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Originally published in 1899 by Fleming H. Revell Company.

Published in the USA

June, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-61455-046-4

The Peril of the Republic of the United States

PERCY T. MAGAN, Ph. B.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.—LINCOLN

Chicago New York Toronto
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS OF EVANGELICAL LITERATURE

Percy Tilson Magan (1867-1947)

Contents

The Peril of the Republic of the United States3

Preface9

Chapter 1 — A Nation’s Birthright11

The United States comes into existence over a principle—All men created equal—“Consent of the governed” doctrine—Declaration of Independence one of great general principles—Comments on the Declaration by Charles Sumner—The Roman theory of unlimited power—The European theory of unlimited power—The American theory of limited power—Opinion of John Quincy Adams—Thackeray on the painting in the rotunda—The American principle of government—The Bible doctrine of government—God and the nations

Chapter 2 — The Crisis of ‘6123

The American Civil war a contest over a great principle—Lincoln’s great Gettysburg speech—The Declaration means just what it says—Lincoln’s ideas of the Declaration—Judge Douglas’s ideas of the Declaration—The ideas of the Fathers of the nation concerning the meaning of the Declaration of Independence—Thomas Jefferson on slavery—James Madison on slavery—A house divided against itself can not stand

Chapter 3 — A War for Humanity’s Sake33

The nation as it issued from the Civil war—The sorrows of Cuba—Causes of the revolution in Cuba—Sufferings of the Cuban people—The causes of their sufferings—Declaration of war against Spain by the United States—Reasons for the war—Not for the increase of territory—Forcible annexation, criminal aggression

Chapter 4 — A Chapter in Criminal History43

The beginnings of Spain—Visigoths become Roman Catholics—The Saracens arrive in Spain—Magnificent civilization of the Spanish Saracens—Their houses, gardens, and libraries, and contributions to science—Their learning contrasted with papistical learning—The Saracens conquered by the Spaniards—The Spaniards attempt to convert the Saracens—Odious persecutions—Expulsion of the Saracens from Spain—Degradation of Spain

Chapter 5 — The Spanish Inquisition55

The secret reason for the Inquisition—Everything based on the Bible—Treatment of the Albigenses—Stories circulated concerning the Jews—Position of Queen Isabella—Ideas of King Ferdinand—Evidences that a Jewish conversion was not sincere—The hall of torture—Modes of torture—Why the people of Cuba and the Philippine Islands rebelled against Spain

Chapter 6 — “The Council of Blood.”65

Free spirit of the Hollanders—Crimes of Charles the Fifth in Holland—Philip the Second and Bloody Mary—The Edict of 1550—Fearful persecutions—William the Silent—Hollanders flee to England, and the commerce of Holland declines—The preachers of the Reformation—Field preaching under guard—Camp-meetings in Holland—Composition of the Council of Blood—Deeds of the Council of Blood—All the inhabitants of Holland condemned to death—The siege of Leyden—Relief of Leyden—Founding of the Dutch Republic

Chapter 7 — American Imperialism—National Apostasy83

Why Spain was conquered—Why America was chosen to conquer her—The setting sun of Spanish glory—An Old World power is driven from Cuba, but an Old World idea invades the United States—The doctrine that might makes right—The doctrine that right makes might—American Imperialism—The Declaration of Independence mocked at—The forcible annexation of the Philippines—A. D. 1899 ideas of the Declaration—Jefferson opposed to conquest—Ideas of John Fiske—James G. Blaine on wars of conquest—Macaulay on colonial empires—The American Revolution a war against the colonial system—Supreme Court opinion versus United States dependencies—The national records opposed to dependencies, in the organization of the Northwest Territory, treaty of cession with France over Louisiana purchase, in the treaty of Washington over the Floridas, in the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo over California, Nevada, etc., and in the Gadsden and Alaskan purchases—A change of front on the “government by consent” doctrine—The purchase of the Philippines—Recent opinions on the “consent of the governed” doctrine—In the track of King George—Grand words from Carl Schurz—Criminal aggression—Can the government endure half citizen, half colonial?—The command, “Silence!”—Liberty at the point of the bayonet—Lord Macaulay on slavery in the West Indies—Is history a fable?

Chapter 8 — Manifest Destiny113

What is manifest destiny?—God’s dealings with the nations—The case of Nebuchadnezzar—The Most High ruleth in the kingdoms of men—Story of the Philippine revolt against Spain—Cruelties of the Spaniards—Aguinaldo and the Americans—The great seal of the United States—Opinions of George Francis Adams—Principles born at Lexington and buried at Manila—Admiral Dewey’s estimate of the Filipinos—Can the Filipinos be made good American citizens?—Is it a Christian duty for the United States to forcibly annex the Philippines?—Christ and civil government—“The Bible in one hand and the shotgun in the other” doctrine—Is the United States a Christian nation?—Militarism and democracy—God uses nations as instruments—The case of Assyria—“My Country, 1899”—The Recessional Ode—The task of the forefathers and the task of the sons—Is it Live through all time, or Die by suicide?—Which way shall the tide of destiny set?

Chapter 9 — In the Trail of Rome141

The two great republics—Cause of the transformation of Rome from a republic to a military monarchy—How nations lose their own freedom—The case in the Philippines—Parallel between the last days of the republic of Rome and the present time in the United States—Roman expansion—A Roman war in the cause of humanity—The liberty that was not given to the Greek republics—Rome’s treatment of allies—Opinion of Rollin on the Roman expansion policy—American expansion in reality contraction—When will Cuba be vacated—How God punishes nations—Not political theories, but prophetical principles—The Bible concerning the Roman republic—The Bible concerning Roman expansion—Bible prophecies relating to the United States—The sealed book, why opened now?—The ruin of Rome and the peril of the United States

Chapter 10 — Amity or Armageddon?169

Proclaiming peace and preparing for war—China the storm center—The czar’s manifesto and the Peace and Disarmament Conference—The United States formerly the champion of peace—The Monroe doctrine—The advent of the United States in the Orient, does it portend peace or war?—Washington’s farewell address—Carl Schurz on the English alliance—“What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?”—Position of Jerusalem in the world—Position of the United States in the world—The vision of the great image—The ten kingdoms of prophecy—The God of heaven shall set up a kingdom—The image struck upon the feet—The reason for this—The kings of the East—Turkey and the great powers—Prophecies concerning Russia—The apostasy of the United States—All nations in rebellion—The armies of heaven—The kingdom and citizens of our Lord and of his Christ

Appendix — The United States and Slavery in the Sulus197

Preface

About ten years ago I became deeply interested in those prophecies of the Bible which relate to the history of this world. As on the sacred page I read and pondered over the outlines of the great events of earth, both past and yet to be, I determined to make a thorough study of human histories, for the double purpose of satisfying myself as to the truthfulness of the Bible concerning what had already transpired, and that through these things I might better understand what was yet to come.

In 1891 my friend and fellow worker, Alonzo T. Jones, wrote his “Two Republics, or Rome and the United States of America.” It was my privilege to read this remarkable work in the proof; and, from the general field of the annals of mankind, my attention was specifically turned to the prophetical and philosophical history of the Republic of Rome and the Republic of the United States. During the past nine years, having occupied the chair of history in the College at this place, my duties have accorded me abundant opportunity to pursue my cherished theme.

With me the study of the great events of the present has been with the one desire that, guided by the Word of God, I might, through the things transpiring around me, read correctly the events which are yet to take place. The matters touched upon in this little book were long ago recorded in sacred, prophetic Writ. They vitally concern the welfare and peace of the United States, and are intimately connected with the deeds which will ultimately bring to a close the long and tragic history of the world. We are apt to believe that we live in better times than those with which others have been favored; but those wonderful words of James Russell Lowell apply just as much to the present time as to any time in past history:—

“Careless seems the great Avenger: history’s pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness ‘twixt false systems and the Word. Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne; yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.” [4]

Firmly believing that it is my duty as a minister of the gospel, as an ambassador of Jesus Christ, to warn men and women what these things will be, I have written that which follows, that in life and spirit they may transfer their allegiance and citizenship from the kingdoms of this world to the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ; which kingdom, according to the seer, shall never be removed, but shall stand forever and ever.

In writing this little work I have not sought to bring hidden facts to light, but rather to make plain the meaning, philosophy, and results of facts already well known, generally accredited, and universally acknowledged by thinking men. I have drawn freely from the books and speeches of others. Many times I have quoted their words rather than to write my own. I have done this for the reason that their thoughts were my thoughts, and that in giving their language I could at once give their ideas and my own without danger of injustice to them. I wish to acknowledge the assistance I have received in making these things plain from the speeches of Senators Hoar, of Massachusetts; Mason, of Illinois; Baker of Georgia, and Daniells, of West Virginia; also from Mr. Chas. F. Adams, of Boston, and Prof. Carl Schurz, of New York. The deep thought and careful study which these eminent men have given this subject, although perhaps only from the standpoint of political and philosophical, in contradistinction to prophetical, history, has been of great help to me in many ways.

In commending my work to the public, I have only to say that what I have written has been written with an earnest desire to do good, that souls may escape the ruin which is surely to come upon the world. It has been written with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God has given me to see the right.

Percy T. Magan.

Battle Creek, Mich.,
Sept. 11, 1899.

Chapter 1 — A Nation’s Birthright

The United States comes into existence over a principle—All men created equal—“Consent of the governed” doctrine—Declaration of Independence one of great general principles—Comments on the Declaration by Charles Sumner—The Roman theory of unlimited power—The European theory of unlimited power—The American theory of limited power—Opinion of John Quincy Adams—Thackeray on the painting in the rotunda—The American principle of government—The Bible doctrine of government—God and the nations

The advent of the United States upon history’s stage broke the dawn of a new era, not alone for the Old Thirteen, but for all mankind. The principles of freedom enunciated in the immortal Declaration of Independence were pregnant with weal for tens of thousands in other climes, and for millions then unborn, as well as for the embattled farmers who fought at Lexington and Concord.

The new nation appealed not to tables of dynasty and royal succession to prove her title to life or her right to existence as a sovereign state among peers. Discarding these, her founders bore her into the arena upon certain self-evident truths. Her people assumed their equal and separate station among the powers of the earth by “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” [1]

Hitherto the doctrine had prevailed that the Almighty had created one class to govern and another class to be governed. Statesmen had universally held that all men were not created equal, and ecclesiastics had not been slow in seconding their teachings. When from time to time philosophers had arisen inculcating ideas of liberty and equality, they had been branded as anarchists by the state and as atheists by the church. Many a time both the civil and religious powers had buried their own differences of opinion and claims of jurisdiction in order that they might form a union for the sole purpose of more effectively dealing swift and summary punishment to these disturbers of the existing order of things. The rack, the fagot, and all the ingenious and exquisite tortures which the Inquisition could devise had been freely employed to wring from unwilling lips the desired recantation. [10]

Prior to the time of our glorious Revolution the doctrine that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed was wholly unknown in national practise. The princes and potentates of the nations of Europe had entrenched themselves behind that wickedest of all political tenets, the divine right of kings. This they amplified till it might better have read, the divine right of kings to govern wrong. With the aid of this as their creed, they had outraged in their subjects the inborn sense of manhood to such an extent that by the time the close of the eighteenth century was reached it was well nigh extinct; and the majority of the human family, worn out by the struggle of centuries, were about to sink into a long sleep of political death from which it seemed almost impossible that there should be an awakening.

But the spark of light and life still burned; and a few bold sentences, the reflection of a few brave hearts, kindled a pillar of fire to guide mankind out of the wilderness of medieval political errors into the Canaan of governmental truth. As are the ten commandments and the golden rule in divinity, so are the precepts that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that all men are created equal, in civility. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States are indeed the New and Old Testaments in things pertaining to Cæsar, the one serving as a commentary in the light of which the other must be interpreted. Immortal are the words of Jefferson, the sage of Monticello; grand in their simplicity and “noble roughness:”—

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” [11]

The Declaration of Independence is a declaration of great general principles, as well as a recital of certain specific grievances. It was never written to meet the exigencies of one particular time or people. No nation prior to this one had ever declared it as a principle good for all mankind that all men are created equal, or that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. None of the great nations of Europe ever taught or ever believed these precepts. They were born simultaneously with the American Republic. They constituted her christening robe and her birthright, peculiarly her own, and the first infant cry of her national life. That nation of the old world which has ever been the foremost in promulgating doctrines of freedom and liberty did not believe these things, for she it was who fought them. She did not even believe them in their most limited sense for her most limited self,—the isle of England, as distinguished from colony and dependency. Much less, therefore, did she consider them as divine and immortal truths, applicable to all times and places, and worthy of being the basis of government among men in every kindred and nation and tongue and tribe and people.

Well has Charles Sumner said:—

“The words that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed are sacred words, full of life-giving energy. Not simply national independence was here proclaimed, but also the primal rights of all mankind. Then and there appeared the angel of human liberation, speaking and acting at once with heaven-born strength, breaking bolts, unloosing bonds, and opening prison doors; always ranging on its mighty errand, wherever there are any, no matter of what country or race, who struggle for rights denied; now cheering Garibaldi at Naples, as it had cheered Washington in the snows of Valley Forge, and especially visiting all who are downtrodden, whispering that there is none so poor as to be without rights which every man is bound to respect, none so degraded as to be beneath its beneficent reach, none so lofty as to be above its restraining power; while before it despotism and oligarchy fall on their faces, like the image of Dagon, and the people everywhere begin to govern themselves.”

And again he says:—

“These words in the Declaration of Independence were not uttered in vain. Do you suppose them idle? Do you suppose them [12] mere phrase or generality? No such thing. They are living words, by which this country is solemnly bound, and from which it can never escape until they are fulfilled. Your statutes can not contain any limitation which inflicts an indignity upon any portion of the human family.”

And yet again:—

“The Declaration of Independence is the twofold promise; first, that all are equal in rights, and secondly, that just government stands only on the consent of the governed, being the two great political commandments on which hang all laws and constitutions. Keep these truly, and you will keep all. Write them in your statutes; write them in your hearts. This is the great and only final settlement of all existing questions. To this sublime consecration of the Republic let us aspire.”

In liberty, therefore, was the nation conceived; to these two propositions was it sacredly dedicated and solemnly sealed in the blood of its noblest sons. As the Bible declares that all men are equal before the Lord i.e., that God is no respecter of persons, so the Declaration affirms that all men are equal before the law, and that this equality is their own unalienable and primal right. The Declaration does not mean that all men are equal in all respects. But it does mean and it does say that they are equal in their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And in this it recognizes the nobility of man as the creation of God, and makes no exception or distinction in favor of any human caste or human lineage.

“Obviously, men are not born equal in physical strength or in mental capacity, in beauty of form or in health of body. Diversity or inequality in these respects is the law of creation. But this inequality is in no particular inconsistent with complete civil or political equality.

“The equality declared by our fathers in 1776, and made the fundamental law of Massachusetts in 1780, was equality before the law. Its object was to efface all political or civil distinctions, and to abolish all institutions founded upon birth. ‘All men are created equal,’ says the Declaration of Independence. ‘All men are born free and equal,’ says the Massachusetts Bill of Rights. These are not vain words. Within the sphere of their influence, no person can be created, no person can be born, with civil or political privileges [13] not enjoyed equally by all his fellow citizens; nor can any institutions be established, recognizing distinctions of birth. Here is the great charter of every human being drawing vital breath upon this soil, whatever may be his conditions, and whoever may be his parents. He may be poor, weak, humble, or black; he may be of Caucasian, Jewish, Indian, or Ethiopian race; he may be born of French, German, English, or Irish extraction; but before the constitution of Massachusetts all these distinctions disappear. He is not poor, weak, humble, or black; nor is he Caucasian, Jew, Indian, or Ethiopian; nor is he French, German, English, or Irish; he is a man, the equal of all his fellow-men.... To some it [the state] may allot higher duties, according to higher capacities; but it welcomes all to its equal hospitable board. The state, imitating the divine justice, is no respecter of persons.” [2]

This is the true doctrine of civil government, this is the Bible doctrine for civil government.

There is still another principle in the Declaration of Independence which is worthy of notice here. The doctrine of the nations of medieval times was that “might makes right.” If a nation possessed enough arbitrary power and physical force to accomplish a certain end, no matter how criminally aggressive, no matter how tyrannical or despotic that end might be, the power to do was always supposed to prove the rightfulness of the thing done. And back of this time, in the dawn of European history, in the days of the Roman Republic, that nation had held to the doctrine of “Vox Populi vox Dei,”—“The voice of the people is the voice of God;” in other words, the Roman doctrine was that if the majority of the people approved of a thing, it must be right.

