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17
GENERAL LIBRARY of the
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
-PRESENTED BY-
Pres. J. B. Angell
1901
E
713
382
Jan. 17, 1901

+
Educational and Industrial
ら
​पण‍
IND
Leaflet No. 8
Union
Imperial Democracy
BY
DAVID STARR JORDAN !
President Leland Stanford, Jr., University, California
K
Reprinted by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
from The New World for
December, 1898
264 BOYLSTON STREET
BOSTON
1898
IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.
LAST May I spoke before my people at home on the subject of
Imperialism. I took my title, as I take now my text, from Kip-
ling's "Recéssional," the noblest hymn of our century: "Lest
we forget." For it seemed to me then, just after the battle of
Manila, that we might forget who we are and what we stand for.
In the sudden intoxication of far-off victory, with the conscious-
ness of power and courage, with the feeling that all the world is
talking of us, our great stern mother patting us on the back, and
all the lesser peoples looking on in fear or envy, we might lose
our heads. But greater glory than this has been ours before.
For more than a century our nation has stood for something
higher and nobler than success in war, something not enhanced
by a victory at sea, or a wild bold charge over a hill lined with
masked batteries. We have stood for civic ideals, and the great-
est of these, that government should make men by giving them
freedom to make themselves. The glory of the American Re-
public is that it is the embodiment of American manhood. It
was the dream of the fathers that this should always be so, that
American government and republican manhood should be coex-
tensive, that the nation shall not go where freedom cannot go.
This is the meaning of Washington's Farewell Address: that
America should grow strong within herself, should keep out of
all fights and friendships that are not her own, should secure no
territory in which a free man cannot live, and should own no
possessions that may not in time be numbered among the United
States. In other words, America should not be a power among
the nations, but a nation among the powers. This view of the
2
Imperial Democracy.
function our country rests on is no mere accident of revolution or
isolation. It has its base in sound political common sense, and
in the rush of new claims and new possibilities we should not for-
get this old wisdom.
This year 1898 makes one of the three world-crises in our
history. Twice before have we stood at the parting of the ways.
Twice before have wise counsels controlled our decision. The
first crisis followed the war of the Revolution. Its question was
this, What relation shall the weak, scattered colonies of varying
tempers and various ambitions bear to one another? The answer
was, the American Constitution, the federation of self-governing
United States.
The second crisis came through the growth of slavery. The
union of the States, we found, could not "permanently endure
half slave, half free." These were the words of Lincoln at
Springfield in 1858, — the words that made Douglas Senator from
Illinois, that made Lincoln the first President of the re-united
States. These are the words which, fifty years ago, drove the
timid away in fear, that rallied the strong to brave deeds in face
of a great crisis. And this was our decision: Slavery must die
that the Union shall live.
concerns us.
The third crisis is on us to-day. It is not the conquest of
Spain, not the disposition of the spoils of victory which first
Shall our
It is the spirit that lies behind it.
armies go where our institutions cannot? Shall territorial expan-
sion take the place of Democratic freedom? Shall our invasion
of the Orient be merely an incident, an accident of a war of
knight-errantry, temporary and exceptional? Or is it to mark a
new policy, the reversion from America to Europe, from Demo-
cracy to Imperialism?
It is my own belief that the crisis is already passing. Our
choice for the future is made. We have already lost our stomach
for Imperialism, as we come to see what it means. A century of
republicanism has given the common man common sense, and the
tawdry glories of foreign dominion already cease to dazzle and
deceive. But the responsibilities of our acts are upon us. Hawaii
and Alaska are ours already. Cuba and Porto Rico we cannot
escape, and, most unfortunate of all, the most of us see no clear
way to justice toward the Philippines. The insistent duties of
"Compulsory Imperialism" already clamor for our attention.
In the face of these tremendous problems, the nation should at
least be serious. It is not enough to swell our breasts over the
Imperial Democracy.
3
glories of national expansion, roll up our eyes, and prate about
the guiding finger of Providence, while the black swarm of our
political vultures swoop down on our new possessions. To the
end that we may understand the serious work of "Compulsory
Imperialism," let us look briefly at a number of easy propositions
or axioms of political science pertinent, each in its degree, to the
topic before us.
Colonial expansion is not national growth. By the spirit of
our Constitution our Nation can expand only with the growth
of freedom. It is composed not of land but of men. It is a
self-governing people, gathered in self-governing United States.
