defends, is the liberty which does its work in the harness of 
 the law. The liberty which demands the license of anarchy 
 and vice is more dangerous than a hostile army on the 
 theater of war. America was founded and has achieved her 
 greatness as a Christian land, and her citizens have the right 
 to be protected in their Christian privileges and institutions, 
 for these are the salt arid future safety of America and of 
 lands which have drawn from her blood, or would copy her 
 example. It is the highest patriotism to maintain the Ame- 
 rica Nation ' n the foundations where the fathers and the 
 Contitution placed it. Atheism is a deadly foe of the great 
 Republic, and agnosticism is cojder than the polar seas. 
 where individual and national life is impossible. If the 
 Nation, which extends from ocean to ocean, and has resour- 
 ces unequalled by any other in the would, is to be main- 
 tained and shall furnish to the future a strength of govern- 
 ment and of civilization unsurpassed in the annals of men, it 
 must guard and stimulate its moral life with sleepless effort 
 and undaunted courage. Its immediate duty is to strike 
 down political and commercial corruption every where, 
 to wage a war of extermination against Trusts, against all un- 
 hallowed combinations which seek to control the food and 
 material comforts of the people, and to constrain with an 
 iron hand their natural and acquired rights. m And the pa- 
 triotic demand for the destruction of these monstrosities is 
 equally strong for the removal of the liquor saloons, which 
 send forth a deadly malaria, a moral pestilence, more fatal 
 to the Nation's lite and to the peace and welfare of human 
 homes, than armed fortresses of treason in the villages and cities 
 
— fi- 
 ef the land. All the foundations of American liberty, morality 
 
 and law must be vratched with scrupulous care and unswerv- 
 ing fidelity. Powerful and indispensible aids to this great 
 work of national security are the sixty-three thousands pul- 
 pits and churches, with their missionary hoards and agencies, 
 
 to which should be added the three hundred and fifty thousand 
 i( achers of the public schools, more potential for the de- 
 fense and safety of the United States than are the trained 
 armies of Burope for the security of its kingdoms and em- 
 pires. 
 
 Having thus rapidly glanced at the prt sent status of the 
 
 nation, whose birth we commemorate, and emphasized some 
 
 of the pressing duties of Americans, it may he allowed us on 
 this memorable and prophetic day to cast and open eye on 
 the future, to consider some things outside of America, set 
 intimately and necessarily related to what concerns America. 
 Ethnology, the laws of commercial development, and the 
 of history, plainly indicate that at do distant day. four 
 National Powers will chiefly control the Pacific, its islands, 
 harbors, adjacent lands, its politics, trade, and prevailing 
 civilizations. These are the United States, the Australian Re- 
 public that is to he, and the Empires of ( 'hina and Japan. The 
 United States and Australia are sufficiently alike in essential 
 elements of human development and character to he considered 
 ,-is one, for our present purpose. China and Japan also have 
 strong points of resemblance and are essencially Asiatic in con- 
 tra-distinction to the American and Australian nations. To-day 
 the United States and Australia have a population of seventy 
 millions, possessing intelligence, enterprise, and determina- 
 tion, unsurpassed by any people of ancient or modern times, 
 with unbounded resources, and in the lifetime of persons now 
 in this assemblage are to number two hundred and sixty 
 
— 9 — 
 
 millions of souls, and at the close of the next century sis 
 hundred millions. With Americans on the one side ;md the 
 Pacific Asiatic peoples on the other, combining a thousand 
 millions of population, it is not difficult to perceive that 
 Europe will be practically out of the Pacific arena, and that 
 its nations will do well to husband the resources of its home 
 domain and of its Eastern and Southern borders. The 
 islands of the Pacific necessarily will come under the influ- 
 ence and seek the alliance, cither of the American and 
 Australian nations, or of the Asiatic. Naturally they con- 
 stitute a part of the commercial and political system of the 
 New World, as the Grecian Archipelago and the British 
 Isles belong to the commercial and political system of 
 Europe. While maintaining their autonomy and independ- 
 ence, it is for the people of these Islands to determine 
 whether they prefer the United States or the Asiatics for 
 allies. The great American nation has only good-will for 
 the Hawaiian Kingdom. Of this the past and the present 
 are a complete guaranty. In the annals of mankind I know 
 not of a more striking example of national generosity than 
 that of the conduct of the United States toward Hawaii. It 
 is conceded by all well informed persons, that the prosperity 
 of the United States, for the past twenty-five years, has no 
 parallel in the commercial historj of nations, and tin 
 every reason to believe that this prosperity will continue in 
 tin 1 century to come. By the Reciprocity Treaty now in 
 force, the United States allows Hawaii to share in he* 
 wonderful prosperity, thereby more than doubling the pro- 
 perty value and wealth producing power of this country, 
 without perceptibly increasing the vast agregate property of 
 the United States. Thus not cue of the States of the Ameri- 
 can Union is treated by its National Government with more 
 liberality than the Hawaiian Kingdom. 
 