But the Declaration of Independence, with one simple yet sweeping statement, disowns, disclaims, and discards both the Roman and the medieval theories, and substitutes in their place a principle beyond comparison with them for its lofty and holy teachings. In the last paragraph of that immortal document it is written that these United Colonies as free and independent States “have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.” [14]

Wrapped in these words was a new doctrine. Here was the enunciation of a principle hitherto unheard of. Heretofore sovereignty had been considered as being unlimited and illimitable. But the Declaration of Independence brought to the birth a new principle, that right is superior to all earthly power, whether vested in prince or potentate or in a republican form of government. With the founders of this government it was not a question of what the nation was able to do, but contrariwise, what was right for the nation to do. I quote once more from the great Sumner:—

“But the great Declaration, not content with announcing certain rights as unalienable, and therefore beyond the control of any government, still further restrains the sovereignty, which it asserts by simply declaring that the United States have ‘full power to do all acts and things which independent States may of right do.’ Here is a well-defined limitation upon the popular sovereignty. The dogma of Tory lawyers and pamphleteers—put forward to sustain the claim of parliamentary omnipotence, and vehemently espoused by Dr. Johnson in his ‘Taxation no Tyranny’—was taught, that sovereignty is in its nature illimitable, precisely as it is now loosely professed by Mr. Douglas for his handful of squatters. But this doctrine is distinctly discarded in the Declaration, and it is frankly proclaimed that all sovereignty is subordinate to the rule of right. Mark, now, the difference: all existing governments at that time, even the local governments of the colonies, stood on power without limitation. Here was a new government, which, taking its place among the nations, announced that it stood only on right, and claimed no sovereignty inconsistent with right.” [3]

In 1837 John Quincy Adams in a Fourth of July oration at Newburyport, said:—

“The sovereign authority conferred upon the people of the colonies by the Declaration of Independence could not dispense them, nor any individual citizen of them, from the fulfilment of their moral obligations. The people who assumed their equal and separate station among the powers of the earth, by the laws of nature’s God, by that very act acknowledged themselves bound to the observance of those laws, and could neither exercise nor confer any power inconsistent with them.” [15]

Still further alluding to the self-imposed restraints upon the sovereignty which had been established, he said:—

“The Declaration acknowledged the rule of right paramount to the power of independent States itself, and virtually disclaimed all power to do wrong. This was a novelty in the moral philosophy of nations, and it is the essential point of difference between the system of government announced in the Declaration of Independence and those systems which had until then prevailed among men.... It was an experiment upon the heart of man. All the legislators of the human race until that day had laid the foundations of all government among men in power; and hence it was that in the maxims of theory, as well as in the practise of nations, sovereignty was held to be unlimited and illimitable. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed another law, ... a law of right, binding upon nations as well as individuals, upon sovereigns as well as upon subjects.... In assuming the attributes of sovereign power, the colonists appealed to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of their intentions, and neither claimed nor conferred authority to do anything but for right.”

Well indeed has George Bancroft, America’s greatest historian, said:—

“This immortal state paper, which for its composer was the aurora of enduring fame, was ‘the genuine effusion of the soul of the country at that time,’ the revelation of its mind, when, in its youth, its enthusiasm, its sublime confronting of danger, it rose to the highest creative powers of which man is capable. The bill of rights which it promulgates is of rights that are older than human institutions, and spring from the eternal justice that is anterior to the state.” [4]

In a speech delivered in the United States Senate, Jan. 9, 1899, Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, refers to Thackeray’s comment upon the great picture in the rotunda of the capitol. So beautifully and forcibly has he woven into his argument this incident, and another with it, that I take the liberty of giving it again in his own words, for they are far better than my own could be:—

“Thackeray, no mean judge of noble art, no mean judge of noble actions, was one day crossing the rotunda of this capitol in [16] company with Charles Sumner. He stopped before the picture where the genius of the great artist of Connecticut has delineated on the imperishable canvas the scene when the Declaration of Independence was presented by Jefferson to the solemn sitting over which Hancock presided, and the new nation, born on the 19th of April, 1775, was baptized in the faith of our new gospel of liberty. He stood for a moment silent, and then said to Mr. Sumner, ‘That’s your painter.’

“Surely he was right. The foremost action of human history is fitly represented by the great work which we fondly hope is to be as enduring as time, enduring as the Republic, enduring as liberty. It is there, in the foremost place of honor which can be found on this earth. No Parthenon, no Saint Peter’s, no Palace of the Escurial, no Sans Souci, not Westminster Abbey itself, can equal, at least to our eyes, this spot, where forever a great and free people declares its constitutional will.

“Beneath the great dome to which the pilgrim from afar first repairs when he visits the capital of his country, hangs the great picture which delineates the scene, when the nation was first baptized into immortal life. It was not only the independence of America which was then declared, it was the dignity of human nature itself.

“When Samuel Rogers visited the Dominican convent at Padua, an aged friar showed him the famous picture of ‘The Last Supper’ in the refectory of the convent. He said:—

“‘I have sat at my meals before it for seven and forty years, and such are the changes that have taken place among us—so many have come and gone in that time—that when I look upon the company there, upon those who are sitting at that table, silent as they are, I am sometimes inclined to think that we, not they, are the shadows.’

“As administrations, terms of presidential office, begin and end, as senators and representatives come and go before the silent figures in that immortal picture, it seems to me that we are but the shadows, while Hancock and Jefferson and Adams and Franklin and Ellsworth and Livingston are still deliberating, still acting, still alive.” [5]

In the Book of books it is written that “the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand forever;” and in [17] another place that that immortal Word “liveth and abideth forever.” And it is even so with the great principles of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution of the United States. They are coeval with time, and they will be commensurate with eternity. The government of God in the beautiful world to come will be a government of love, a government founded upon the principles of the consent of the governed; for every soul in that blest home and kingdom, and in all the infinite universe, will desire naught else but that God and Jesus Christ shall rule. This will be the supreme and ever-living desire of every one. Heaven’s government is indeed one deriving its powers, which are only just, from the consent of the governed. Every voice in the righteous nation blends in that glad chorus: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing.” Says John, the revelator: “Every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever.”

Some years ago James Russell Lowell was asked by Guizot, the great French historian, how long the Republic of the United States might reasonably be expected to endure. “So long,” replied Mr. Lowell, “as the ideas of its founders continue dominant.”

No truer answer than this could possibly have been given. The United States obtained its national charter from the hand of Providence with the distinct understanding that its cardinal principles of government should forever be liberty and equality; and also with the express stipulation that the rule of right should always be paramount to the power of the sovereign State.

If the Republic shall ever permanently desert these great principles, the star of her genius will set forevermore. By that foul act of disloyalty and treason to “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” she will forfeit her own right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Woe be the day when she shall deny these unalienable rights, these precious God-given boons, to any portion of the family of mankind. In that selfsame hour the bloodless hand will once again trace the dread writing on the national wall: Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin,—God hath numbered thy kingdom and [18] finished it. Thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting. To her it will be said, “Reward he even as she rewarded others, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled, fill to her double.”

If we shall ever deny to others the right of government by their own consent, by such a deed we shall ourselves surrender to the Creator the charter of our national life, of our corporate existence.

Can it even be that in recent events the treacherous and malignant deed has indeed been done? Has the gloomy cloud which has hovered over and mantled our acts in the far East contained in its folds a Macbethian dagger, which, while slaying inoffensive and semicivilized people in the innocence of their national childhood, is in reality being plunged to the hilt into the fountain of our waters of life to poison them with the dread drug of despotism which sits upon its blade? Is national suicide being committed? Is the seal of state sorrow being set? Is the die of doom even now being cast?

To every nation as to every man God has committed its work. The Captain of our salvation sets the course of the man, and bids him steer the bark of his life for a port of spiritual and religious perfection wherein is immortality and everlasting peace. On the chart of the ocean of time the haven which he is to gain is faithfully marked. Happy is the man who knoweth and obeyeth his Creator in this. With the individual man the goal pertaineth to the things of the soul, to the things of spirituality.

So also it is with nations. The King of kings sets the course for every ship of state. Happy are the legislators who hold thereto. For the nation God appointeth a harbor of perfection in things civil, just as verily as for man he appointeth it in things religious. Should the nation turn aside and steer another course, naught but the rocks of destruction await it. All this is clearly brought to view in the great Book of books. For it is written that he “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation.” It is the Lord, then, who determines the time when nations shall rise and when they shall totter to their fall. It is the great I Am who says to the nations concerning their boundaries, “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther: and here shall [19] thy proud waves be stayed.” And Job said: “He leadeth away counselors spoiled, and maketh the judges fools. He looseth the bond of kings, and girdeth their loins with a girdle. He leadeth princes away spoiled, and overthroweth the mighty. He removeth away the speech of the trusty, and taketh away the understanding of the aged. He poureth contempt upon princes, and weakeneth the strength of the mighty. He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of death. He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them: he enlargeth the nations and straighteneth them again. He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way. They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.” [6]

With every nation, as with every man, an account is opened on the ledger of life in the record office above. With unerring accuracy the Infinite One keeps an account with every kindred and nation and tongue and tribe and people. “While his mercy is tendered, with calls to repentance, this account will remain open; but when the figures reach a certain amount which God has fixed, the ministry of his wrath commences. The account is closed. Divine patience ceases. There is no more pleading of mercy in their behalf.”

With men there is a hereafter. With nations there is not; and as they can not be punished or rewarded in the next world, they must be in this. Will the United States remain true to her trust? That is the question which even now is hanging in the balances of time. [20]

[1] Declaration of Independence, par. 1.

[2] Chas. Sumner, “Works,” Vol. II, pp. 341, 342.

[3] Sumner, “Works.”

[4] Bancroft, “History of United States,” Vol. IV, chap. 28.

[5] Speech of Hon. George F. Hoar in the United States Senate, Jan. 9, 1899.

[6] Job 12:17-25.

Chapter 2 — The Crisis of ‘61

The American Civil war a contest over a great principle—Lincoln’s great Gettysburg speech—The Declaration means just what it says—Lincoln’s ideas of the Declaration—Judge Douglas’s ideas of the Declaration—The ideas of the Fathers of the nation concerning the meaning of the Declaration of Independence—Thomas Jefferson on slavery—James Madison on slavery—A house divided against itself can not stand

In the dark times which preceded the crisis of ‘61, gloomy shades, as of the last days of the Republic, stealthily attempted to draw their weird forms across the land.

The Civil war between the North and the South was a struggle over principle. In the famous Gettysburg address, Abraham Lincoln stated this principle in immortal prose as follows:—

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

“Now we are engaged in a great Civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note or long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The proposition that all men are created equal was on trial in the Civil war. The struggle was to test whether the government conceived [21] in liberty was so to endure. The brave men who shed their blood, shed it in behalf of liberty and equality. They courted death, and flocked to its arbitrary and despotic arms, in order that the nation of liberty and equality might live.

Every principle of the Declaration of Independence was at stake; and as the principles of the Declaration were the vital life of the nation, it logically followed that if those principles were abandoned, the ruin of the young Republic was assured. Lincoln’s whole effort was one in behalf of the Declaration—for liberty and equality.

On the part of the champions of slavery a plea was set up that the Declaration did not mean just what it said; that the clause, “all men are created equal,” was not a self-evident truth, but on the contrary, a “self-evident lie.” It was held that the framers of the great charter of our liberties never intended to include the negro in the meaning of the word “all” in the clause above quoted. In fact, every kind and description of cringing sophistry and counterfeit logic was used to prove that what was said in the Declaration was not true; or that if it was true, it was limited to the time of the Revolution, and that it did not contain great general principles applicable to all places, all times, and all peoples. It was against these arguments that Lincoln expended his strength and his life.

In a speech delivered at Springfield, Ill., June 26, 1857, we find the following noble defense of true principles:—

“In those days [the days of the Revolution], our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, and sneered at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it. All the powers of earth seem rapidly combining against him. Mammon is after him, ambition follows, philosophy follows, and the theology of the day is fast joining the cry. They have him in his prison house; they have searched his person, and left no prying instruments with him. One after another they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him; and now they have him, as it were, bolted in with a lock of a hundred keys, which can never be unlocked without the concurrence of every key; the keys in the hands of a hundred different men, and they scattered to a hundred different and distant places; and they stand musing as to [22] what invention, in all the dominions of mind and matter, can be produced to make the impossibility of his escape more complete than it is.... Judge Douglas finds the Republicans insisting that the Declaration of Independence includes all men, black as well as white; and forthwith he boldly denies that it includes negroes at all, and proceeds to argue gravely that all who contend that it does, do so only because they want to vote, and eat, and sleep, and marry with the negroes! He will have it that they can not be consistent else. Now I protest against the counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either. I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.

“Chief Justice Taney, in his opinion in the Dred Scott case, admits that the language of the Declaration is broad enough to include the whole human family; but he and Judge Douglas argue that the authors of that instrument did not intend to include negroes, by the fact that they did not at once actually place them on an equality with the whites. Now this grave argument comes to just nothing at all, by the other fact that they did not at once, or ever afterwards, actually place all white people on an equality with one another. And this is the staple argument of both the chief justice and the senator for doing this obvious violence to the plain, unmistakable language of the Declaration!

“I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men: but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined, with tolerable distinctness, in what respects they did consider all men created equal—equal with ‘certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they bad no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances would permit. [23]

“They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for; and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere. The assertion that ‘all men are created equal’ was of no practical value in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that, but for future use. Its authors meant it to be as, thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling-block to all those who, in after times, might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should reappear in this fair land and commence their vocation, they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.

“I have now briefly expressed my view of the meaning and object of that part of the Declaration of Independence which declares that all men are created equal.

“Now let us hear Judge Douglas’s view of the same subject, as I find it in the printed report of his late speech. Here it is:—

“‘No man can vindicate the character, motives, and conduct of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, except upon the hypothesis that they referred to the white race alone, and not to the African, when they declared all men to have been created equal; that they were speaking of British subjects on this continent being equal to British subjects born and residing in Great Britain; that they were entitled to the same unalienable rights, and among them were enumerated life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration was adopted for the purpose of justifying the colonists in the eyes of the civilized world in withdrawing their allegiance from the British crown, and dissolving their connection with the mother country.’

“My good friends, read that carefully over some leisure hour, and ponder well upon it; see what a mere wreck—mangled ruin—it makes of our once glorious Declaration.

“‘They were speaking of British subjects on this continent being equal to British subjects born and residing in Great Britain!’ Why, according to this, not only negroes, but white people outside of Great Britain and America, were not spoken of in that instrument. [24] The English, Irish, and Scotch, along with white Americans, were included, to be sure; but the French, Germans, and other white peoples of the world are all gone to pot along with the Judge’s inferior races.

“I had thought the Declaration promised something better than the condition of British subjects; but no, it only meant that we should be equal to them in their own oppressed and unequal condition! According to that, it gave no promise that, having kicked off the king and lords of Great Britain, we should not at once be saddled with a king and lords of our own in these United States.

“I had thought the Declaration contemplated the progressive improvement in the condition of all men everywhere; but no, it merely ‘was adopted for the purpose of justifying the colonists in the eyes of the civilized world in withdrawing their allegiance from the British crown, and dissolving their connection with the mother country.’ Why, that object having been effected some eighty years ago, the Declaration is of no practical use now—mere rubbish—old wadding left to rot on the battle-field after the victory is won.

“I understand you are preparing to celebrate ‘The Fourth’ tomorrow week. What for? The doings of that day had no reference to the present; and quite half of you are not even descendants of those who were referred to at that day. But I suppose you will celebrate; and will even go so far as to read the Declaration. Suppose, after you read it once in the old-fashioned way, you read it once more with Judge Douglas’s version. It will then run thus: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all British subjects who were on this continent eighty-one years ago, were created equal to all British subjects born and then residing in Great Britain.’

“And now I appeal to all,—to Democrats as well as others,—are you really willing that the Declaration shall be thus frittered away? thus left no more at most than an interesting memorial of the dead past? thus shorn of its vitality and practical value, and left without the germ or even the suggestion of the individual rights of man in it?”

All of this is good doctrine. It is the best kind of civil government gospel. It is the enunciating of principles which are immortal, and which will stand as long as time itself. And it can never be remembered too often, that it was in defense of these principles [25] so ably told by Abraham Lincoln that tens of thousands shed their blood upon the field of battle in the Civil war. This was clearly seen and recognized by the leaders at that time. The blare of battle and reek of carnage seem to last longer in the minds of most men than the principles over which the battles were fought. Nevertheless it is the principles which should interest all, for they are of vital importance to all.

In another speech delivered in Chicago, Ill., July 10, 1858, Lincoln further amplified his comments upon the Declaration of Independence as follows:—

“We are now a mighty nation; we are thirty, or about thirty, millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years, and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country, with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men; we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men, they fought for the principles that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity which we now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time, of how it was done, and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves, we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age and race and country in which we live, for these celebrations.

“But after we have done all this, we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have, besides these men descended by blood from our ancestors, among us, perhaps half our people, who are not descendants at all of these men; they are men who have come from Europe,—German, Irish, French, and Scandinavian,—men that have come hither and settled [26] here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they can not carry themselves back into that glorious epoch, and make themselves feel that they are part of us; but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;’ and then they feel that that moral sentiment, taught in that day, evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote the Declaration [loud and long continued applause]; and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together—that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world. [Applause.]

“Now, sirs, for the purpose of squaring things with this idea of ‘don’t care if slavery is voted up or voted down,’ for sustaining the Dred Scott decision, for holding that the Declaration of Independence did not mean anything at all, we have Judge Douglas giving his exposition of what the Declaration of Independence means, and we have him saying that the people of America are equal to the people of England. According to his construction, you Germans are not connected with it. Now, I ask you in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and indorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this government into a government of some other form?

“Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow, what are these arguments?—They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says, You work, and I eat; you toil, and [27] I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn it in whatever way you will, whether it come from the mouth of a king as an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent; and I hold, if that course of argumentation which is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about this, should be granted, it does not stop with the negro. I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that Declaration is not the truth, let us get the statute book in which we find it, and tear it out! Who is so bold as to do it? If it is not true, let us tear it out! [Cries of ‘no, no.’] Let us stick to it, then; let us stand firmly by it, then.

“It may be argued that there are certain conditions that make necessities and impose them upon us; and to the extent that a necessity is imposed on a man, he must submit to it. I think that was the condition in which we found ourselves when we established this government. We had slaves among us; we could not get our Constitution unless we permitted them to remain in slavery, we could not secure the good we did secure if we grasped for more. But having by necessity submitted to that much, it does not destroy the principle that is the charter of our liberties. Let that charter stand as our standard.