There is no objection to national expansion where honorably
brought about. If there were any more space to be occupied by
American citizens, who could take care of themselves, we would
cheerfully overflow and fill it. But Colonial Aggrandizement is
Wherever degen-
not national expansion; slaves are not men.
erate, dependent or alien races are within our borders to-day,
they are not part of the United States. They constitute a
social problem; a menace to peace and welfare. There is no
solution of race problem or class problem until race or class can
solve it for itself. Unless the negro can make a man of himself
through the agencies of freedom, free ballot, free schools, free
religions, there can be no solutions of the race problem. Already
Booker Washington warns us that this problem unsettled is a
national danger greater than the attack of armies within or with-
out. The race problems of the tropics are perennial and insolu-
ble, for free institutions cannot exist where free men cannot
live.
The territorial expansion now contemplated would not extend
our institutions, because the proposed colonies are incapable of
civilized self-government. It would not extend our nation, be-
cause these regions are already full of alien races, and are not
habitable by Anglo-Saxon people. The strength of Anglo-Saxon
civilization lies in the mental and physical activity of men and in
the growth of the home. Where activity is fatal to life, the
Anglo-Saxon decays, mentally, morally, physically. The home
cannot endure in the climate of the tropics. Mr. Ingersoll once
said that if a colony of New England preachers and Yankee
schoolma'ams were established in the West Indies, the third
generation would be seen riding bareback on Sunday to the cock-
fights. Civilization is, as it were, suffocated in the tropics. It
lives, as Benjamin Kidd suggests, as though under deficiency of
4
Imperial Democracy.
oxygen. The only American who can live in the tropics without
demoralization is the one who has duties at home and will never
go there.
The advances of Civilization are wholly repugnant to the chil-
dren of the tropics. To live without care, reckless and dirty, to
have no duties and to be in no hurry, with the lottery, cock-fight
and games of chance for excitement, is more to them than rapid
transit, telegraphic communication, literature, art, education and
all the joys of Saxon civilization. The Latin Republics fail for
reasons inherent in the nature of the people. There is little civic
coherence among them; feelings are mistaken for realities, words.
for deeds and boasting for accomplishment. Hence great words,
lofty sentiments, fuss and feathers generally take the place of
action.
The freedom of Spanish America is for the most part military
despotism. It is said of the government of Russia that it is
"despotism tempered by assassination." That of most of our
sister republics is assassination tempered by despotism. Mexico,
the best of them, is not a republic; it is a despotism, the splendid
tyranny of a man strong and wise, who knows Mexico and how
to govern her, a humane and beneficent tyrant.
We shall find in Cuba all the problems that vex Latin Amer-
ica. There are three things inseparable from the life of the
Cuban people, the cigarette, the lottery ticket and the machete.
These stand for vice, superstition and revenge. From my own
visit to Havana two keen recollections remain. In the early
morning the markets are filled by a long procession of loaded
burros who come down the mountain-side. These bring every-
thing that is eatable, — with the rest live pigs and sheep. Pigs
and sheep alike are tied in pairs and hung saddle-wise, head
downward from the backs of the donkeys. From two until four
in the morning the long procession comes in, the pigs lustily
squealing, the sheep helpless and dumb. But nobody cares for
an animal's pain. There is no society for the prevention of
cruelty to animals in Cuba. There are not many who could
understand even the purpose of such a society. In Havana bull-
fights follow the church services, not real fights but slaughter. A
horse lame and blind is ripped up by an infuriated bull, who in
turn is done to death by the stab of a skillful butcher. At
Christmas time all interest centres in the lottery. Everybody
buys lottery tickets. Charms, fortune-tellers, astrology and all
the machinery of superstition are brought into play to select the
Imperial Democracy.
5
lucky numbers. "How many days old am I? How many days.
old is my Dolores? How many days old was I on my lucky day
when I drew the prize last year? How can I find my lucky num-
ber?"
These matters are talked of everywhere, on the streets, in
the church, in the wine rooms, in the theatres. One hears the
parrots on their posts at the gate discussing the very same ques-
tions. The birds rattle off the names and numbers as glibly as
their master, and with as high a conception of the possibilities of
life.
The people of Cuba prefer the indolence of Spanish rule, how-
ever corrupt and brutal, to the bustling, blunt ways of the Anglo-
Saxon. They would take their chances at starvation or butchery
rather than clean up their towns. To suppress lottery and cock-
fight would make life not worth living. The Puritan Sabbath
and the self-control it typifies would be worse to them than the
flames of Purgatory.
We are pledged to give self-government to Cuba. This we
cannot do in full without the risk of seeing it relapse into an
anarchy as repulsive, if not as hopeless, as the tyranny of Spain.