JO 
 
 The American Republic has been compared to ancient 
 Rome in the prosperous periods of her dominion. It is cor- 
 rect to say, that in her proudest days, Koine held not in her 
 hand such elements of power as the United States now pos- 
 ts. But Koine was always a menace to other nations. 
 Conquest and annexation were fixed in her policy. For the 
 most obvious reasons other nations stood in dread of her. 
 But the American Republic seeks not to enlarge her borders 
 at the expense of others. Since the Slave Power iii the Uni- 
 ted States went down forever on a hundred battle-fields, an- 
 nexation ceased to be the policy of the American Nation. 
 This is plainly shown in that, when at the close of the war 
 in 1865, with one million veteran soldiers at her command, 
 Mexico on the South and Canada on the North, then at 
 her mercy, were untouched, unsought. That vast army, 
 twice as large as that which Napoleon led on his memorable 
 Russian campaign, and much larger than that with which Ger- 
 main smote down imperial France in l*7f>. was quietly dis- 
 banded, and not an inch of foreign soil was coveted. Tin 
 like aversion to annexation was manifested when the Ameri- 
 can Senate refused to annex San Domingo with her luxuri- 
 ant soil and genial climate, though it was ottered by her own 
 rulers, and that rich domain lies near the American shores. 
 Yes. American statesmen and the, American people realize 
 that they have land enough, and by education, by conviction, 
 and by interest, they hold it to lie just and wise to respect 
 the autonomy and the rights of other countries and of other 
 peoples. They do not believe it. well to send forth Meets 
 and armies to seize islands and foreign lands, to appoint over 
 them Governors, Judges, and other officials of political and 
 military power. In the place of forcible annexation, the 
 American Republic has substituted peaceful fraternity, gen- 
 
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 erous reciprocity and good-will. It is this fraternal, humane 
 policy of Christian civilization which befits America, and by 
 which she can best maintain healthful life, and achieve that 
 true glory, worthy of her commanding continental position 
 and of her exalted leadership among the Christian nations of 
 the world. While it could not justly be expected that the 
 people of these independent and prosperous Islands should 
 refuse any good thing or commercial advantage from Europe 
 or Asia, the obvious and essential truth stands unrefuted by 
 facts or reason, that America and Hawaii have reciprocal re- 
 lations, stronger and closer than the latter can possibly have 
 with other nations. There is no natural antagonism between 
 them. In standing on fraternal lines they follow the rules of 
 common-sense and of commercial logic. Near neighborhood 
 has the obvious advantage over vast distance. Even when 
 the enterprise and wealth of the United States shall have 
 completed the Nacaragua canal and placed it at the service 
 of the world's commerce, Europe will be five-fold more dis- 
 tant from these Islands than America, and San Francisco will 
 be seven thousand miles nearer Honolulu than London. No 
 cunning devices of men can overcome the cold mathematics 
 of this great odds in distance. Besides, the United States 
 and Hawaii belong to the New World, and their advancing 
 civilization has a common stamp, as all who have traveled 
 from Boston via Plymouth Bock, New York, Independence 
 Hall, and San Francisco have quickly observed. It will not 
 be by war. nor by diplomatic fencing and formularies, that 
 that Europe will grow less and less in the Pacific, but this 
 will come by the irresistible logic of increasing population 
 and of superior commercial and social forces. It would be 
 vain to oppose this resistless march of nature and of destiny, 
 which are agents of (rod's will, before which imperial ambi- 
 
— 12 — 
 
 tions perish and armies and navies crumble and melt away 
 as the mists on the mountains are dissipated by the sun, and 
 icebergs arc crushed and dissolved by the ocean wavi s. 
 When America shall have her """six hundred millions of peo- 
 ple and Australia, China and Japan as many more, then 
 Seward's prophesy will be more than verified, and around 
 the shores and on bhe waters of the Pacific will trans- 
 pire the great events and be developed the larger commerce 
 of the world. In this splendid drama of future civilization 
 and of commercial [tower these Islands will have their part. 
 In the presence of SUch an auspicious future as these facts 
 indicate, patriotism is a supreme duty — a patriotism not of 
 Carthaginian 'or Roman type, which, inspired by heathen sel- 
 fishness and ambition, hated and antagonized other nations. 
 but 8 patriotism horn of the Sermon on the Mount and 
 taught by fche great Apostle to the Gentiles, which recognizes 
 that God has made of one blood all the nations of the earth 
 — a patriotism which in Philadelphia, July 4th, 1776, gave 
 wisdom and power to that remarkable body of men who made 
 this day immortal a patriotism which seeks the highest 
 good of all within its horizon, whose radiant circle of hope 
 includes this world and the Great Hereafter— a patriotism 
 of moral and heroic devotion, which would keep America on 
 the plane of fraternal and humane development, and which as 
 an ever-living force, is necessary to make these Islands the 
 happy homes of civilized men, sparkling gems in the great 
 Western ocean, more beautiful than the famed islands of the 
 Mediterranean in the brightest days of ancient Greece. It is 
 
 * James Bryce, a distinguished British author, in his recent greal 
 work on the " American Commonwealth."' speaks oi Ainerieansas "The 
 mighty democracy, destined in another century tO form one half of 
 civilized mankind."* Vol. I, page 14'.). 
 
13 
 
 the hope and the prayer of all true Americans of to-day, that 
 over this Bplendid panorama of the future Western world, its 
 cities, states, governments, schools, its rich commerce, busy 
 industries, and teeming populations, may rest the perpetual 
 sunshine of Christian Faith and Republican Liberty, and in 
 all its vast area be taught and practised the brotherhood 
 of nations, peace ami good will among men. 
 
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