“My friend has said to me that I am a poor hand to quote Scripture. I will try it again, however. It is said in one of the admonitions of our Lord, ‘As your Father in heaven is perfect, be ye also perfect.’ The Saviour, I suppose, did not expect that any human creature could be as perfect as the Father in heaven; but he said, ‘As your Father in heaven is perfect, be ye also perfect.’ He set that up as a standard, and he who did most toward reaching that standard attained the highest degree of moral perfection. So I say in relation to the principle that all men are created equal, let it be as nearly reached as we can. If we can not give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that will impose slavery upon any other creature. Let us then turn this government back into the channel in which the framers of the Constitution originally placed it.” [28]

We must transport ourselves, in mind and spirit, if not in body, back to those days of strife in order that we may imbibe even a little of the spirit which animated them. We must feel and know and understand in our innermost and truest selves something of the intensity of feeling which inspired the breast of the immortal Lincoln and the brave men who stood with him. Let all understand that the principles of the Declaration of Independence were the main issue under consideration in those momentous times. They were not a mere side circumstance. They were the all and in all. It seems as if human language could make these truths no plainer than Lincoln made them. That he said exactly what the noble instrument itself said is perfectly plain. And that he was also correct in his estimate of the ideas of the Fathers concerning their position on the negro question is a fact which no honest man can reasonably dispute.

An interesting little incident in the history of James Madison clearly evidences this. In the year 1783 one of his slaves escaped, and was afterward found by Madison himself in Philadelphia. But he did not force him back into slavery; on the contrary he wrote to his father that he had “Judged it most prudent not to force Billey back to Virginia, even if it could be done;” and that he could not “think of punishing him by transportation merely for coveting that liberty for which we have paid the price of so much blood, and have proclaimed so often to be the right, and worthy the pursuit, of every human being.”

But the advocates and champions of an extension of slavery were not easily downed. Not one of them, however, came out openly and said that an extension of slavery was what was desired. But every move they made, every act they did, and every speech they made showed beyond the shade of a shadow of a doubt that this was the focal point, the ultimate end which they desired.

It seems astonishing that men could so suddenly depart from the glorious gospel of liberty and equal rights for which their fathers had struggled in the Revolutionary war. It would seem that the remembrance of those things, yea, verily the warm breath of them, ought to have still been in and upon their souls. It seems almost incredible that men could rise up and make such sweeping denials of the principles which had won for them their own freedom just a few short years before. But passion and prejudice were doing their [29] deadly work; and once these two foul demons have taken possession of the temple of the soul, facts are treated as a mere bagatelle, the truth is trampled in the dust, and naught is thought of or cared for but the end so ardently desired.

The evidence that the great Revolutionary leaders were opposed to slavery is monumental and beyond dispute. The famous words of Thomas Jefferson, “I tremble for my country, for I know that God is just,” were spoken with reference to slavery. At the federal convention, Mason, compressing the observation of a long life into a few burning words, made the statement, “This infernal traffic originated in the avarice of British merchants; the British government constantly checked the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to it.... Slaves produce the most pernicious effects on manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven upon a country. As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities.” And the Constitution limited the importation of slaves to the year 1808; and when that year broke, the importation of slaves had ceased. This was the best that could be done; but there were many who would fain have seen slavery abolished altogether at the time of the birth of the nation.

Said Madison, in a paper addressed to the country:—

“An unhappy species of population abounds in some of the States, who, during the calm of the regular government, are sunk below the level of men; but who, in the tempestuous scenes of civil violence, may emerge into the human character, and give a superiority of strength to any party with which they associate themselves.”

It is a true principle of history that a free people can not long govern subject provinces and still retain their own freedom. Exceptions can not be made to principles without the exceptions destroying the principle itself. If a principle of government is violated to day in one portion of a nation’s domain, it will not be long until that violation, like a deadly leprosy, will have eaten its way to every acre of territory in the national domain.

Lincoln clearly saw and understood this, and expressed it in a speech delivered at Springfield, Ill., June 16, 1858:— [30]

“‘A house divided against itself can not stand.’ I believe this government can not endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.”

In the Civil war the principles of the Declaration of Independence were triumphant. It was settled, for a time at least, that the nation was to endure as the fathers had designed, true to its conception in liberty, and still dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. [31]

Chapter 3 — A War for Humanity’s Sake

The nation as it issued from the Civil war—The sorrows of Cuba—Causes of the revolution in Cuba—Sufferings of the Cuban people—The causes of their sufferings—Declaration of war against Spain by the United States—Reasons for the war—Not for the increase of territory—Forcible annexation, criminal aggression

The “mighty scourge” of the Civil war bathed the fair fields of the sunny South in torrents of crimson life-blood drawn from the veins of her strongest sons, and the wealth piled up by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil was sunk in that terrible effort of Herculean strength to obliterate forever the principles of the immortal Declaration of Independence. But at last the long shadows of the evening of the weary day of strife drew o’er the land. Once more the saber sought its scabbard, and the sword its sheath. With the springtide of 1865 came the angel of peace with healing in her wings, and God gave sweet rest to the tired Republic.

From first to last the struggle had been an awful one. Aside from the contending forces of men, clad in their uniforms of blue and of gray, unseen powers, angels and demons, had been at work with all the intensity of their supernatural attributes. The Confederate States were humbled in the dust. In the North also there was deep sadness, for the fairest flowers of many homes lay sleeping ‘neath the Southern sod; and the rustling of the grass as the winds with their invisible feet swept o’er the soldiers’ sepulchers seemed only to make soft sighing in unison with the stifled and suppressed sobbing in many a Northern home where mothers, sisters, and sweethearts wept for the loved ones of whom they had been bereft.

Nevertheless the dire contest had not been for naught. Towering and grand, above the wrecks of war rose the principles over which it had been fought. For them, there had been a second baptism of blood, and in the crimson streams of that fearful strife the nation’s record had been washed and made spotlessly white. In the innocence and strength which purity alone can beget, the United States once more went aloft upon her flagstaff, and gloriously rewrote on the folds of freedom’s flag: “All men are created equal,” and “Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the [32] governed.” Many a people caught up the hallowed strain, and to thousands of oppressed, rent by the schisms caused by caste and class, the blessed words became but a prelude to the angel’s song of peace on earth, good-will toward men.

From the close of the Civil war until 1898 profound peace brooded over our land. Locked in the embraces of the great twin oceans, absolutely secure from foreign attack, we grew and prospered. A period of national felicity almost unparalleled in the history of nations was our happy lot. So long was the reign of tranquillity that our people had almost come to believe that war for them was a thing of the past.

Nevertheless while Providence favored the United States with blessings innumerable, Cuba, the Pearl of the Antilles, torn, bleeding, and distracted by internecine strife, suffered travail untold almost beneath the shadows of our shores. As day by day the waves of the narrow strip of sea separating us from the unfortunate island, lashed and beat upon our coasts, throwing their silvery spray upon our sands and soil, it almost seemed as if old ocean were bearing on his crest, and throwing toward us from imploring hands, numberless tears, the distilled agony and anguish of the souls of our fellow men.

The revolution just ended in Cuba began in 1895, but it was only the successor of other similar insurrections against the monarchy of Spain which have before occurred in Cuba. These had extended over a period of nearly half a century. As a result, this fair and fertile island was lying desolate. If crops were planted, one or the other of the contending armies would destroy them before the time of reaping. To homes both haughty and humble the ruthless torch was applied, and an Eden was soon turned into a wilderness. The gaunt specter of famine stalked through the land, and pinching want did its dire work. Many were homeless, and thousands died for want of food.

Little by little the efforts of Spain were increased. A terrible policy of devastation and concentration was inaugurated by the captain-general’s bando of Oct. 21, 1896. The poor peasants of the lands were by this decree driven into the garrisoned towns, or to the wild and desolate places held by the throne of Madrid. Well has it been said that this was not civilized warfare, but only extermination; [33] and that the only peace it could beget was that of the wilderness and the grave.

Fitzhugh Lee, the American consul-general at Havana, in an enclosure with one of his despatches to the department of state, gives an awful pen-picture of the sufferings of this reconcentrado class, sufferings so terrible that they almost beggar description:—

“The public rumor of the horrible state in which the reconcentrados of the municipal council of Havana were found in the focos (ditches) having reached us, we resolved to pay a visit there, and we will relate to you what we saw with our own eyes:—

“Four hundred and sixty women and children thrown on the ground, heaped pell-mell as animals, some in a dying condition, others sick, and others dead; without the slightest cleanliness, or the least help, not even to give water to the thirsty; with neither religious nor social help, each one dying wherever chance laid him. For this limited number of reconcentrados the deaths ranged between forty and fifty daily, giving relatively ten days of life for each person, with great joy to the authorities, who seconded fanatically the policy of General Weyler to exterminate the Cuban people; for these unhappy creatures received food only after having been eight days in the focos, if during this time they could feed themselves with the bad food which the dying refused.

“On this first visit we were present at the death of an old man who died through thirst. When we arrived, he begged us, for God’s sake, to give him a drink. We looked for it, and gave it to him, and fifteen minutes afterward he breathed his last, not having had even a drink of water for three days before. Among the many deaths we witnessed there was one scene impossible to forget. There is still alive the only living witness, a young girl of eighteen years, whom we found seemingly lifeless on the ground; on her right-hand side was the body of a young mother, cold and rigid, but with her young child still alive clinging to her dead breast; on her left-hand side was also the corpse of a dead woman holding her son in a dead embrace; a little farther on a poor dying woman having in her arms a daughter of fourteen, crazy with pain, who after five or six days also died, in spite of the care she received.

“In one corner a poor woman was dying, surrounded by her children, who contemplated her in silence, without a lament or the [34] shedding of a tear, they themselves being real specters of hunger, emaciated in a horrible manner. This poor woman augments the catalogue, already large, of the victims of the reconcentration in the focus.

“The relation of the pictures of misery and horror which we have witnessed would be never-ending were we to narrate them all.

“It is difficult and almost impossible by writing to express the general aspect of the inmates of the focos, because it is entirely beyond the line of what civilized humanity is accustomed to see; therefore no language can describe it.

“The circumstances which the municipal authorities could relieve there are the following: complete accumulation of bodies dead and living, so that it was impossible to take one step without walking over them; the greatest want of cleanliness, want of light, air, and water; the food lacking in quality and quantity what was necessary to sustain life, thus sooner putting an end to these already broken-down systems; complete absence of medical assistance; and what is more terrible than all, no consolation whatever, religious or moral.

“If any girl came in anywise nice looking, she was infallibly condemned to the most abominable of traffics.

“At the sight of such horrible pictures, the two gentlemen who went there resolved, in spite of the ferocious Weyler, who was still captain-general of the island, to omit nothing to remedy a deed so dishonorable to humanity, and so contrary to all Christianity. They did not fail to find persons animated with like sentiments, who, putting aside all fear of the present situation, organized a private committee with the exclusive end of aiding materially and morally the reconcentrados. This neither has been nor is at present an easy task. The great number of the poor and the scarcity of means make us encounter constant conflicts. The conflict is more terrible with the official elements, and in a special manner with the mayor of the city and the civil authorities, who try by all means to annihilate this good work. The results of the collections are very insignificant, if we bear in mind the thousands of people who suffer from the reconcentrations; but it serves for some consolation to see that in Havana some one hundred and fifty-nine children and eighty-four women are well cared for in the asylum erected in Cadiz Street, No. [35] 82, and ninety-three women and children are equally well located in a large saloon erected for them in the second story of the focos, with good food and proper medical assistance, as also everything indispensable to civilized life.

“According to the information which we have been able to acquire since August until the present day, one thousand seven hundred persons have entered the focos, proceeding from Jaruco, Campo Florido, Guanabo, and Tapaste, in the Province of Havana, Of these, only two hundred and forty-three are living now, and are to be found in Cadiz Street—eighty-two in the saloon already mentioned, and sixty-one in the Quinta del Roy and the Hospital Mercedes, the whole amounting to about three hundred and ninety-seven; and of these a great many will die on account of the great sufferings and hunger they have gone through.

“From all this we deduce that the number of deaths among the reconcentrados has amounted to seventy-seven per cent.” [1]

Could humans be called upon to suffer greater agonies than these? And it must be remembered that the above figures refer only to the conditions in the city of Havana, and that the death-rate there was only about fifty per cent of that in other places in the island; and when it is further borne in mind that there were several hundred thousands of these non-combatant reconcentrados, or pacificos, mainly women and children concentrated under General Weyler’s order, some idea can be formed of the mortality among them.

In the Pinar del Rio Province there were at one time about forty thousand of these unfortunate reconcentrados. Of this number fifteen thousand were children, and the most of them orphans. To make matters worse, they were unequally distributed throughout the different towns in the province. In the capital city there were only four hundred and sixty, while in some of the small towns there were over four thousand. As the majority of the taxpayers in these towns had been ruined by the war, it was next to impossible to collect anything by means of imposts with which to care for this added burden. In many places food was so scarce that even cats were eaten, selling for thirty cents apiece.

The relief offered by the authorities was relief in name only. On this point one United States consul wrote as follows:— [36]

“I have personally visited (on several occasions) head masters of distributing stations. Two thousand rations were given out for a few days only to eight thousand persons.... There are more than twelve thousand starving people in this city to-day. One out of four (or six) received the following ration: two ounces rice, one and one-half ounces tassajo (jerked beef), and sometimes a small piece of bread, per diem. Imagine starving people being relieved by such rations! Even this ration of food has been discontinued since the 11th inst. Death-rate has diminished somewhat; now about sixty-three daily. There are less people to die.

“The scenes of misery and distress daily observed are beyond belief. Here is one out of hundreds. In a family of seventeen living in an old lime-kiln, upper part of city limits, all were found dead except three, and they barely alive.” [2]

Still another United States consul wrote that in his district there was a starving, struggling mass, whose constant cry was, “Bread, or I perish.” His consulate was besieged to an extent that blocked the entrance, and greatly retarded business. Men, women, and children, homeless and naked, roamed the streets; they begged of every one they met and at every door they passed, and at night they slept wherever they could find a spot upon which to lay their weary frames.

Whence sprang this sorrow? Whence came such awful suffering? From whence this terrible mortality? Why the thunder of artillery and the desolating rattle of the deadly Mauser? What hellish cause gave birth to this emaciated army of reconcentrados? Came they from catacomb or tomb?—Nay! From whence then?

Go to the twilight of history for the answer. Turn back the wheels of time, and journey through the doctrines of the Dark Ages. Read upon the pages of the great ledger of things which have happened under the sun, and there be enlightened. Yes, find it upon the records that God keeps with the nations. There it is charged to the account of those two theories that “all men are not created equal, and governments do not derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” There is where it is written, and there it belongs. From these pernicious principles sprang the Cuban insurrections. [37]

The people of Cuba pleaded for their inalienable rights and liberties. Spain was determined that they should not have them, and their pleas were met with mockings and with war. To the end that she might not enjoy her liberties and her rights, Spain made war upon her unfortunate and unhappy daughter. To prevent the peaceable enjoyment of these two things, Spain marshalled her armies and mobilized her fleets. In the defense of these evil doctrines she spilled the blood of her sons, and sank her ships. But these efforts were like the final struggles of the man who vainly tries to chain the last fierce flicker of the spark of life. They were her death throes.

It was during the height of the death grapple between mother and daughter that the voice of the American republic was heard in resolute tones. Impregnable in the rocky strength of the conviction that “all men are created equal,” and that “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” the people of the United States spoke forth.

The declaration of war against the kingdom of Spain was adopted on the 18th of April, 1898, by a vote of 42 to 35 in the Senate, and 311 to 6 in the House. It clearly sets forth the policy of the government at that time:—

“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.” [38]

This declaration of war is significant in itself. Its first resolution clearly and forcibly voices the principles and sentiment of the Declaration of Independence. The one says, “These United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States;” and the other asserts, “The people of the island of Cuba are, and of right ought to be, free and independent.”

Moreover the declaration of war demands that the Cubans shall be free and govern themselves, on the ground of right, when it states that the people of the island of Cuba are, and of right ought to be free and independent. In short, it demands freedom for the people of Cuba on the same ground that the fathers demanded freedom for the people of these United States.

When the resolutions were passed by Congress, the United States, to all appearances at least, rose above that selfishness to which nations are so prone. From the executive mansion, in Senate and House, on the platform, in the press, and even from out the Christian pulpit, it was everywhere noised abroad that the war upon which the United States entered was wholly and solely “for humanity’s sake.”

In his message to Congress, April 11, 1898, President McKinley said:—

“The grounds for such intervention may be briefly summarized as follows:—

“First. 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 mitigate. It is no answer to say this is all in another country, belonging to another nation, and is therefore none of our business. It. is especially our duty, for it is right at our door.”

Other nations declared that America had sinister designs. Such insinuations were repudiated with contempt. Daily was defiance hurled at all maligners. We boldly told the world that this was not a war for territorial aggrandizement; that we wanted nothing save only that a suffering people should go free. Even as late as last October, at the Peace Jubilee in Chicago, President McKinley said:—

“The war with Spain was undertaken, not that the United States should increase its territory, but that the oppression at our [39] 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.”