Only the splendid apparition of the man on horseback could
bring this to an end. The dictator may bring Law, but not
democracy. Its ultimate fate and ours is Annexation. It is too
near us and our interests for us to leave it to its fate, and to the
schemes of its own small politicians. It therefore remains for us
to annex and assimilate Cuba, but not at once. We must take
our time, and do it in decency and order, as we have taken Alaska
and Hawaii. We take Cuba, Porto Rico and Hawaii, not because
we want them, but because we have no friends who can manage
them well and give us no trouble, and it is possible that in a
century or so they may become part of our nation as well as of
our territory. American enterprise will flow into Cuba, no
doubt, when Cuba is free. It will clean up the cities, stamp out
the fevers, build roads where the trails for mule-sleds are, and
railroads where the current of traffic goes. Doubtless a great
industrial awakening will follow our occupation of Cuba when
we have taken away the barrier of our tariffs.
The Anglo-Saxon nations have certain ideals on which their
political superstructure rests. The great political service of
England is to teach respect for Law. The British Empire rests
on British Law. The great political service of the United
States is to teach respect for the Individual Man. The Amer-
ican republic rests on individual manhood, the "right divine of
6
Imperial Democracy.
man, the million trained to be free." The chief agency in the
development of free manhood is the recognition of the individual
man as the responsible unit of government. This recognition is
not confined to local and municipal affairs, as is practically the
case in England, but extends to all branches of government.
It is the axiom of democracy that "government must derive its
just powers from the consent of the governed." No such consent
justifies slavery; hence our Union "could not endure half slave,
half free." No such consent justifies our hold on Alaska, Ha-
waii, Cuba, Porto Rico, the Ladrones or the Philippines. The
people do not want us, our ways, our business, or our govern-
ment. Only as we displace them or amuse them with cheap
shows do we gain their consent. These are slave nations, and
their inhabitants cannot be units in government. In our hands,
as Judge Morrow has ably pointed out, they will have no voice in
their own affairs, but must be subject to the sovereign will of
Congress alone. This implies Taxation without Representation,
a matter of which something was said in Boston one hundred and
thirty years ago. Our Constitution knows no such thing as per-
manently dependent colonies, else the acquisition of such would
have been formally forbidden.
?
To be subject to the will of Congress, as the history of Alaska
has clearly shown, is to be subject to vacillation, corruption,
tyranny, parsimony and neglect. The greatest scandals England
has known have come from her neglected colonies. It is not that
Americans or Englishmen are incompetent to handle any class of
problems. It is because the public weary of them; colonial affairs
are trivial, paltry and exasperating. When a colony ceases to be
a new toy, it falls into neglect. The record of American occupation
of our one colony of Alaska is the same in kind (climate and blood
excepted) with that of Spanish rule in Cuba or the Ladrones.
We are blind to this because we do not care. Alaska is none of
our business; we have no money invested in it. In a few years
Alaska will have no resources left; then we may throw it away
as we would throw a sucked orange. The American-Spanish idea
of a colony is a place to be exploited, to make its captors rich by
its resources and its trade. We have cured Spain of that idea,
by taking all her colonies away. But we have not attained to the
idea that we must spend our money on our colonies, enriching
them with enterprise and law.
It is said nowadays that wherever our flag is raised it must
never be hauled down. To haul down an American flag is an
Imperial Democracy.
7
insult to Old Glory. But this patriotism rings counterfeit. It
would touch a truer note to say that wherever our flag goes it
shall bring good government. It should, as Senator Mason sug-
gests, "never float over an unwilling people." Whatever land
comes under the American flag should have the best government
we know how to give. It should be better than we give ourselves,
for it lacks the noble advantages of self-rule.
Take the Philippines or leave them! No half-way measures
can be permanent. To rule at arm's length is to fail in govern-
ment. These islands must belong to the United States, or else
they must belong to the people who inhabit them. If we govern
the Philippines, so in their degree must the Philippines gov-
ern us.
There are
some economists who intelligently favor colonial
extension to-day because to handle colonies successfully must
force on us English forms of government. A dose of Imperial-
ism would stiffen the back of our Democracy. English forms are
better than ours in this, that they can deal more accurately with
outside affairs. This is because the people of England are never
consulted by the foreign office, the colonial office or the Bureau
controlling coinage and finance. To remove these matters from
popular control makes for good government at the expense of
training of the people. As to which is the better there is room
for honest difference of opinion. The essence of this argument is
that pressure from without will force us to take all difficult mat-
ters out of the people's hands, intrusting them only to trained
representatives. It is true, no doubt, that our standing in the
world is lowered because our best statesmen are not in politics to
the degree that they are in England. The rules of the game shut
them out. But I believe that we can change these rules by forces
now at work. Wiser voters will demand better representatives,
but these must keep in touch with the people, acting with them
and through them, never in their stead. For reasons I shall give
later on, I believe that to adopt British forms, with all their
unquestioned advantages, would be a step backward and down-
ward.
Leaving political philosophers aside, the noisiest advocates of
colonial expansion are among men least interested in good gov-
ernment at home. Chief among these are ministers ignorant of
the difficulties of wise administration, and politicians contemptu-
ous of them. "I don't," observes one of these,
8
Imperial Democracy.
“I don't value principle mor 'n an old cud,
What are we rational creatures for
But glory and gunpowder, thunder and blood ?”
Such men find fishing best in troubled water. If it were not for
the petty offices which the Philippines promise, half the political
impulse in favor of their annexation would evaporate. Half the
rest comes from the desire to dodge the issues of labor and coin-
age by setting people to talking of something else.
-
There are two parties in every free country, and only two.
These are, first, those who strive for good government, and sec-
ond, those who hope to gain something money, glory, prestige-
from bad government. These two parties are not called republi-
can or democrat, not whig or tory. They do not present separate
tickets the first party never presents tickets at all. It is
always in the minority, but it is the glory and the hope of the
democracy that it always comes out victorious after the election is
over.
!
The chief real argument for the retention of the Philippines
rests on the belief that if we do not take them, they will fall into
worse hands. This may be true, but it is open to question. It
is easy to treat them as Spain has done; but none of the eloquent
voices raised for annexation has yet suggested anything better.
We must also recognize that the nerve and courage of Dewey and
his associates seems spent to little avail if we cast away what we
have won. To leave the Philippines, after all this, seems like
patriotism under false pretenses. But nothing could have induced
us to accept these islands, if offered for nothing, before the battle
of Manila. If we take the Philippines, the business of bringing
peace through war is scarce begun. The great majority of the
Filipinos have never yet heard of Spain, much less of the United
States. This is especially true of the Malay pirates of the South-
ern Islands and the black imps of the unexplored interior, as
capable of self-government or of any other government as so
many monkeys. It would not be an easy and humane task to
bring these folks to the extermination which some of the annex-
ationists placidly claim is the final doom of negritos, Kanakas,
Malays and all inferior races who get in anybody's way.
This, according to John Morley, is England's experience in
bringing peace to suffering humanity in the tropics: "First, you
push on into territories where you have no business to be, and
where you had promised not to go; secondly, your intrusion pro-
vokes resentment, and, in these wild countries, resentment means
Imperial Democracy.
9
resistance; thirdly, you instantly cry out that the people are
rebellious and that their act is rebellion (this in spite of your own
assurance that you have no intention of setting up a permanent
sovereignty over them); fourthly, you send a force to stamp out
the rebellion; and fifthly, having spread bloodshed, confusion
and anarchy, you declare, with hands uplifted to the heavens, that
moral reasons force you to stay, for if you were to leave, this ter-
ritory would be left in a condition which no civilized Power could
contemplate with equanimity or with composure. These are the
five stages in the Forward Rake's progress." It was of England
in Chitral that Morley said this, not of America in Luzon. No
wonder England now cheers us on. We are following her lead.
We are giving to her methods the sanction of our respectability.
Of all forms of flattery imitation is the most sincere.
There are many who
say,
"Take whatever we can get. Who is
afraid? What is there for the strongest, richest, bravest, wisest
nation on earth to fear?" But it is not force we fear.
But it is not force we fear.
""
Armies,
navies, Kings and Kaisers, so long as we behave ourselves, can
never harm our republic. It is bad government we fear, the dry
rot of official mismanagement, corruption and neglect, the decay
which the Fates mete out "when the tumult and the shouting
dies to the nations that forget their ideals. To come to our
place among the nations " will be to show that democracy can
give good government, government firm, dignified, economical,
just. It does not mean to have everybody talking about us, to
carry our flag into every sea and to spread rank imbecility over a
hundred scattered patches of island.
So far as the Philippines are concerned, the only righteous
thing to do would be to recognize the independence of the Philip-
pines under American protection, and to lend them our army and
navy and our wisest counselors, our Dewey and our Merritt, not
our politicians, but our jurists, our teachers, with foresters, elec-
tricians, manufacturers, mining experts and experts in the various
industries. Then, after they have had a fair chance and shown
that they cannot care for themselves, we should turn them over
quietly to the paternalism of peace-loving Holland or peace-
compelling Great Britain. We should not get our money back,
but we should save our honor. The only sensible thing to do
would be to pull out some dark night and escape from the great
problem of the Orient as suddenly and as dramatically as we got
into it.
As for trade, to take a weak nation by the throat is not the
10
Imperial Democracy.
righteous way to win its trade. It is not true that "trade follows
the flag."