Continually and all the time we denied for ourselves, just as much as for others, the right to Cuban or any other soil, save only by and with the consent of the governed. The most forcible statement of this was by the chief magistrate of the Republic in his message to Congress of Dec. 6, 1897:—

“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, and intervention in favor of one or the other party. I speak not of forcible annexation, for that can not be thought of. That, by our code of morality, would be criminal aggression.”

In these words a noble and thoroughly American principle is laid down. The idea of “forcible annexation” is expressly repudiated. And more than this, it is repudiated on the ground that “by our code of morality [it] would be criminal aggression.” But where is “our code of morality”? In what part of that code is it declared that “forcible annexation” would be “criminal aggression”? What document contains it? On what pages can it be found?

Once more the answer must be given that in the Declaration of Independence it is written, not only that “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” but that these United States have “full power to do all acts and things which independent States may of right do.”

It was with these sacred principles burning upon every lip, flying from the peak of every ship of war, and floating upon the folds of all our battle standards, that we entered upon the contest with Spain “in the cause of humanity.”

In all of this the nation only reaffirmed the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and told to all mankind that still its holy fire kindled in our breasts; that now, as ever before, we believed these truths to be good for, and applicable to, not only ourselves, but all humanity. Not since the days of Rome, that other great republic of the West, had the world listened to such lofty and unselfish national sentiments. [40]

Victory crowned our arms. It was everywhere the same. One harmonious strain of triumph pealed forth from Dewey on the whispering waters of Manila Bay, from the forces of Sampson, Schley, and Shafter at Santiago, and from the Rough Riders of Colonel Roosevelt at San Juan Hill.

With the destruction of Admiral Montojo’s fleet, and the annihilation of Cervera’s squadron; with the surrender of Santiago, and the results of the heroism at San Juan, there came to an end the colonial system of a nation whose history is at once profoundly interesting and pregnant with instruction. To-day the death certificate of Spain’s colonial system stands signed; yea, even now that system is arraigned at history’s bar. [41]

[1] Enclosure with Despatch No. 712 from Mr. Lee to Mr. Day, Nov. 27, 1897.

[2] A. O. Brice, United States consul, Matanzas, to Secretary of State Day, Dec. 17, 1897.

Chapter 4 — A Chapter in Criminal History

The beginnings of Spain—Visigoths become Roman Catholics—The Saracens arrive in Spain—Magnificent civilization of the Spanish Saracens—Their houses, gardens, and libraries, and contributions to science—Their learning contrasted with papistical learning—The Saracens conquered by the Spaniards—The Spaniards attempt to convert the Saracens—Odious persecutions—Expulsion of the Saracens from Spain—Degradation of Spain

Of the powers which rose upon the ashes of the empire of Rome, the kingdom of Spain was one. This people trace their lineage back to the woods of ancient Germania. In that vast cradle of nations they were known as the tribe of the Visigoths. Like all the other German tribes they were intensely fond of liberty, and knew far more of its true and governing principles than did the more highly educated and refined people of the Roman empire.

When Rome had filled her cup of tyranny and despotism to the full, Providence took these barbarous children of the North, and used them as an instrument in the hand of Heaven to wreak vengeance upon the guilty world-power. Under the leadership of the great chieftain, Alaric, the Visigoths everywhere defeated the Roman armies. By the year 436 a. d., they were established in the peninsula of Spain.

For a long time the Visigoths remained true to the Arian faith, to which they had been converted from heathenism. For years they maintained a sturdy and uncompromising warfare against the princes and prelates of the Roman Catholic Church, who left untried no strategy of war, or seductions of peace, to accomplish their conversion and submission to the see of Rome.

Had the Visigoths persevered in their stand, they might have become the liberators, instead of the oppressors, of mankind. Both natural traits and religious tenets had admirably fitted them for this position. But the nation of Visigoths, like many a man, allowed the golden opportunity to pass by; and the opportunity came but once. Neglecting to accept the high and lofty station offered them, they became instruments of the Roman Catholic Church. There is an ancient adage that a good slave always makes a good tyrant, and this has proved itself only too true in the case of the Spanish nation.

The bait of luxury, ease, and power held out by Rome was too tempting; and late in the sixth century they became orthodox, and [42] joined the Latin communion. Then began an era in the history of Spain, continuing through centuries, at times victorious and triumphant, and at times repulsed and defeated, and whether in weal or in woe, ever and always criminal. The story of Spain, from first to last, is the record of a criminal case. Her history is naught but one prolonged crime. Forever has it been her boast that she has uncompromisingly denied freedom of conscience on the one hand, and equality before the law on the other.

In the year 711 a. d., the Mohammedans sailed from Africa, and landed at Gibraltar, which notable rock took its present name—Gebel-al-Tarik, the Rock of Tarik—from Tarik, a lieutenant of the emir. A desperate struggle ensued, and continued for nearly eight centuries. At first victory after victory in rapid succession crowned the arms of the worshipers of Allah. At one time it almost looked as if the Spanish Catholics would be blotted from the face of the earth. A large part of the peninsula fell under the rule of the Saracens. At length the tide of battle turned. Malaga was taken by the Spaniards in 1487, and Granada in 1492, and this, in a certain sense, re-established the old Spanish monarchy.

Christendom has never yet acknowledged her debt to the Saracens; but that much that is useful and artistic was acquired from them, can never be rightly contested nor successfully denied. During the time that they were masters of Spain they were lenient and merciful to their fallen foe. In the days of their power they accorded far more of civil and religious liberty and toleration than the orthodox church was wont to grant to those whom she subdued. To all who did not wish to turn to Mohammedanism, there was given the choice of paying a slight tribute and continuing as a devotee of their former faith. But few historians have correctly understood or estimated the real services of the Saracens of Spain to civilization and intellectual development. Only one has honestly accorded to them their just and well-won place. I refer to the impartial and ingenuous John W. Draper. He alone has graphically and truthfully described their splendid achievements in material things:—

“Scarcely had the Arabs become firmly settled in Spain when they commenced a brilliant career. Adopting what had now become the established policy of the commanders of the faithful in Asia, the emirs of Cordova distinguished themselves as patrons of learning, [43] and set an example of refinement strongly contrasting with the condition of the native European princes. Cordova under their administration, at its highest point of prosperity, boasted of more than two hundred thousand houses and more than a million inhabitants. After sunset, a man might walk through it in a straight line for ten miles by the light of the public lamps. Seven hundred years after this time there was not so much as one public lamp in London. Its streets were solidly paved. In Paris, centuries subsequently, whoever stepped over his threshold of a rainy day stepped up to his ankles in mud. Other cities, as Grenada, Seville, and Toledo considered themselves rivals with Cordova. The palaces of the khalifs were magnificently decorated. Those sovereigns might well look down with supercilious contempt on the dwellings of the rulers of Germany, France, and England, which were scarcely better than stables,—chimneyless, windowless, with a hole in the roof for the smoke to escape, like the wigwams of certain Indians. The Spanish Mohammedans had brought with them all the luxuries and prodigalities of Asia. Their residences stood forth against the clear blue sky, or were embosomed in the woods. They had polished marble balconies, overhanging orange-gardens; courts with cascades of water; shady retreats provocative of slumber in the heat of the day; retiring-rooms vaulted with stained glass, speckled with gold, over which streams of water were made to gush; the floors and walls were of exquisite mosaic. Here, a fountain of quicksilver shot up in a glistening spray, the glittering particles falling with a tranquil sound like fairy bells; there, apartments into which cool air was drawn from the flower gardens, in summer by means of ventilating towers, and in winter through earthen pipes, or caleducts, imbedded in the walls—the hypocaust, in the vaults below, breathing forth volumes of warmed and perfumed air through these hidden passages. The walls were not covered with wainscot, but adorned with arabesques, and paintings of agricultural scenes, and views of Paradise. From the ceilings, corniced with fretted gold, great chandeliers hung, one of which, it is said, was so large that it contained 1,804 lamps. Clusters of frail marble columns surprised the beholder with the vast weights they bore. In the boudoirs of the sultanas they were sometimes of verd antique and incrusted with lapis-lazuli. The furniture was of sandal and citron wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, [44] ivory, silver, or relieved with gold and precious malachite. In orderly confusion were arranged vases of rock crystal, Chinese porcelains, and tables of exquisite mosaic. The winter apartments were hung with rich tapestry; the floors were covered with embroidered Persian carpets. Pillows and couches, of elegant forms, were scattered about the rooms, perfumed with frankincense.... Great care was taken to make due provision for the cleanliness and amusement of the inmates. Through pipes of metal, water, both warm and cold, to suit the season of the year, ran into baths of marble; in niches, where the current of air could be artificially directed, hung dripping alcarazzas. There were whispering-galleries for the amusement of the women; labyrinths and marble play-courts for the children; for the master himself, grand libraries. The Khalif Alhakem’s was so large that the catalogue alone filled forty volumes.

“No nation has ever excelled the Spanish Arabs in the beauty and costliness of their pleasure-gardens. To them we owe the introduction of very many of our most valuable cultivated fruits, such as the peach. Retaining the love of their ancestors for the cooling effect of water in a hot climate, they spared no pains in the superfluity of fountains, hydraulic works, and artificial lakes in which fish were raised for the table. Into such a lake, attached to the palace at Cordova, many loaves were cast each day to feed the fish. There were also menageries of foreign animals; aviaries of rare birds; manufactories in which skilled workmen displayed their art in textures of silk, cotton, linen, and all the miracles of the loom; in jewelry and filigree work, with which they ministered to the pride of the sultanas and concubines. Under the shade of cypresses, cascades disappeared; among flowering shrubs there were winding walks, bowers of roses, seats cut out of the rock, and crypt-like grottoes hewn in the living stone. Nowhere was ornamental gardening better understood; for not only did the artist try to please the eye as it wandered over the pleasant gradation of vegetable color and form, he also boasted his success in the gratification of sense and smell by the studied succession of perfumes from beds of flowers.

“To these Saracens we are indebted for many of our personal comforts. Religiously cleanly, it was not possible for them to clothe themselves according to the fashion of the natives of Europe, [45] in a garment unchanged till it dropped to pieces of itself, a loathsome mass of vermin, stench, and rags. No Arab who had been a minister of state, or the associate or antagonist of a sovereign, would have offered such a spectacle as the corpse of Thomas à Becket when his haircloth shirt was removed. They taught us the use of the often-changed and often-washed undergarment of cotton or linen, which still passes among ladies under its old Arabic name. But to cleanliness they were not unwilling to add ornament. Especially among women of the higher classes was the love of finery a passion. Their outer garments were often of silk, embroidered and decorated with gems and woven gold. So fond were the Moorish women of gay colors and the luster of chrysolites, hyacinths, emeralds, and sapphires, that it was quaintly said that the interior of any public building in which they were permitted to appear, looked like a flower meadow in the spring besprinkled with rain.

“The khalifs of the West carried out the precepts of Ali, the fourth successor of Mohammed, in the patronage of literature. They established libraries in all their chief towns; it is said that not fewer than seventy were in existence. To every mosque was attached a public school, in which the children of the poor were taught to read and write, and instructed in the precepts of the Koran. For those in easier circumstances there were academies, usually arranged in twenty-five or thirty apartments, each catalogued for accommodating four students; the academy being presided over by a rector. In Cordova, Granada, and other great cities there were universities presided over by the Jews, the Mohammedan maxim being that the real learning of a man is of more public importance than any particular religious opinions he may entertain.... The Mohammedan liberality was in striking contrast with the intolerance of Europe.... In the universities some of the professors in polite literature gave lectures on Arabic classical works; others taught rhetoric or composition, or mathematics, or astronomy. From these institutions many of the practises observed in our colleges were derived. They held commencements, at which poems were read and orations delivered in presence of the public. They had also, in addition to these schools of general learning, professional ones, particularly for medicine....

“The Saracens commenced the application of chemistry to the [46] theory and practise of medicine, in the explanation of the functions of the human body, and in the cure of its diseases. Nor was their surgery behind their medicine. Albucasis, of Cordova, shrinks not from the performance of the most formidable operations in his own and in the obstetrical art; the actual cautery and the knife are used without hesitation. He has left us ample description of the surgical instruments then employed; and from him we learn that, in operations on females in which considerations of delicacy intervened, the services of properly instructed women were secured. How different was all this from the state of things in Europe; the Christian peasant, fever-stricken, or overtaken by accident, hied to the nearest saint-shrine, and expected a miracle; the Spanish Moor relied upon the prescription or lancet of his physician, or the bandage and knife of his surgeon.

“Our obligations to the Spanish Moors in the arts of life are even more marked than in the higher branches of science. They set an example of skilful agriculture, the practise of which was regulated by a code of laws. Not only did they attend to the cultivation of plants, introducing very many new ones, they likewise paid great attention to the breeding of cattle, especially the sheep and the horse. To them we owe the introduction of the great products, rice, sugar, cotton, and also, as we have previously observed, nearly all the fine garden and orchard fruits, together with many less important plants, as spinach and saffron. To them Spain owes the culture of silk; they gave to Xeres and Malaga their celebrity for wine. They introduced the Egyptian system of irrigation by flood-gates, wheels, pumps. They also promoted many important branches of industry; improved the manufacture of textile fabrics, earthenware, iron, and steel; the Toledo sword-blades were everywhere prized for the temper of their steel.”

Such were some of the splendid achievements of the Saracens of Spain. Many more of the material benefits which they conferred upon Christendom might be mentioned, but the above will suffice for this sketch, which is not designed to be exhaustive. These are the things with which the Saracens occupied themselves, while Christendom sat in squalor and superstition. While Rome was asserting the flatness of the earth, the Spanish Moors were teaching geography from globes. To say that the earth was globular in form [47] was held to be heretical by monks and patristic teachers. They said in the words of Lactantius: “Is it possible that men can be so absurd as to believe that the crops and the trees, on the other side of the earth, hang downward, and that men have their feet higher than their heads?” They taught that the edge of the sea was protected by a wall of weeds in order to keep the ships from tumbling into space. While the Arab was studying physiology and the use of the lancet, in order that he might the better treat disease, the Christian of the West was prostrating himself before the shrine of some bleeding, sweating, winking image, with the hope and expectation that the doing of this would cause his bodily woes to vanish. If a pious Catholic could only kiss a lock of the hair of Saint Peter or a piece of a bone of Saint Paul, he would confidently expect that his diseases would disappear like frost before the morning sun.

But the learning of the Arabs really forced Christendom to cast aside its superstition, and to study in a rational way. The Arabian system was undoubtedly one of the chief causes of the Renaissance. And the lasting benefits which the Saracens conferred upon Europe can be clearly traced, even at the present time.

It made no difference to the Spanish Christians, however, how much the Saracens were the benefiters of mankind. They were heathen, and must be persecuted for that; and being heathen, they had no equal rights with others before even the civil law. With the Spaniards these were cardinal principles. There were no real and substantial grounds of complaint against the Saracens as competitors and neighbors. They differed from the Spaniards in religion. This was the only thing that could be said against them. They were kind, industrious, and peaceful; but all of this availed them nothing. Spain could not and would not allow the principle of freedom of conscience and of equality before the law.

At first the Spaniards attempted to convert the Saracens to their own religion. Exhortations and arguments were the first weapons, but when these means failed, she had resource to other means; viz., she persecuted those whom she was unable to persuade. This method seemed to be more successful, since we are told by good authority that after the year 1526 “there was no Mohammedan in Spain who had not been converted to Christianity.” That is to say, [48] in other language, that every Mohammedan in Spain professed to be a papist.

Some, however, were difficult subjects for conversion. They would not willingly submit to be baptized. The water might be “holy,” but holy or unholy, they wanted none of it. Nevertheless, baptized they must be, so they were forcibly seized, and the ordinance was forcibly administered. This was done in an immense number of cases. Then the church and state united, proceeded to doubt the genuineness of their forced conversion, and began to inquire into their sincerity. They were ordered to relinquish everything that might have the most remote tendency to remind them of their former religion. They were forced, under severe penalties, to learn Spanish, and to deliver over to their persecutors all their Arabic books. They were forbidden to read Arabic, they were forbidden to write it, or even to converse in it in the sanctuary of their own homes. The ceremonies and games in which their ancestors had delighted were forbidden them. They were prohibited from wearing clothes of the same pattern as those worn by their fathers. “Their women were to go unveiled; and, as bathing was a heathenish custom, all public baths were to be destroyed, and even all baths in private houses.”

All of this was more than Saracenic flesh and blood could stand. In 1563 they rose in rebellion, and so desperately did their arms maintain the unequal contest that it was 1571 ere the insurrection was quelled. By this rising, their numbers were greatly reduced. The remnant appear to have lapsed into the quiet, every-day walks of life. But the Spaniards were not satisfied yet. The obnoxious Morisco, as these converted Mohammedans were termed, must be pursued to the grave with torture and civil disability, and even beyond that portal of darkness as far as the unrelenting hand could reach.

Whatever ills befell the arms or diplomacy of Spain were charged to the account of these unfortunates:—

“The archbishop of Valencia ... assured the king that all the disasters which had befallen the monarchy had been caused by the presence of these unbelievers, whom it was now necessary to root out, even as David had done to the Philistines, and Saul to the Amalekites. He declared that the Armada, which Philip II sent [49] against England in 1588, had been destroyed because God would not allow even that pious enterprise to succeed, while those who undertook it left heretics undisturbed at home. For the same reason the late expedition against Algiers had failed, it being evidently the will of Heaven that nothing should prosper while Spain was inhabited by apostates.” [1]

For these reasons, it was urged that the whole of them, men women, and children, should be put to the sword:—

“Bleda, the celebrated Dominican, one of the most influential men of his time, wished this to be done, and to be done thoroughly. He said that, for the sake of example, every Morisco in Spain should have his throat cut, because it was impossible to tell which of them were Christians at heart, and it was enough to leave the matter to God, who knew his own, and who would reward in the next world those who were really Catholics.” [2]

In the year 1609, when Philip III was king, Lerma, his minister, at the instigation of the clergy, announced to the king that the expulsion of the Moriscos had become necessary. “The resolution,” replied Philip, “is a great one; let it be executed.” And executed it was, with unflinching barbarity.