Trade flies through the open door. To open the door
of the Orient is to open our own doors to Asia. To do this hur-
ries us on toward the final " manifest destiny," the leveling of the
nations. Where the barriers are all broken down, and the world
becomes one vast commercial republic, there will be leveling down
of government, character, ideals, as well as leveling up.
It is the duty of nations with ideals to struggle against
"manifest destiny." In the Norse Mythology the Fenris-Wolf in
the Twilight of the Gods shall at last devour them all. So at
last, in the Twilight of the Nations shall all of them succumb to
"Manifest Destiny." The huge armaments of Europe, its invin-
cible armies, its mighty navies, are but piled up as fagots for the
burning which shall destroy dynasties and nations. Lowering of
national character, of national ideals, of national pride, follows
the path of glory.
“We want,” some say, "our hands in oriental affairs when the
great struggle follows the breaking up of China." Others would
have "American freedom upheld as a torchlight amidst the dark-
ness of oriental despotism." We cannot show American civili-
zation where American institutions cannot exist. But the spirit
of freedom goes with its deeds.
I do not urge the money cost of holding the Philippines as an
argument against annexation. No dependent colony, honestly
administered, ever repaid its cost to the government, and this col-
ony holds out not the slightest promise of such a result. In fact,
the cost of conquest and maintenance in life and gold is in gro-
tesque excess of any possible advantage to trade or to civilization.
Individuals grow rich, but no honest government gets its money
back. But with all this, if annexation is a duty, it is such regard-
less of cost.
But America has governmental ideals of the development of
the individual man. England has no care for the man, only for
civic order. This unfits America for certain tasks for which
England is prepared. In Zanzibar, when the king dies, the first
of the royal family to reach the throne is made king. Once a
king who hated England was thus chosen. A British man-of-war
in the harbor promptly shelled the royal palace and killed so
many followers of the new king that the mistake was quickly rec-
tified and the Pax Britannica restored. Our ideals stand in the
way of our doing such things as this.
To govern colonies it is necessary to have an automatic non-
Imperial Democracy.
11
political civil service. That our navy is organized on such a basis
makes its strength. That the volunteer army is not, is the reason
why the air is full to-day of charges and counter charges. The
colonial policy must be continuous, hence out of the people's
hands. It must be flexible, hence not limited by constitutional
checks and balances. An annexationist lately said to me, " I
am just tired of hearing of the Constitution." A labor agitator
says that all our troubles come from the fact “
every reform
needed by the people is prevented by the Constitution." But to
prevent foolish acts, inside and outside the country, the Constitu-
tion was devised. It is a good Constitution after all. Let us
give it a little further trial!
Government derives "just powers from the consent of the gov-
erned." This is the maxim of democracy. But where such con-
sent is impossible, government may derive just powers in another
way. It may justify itself because it is good government. This
is the maxim of Imperialism. This is the justification of Mexico.
It is the justification of Great Britain. The function of British
Imperialism is to carry law and order, the Pax Britannica, to all
parts of the globe. This function has been worked out in three
ways corresponding to England's three classes of tributary dis-
tricts or colonies. The first class of these consists of regions
settled by Englishmen imbued with the spirit of the law, and
capable of taking care of themselves. Such colonies rule their
own affairs absolutely. The bond of Imperialism is little more
than a treaty of perpetual friendship. Over the local affairs of
Canada, for example, England claims little authority and exer-
cises none.
When difficulties arise with Canada, we see British
Imperialism cringing before provincial politicians as a weak
mother before a spoiled child. Should Canada or Australia
break from her nominal allegiance, the whole sham fabric of
Imperialism would fall to pieces.
A second class of colonies consists of military posts, strategic
points of war or commerce, wrested from some weaker nation in
the militant past. In the control of these outposts "the consent
of the governed" plays no part. The inhabitants of Gibraltar,
for example, count for no more than so many "camp-followers."
The third class of colonies is made up of conquered or bank-
rupt nations, people whose own governmental forms were so
intolerable that England was forced to take them across her knee.
These nations still govern themselves in one fashion, but each act
of their rulers is subject to the firm veto of the British Colonial
12
Office.
Imperial Democracy.
"Said England unto Pharaoh, I will make a man of
you,
and with Pharaoh, as with other irresponsibles of the
tropics, England has in some degree succeeded. But this success
is attained only through the strictest discipline of military meth-
ods. It is not along the lines by which we have made a man of
"Brother Jonathan." England has thus become the guardian of
the weak nations of the earth, the police force of the unruly, the
assignee of the bankrupt.