“About one million of the most industrious inhabitants of Spain were hunted out like wild beasts, because the sincerity of their religious opinions was doubted. Many were slain as they approached the coast; others were beaten and plundered; and the majority in the most wretched plight, sailed for Africa. During the passage, the crew, in many of the ships, rose upon them, butchered the men, ravished the women, and threw the children into the sea. Those who escaped this fate landed upon the coast of Barbary, when they were attacked by the Bedouins, and many of them put to the sword. Others made their way into the desert, and perished from famine. Of the number of lives actually sacrificed we have no accurate account; but it is said on very good authority that on one expedition in which one hundred and forty thousand were carried to Africa, upward of one hundred thousand suffered death in its most frightful forms, within a few months after their expulsion from Spain.” [3] [50]

“Now, for the first time, the church was really triumphant. For the first time, there was not a heretic to be seen between the Pyrenees and the Strait of Gibraltar. All were orthodox, and all were loyal. Every inhabitant of that great country obeyed the church, and feared the king. And from this happy combination, it was believed that the prosperity and grandeur of Spain were sure to follow. The name of Philip III was to be immortal, and posterity would never weary of admiring that heroic act by which the last remains of an infidel race were cast out from the land. Those who had even remotely participated in the glorious consummation were to be rewarded by the choicest blessings. Themselves and their families were under the immediate protection of heaven. The earth should bear more fruit, and the trees should clap their hands. Instead of the thorn, should come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier, the myrtle. A new era was now inaugurated, in which Spain, purged of her heresy, was to be at ease, and men, living in safety, were to sleep under the shade of their own vineyards, sow their gardens in peace, and eat of the fruit of the trees they had planted.”

These were the promises which the united church and state held out, and which the people believed. It was told how that now the arts, the commerce, the wealth, and magnificence of Spain would flourish and increase as never before, since heretical Jew, and idolatrous Mohammedan had been cast out of the land. Her ships were to plow the seas, and crowd the ports of other shores. Her soldiers were to wreath themselves with laurels of victory till the sun should never set on her dominions, and all earth should do homage at the feet of her scepter of greatness.

But 1613, instead of being the beginning of the greatness and power of Spain, was the apex of her glory, and that glory was one of infamy. In that boasted hour of her might—all heretics dead or driven out—can be heard, even at this late day, the death knell of her prestige and glory. From that day forth her glory began to wane, till naught is left to-day, save the mistiest shade of a shadow. The kingdom of Spain had driven out the men who cultivated her rice and her cotton, and not being cultivated, they grew no more. She had expelled from her borders those who had manufactured her silk and paper, and the ceaseless humming of the looms and buzzing of the mills no longer reverberated upon the breezes. The [51] olives and the vines ceased to yield their increase, for they were neglected.

“In the sixteenth century and early in the seventeenth, Spain enjoyed great repute for the manufacture of gloves, which were made in enormous quantities and shipped to many parts, being particularly valued in England and in France, and being also exported to the Indies. But Martinez de Mata, who wrote in the year 1655, assures us that at that time this source of wealth had disappeared, the manufacture of gloves having quite ceased, though formerly, he says, it had existed in every city in Spain.

“In every department all power and life disappeared. The Spanish troops were defeated at Rocroy in 1643; and several writers ascribe to that battle the destruction of the military reputation of Spain. This, however, was only one of many symptoms. In 1656 it was proposed to fit out a small fleet; but the fisheries on the coasts had so declined that it was found impossible to find sailors enough to man even the few ships which were required. The charts which had been made were either lost or neglected, and the ignorance of the Spanish pilots became so notorious that no one was willing to trust them. As to the military, service, it is stated, in an account of Spain late in the seventeenth century, that most of the troops had deserted their colors, and that the few who were faithful were clothed in rags, and were dying of hunger. Another account describes that once mighty kingdom as utterly unprotected; the frontier towns ungarrisoned; the fortifications dilapidated and crumbling away, the magazines without ammunition, the arsenals empty, the workshops unemployed, and even the art of building ships entirely lost.” [4]

This is only one chapter in the history of Spain, but if it is not criminal history, bearing its legitimate mark, then none has ever been enacted. [52]

[1] Buckle’s “History of Civilization in England,” Vol. II, chap. 1. par. 36.

[2] Ibid., par. 37.

[3] Ibid., par. 38.

[4] Ibid., pars. 42-44.

Chapter 5 — The Spanish Inquisition

The secret reason for the Inquisition—Everything based on the Bible—Treatment of the Albigenses—Stories circulated concerning the Jews—Position of Queen Isabella—Ideas of King Ferdinand—Evidences that a Jewish conversion was not sincere—The hall of torture—Modes of torture—Why the people of Cuba and the Philippine Islands rebelled against Spain

One of the greatest grievances held by the Cubans and Filipinos against the kingdom of Spain was the extortion practised by the Spanish Roman Catholic clergy and monks. The people continually groaned under the weight of the ecclesiastical taxes. They constantly complained that it was absolutely unjust to compel them to support a religion, no matter whether they believed in that religion or not. In all of the islands recently wrested from the throne of Madrid, this was one of the main causes of dissatisfaction and insurrection. In the Philippines, in many cases and places the followers of Aguinaldo were ready to release the Spanish soldiers who had been taken prisoners of war; but in almost every instance they have manifested a most determined purpose to retain the friars in bonds. They have even threatened to butcher them in a wholesale manner.

This policy of extortion for ecclesiastical purposes has been long in vogue with the government of Spain, and to a large degree it has led to the stripping her of her foreign possessions. In fact, the theory upon which Spain’s colonial system has been based, is that dependencies and foreign peoples under her control are a kind of property, or farm, from which a revenue for the benefit of the home country and the state church should of right be drawn.

The Spanish government first originated this policy in its treatment of the Jews, and the Inquisition was invented to carry it into execution. The story is intensely interesting, and well worthy of consideration here, as it marks the beginning of a piece of sowing from which Spain has just reaped the last instalment of the harvest of loss.

The kingdom and church of Spain have always professed to find in Holy Writ precedent for all their doctrines and practises. I do not say that Holy Writ contains precedent for their doctrines and practises; but simply aver that they think they find them there.

The Inquisition is one of the most diabolically gross abuses that [53] ever disgraced the name of humanity. Nevertheless the Spanish writers rest the authority of this infamous tribunal upon the Word of God.

According to a well-known Roman Catholic historian, God himself was the first inquisitor-general. In the death penalty announced to Adam and Eve, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17), precedent is found for inflicting capital punishment on heretics, because our first parents were heretics,—they had left the true faith. Again, the Lord turned them out of the garden of Eden; this was the confiscation of the property of heretics. Thirdly, the Almighty made them “coats of skins, and clothed them.” Genesis 3:21. This was the model of the san benito. [1] The san benitos were coarse woolen garments, in which the heretic was arrayed for the auto da fe, the name given to the ceremony accompanying the burning of the victims. These garments were brought close round the neck, and descended like a frock down to the knees. They were of a yellow color, embroidered with a cross, and well garnished with figures of devils and flames of fire, which, typical of the heretic’s destiny hereafter, served to make him more odious in the eyes of the superstitious multitude. In certain cases the garment was also adorned with the picture of the wearer, burning in flames, with several figures of dragons and devils in the act of fanning them. [2]

The Inquisition has existed in principle ever since the fourth century, when Christianity became the established religion of the Roman empire; but acts of intolerance do not seem to have flowed from any systematized plan of persecution until the papal authority had risen to a considerable height.

Inquisitorial missions were first sent out by Pope Innocent III, 1210-1215, against the Albigenses, who dwelt under the shadow of the lofty Pyrenees in southern France. They were a most peaceable and polished people, and the only national crime of which they had ever been guilty was that of rejecting with shrinking horror the doctrines and practises of the Roman Catholic Church, whose clergy was regarded with loathing and contempt. “Viler than a priest,“ [54] and “I would as soon be a priest,” became proverbial expressions. “The papacy had lost all authority with all classes, from the great feudal princes down to the cultivators of the soil.” How beautiful their land, how elegant their manners, how advanced, for that barbarous age, their scientific research, how cruel their extermination, the pen of Lord Macaulay has perfectly delineated!

In the year 1480, during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the holy office was established in Spain. It was inaugurated for the benefit of the Jews, not primarily because they were heretics, but because they were wealthy, and Rome and Spain needed money. This is a serious charge, but nevertheless a true one, and one which can be easily and clearly sustained.

These unfortunate members of the race of Israel were not only wealthy, but they had gradually risen in political eminence until they were the incumbents of the highest civil offices. They made great advancement in various departments of letters. The schools of Cordova, Toledo, Barcelona, and Grenada were crowded with students. It was the Jews and the Arabs who kept alive the flame of learning during the mythological gloom of the Middle Ages. They frequently resided at the courts of Catholic princes as ministers of finance, situations which they were eminently qualified to fill.

But royal patronage proved incompetent to save them from the bloody hand of the state church, when their “flourishing fortunes had risen to a sufficient height” to excite her envy. I quote from Prescott:—

“Stories were circulated of their contempt for the Catholic worship, their desecration of the most holy symbols, and of their crucifixion, or other sacrifice, of Christian children at the celebration of their own Passover.... At length toward the close of the fourteenth century the fanatical populace, stimulated in many instances by the no less fanatical clergy, and perhaps encouraged by the numerous class of debtors to the Jews, who found this a convenient mode of settling their accounts, made a fierce assault on this unfortunate people in Castile and Arragon, breaking into their houses, violating their most private sanctuaries, scattering their most costly collections and furniture, and consigning the wretched proprietors to indiscriminate massacre, without regard to sex or ago.” [3] [55]

On account of this barbarous treatment many of the Spanish Jews feigned conversion to Christianity. Such was their spiritual condition when Ferdinand and Isabella assumed the reins of government. During their reign complaints against Jewish heresy became more and more frequent, and the throne was repeatedly beset with petitions to devise some means for its extirpation. The words of the curate of Los Palacios, who lived at this time, throw considerable light on “the real as well as pretended motives of the subsequent persecution“:—

“This accursed race were either unwilling to bring their children to be baptized, or, if they did, they washed away the stain on returning home. They dressed their stews and other dishes with oil instead of lard; abstained from pork; kept the Passover, ate meat in Lent; and sent oil to replenish the lamps in their synagogues, with many other abominable ceremonies of their religion.... They were an exceeding polite and ambitious people engrossing the most lucrative municipal offices.”

No wonder Prescott remarks, after quoting the above:—

“It is easy to discern in this medley of credulity and superstition the secret envy entertained by the Castilians of the superior skill and industry of their Hebrew brethren, and of the superior riches which these qualities secured to them; and it is impossible not to suspect that the zeal of the most orthodox was considerably sharpened by worldly motives.... Ferdinand listened with complacency to a scheme which promised an ample source of revenue in the confiscations it involved. [4]

To Isabella’s honor be it spoken, frequent importunities on the part of the clergy were necessary before she yielded her consent to having the Inquisition established in her dominions. But at last she gave way.

“Sixtus the Fourth, who at that time filled the pontifical chair, easily discerning the sources of wealth and influence which this measure [the establishment of the Inquisition in Spain] opened to the court of Rome, readily complied with the petitions of the sovereigns, and expedited a bull, bearing date Nov. 1, 1478, authorizing them to appoint two or three ecclesiastics, inquisitors for the detection and suppression of heresy throughout their dominions.” [5] [56]

Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1492, issued a decree expelling from Spain every Jew who did not deny his faith, so that the soil of Spain might be no longer polluted by the presence of unbelievers. To make them Christians, or failing in this, to exterminate them, was the business of the Inquisition.

Of course many of the Jews declared, when the terrible words which constituted the form of arrest, “Deliver yourself up a prisoner to the Inquisition!” were whispered in their ear, that they were not Jews, but Catholics. It then became necessary to prove that they were Jews. Here are some of the points by means of which the charge of Judaism was established among them:—

“It was considered good evidence of the fact if the prisoner wore better clothes or cleaner linen on the Jewish Sabbath than on any other day of the week; if he had no fire in his house the preceding evening; if he sat at table with Jews, or ate the meat of animals slaughtered by their hands, or drank a certain beverage held in much estimation by them; if he washed a corpse in warm water, or when dying turned his face to the wall; or, finally, if he gave Hebrew names to his children, a provision most whimsically cruel, since, by a law of Henry II he was prohibited under severe penalties from giving them Christian names. He must have found it difficult to have extricated himself from the horns of this dilemma. Such are a few of the circumstances, some of them purely accidental in their nature, others the result of early habit, which might well have continued after a sincere conversion to Christianity, and all of them trivial, on which capital accusations were to be alleged, and even satisfactorily established.” [6]

I give this quotation from Llorente, as he is a writer most competent to unveil the hidden mysteries of the Inquisition. He was secretary to that tribunal in Madrid from 1790-1792. He devoted several years to a thorough investigation of the records of the tribunals, as well as of other original documents contained in their archives.

It will therefore be now in place to relate some of those secret workings, and to relate how its victims were accused, condemned, and tortured.

To presume the innocence of the prisoner until his guilt has [57] been established, is an axiom of justice accepted by all true jurists. The Inquisition, however, instead of granting to the prisoner the protection afforded by every other judicature, and especially demanded by his forlorn situation, acted upon the opposite principle, and used the most insidious arts to circumvent and surround all who came within its fearful grasp. Says Prescott:—

“The accused, ... whose mysterious disappearance was perhaps the only public evidence of his arrest, was conveyed to the secret chambers of the Inquisition, where he was jealously excluded from intercourse with all, save a priest of the Romish Church, and his jailer, both of whom might be regarded as the spies of the tribunal. In this desolate condition the unfortunate man, cut off from external communication and all cheering sympathy and support, was kept for some time in ignorance even of the nature of the charges preferred against him; and at length, instead of the original process, was favored only with extracts from the deposition of the witnesses, so garbled as to conceal every possible clue to their name and quality. With still greater unfairness no mention whatever was made of such testimony as had arisen in the course of the examination in his own favor. Counsel was indeed allowed him from a list presented by his judges. But this privilege availed little, since the parties were not permitted to confer together, and the advocate was furnished with no other information than what had been granted to his client. To add to the injustice of these proceedings, every discrepancy in the statements of the witnesses was converted into a separate charge against the prisoner, who thus, instead of one crime, stood accused of several. This, taken in connection with the concealment of time, place, and circumstance in the accusations, created such embarrassment that, unless the accused was possessed of unusual acuteness and presence of mind, it was sure to involve him, in his attempt to explain, in inextricable contradiction.

“If the prisoner refused to confess his guilt, or, as was usual, was suspected of evasion, or an attempt to conceal the truth, he was subjected to torture. This, which was administered in the deepest vaults of the Inquisition, where the cries of the victim could fall on no ear save that of his tormentors, is admitted by the secretary of the holy office, who has furnished the most accurate report of its transactions, not to have been exaggerated in any of the numerous [58] narratives which have dragged these subterranean horrors into light. If the intensity of pain extorted a confession from the sufferer, he was expected, if he should survive, to sustain it on the next day. Should he refuse to do this, his mutilated members were condemned to a repetition of the same sufferings, until his obstinacy (it should rather have been termed his heroism) might be vanquished.” [7]

“By a subsequent regulation of Philip II, the repetition of torture in the same process was strictly prohibited to the inquisitors. But they, making use of a sophism worthy of the arch-fiend himself, contrived to evade this law, by pretending after each new application of punishment, that they had only suspended and not terminated the torture.” [8]

“Should the rack, however, prove ineffectual to force a confession of his guilt, he was so far from being considered as having established his innocence that, with a barbarity unknown to any tribunal where torture has been admitted, and which of itself proves its utter incompetency to the end it proposes, he was not unfrequently convicted on the depositions of the witnesses. At the conclusion of his mock trial, the prisoner was again returned to his dungeon, where, without the blaze of a single faggot to dispel the cold or illuminate the darkness of the long winter night, he was left in unbroken silence to await the doom which was to consign him to an ignominious death, or a life scarcely less ignominious.” [9]

To add to the discomfiture of the victims, the three men who sat as judges in the inquisitorial courts were almost invariably chosen from the most ignorant. Says Puighblanch:—

“Even the common people, amidst the illusion in which they lived under the yoke of this tribunal, at length became sensible of the great ignorance which prevailed in its dark conclaves. This is proved by the following saying to be met in the mouths of every one:—

“Question—What constituted the Inquisition?

“Answer—One crucifix, two candlesticks, and three blockheads, alluding to the form and parade of its sittings, and the number of the Judges present thereat.” [10] [59]

The culprit was obliged to declare his whole genealogy and descent, and to state whether any of his ancestors, in a direct or transversal line, or his brothers, wife, children, or, indeed, himself, had at any time previously been arraigned before the tribunal, and penanced by it. The real object of all this was to obtain possession of the property he might have inherited, by declaring the right of succession null and void.

There were three kinds of torture generally used by the Inquisition; viz., the pulley, the rack, and the fire. The apartment in which these were inflicted was underground, and was called the hall of torture.

The first of these three modes of punishment was inflicted by fastening a pulley, with a rope passed through it, to the roof. The executioners would then seize the culprit, shackle his feet together, and suspend weights of one hundred pounds to his ankles. His hands were bound behind his back, and the rope from the pulley fastened to his wrists. He was then raised about six feet from the ground, and twelve stripes were inflicted upon him. After this he was let down with a run, but checked just before either of his feet or the weights should touch the floor, in order to render the shock to his body greater.

The torture of the rack, also called that of water and ropes, was a common one. The victim, divested of his clothing, was stretched upon his back along a hollow bench with sticks across like a ladder, and prepared for the purpose. To this his head, hands, and feet were bound so tightly that he could not move. In this position he experienced eight strong contortions in his limbs; viz., two on the fleshy parts of the arm above the elbow, two below the elbow, two on the thighs, and two on the legs. Sometimes also his face was covered with a thin piece of linen, through which seven pints of water ran into his mouth and nostrils, preventing him from breathing.

But the torture by fire was the most revolting of all. The prisoner was placed with his legs naked in the stocks, the soles of his feet well greased with lard, and a blazing chafing-dish applied to them, by the heat of which they became perfectly fried [11]

Now all of these tortures and inhuman barbarities were committed [60] in defense of those two theories that there should not be freedom of conscience, and that men are not equal before the law. They were committed for the purpose of wringing money from the inferior race (if inferior it can be termed) for the support of the superior. I can not believe that originally the Spaniards were more cruel or inhuman than the rest of mankind. It is certain that we are all of one blood, and all born in sin. But the manifestation of such awful cruelties by the Spaniards was brought about by following a wrong theory.

The people of Cuba and of the Philippine Islands were oppressed for precisely the same reasons that the Jews of Spain were oppressed so many years ago. As a result of the first persecutions, the Jews left, and were driven out of Spain. But as a result of the second, the Spanish were driven out of the Philippines, and out of Cuba; for in this latter time the cup of her iniquity was full and her punishment was decreed from above. [61]

[1] See Paramo, “Origin of the Inquisition,” book 1, chaps. 1-3.

[2] See Prescott, “History of Ferdinand and Isabella,” part 1, chap, 7, par. 34. Also D. Antonio Puighblanch, translated by Walton, “Inquisition Unmasked,” chap 4.

[3] Prescott, “History of Ferdinand and Isabella.”

[4] Ibid., part 1, chap. 7, pars. 16, 17.

[5] Ibid., par. 21.

[6] Llorente, “History of the Inquisition,” Vol. I, pp. 153-159.

[7] Prescott, Ibid. chap. 7, pars. 30, 31.

[8] Llorente, Ibid. Vol. I, chap. 9, art. 7.

[9] Prescott, Ibid.

[10] “Inquisition Unmasked,” chap. 4, par. 7, note.

[11] These facts are gathered mainly from Puighblanch, translated by Walton, “Inquisition Unmasked,” chap. 4, par. 7, note.

Chapter 6 — “The Council of Blood.”

Free spirit of the Hollanders—Crimes of Charles the Fifth in Holland—Philip the Second and Bloody Mary—The Edict of 1550—Fearful persecutions—William the Silent—Hollanders flee to England, and the commerce of Holland declines—The preachers of the Reformation—Field preaching under guard—Camp-meetings in Holland—Composition of the Council of Blood—Deeds of the Council of Blood—All the inhabitants of Holland condemned to death—The siege of Leyden—Relief of Leyden—Founding of the Dutch Republic

The dealings of Spain with Holland and the Netherlands are dyed in stains of deepest crimson. This chapter in the history of Spain is a tragedy of the most dreadful type. During the few short years in which this dependency of the Spanish crown struggled for freedom, crimes, monumental in their proportions and unnumbered for their multitude stand registered against the government and warfare of Spain.

Of all the people of Europe, none were more brave than the Hollanders. To an unparalleled degree they were tenacious of liberty, both in things civil and in things religious. From time to time during their history they had wrested valuable charters of freedom from their masters. These had been won at great cost of blood and treasure, and at all times their owners showed a disposition to cling to them firmly. From the earliest days of their history, sovereignty had resided in the great assembly of the people, and this same assembly elected the village magistrates, and decided upon all matters of great importance. The government may have been a fierce democracy, but it was a democracy nevertheless.

At length, however, Holland fell under the rule of Spain; and with the advent to the throne of Charles V. of Reformation fame, ill times began for the little land. This monarch made continued effort to drain their treasure, and to hamper their industry. He hated their ancient and dearly bought civil liberties, and did all in his power to restrict and overthrow them. The Netherlands at this time were divided into seventeen distinct and separate provinces; but this prince was determined to construct them into one kingdom, in order that he might rule them the more effectually with the iron hand of absolutism. [1] [62]

His hand it was that planted the Inquisition in the Netherlands. For reading the Scriptures, for looking irreverently at a graven image, for even daring to hint that the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ was not present in the consecrated wafer, from fifty to one hundred thousand Dutch perished according to his edicts. Well has Motley said that his “name deserves to be handed down to eternal infamy, not only throughout the Netherlands, but in every land where a single heart beats for political or religious freedom.”

But even in this life his crimes went not unpunished. “While he was preparing to crush, forever, the Protestant Church, with the arms which a bench of bishops were forging, lo, the rapid and desperate Maurice, with long red beard streaming like a meteor in the wind, dashing through the mountain passes, at the head of his lancers—arguments more convincing than all the dogmas of Granville! Disguised as an old woman, the emperor had attempted, on the 6th of April, to escape in a peasant’s wagon from Innspruck into Flanders. Saved for the time by the mediation of Ferdinand, he had, a few weeks later, after his troops had been defeated by Maurice at Fussen, again fled at midnight of the 22nd of May, 1555, almost unattended, sick in body and soul, in the midst of thunder, lightning, and rain, along the difficult Alpine passes from Innspruck into Carinthia.” Sad end indeed was this to all his greatness. Sick and tired of life, on the 25th of October, 1555, he abdicated the throne, and went to spend the rest of his life within the walls of a monastery. “This was a fitting end for a monarch who all his life had been false as water, who never possessed a lofty thought, or entertained a noble or generous sentiment.”

He was succeeded in Spain and the Netherlands by Philip II, who married Bloody Mary of England. The tastes of these two certainly ran in the same direction. “To maintain the supremacy of the Church seemed to both of them the main object of existence; to execute unbelievers, the most sacred duty imposed by the Deity upon anointed princes; to convert their kingdom into a hell, the surest means of winning heaven for themselves.” Philip hated the Christian heretic with a more venemous hatred than any of his ancestors had ever manifested toward Jew or Moor. Yet in spite of all this pretended piety, he was so grossly licentious that his liaisons are the scandal of the annals of his state. [63]

For national and popular rights he had a loathing which he never attempted to disguise. For the people itself,—“that vile and mischievous animal called the people,”—as far as their inalienable rights were concerned he entertained a most supreme contempt. It was during his reign that the great struggle for freedom in the Netherlands broke out. “It was a great episode,—the longest, the darkest, the bloodiest, the most important episode in the history of the religious reformation in Europe.” Spain was determined to put the Netherlands in a quarantine so effective that the religious pest of Protestantism should find no entrance. In the Netherlands the scaffold had many victims, but the numbers of its converts were few indeed. In that land there were men and women who dared and suffered much for conscience’ sake. They were not fanatics. “For them all was terrible reality. The emperor and his edicts were realities; the ax, the stake, were realities; and the heroism with which men took each other by the hand and walked into the flames, or with which women sang a song of triumph while the grave-digger was shoveling the earth upon their living faces, was a reality also.”

Immediately after the accession of Philip, the terrible edict of 1550 was re-enacted. From this notable document an idea of Spain’s methods of governing her colonies may be gathered:—

“No one shall print, write, copy, keep, conceal, sell, buy, or give in churches, streets, or other places, any book or writing made by Martin Luther, John Ecolampadius, Ulrich Zwinglius, Martin Bucer, John Calvin, or other heretics reprobated by the holy church; ... nor break, or otherwise injure the images of the Holy Virgin or canonized saints; ... nor in his house hold conventicles, or illegal gatherings, or be present at any such in which the adherents of the above-mentioned heretics teach, baptize, and form conspiracies against the holy church and the general welfare.... Moreover, we forbid all persons to converse or dispute concerning the Holy Scriptures, openly or secretly, especially on any doubtful or difficult matters, or to read, teach, or expound the Scriptures unless they have duly studied theology, and been approved by some renowned university; ... or to preach secretly, or openly, or to entertain any of the opinions of the above-mentioned heretics; ... on pain, should any be found to have contravened any of the points [64] above mentioned, as perturbers of the state and of the general quiet, to be punished in the following manner: that such perturbators of the general quiet are to be executed; to wit, the men with the sword, and the women to be buried alive, if they do not persist in their errors; if they do persist in them, then they are to be executed with fire; all their property in both cases to be confiscated to the crown.”

“Thus, the clemency of the sovereign permitted the repentant heretic to be beheaded or buried alive, instead of being burned.”

All who in any way helped the heretic were in danger of, and liable to, the same punishment; for said the decree:—

“We forbid all persons to lodge, entertain, furnish with food, fire, or clothing, or otherwise to favor any one holden or notoriously suspected of being a heretic; ... and any one failing to denounce any such, we ordain shall be liable to the above-mentioned punishments.” The edict went on to provide “that if any person, being not convicted of heresy or error, but greatly suspected thereof, and therefore condemned by the spiritual judge to abjure such heresy, or by the secular magistrate to make public fine or reparation, shall again become suspected or tainted with heresy—although it should not appear that he has contravened or violated any one of our abovementioned commands—nevertheless we do will and ordain that such person shall be considered as relapsed, and, as such, be punished with loss of life and property, without any hope of moderation or mitigation of the above-mentioned penalties.”

And it was further decreed “that the spiritual judges desiring to proceed against any one for the crime of heresy shall request any of our sovereign courts or provincial councils to appoint any one of their college, or such other adjunct as the council shall select, to preside over the proceedings to be instituted against the suspected. All who know of any persons tainted with heresy are required to denounce them and give them up to all judges, officers of the bishops, or others having authority on the premises, on pain of being punished according to the pleasure of the judge. Likewise, all shall be obliged, who know of any place where such heretics keep themselves, to declare them to the authorities, on pain of being held as accomplices, and punished as such heretics themselves would be punished if apprehended.” [65]

In order to bring about the greatest number of arrests by means the most base, and by that which appeals powerfully to the most sordid attributes of our natures, it was further decreed that the informer, in the case of conviction, should be entitled to one half the property of the accused, if not more than one hundred pounds Flemish; if more, then ten per cent of all such excesses.

Treachery to friends, brothers, and sisters was encouraged by a provision “that if any man being present at any secret conventicle shall afterwards come forward and betray his fellow members of the congregation, he shall receive full pardon.”

Nor was this any mere fanatical decree for the purpose of inspiring terror, for the sovereign continued to ordain:—

“To the end that the judges and officers may have no reason, under pretext that the penalties are too great and heavy, and only devised to terrify delinquents, to punish them less severely than they deserve—that the punished be really punished by the penalties above declared; forbidding all judges to alter or moderate the penalties in any manner; forbidding any one, of whatsoever condition, to ask of us, or of any one having authority, to grant pardon, or to present any petition in favor of such heretics, exiles, or fugitives, on penalty of being declared forever incapable of civil and military office, and of being arbitrarily punished besides.” [2]

Such was one of the most famous decrees, having for its main object the trampling into the dust the religious and civil rights and liberties of the people of Holland. It would almost seem that if the archfiend himself had set about it to create a more awful ordinance, he would have paled before the magnitude of the task. And it can never be said that this was done in the Dark Ages, and that the monarch was the only creature of the times in which he lived. It was done during the days when the Renaissance and the Reformation were at their height. It was done during an age in which men were supposed to have come out of darkness into great and marvelous light. And to make the whole transaction the more horrible, it was ordered and decreed that this edict should be published forever, once in every six months, in every city, and in every village of the Netherlands. And this by a monarch who said of himself that he had always, “from the beginning of his government, [66] followed the path of clemency, according to his natural disposition, so well known to all the world.”

And now the Inquisition was set in motion as the instrument whereby this decree should be carried into effect. It has been well said that, however classified or entitled, the Inquisition was only a machine for inquiring into a man’s thoughts, and for burning him if the result was not satisfactory. The Inquisition was that part of the church which caused the savages of India and America to shudder and turn chill at the very name of Christianity.

It is said that one day the secular sheriff, familiarly known as Red-rod, from the color of his wand of office, met upon the high road, Titelmann, the great inquisitor of Holland, and thus addressed him:—

“How can you venture to go about alone, or at most with one attendant or two, arresting people on every side, while I dare not attempt to execute my office, except at the head of a strong force, armed in proof, and then only at the peril of my life?”

“Ah! Red-rod,” answered Titelmann, laughing, “you deal with bad people. I have nothing to fear, for I seize only the innocent and the virtuous, who make no resistance, and let themselves be taken like lambs.”

“Mighty well,” said the other; “but if you arrest all the good people, and I all the bad,’ t is difficult to say who in the world is to escape chastisement.”

There was no end to the horrors of this horrible time. One Bertrand was seized by Titelmann for having insulted the host. He was dragged on a hurdle, his mouth closed with an iron gag, to the market-place. Here his right hand and his right foot were burned and twisted off between two red-hot irons. Then his tongue was torn out by the roots, and because he still endeavored to call upon God, the iron gag was again applied. His arms and legs were fastened together behind his back; he was hooked by the middle of his body to an iron chain, and made to swing to and fro over a slow fire till he was entirely roasted. His life lasted almost to the end of these ingenious tortures, but “his fortitude lasted as long as his life.”

At Ryssel, in Flanders, Titelmann caused one Robert Ogier to be arrested, together with his wife and two sons. The accusation [67] brought against them was that they did not go to mass, and that they had private worship in their own home. They were asked what rites they practised in their own house. One of the children answered: “We fall on our knees, and pray to God that he may enlighten our hearts, and forgive our sins. We pray for our sovereign, that his reign may be prosperous, and his life peaceful. We also pray for the magistrates and others in authority, that God may protect and preserve them all.” The simplicity of the boy drew tears from even some of those who sat in judgment upon his case. Nevertheless the father and the older child were condemned to the flames. “O God!” prayed the youth at the stake, “Eternal Father, accept the sacrifice of our lives, in the name of thy beloved Son.” “Thou liest, scoundrel!” interrupted the pious monk, who was lighting the fire; “God is not your Father, ye are the devil’s children.” As the flames rose high above them, the poor child once more cried out, “Look, my father, all heaven is opening, and I see ten hundred thousand angels rejoicing over us. Let us be glad, for we are dying for the truth.” “Thou liest! thou liest!” again roared the monk; “all hell is opening, and you see ten hundred thousand devils thrusting you into eternal fire.” Only eight days after this the wife of Ogier and the other child were burned, and this once happy family exterminated.

These were some of the things which were done in the Netherlands for the purpose of obliterating civil and religious freedom in this dependency of Spain. It is no wonder that such things bred revolt, and that the Hollanders, slow to rise, but terrible and determined when at last they did rise, should make one terrible effort to throw off the accursed yoke. And it must ever be remembered that the whole object of these wicked proceedings was to extort money and property unjustly from the people, and to bring about the incorporation of a number of free and liberty-loving states into one compact and centrally governed kingdom, to be farmed for the benefit of the crown of Spain.

General police regulations were issued at the same time, “by which heretics were to be excluded from all share in the usual conveniences of society, and were in fact to be strictly excommunicated. Inns were to receive no guests, schools no children, almshouses no paupers, graveyards no dead bodies, unless guests, [68] children, paupers, and dead bodies were furnished with the most satisfactory proofs of orthodoxy. Midwives of unsuspected Romanism were alone to exercise their functions, and were bound to give notice within twenty-four hours of every birth which occurred; the parish clerks were as regularly to record every such addition to the population, and the authorities to see that Catholic baptism was administered in each case with the least possible delay. Births, deaths, and marriages could only occur with validity under the shadow of the church. No human being could consider himself born or defunct unless provided with a priest’s certificate. The heretic was excluded, so far as ecclesiastical dogma could exclude him, from the pale of humanity, from consecrated earth, and from eternal salvation.” [3]

To the famous William of Orange, better known as William the Silent, or Father William, the great work of leading the revolt for freedom was by right assigned. His is one of the most noble characters of which all history boasts. In 1564 he took the ground that the time for speaking out had arrived, and that brave and honest men could no longer keep still. He argued that an envoy of high rank should be sent to the king of Spain in his native land, and that he should be told in unequivocal terms how the people of the Netherlands felt toward him and his rule. “Let him,” were his words, “be unequivocally informed that this whole machinery of placards and scaffolds, of new bishops and old hangmen, of decrees, inquisitors, and informers, must once and forever be abolished.”