In the Norse Mythology the Midgard-Serpent appears in the
guise of a cat, an animal small and feeble, but in reality the
mightiest and most enduring of all, for its tail goes around
the earth, growing down its own throat, and by its giant force, it
holds the world together. England is the Midgard-Serpent of
the nations, shut in a petty island; as Benjamin Franklin said,
"an island which compared to America is but a stepping stone in
a brook with scarce enough of it above water to keep one's shoes
dry." Yet, by the force of arms, the force of trade and the
force of law she has become the ruler of the earth. It is English
brain and English muscle which hold the world together. “What
does he know of England who only England knows?" No doubt,
as Kipling says, England
thinks her empire still
Twixt the Strand and Holborn Hill,
but the Strand would be half empty were it not that it leads out-
ward to Cathay. The huge business interests of Greater Britain
are the guaranty of her solidarity.
In close relation to the Mother Country America must stand.
Greater England holds over us the obligations of blood and
thought and language and character. Only the Saxon under-
stands the Saxon. Only the Saxon knows the meaning of free-
dom. "A sanction like that of religion," says Secretary Hay,
"enforces our partnership in all important matters." Not that
we should enter into formal alliance with Great Britain. We
can get along well side by side, but never tied together by red
tape. The English people are our friends in every real crisiş
and that without caring overmuch whether we be right or not.
War with England should be forever impossible. The need of
the common race is greater than the need of the nations. The
Anglo-Saxon race must be at peace within itself. A war between
England and America, fought to the bitter end, might submerge
civilization. When the war should be over and the smoke
cleared away there would be but one left. That would be Russia.
men.
Imperial Democracy.
13
But though one in blood with England, our course of political
activities has not lain parallel with hers. We were estranged in
the beginning, and we have had other affairs on our hands. We
have turned our faces westward, and our work has made us
strong. We have had our forests to clear, our prairies to break,
our rivers to harness, our own problem of slavery to adjust.
While England has been making trade we have been making
We have no machinery to govern colonies well. We want
no such machinery if we can help it. The habit of our people
and the tendency of our forms of government are to lead people
to mind their own business. Only the business of individuals or
groups of individuals receives attention. Our representatives in
Congress are our attorneys, retained to look after our interests,
the interest of the state or district, not of the nation. A colony
has no attorney, and its demands, as matters now stand, must go
by default. This is the reason why we fail in the government of
colonies. This is the reason why our consular service is weak
and inefficient. This is the reason why our forests are wasted
year by year. Nothing is well done in a republic unless it touches
the interest or catches the attention of the people. Unless a col-
ony knows what good government is and insists loudly on having
it, with some means to make itself heard, it will be neglected and
abused. This is why every body of people under the American
flag must have a share in the American government.
When a
colony knows what good government is, it ceases to be a colony
and can take care of itself.
To do what England does we must take lessons of England's
methods. Toward the English system we must approach more
and more closely if we are to deal with foreign interests in large
fashion. The town-meeting idea must give way to centralization
of power. We must look away from our own affairs, neglect
them even, until the pressure of growing expenditure forces us to
attend to them again more carefully than we ever yet have done.
One reason England is governed well is that misgovernment any-
where on any large scale would be fatal to her credit and fatal to
her power. She must call her best men to her service because
without them she would perish. Our government must be
changed for our changing needs. We must give up our whole
protective system at the demand of commerce. I, for one, shall
never weep at that. But we must abandon our childish notions
that America is a world of herself, big enough to maintain a sep-
arate basis of coinage, a freeman's scale of wages or a social order
of her own.
14
Imperial Democracy.
We must give up the checks and balances in our Constitution.
It is said that our great battleship, Oregon, can turn about, end
for end, within her own length. The dominant nation must have
the same power. She must be capable of reversing her action
in a minute, or turning around within her own length. This
"our prate of statutes and of state" makes impossible. We
shall receive many hard knocks before we reach this condition,
but we must reach it if we are to "work mightily " in the affairs
of the other nations. If we are to deal with crises in foreign
affairs we must hold them with a steadier grasp than that with
which we have held the Cuban question. The Spanish Peace
Commission knows well that it is no Empire with which it has to
deal. An Empire knows its own mind and never yields a point.
As matters are now, President, Senate and House check each
other's movements, and the State falls over its own feet.
The question is not whether Great Britain or the United States
has the better form of government or the nobler civic mission.