Even while the envoy was absent in Spain, the oppressive measures were pushed forward with unabated fury. Such a state of things was produced by this great wickedness, that the ordinary business of mankind was almost entirely suspended. Commerce came to a dead standstill. The great commercial city of Antwerp “shook as with an earthquake.” Merchants from other lands, manufacturers, and artisans fled away, and the grass began to grow in the streets. Contemporaneous records tell how that “famine reigned in the land. Emigration, caused not by overpopulation, but by persecution, was fast weakening the country. It was no wonder that not only foreign merchants should be scared from the great commercial cities by the approaching disorders, but that every [69] industrious artisan who could find the means of escape should seek refuge among strangers, wherever an asylum could be found. That asylum was afforded by Protestant England, who received these intelligent and unfortunate wanderers with cordiality, and learned with eagerness the lessons in mechanical skill which they had to teach. Already thirty thousand emigrant Netherlander were established in Sandwich, Norwich, and other places, assigned to them by Elizabeth.” [4]

“It had always, however, been made a condition of the liberty granted to these foreigners for practising their handiwork that each house should employ at least one English apprentice.” [5] “Thus,” said a Walloon historian, splenetically, “by this regulation, and by means of heavy duties on foreign manufactures, have the English built up their own fabrics, and prohibited those of the Netherlands. Thus have they drawn over to their own country our skilful artisans to practise their industry, not at home but abroad, and our poor people are thus losing the means of earning their livelihood. Thus has cloth-making, silk-making, and the art of dyeing declined in our country, and would have been quite extinguished but by our wise countervailing edicts.” [6]

The cause given by this writer undoubtedly gives a wrong view of the case. This expatriation of these poor people came about on account of the sufferings imposed upon them in their native land. Where such terrible edicts were being daily enforced, where civil liberties were mocked at and trampled in the dust, it is only reasonable to suppose that commerce and manufactures would make their escape out of a doomed land with the utmost possible despatch.

But neither edict, nor famine, nor persecutions could shake the purpose of the sturdy Hollanders. They were determined to do as they pleased in things religious, and not to be oppressed in their civil rights so to do. In the early summer of 1566, “many thousands of burghers, merchants, peasants, and gentlemen were seen mustering and marching through the fields of every province, armed with arquebus, javelin, pike, and broadsword. For what purpose were these gatherings?—Only to hear sermons and sing hymns in the open air, as it was unlawful to profane the churches with such rites. [70] This was the first great popular phase of the Netherland rebellion. Notwithstanding the edicts and the inquisitions with their hecatombs, notwithstanding the special publication at this time throughout the country by the duchess regent that all the sanguinary statutes concerning religion were in as great vigor as ever, notwithstanding that Margaret offered a reward of seven hundred crowns to the man who would bring her a preacher dead or alive, the popular thirst for the exercises of the reformed religion could no longer be slaked at the obscure and hidden fountains where their priests had so long privately ministered....

“Apostate priests were not the only preachers. To the ineffable disgust of the conservatives in church and state, there were men with little education, utterly devoid of Hebrew, of lowly station,—hatters, curriers, tanners, dyers, and the like,—who began to preach also; remembering, unseasonably perhaps, that the early disciples, selected by the founder of Christianity, had not all been doctors of theology with diplomas from a ‘renowned university.’ But if the nature of such men were subdued to what it worked in, that charge could not be brought against ministers with the learning and accomplishments of Ambrose Willie, Marnier, Guy de Bray, or Francis Junius, the man whom Scaliger called the ‘greatest of all theologians since the days of the apostles.’ An aristocratic sarcasm could not be leveled against Peregrine de la Grange, of a noble family in Provence, with the fiery blood of southern France in his veins, brave as his nation, learned, eloquent, enthusiastic, who galloped to his field-preaching on horseback, and fired a pistol shot as signal for his congregation to give attention.

“On the 28th of June, 1566, at eleven o’clock at night, there was an assemblage of six thousand people near Tournay, at the bridge of Ernonville, to hear a sermon from Ambrose Willie, a man who had studied theology in Geneva, at the feet of Calvin, and who with a special price upon his head, was preaching the doctrines he had learned. Two days afterward ten thousand people assembled at the same spot to hear Peregrine de la Grange. Governor Moulbasis thundered forth a proclamation from the citadel, warning all men that the edicts were as rigorous as ever, and that every man, woman, or child who went to these preachings was incurring the penalty of death. The people became only the more ardent and [71] excited. Upon Sunday, the 7th of July, twenty thousand persons assembled at the same bridge to hear Ambrose Willie. One man in three was armed. Some had arquebuses, others pistols, pikes, swords, pitchforks, poniards, clubs. The preacher, for whose apprehension a fresh reward had been offered, was escorted to his pulpit by a hundred mounted troopers. He begged his audience not to be scared from the Word of God by menace; assured them that although but a poor preacher himself, he held a divine commission, and that he had no fear of death; that should he fall, there were many better than he to supply his place, and fifty thousand men to avenge his murder.

“The duchess sent forth proclamations by hundreds. She ordered the instant suppression of these armed assemblies, and the arrest of the preachers: but of what avail were proclamations against such numbers with weapons in their hands? Why irritate to madness these hordes of enthusiasts, who were now entirely pacific, and who marched back to the city at the conclusion of divine service with perfect decorum? All classes of the population went eagerly to the sermons. The gentry of the place, the rich merchants, the notables, as well as the humble artisans and laborers, all had received the infection. The professors of the reformed religion outnumbered the Catholics by five or six to one. On Sunday and other holidays, during the hours of service, Tournay was literally emptied of its inhabitants. The streets were as silent as if war or pestilence had swept the place. The duchess sent orders, but she sent no troops. The train bands of the city, the crossbowmen of St. Maurice, the archers of St. Sebastian, the sword-players of St. Christopher, could not be ordered from Tournay to suppress the preaching, for they had all gone to the preaching themselves. How idle, therefore, to send peremptory orders without a matchlock to enforce the command!

“Throughout Flanders similar scenes were enacted. The meetings were encampments, for the reformers now came to their religious services armed to the teeth, determined, if banished from the churches, to defend their right to the field. Barricades of upturned wagons, branches, and planks were thrown up around the camp. Strong guards of mounted men were stationed at every avenue. Outlying scouts gave notice of approaching danger, and guarded [72] the faithful into the enclosure. Pedlers and hawkers plied the trade upon which the penalty of death was fixed, and sold the forbidden hymn-books to all who chose to purchase. A strange and contradictory spectacle! An army of criminals doing deeds which could only be expiated at the stake; an entrenched rebellion, bearding the government with pikes, matchlocks, javelin, and barricade, and all for no more deadly purpose than to listen to the precepts of the pacific Jesus.

“Thus the preaching spread through the Walloon provinces to the northern Netherlands. Toward the end of July an apostate monk, Peter Gabriel by name, was announced to preach at Overwen, near Harlem. This was the first field meeting which had taken place in Holland. The people were wild with enthusiasm, the authorities beside themselves with apprehension. People from the country flocked into the town by thousands. The other cities were deserted, Harlem was filled to overflowing. Multitudes encamped upon the ground the night before. The magistrates ordered the gates to be kept closed in the morning till long after the usual hour. It was of no avail Bolts and bars were but small impediments to enthusiasts who had traveled so many miles on foot or horseback to listen to a sermon. They climbed the walls, swam the moat, and thronged to the place of meeting long before the doors had been opened. When these could no longer be kept closed without a conflict, for which the magistrates were not prepared, the whole population poured out of the city with a single impulse. Tens of thousands were assembled upon the field. The bulwarks were erected as usual. The guards were posted. The necessary precautions taken. But upon this occasion, and in that region, there was but little danger to be apprehended. The multitudes of reformers made the edicts impossible, so long as no foreign troops were there to enforce them. The congregation was encamped and arranged in an orderly manner. The women, of whom there were many, were placed next the pulpit, which, upon this occasion, was formed of a couple of spears thrust into the earth, sustaining a cross-piece, against which the preacher might lean his back. The services commenced with the singing of a psalm by the whole vast assembly. Clement Marot’s verses, recently translated by Dathenus, were then new and popular. The strains of the monarch minstrel, chanted [73] thus in their homely but nervous mother tongue by a multitude who had but recently learned that all the poetry and rapture of devotion were not irrevocably coffined with a buried language, or immured in the precincts of a church, had never produced a more elevating effect. No anthem from the world renowned organ in that ancient city ever awakened more lofty emotion than did those ten thousand human voices, ringing from the grassy meadows in that fervid midsummer noon. When all was silent again, the preacher rose,—a little meager man, who looked as if he might rather melt away beneath the blazing sunshine of July than hold the multitude enchained four uninterrupted hours long, by the magic of his tongue. His text was the eighth, ninth, and tenth verses of the second chapter of Ephesians; and as the slender monk spoke to his simple audience of God’s grace, and of faith in Jesus, who had descended from above to save the lowliest and the most abandoned, if they would but put their trust in him, his hearers were alternately exalted with fervor or melted into tears. He prayed for all conditions of men—for themselves, their friends, their enemies, for the government which had persecuted them, for the king whose face was turned upon them in anger. At times, according to one who was present, not a dry eye was to be seen in the crowd. When the minister had finished, he left his congregation abruptly, for he had to travel all night in order to reach Alkmaar, where he was to preach upon the following day.

“By the middle of July the custom was established outside all the principal cities. Camp-meetings were held in some places; as, for instance, in the neighborhood of Antwerp, where the congregation numbered over fifteen thousand; and on some occasions was estimated at between twenty and thirty thousand persons at a time, ‘very many of them,’ said an eye-witness, ‘the best and wealthiest in the town.” [7]

Looking back through the mist of time, we think how easy it would have been for Spain to have saved herself much trouble and travail, and to have imparted great happiness to a frugal, industrious, and peaceable people by simply letting them worship according to the dictates of conscience, and regulate their own local affairs in whatever manner would have been most satisfactory to them. [74] This would have been a simple solution, to be sure; but lust and greed of gain were against it, and to these monsters principle was sacrificed.

In 1567 the Duke of Alva, with a powerful army, was sent to look after the interests of Spain in the Netherlands. He was instructed to organize and preside over that terrible court, forever to be known in history as the Blood-Council. It was a mere informal club, of which the duke was perpetual president, while all the other members were appointed by himself; and of these other members there were only two who had the right to vote; the remainder were not permitted to vote at all. This infamous court carried on its proceedings in defiance of all law and all reason. Information was lodged against one man or against one hundred men in a single document, and execution was frequently done upon the one man or upon the hundred men within forty-eight hours after the information had been lodged. The proceedings of the council were also ex parte, and an information was almost invariably followed by a death-warrant. Sometimes the sentences were in advance of the docket. Upon one occasion a man’s case was called for trial, but before the investigation had commenced, it was discovered that he had already been executed. Moreover, upon examination, it was found that he had committed no crime. “No matter for that,” said Vargas, gaily, “if he has died innocently, it will be all the better for him when he takes his trial in the other world.”

However, according to the rules which defined and constituted guilt, it was almost impossible for a man to be innocent before such a court. People were daily executed upon the most frivolous pretexts. “Thus Peter de Witt, of Amsterdam, was beheaded because at one of the tumults in that city he had persuaded a rioter not to shoot a magistrate. This was taken as sufficient evidence that he was a man in authority among the rebels, and he was accordingly put to death.” “Madame Juriaen, who in 1566 had struck with her slipper a little wooden image of the Virgin, together with her maid servant, who had witnessed, without denouncing, the crime, were both drowned by the hangman in a hogshead placed on the scaffold.”

“Death, even, did not in all cases place a criminal beyond the reach of the executioner. Egbert Meynartzoon, a man of high [75] official rank, had been condemned, together with two colleagues, on an accusation of collecting money in a Lutheran church. He died in prison, of dropsy. The sheriff was indignant with the physician, because, in spite of cordials and strengthening prescriptions, the culprit had slipped through his fingers before he had felt those of the hangman. He consoled himself by placing the body on a chair, and having the dead man beheaded in company with his colleagues.

“Thus the whole country became a charnel-house; the death-bell tolled hourly in every village; not a family but was called to mourn for its dearest relatives, while the survivors stalked listlessly about, the ghosts of their former selves, among the wrecks of their former homes. The spirit of the nation, within a few months after the arrival of Alva, seemed hopelessly broken. The blood of its best and bravest had already stained the scaffold; the men to whom it had been accustomed to look for guidance and protection were dead, in prison, or in exile. Submission had ceased to be of any avail, flight was impossible, and the spirit of vengeance had alighted at every fireside. The mourners went daily about the streets, for there was hardly a house which had not been made desolate. The scaffolds, the gallows, the funeral piles, which had been sufficient in ordinary times, furnished now an entirely inadequate machinery for the incessant executions. Columns and stakes in every street, the door-posts of private houses, the fences in the fields, were laden with human carcasses, strangled, burned, beheaded. The orchards in the country bore on many a tree the hideous fruit of human bodies.

“Thus the Netherlands were crushed, and but for the stringency of the tyranny which had now closed their gates, would have been depopulated. The grass began to grow in the streets of those cities which had recently nourished so many artisans. In all those great manufacturing and industrial marts, where the tide of human life had throbbed so vigorously, there now reigned the silence and darkness of midnight. It was at this time that the learned Vigilius wrote to his friend Hopper that all venerated the prudence and gentleness of the Duke of Alva. Such were among the first-fruits of that prudence and that gentleness.

“Upon the 16th of February, 1568, a sentence of the holy office condemned all the inhabitants of the Netherlands to death as heretics. [76] From this universal doom only a few persons especially named, were excepted. A proclamation of the king, dated ten days later, confirmed this decree of the Inquisition, and ordered it to be carried into instant execution, without regard to age, sex, or condition. This is probably the most concise death-warrant that was ever framed. Three millions of people, men, women, and children, were sentenced to the scaffold in three lines; and, as it was well known that these were not harmless thunders, like some bulls of the Vatican, but serious and practical measures, which it was intended should be enforced, the horror which they produced may be easily imagined.

“And under this new decree the executions certainly did not slacken. Men in the highest and humblest positions were daily and hourly dragged to the stake. Alva, in a single letter to Philip, coolly estimated the number of executions which had taken place after the expiration of holy week, ‘at eight hundred heads.’ Many a citizen, convicted of a hundred thousand florins, and no other crime, saw himself suddenly tied to a horse’s tail, with his hands fastened behind him and so dragged to the gallows.... The tongue of each prisoner was screwed into an iron ring, and then seared with a hot iron. The swelling and inflammation, which were the immediate result, prevented the tongue from slipping through the ring, and of course effectually precluded all possibility of speech.”

Still the sturdy Hollanders were not crushed. Fear ne’er sat upon their breasts; and never did they stack their arms until the Duke of Alva had been forced to leave the country. But there was no peace even then; Spain kept up the fight, and the people of the Netherlands contended against the most fearful odds which history has to record. Then came the far-famed siege of Leyden. The beleaguered city endured sufferings untold, and it seemed impossible for their brethren to bring them relief. Leyden was not upon the sea, but they resolved to send the sea to Leyden. “Better a drowned land than a lost land,” was the cry of the patriots. They determined to pierce the dikes that kept back the ocean, and drown their land in the waves. The Spaniards mocked at the very idea. The idea that any people could love liberty sufficiently to purchase it at such an awful price was foreign to their lust-loving and greedy [77] souls. “Go up to the tower, ye beggars,” was their frequent and taunting cry, “go up to the tower, and tell us if you can see the ocean coming over the dry land to your relief.” “And day after day they did go up to the ancient tower of Hengist, with heavy heart and anxious eye, watching, hoping, fearing, praying, and at last almost despairing of relief by God or man.” Once, fearing that they had been forgotten, they addressed a despairing letter to the estates; but back came the reply: “Rather will we see our whole land and all our possessions perish in the waves than forsake thee, Leyden. We know full well, moreover, that with Leyden all Holland must perish also.”

Once during the siege a crowd of those who had grown fainthearted during the long and terrific struggle came to Adrain van der Werf, the burgomaster. They assailed him with threats and reproaches. He waved his hand for silence, and spoke as follows: “What would ye, my friends? Why do ye murmur that we do not break our vows, and surrender the city to the Spaniards, a fate more horrible than the agony which she now endures? I tell you I have made an oath to hold the city, and may God give me strength to keep my oath! I can die but once; whether by your hands, the enemy’s, or by the hand of God. My own fate is indifferent to me, not so the city entrusted to my care. I know that we shall starve if not soon relieved; but starvation is preferable to the dishonored death which is the only alternative. Your menaces move me not; my life is at your disposal; here is my sword, plunge it into my breast, and divide my flesh among you. Take my body to appease your hunger, but expect no surrender so long as I remain alive.” His words inspired courage, and a shout of applause went up from the assembled throng.

At length the last dike was pierced, and the ocean, aided by a strong equinoctial gale, swept over the land. In a light flotilla came the relieving force with supplies for the people of Leyden. Terror took possession of the Spaniards, and in the gray light of the early morning they poured out of their entrenchments, and fled toward The Hague. They were none too early in their flight. Rapidly did their narrow path vanish in the waves, and hundreds sank beneath the deepening and treacherous flood. Leyden was relieved.

It is needless for me to write here of the Dutch Republic which [78] followed, when the Netherlands gained their freedom and separation from the crown of Spain. Suffice to say that before the advent of the United States upon the stage of earth’s history, the little Dutch republic was the home of the oppressed of all Europe; and it is significant that Leyden was the home of the Pilgrim Fathers before they sailed upon that memorable voyage which landed them upon Plymouth Rock, where they were destined to lay the foundation stone of a new and greater Republic, which was to take up the work so gallantly commenced by Holland, and bear it forward to perfection. [79]

[1] The historical facts of this chapter are gathered mainly from Motley’s “History of the Dutch Republic.” I have not in all cases given the exact reference. It will be understood, however, that uncredited quotations are from his great work.

[2] This edict can be read in Motley, “Rise of the Dutch Republic,” part 2, chap. 1.

[3] Motley “Rise of the Dutch Republic,” part 2, chap. 5.

[4] Pasquier de la Barre, MSS. 1vo, “Correspondence de Philippe II,” 1, 392.

[5] “Renom de France,” MSS.