There is room in the world for two types of Anglo-Saxon nations,
and nothing has yet happened to show that civilization would
gain if either were to take up the function of the other. We may
not belittle the tremendous services of England in the enforcement
of laws amid barbarism. We may not deny that every aggression
of hers on weaker nations results in good to the conquered, but
we insist that our own function of turning masses into men, of
Knowing men by name," is as noble as hers. Better for the
world that the whole British Empire should be dissolved, as it
must be late or soon, than that the United States should forget
her own mission in a mad chase of emulation. He reads history
to little purpose who finds in Imperial dominion a result, a cause
or even a sign of national greatness. Infinitely stronger for the
cause of freedom, says Justice Brewer, "than the power of our
armies, is the force of our example."
66
We may have a navy and coaling stations to meet our com-
mercial needs without entering on colonial expansion. It takes
no war to accomplish this honorably. Whatever land we may
need in our business we may buy in the open market as we buy
coal. If the owners will accept our price it needs no Imperialism
to foot the bills. But the question of such need is one for com-
mercial experts, not for politicians. Our decision should be in
the interest of commerce, not of sea power. We need, no doubt,
navy enough to protect us from insults, even though every battle-
ship, Charles Sumner pointed out fifty years ago, costs as much
Imperial Democracy.
15 .
as Harvard College, and though schools, not battleships, make the
strength of the United States. We have drawn more strength
from Harvard College than from a thousand men-of-war. Once
Spain owned some battleships as many and as swift as ours, but
she had no men of science to handle them. A British fleet bot-
tled up in Santiago or Cavite would have given a very different
account of itself. It is men not ships which make a navy. It is
our moral and material force, our brains and character and inge-
nuity and wealth that make America a power among the nations,
not her battleships. These are only visible symptoms designed to
impress the ignorant or incredulous. The display of force saves
us from insults from those who do not know our mettle.
Some great changes in our system are inevitable, and belong to
the course of natural progress. Against these I have nothing to
say. Whatever our part in the affairs of the world, we should
play it manfully. I make no plea for self-sufficiency, indiffer-
ence, or isolation for isolation's sake. To shirk the world-move-
ments or to drift with the current would be alike unworthy of
our origin, our history and our ideals.
In closing let me repeat what seem to me the three main
reasons for opposing every step toward Imperialism. First, do-
minion is brute force. To furnish such power we shall need a
colonial bureau, with its force of extra-national police. A large
army and navy must justify itself by doing something. An army
and navy we must maintain for our own defense, but beyond
that they can do little that does not hurt, and they must be used
if they would be kept alive.
The other reasons concern the integrity of the Republic itself.
This was the lesson of slavery, that no republic can “endure half
slave and half free." The republics of antiquity fell because
they were republics of the free only, for each citizen rested on the
backs of nine slaves. A republic cannot be an oligarchy as well.
Whatever form of control we adopt, we shall be in fact slave-
drivers, and the business of slave-driving will react upon us.
Slavery itself was a disease which came to us from the British
West Indies. It breeds in the tropics like yellow fever and
leprosy. Can even an imperial republic last, part slave, part
free?
But England endures, and her control of slave territories is her
"doom and pride." What, then, of British Imperialism? But
Great Britain is an oligarchy, not a republic. Her government
is the direction of commerce. It is admiralty rather than demo-
16
Imperial Democracy.
cracy. Americans govern themselves. Englishmen are ruled by
their government. The people can only control the speed, not
the direction of the administration. Englishmen govern them-
selves in municipal affairs, and in ways from which we have
much to learn. In foreign affairs their huge governmental
machine, backed by all the momentum of tradition, is all-pow-
erful.
The stronger the governmental machine, the more adjustable
its powers, the more accurately the processes of government are
performed. If good government were all, democracy would not
deserve half the effort that is spent on it. The function of
democracy is not alone to make government good. It is to make
men strong. Better government than any republic has yet en-
joyed could be had in a simpler and cheaper way. The automatic
scheme of competitive examination would give us better service
at half the present cost. Even an ordinary intelligence-office or
statesman's employment bureau would serve us better than con-
ventions and elections. Government too good as well as too bad
may have a baneful influence on men. The purpose of self-
government is to intensify individual responsibility, to promote
attempts at wisdom, through which true wisdom may come at
last. The republic is a huge laboratory of civics, a laboratory in
which strange experiments are performed, but by which, as in
other laboratories, wisdom may arise from experience, and, once
arisen, may work itself out in virtue. Even the Spoils System,
with all its waste and humiliation, has its educative power.
Vastly greater will be the educative value of the effort by which
the nation will some day throw it off.
It is not true that the government "which is best administered
is best." That is the maxim of tyranny. That government is
best which makes the best men. In the training of manhood lies
the certain pledge of better government in the future. The civic
problems of the future will be greater than those of the past.
They will concern, not the relation of nation to nation, but of man
The policing of far-off islands, the herding of baboons
and elephants, the maintenance of the machinery of Imperialism,
all are petty things beside what the higher freedom demands.
To turn to these empty and showy affairs is to neglect our own
business for the gossip of our neighbors.
to man.
Men say that we want nobler political problems than those we
have. We are tired of our tasks "artificial and transient," and
seek some new ones worthy of our national bigness. I have no
Imperial Democracy.
17
patience with such talk as this. The greatest political problems
the world has ever known are ours to-day and still unsolved, —
the problems of free men in freedom. Because these are hard
and trying we would shirk them in order to meddle with the af
fairs of our weak-minded neighbors. So we are tired of the labor
problem, the corporation problem, the race problem, the problem
of coinage and of municipal government. Then let us turn to
the politics of Guam and Mindanao, and let our own difficulties
settle themselves! Shame on our cowardice! Are the politics
of Luzon cleaner than those of New York? We would give our
blood to our country, would we not? Then let us give her our
brains. More than the blood of heroes she needs the brains of
men.
The political greatness of England has never lain in her navies
nor the force of her arms. It has lain in her struggle for indi-
vidual freedom. Not Marlborough nor Grenville nor Welling-
ton is its exponent. Let us say rather Pym and Hampden,
Maine and Blackstone, Herbert Spencer and John Bright. The
real problems of England have always been at home. The pomp
of Imperialism, the display of naval power, the commercial con-
trol of India and China, all these are as "the bread and circuses
by which the Roman emperors kept the mob from their thrones.
They kept the people busy and put off the day of final reckoning.
"Gild the dome of the Invalides," was Napoleon's cynical com-
mand, when he learned that the people of Paris were becoming
desperate. The people of England seek for a higher justice, a
worthier freedom, and so the ruling ministry crowns the good
queen as Empress of India.
Meanwhile, the real problems of civilization develop and ripen.
They care nothing for the greatness of empire or the glitter of
Imperialism. They must be solved by men, and each man must
help solve his own problems. The development of republican
manhood is just now the most important matter that any nation
in the world has on hand. We have been fairly successful thus
far, but perhaps only fairly. Our government is careless, waste-
ful and unjust, but our men are growing self-contained and wise.
Despite the annual invasion of foreign illiteracy, despite the
degeneration of congested cities, the individual intelligence of
men stands higher in America than in any other part of the world.
The bearing of the people at large in these days is a lesson in
itself. Compare the behavior of the American people, through-
out the late war, with that of the masses of any other nation, and
18
Imperial Democracy.
we see what democracy has done. And we shall see more of this
as our history goes on. Free schools, free ballot, free thought,
free religion all tend to enforce self-reliance, self-respect and
the sense of duty, which are the surest foundation of national
greatness.
An active foreign policy would slowly change much of this.
The nation which deals with war and diplomacy must be quick to
act and quick to change. It must, like the Oregon, be able to
reverse itself within its own length. To this end, good govern-
ment is a necessity, whether it be a self-government or not.
Democracy yields before diplomacy. Republicanism steps aside
when war is declared. "An army," said Wellington, "can get
along under a poor general, it can do nothing under a debating
society." In war the strongest man must lead, and military dis-
cipline is the only training for an army. In a militant nation
the same rules hold in peace as in war. We cannot try civic
experiments with a foe at our gates. A foe is always at the gates
of a nation with a vigorous foreign policy. Experiments such as
we freely try would wreck the British Empire. For one of Eng-
land's great parties to propose a great change like that of the
free coinage of silver, would produce a panic like that of the swal-
lowing of London by an earthquake. The British nation is hated
and feared of all nations except our own, and we love her only in
our lucid intervals. Only her eternal vigilance keeps the vultures
from her coasts.
The day of the nations as nations is passing. National ambi-
tions, national hopes, national aggrandizement, all these may
become public nuisances. Imperialism, like feudalism, belongs to
the past. The men of the world as men, not as nations, are
drawing closer and closer together. The final guarantee of peace
and good will among men will be not the parliament of nations,
but the self-control of men. Whatever the fateful twentieth
century may bring, the first great duty of Americans is never to
forget that men are more than nations, that wisdom is more than
glory, and virtue more than dominion of the sea. The nation
exists for its men, never the men for the nation.
"The only
government that I recognize," said Thoreau, "and it matters not
how few are at the head of it or how small its army, is the power
that established justice in the land, never that which established
injustice." The will of free men to be just one toward another
is our best guarantee that "government of the people, for the
people, and by the people, shall not perish from the earth.'
Imperial Democracy.
God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine,
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!
Far-called our navies melt away,
On dune and headland sinks the fire;
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre !
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!
19

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