[6] “Renom de France,” MSS.

[7] Motley, “Rise of the Dutch Republic,” part 2, chap. 6.

Chapter 7 — American Imperialism—National Apostasy

Why Spain was conquered—Why America was chosen to conquer her—The setting sun of Spanish glory—An Old World power is driven from Cuba, but an Old World idea invades the United States—The doctrine that might makes right—The doctrine that right makes might—American Imperialism—The Declaration of Independence mocked at—The forcible annexation of the Philippines—A. D. 1899 ideas of the Declaration—Jefferson opposed to conquest—Ideas of John Fiske—James G. Blaine on wars of conquest—Macaulay on colonial empires—The American Revolution a war against the colonial system—Supreme Court opinion versus United States dependencies—The national records opposed to dependencies, in the organization of the Northwest Territory, treaty of cession with France over Louisiana purchase, in the treaty of Washington over the Floridas, in the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo over California, Nevada, etc., and in the Gadsden and Alaskan purchases—A change of front on the “government by consent” doctrine—The purchase of the Philippines—Recent opinions on the “consent of the governed” doctrine—In the track of King George—Grand words from Carl Schurz—Criminal aggression—Can the government endure half citizen, half colonial?—The command, “Silence!”—Liberty at the point of the bayonet—Lord Macaulay on slavery in the West Indies—Is history a fable?

The war, begun in 1898, between the kingdom of Spain and the republic of the United States is now at an end, and the laurels of victory are worn by the armies and the navy of the Western Giant. Few were the battles and brief the campaign which laid the feeble foe prostrate in the dust. Continued violation of natural law had produced internal weakness and disintegration. Spain fell an easy and helpless prey, not simply on account of the superiority of American prowess and gunnery, but because of inherent weakness, produced by her own sin.

It was altogether fitting that the long struggle which the Iberians had carried on against their own colonies for the purpose of enforcing the ideas that all men are not created equal, and that governments do not derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, should be abruptly terminated by that nation which was conceived in principles the exact reverse of these theories.

That Providence willed it so, there can be no doubt. Only the hand that was free from the stain of despotism could be used to inflict punishment upon her whose every garment was spotted with its leprosy. With the surrender of Cuba and Porto Rico, Spain relinquished the last acre of that great landfall which Christopher Columbus in 1492 brought to the united thrones of Aragon and Castile. Spain’s administration of these domains was one long series of national crime. Long ago the King of kings arraigned her at the bar above, and there and then it was justly decreed that the unjust steward should have her stewardship taken away. Instalments of the penalty have fallen due from time to time. Just now we have witnessed the last payment, that of the uttermost farthing. And in the words of Lincoln, “As was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’” [80]

As the stereopticon pictures dissolve upon the sheet upon which they are thrown, and fade away from view, so in a. d. 360 the empire of the Romans began dissolving upon the great sheet of time and space upon which all nations are cast, until in a. d. 476 the last faint traces and shadowy outlines of her once great power and glory had utterly vanished. But as her fleeting specter disappeared from off the canvas, the Visigoths, in the childlike bloom of semi-barbaric virginity, may be seen in that dim twilight of time stealthily gliding in to occupy the rich peninsula which the fall of Rome had left without a tenant. Weal might have been their day; glorious with white and gold the years of the hoar hair of their national existence, the harvest of their allotted span. By their own choice alone it has brought forth only tears and woe,—first to others, and finally to themselves. They followed in the steps of Rome, they repeated her history, and as far as colonial empire is concerned, they have met her end, while their own dissolution, the last grand tableau in the tragedy, already looms in the offing of time. For as God is no respecter of persons, even so he is no respecter of nations.

Columbus sailed with the intent of finding, not the West, but the East Indies. To the day of his death he never discovered his mistake. It was his intent there to plant the monarchical tyranny of Spain. Four hundred years have passed away since then, and it is passing strange that these United States, after breaking the power of Spain in the West, are even now engaged in fastening upon that land which Columbus sought to reach, those same Spanish principles of power and tyranny which he would fain have taken there.

An Old World power has been driven from Cuba, but an Old World idea has invaded and well-nigh captured the republic of the United States,—the idea that all men are not created equal, and that governments do not derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. There have been times when the ship of state in the United States has been partially diverted from her course, and greed has used her officers for private ends and personal emoluments. But now the very foundation-stones of the fabric governmental are being undermined.

Prior to the year 1898 this government was a republic pure and simple. Its foundations were laid in principle, and not in power. [81] It was not an empire in any sense of the word, for the foundations of an empire are laid in power, and not in principle. It was built upon that everlasting rock that right makes might. Against this the coming of floods and the blowing and beating of winds are alike powerless, for it standeth sure and falleth not forever. But empires, on the other hand, are built upon that sinking sand that might makes right. Against these the floods come, and the winds blow and beat, and they fall, and great is the fall thereof.

To-day this nation is in danger of abandoning the rock and settling upon the sand. The love of power, so prone to the human breast, is smothering priceless, eternal principle. From being a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, it is being rapidly transformed into a government of some of the people, by a few of the people, for all the people. This is imperialism as opposed to republicanism, and this is national apostasy.

Until the summer of 1898 the word “imperialism” was but little heard from the lips of Americans. Now the very atmosphere is fairly drenched with it. A perfect wave of imperialism has swept over the land, and the desire for an Imperial America, or an “Imperial Republic,” as it has been styled, sits supreme upon hundreds of scores of souls. But an imperial republic cannot exist. With equal sense and propriety one might talk about “good badness.”

What means this wild babel of tongues clamoring for subjects over which to exercise sway? What means this strange jargon, formed from an Old World monarchical vocabulary? Are men crazed with the madness sometimes begotten by victory at arms? Are men drunken with the lust of colonial empire? Are men raving in the delirium of that dread fever, earth-hunger, in which all the monarchies of the Old World are writhing? Think they in the hour of triumph over a foe, outclassed at every point, to build a tower of national greatness which will reach to the very heavens, and at the same time to lay its unrighteous foundations on the stricken forms of vassal peoples? The result will surely be as it was before in the case of the builders of Babel, there will be confusion of tongues, and the dissolution of the nation.

In his day, Abraham Lincoln said that in the days of the Fathers “our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of [82] the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, and sneered at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.” [1]

And again he said, speaking of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise:—

“I think, and shall try to show, that it is wrong,—wrong in its direct effect,—letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, and wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world, where men can be found inclined to take it.

“This declared indifference, but as I must think covert real zeal, for the spread of slavery, I can not but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence; enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity; and especially because it forces so many really good men among ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the Declaration of Independence.” [2]

Once again the time has come when the Declaration of Independence is not held sacred by all, is not thought to include all. Once again, to make the bondage, not of the negro, but of the Filipino, universal and eternal, “it is assailed, and sneered at, and hawked at, and, torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.”

The forcible annexation of the Philippine Islands is now being attempted. The government of the United States is endeavoring to subject this people against their will. To enforce this idea is to enforce slavery; not in the extreme degree, to be sure, but in part and in principle nevertheless. On this point a United States senator has truly said:—

“Wherever a people are required to render an obedience which is involuntary, that requirement is an enslavement of that people.

“There are different degrees of enslavement. If we put our yoke upon a people, if we rule them arbitrarily, if we send them governors and judges, if we make laws for them without their participation, if we enforce obedience to such laws by our army, then it [83] is an absolute enslavement. If, on the contrary, we allow them free institutions, but at the same time prescribe to them that they shall owe allegiance to a government against their will, it is none the less an enslavement, although less in degree.” [3]

That which is now being done in this enslavement is wrong. It is wrong in its direct effect, and “wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it [slavery-vassalage] to spread to every other part of the wide world, where men can be found inclined to take it.” Besides this, it “deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity.” And more and worse than all of this, “it forces so many really good men among ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the Declaration of Independence.”

Now here are the words of some who have been doing this:—

“A constitution and national policy adopted by thirteen half-consolidated, weak, rescued colonies, glad to be able to call their life their own, can not be expected to hamper the greatest nation in the world.” [4]

“This nation has become a giant, who is no longer content with the nursery rimes which were sung around his cradle.” [5]

“In the right to acquire territory is found the right to govern; and as the right to govern is sovereign and unlimited, the right to govern is a sovereign right, and I maintain is not limited in the Constitution. I think it must be admitted that the right to govern is sovereign and unlimited.... Governments derive their just powers from the consent of some of the governed.” [6]

“The Declaration of Independence was made to suit a particular existing condition of things. The Declaration meant simply that the colonies had become tired of the British domination, deeming it oppressive, and intended to set up a government of their own by the right of revolution. They were not laying down a principle for anybody except themselves, and they had no conception of the ‘consent of the governed’ as it is proclaimed by Mr.—and the generally [84] hypocritical gang who are sympathizing with him in the hope of cheating us out of our rightful conquests.” [7]

“It is a favorite notion now to quote the words, ‘Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,’ as if these embodied a law of application to all inhabitants a like.... It was never the intention [of the signers of the Declaration] to assert that the negroes or the savage race must give consent before just government should be established over them.... The Declaration of Independence was a formal notice that the inhabitants of the colonies consented no longer to British rule.” [8]

“We would inform Senator Vest that the idea that all men are created equal is not the fundamental law of this country. The Fathers had better sense than to put that phrase in the Constitution. They wrote it in the Declaration, which was simply their manifesto to European powers, and is not law.” [9]

“Resist the crazy extension of the doctrine that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.” [10]

“And so to-day there are those that wave the Declaration of Independence in our faces, and tell us that the thing to do is to deliver over those islands of the archipelago in the East to the people who are their rightful masters; for ‘all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.’ So wrote Thomas Jefferson. Do you remember that the Lord said to Joshua, ‘My servant is dead’? And so is Thomas Jefferson. I do not believe that Thomas Jefferson was infallible. I believe that a live president in the year of grace 1899 is just as much of an authority as a president that lived and died a hundred years ago. I am no worshiper of a saint just because he is dead. Let the dead bury the dead. As to that hallowed document that declares that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, if that is to be literally construed, THERE NEVER WAS A GREATER FALSEHOOD PALMED OFF BY THE DEVIL UPON A CREDULOUS WORLD. It is not true of the government of God.” [11] [85]

These sentiments are so akin in principle to the doctrine of Judge Stephen A, Douglas, Lincoln’s great opponent, that it is well worth while to put his words side by side with them. Here they are:—

“No man can vindicate the character, motives, and conduct of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, except upon the hypothesis that they referred to the white race alone, and not to the African, when they declared all men to be created equal,—that they were speaking of British subjects on this continent being equal to British subjects born and residing in Great Britain,—that they were entitled to the same inalienable rights, and among them were enumerated life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration was adopted for the purpose of justifying the colonists in the eyes of the civilized world in withdrawing their allegiance from the British crown, and dissolving their connection with the mother country.”

Truly did Lincoln rejoin to this speech that it made a mere wreck, a mangled ruin, of our once glorious Declaration. But verily it is true now as well as then, that “its authors meant it to be, as, thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling-block to all those who in aftertimes might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant that when such should reappear in this fair land, and commence their vocation, they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.”

The advocates of the imperialistic policy frequently cite past events in our national history in support of their theory. The Fathers are quoted, and chief among them Thomas Jefferson. Nevertheless, of all the statesmen who ever lived none was more hostile to colonial policy than was the sage of Monticello.

A well-known statesman of the present day has divided imperialism, as it now presents itself, into four distinct propositions, as follows:—

“1. That the acquisition of territory by conquest is right.

“2. That the acquisition of remote territory is desirable.

“3. That the doctrine that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed is unsound [86]

“4. That people can be wisely governed by aliens.” [12]

As for conquering territory and ruling over it there can be no mistaking Jefferson’s position, for in 1791 he wrote:—

“If there be one principle more deeply written than any other in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.” [13]

Surely this is plain enough from the author of the Declaration of Independence. Why, the very fundamental principle of the doctrine of a republic is diametrically opposed to the acquisition of territory by conquest. This truth is plainly set forth by John Fiske, the most philosophical of all the American historians. He divides nation-making into three classes, the third of which he styles the “English method.” This he defines as being the one which contains the “principle of representation.” Then he adds:—

“For this reason, though like all nation-making it was in its early stages attended with war and conquest, it nevertheless does not necessarily require war and conquest in order to be put into operation.... Now of the English or Teutonic method, I say, war is not an essential part; for where representative government is once established, it is possible for a great nation to be formed by the peaceful coalescence of neighboring states, or by their union into a federal body.... Now federalism, though its rise and establishment may be incidentally accompanied by warfare, is nevertheless in spirit pacific. Conquest in the Oriental sense is quite incompatible with it; conquest in the Roman sense hardly less so. At the close of our Civil war there were now and then zealous people to be found who thought that the Southern States ought to be treated as conquered territory, governed by prefects sent from Washington, and held down by military force for a generation or so. Let us hope that there are few to-day who can fail to see that such a course would have been fraught with almost as much danger as the secession movement itself. At least it would have been a hasty confession, quite uncalled for and quite untrue, that American federalism [87] had thus far proved itself incompetent; that we had indeed pre served our national unity, but only at the frightful cost of sinking to a lower plane of national life....

“Our experience has now so far widened that we can see that despotism is not the strongest but well-nigh the weakest form of government; that centralized administrations, like that of the Roman empire, have fallen to pieces, not because of too much, but because of too little, freedom; and that the only perdurable government must be that which succeeds in achieving national unity on a grand scale, without weakening the sense of local and personal independence. For in the body politic this spirit of freedom is as the red corpuscles in the blood; it carries the life with it. It makes the difference between a society of self-respecting men and women and a society of puppets. Your nation may have art, poetry, and science, all the refinements of civilized life, all the comforts and safeguards that human ingenuity can devise, but if it lose this spirit of personal and local independence, it is doomed, and deserves its doom.... Of the two opposite perils which have perpetually threatened the welfare of political society,—anarchy on the one hand, loss of self-government on the other,—Jefferson was right in maintaining that the latter is really the more to be dreaded, because its beginnings are so terribly insidious.” [14]

“Nothing is more dangerous for a free people than the attempt to govern a dependent people despotically. The bad government kills out the good government as surely as slave labor destroys free labor, or as a debased currency drives out a sound currency.” [15]

Such are the principles of Thomas Jefferson and of John Fiske, and these were reiterated in later years by a statesman of no less repute than James G. Blaine. One of the great desires of his life was to bring the republics of North and South America into close and cordial relations, and at a conference held for this purpose in 1890 he introduced the following resolutions, and the same were approved by the commissioners present:—

“First. That the principle of conquest shall not, during the continuance of the treaty of arbitration, be recognized as admissible under American public law. [88]

“Second. That all cessions of territory made during the continuance of the treaty of arbitration shall be void, if made under threats of war or in the presence of an armed force.

“Third. Any nation from which such cessions shall be exacted may demand that the validity of the cessions so made shall be submitted to arbitration.

“Fourth. Any renunciation of the right to arbitration made under the conditions made in the second section shall be null and void.”

Now these resolutions do not admit conquest to any place in American public law. The reason they do not admit it is simply and solely because it is not right. Commenting on these resolutions a noted publicist justly says:—

“So objectionable is the theory of acquisition of territory by conquest that the nation which suffers such injustice can, according to the resolutions, recover by arbitration the land ceded in the presence of an armed force. So abhorrent is it that a waiver of arbitration, under such circumstances, is null and void.” [16]

Besides all this, Jefferson was ever opposed to the acquisition of remote territory. He continually stated that he did not desire for the United States any land outside the North American continent. It is true, however, as an exception to this that he desired the annexation of the island of Cuba. On this point, however, he has left on record a letter addressed to the then president of the United States, in which he suggests that we should be ready to receive Cuba “when solicited by herself.” [17] The only reason that he ever dreamed of desiring Cuba was because of its nearness to our own shores; but for fear that any one might use its annexation as a precedent for general and indefinite expansion, he said in another letter to James Madison, then president: “It will be objected to our receiving Cuba, that no limit can be drawn to our future acquisitions;” but he added, “Cuba can be defended by us without a navy, and this develops the principle which ought to limit our views. Nothing should ever be accepted which requires a navy to defend it.” [18]

And still further, in the same letter, speaking in view of the [89] possible acquisition of that island, he said: “I would immediately erect a column on the southernmost limit of Cuba, and inscribe on it a ne plus ultra as to us in that direction.”

Upon the fourth proposition regarding the government of people by aliens, Jefferson spake words which for the truth they contain, and the modest simplicity they manifest, must live forever. There was formed in the year 1817 a French society, the members of which had it for their purpose to settle near the Tombigbee River. This society invited Jefferson to formulate laws and regulations for them. Replying, he expressed his appreciation of their feelings toward and confidence in him, but stated in effect that he could not conscientiously undertake the task. The following are the reasons which he gave for thus declining:—

“The laws, however, which must effect this must flow from their own habits, their own feelings, and the resources of their own minds. No stranger to these could possibly propose regulations adapted to them. Every people have their own particular habits, ways of thinking, manners, etc., which have grown up with them from their infancy, are become a part of their nature, and to which the regulations which are to make them happy must be accommodated. No member of a foreign country can have a sufficient sympathy with these. The institutions of Lycurgus, for example, would not have suited Athens, nor those of Solon, Lacedaemon. The organizations of Locke were impracticable for Carolina, and those of Rosseau for Poland. Turning inwardly on myself from these eminent illustrations of the truth of my observation, I feel all the presumption it would manifest should I undertake to do what this respectable society is alone qualified to do suitably for itself.” [19]

This is all admirable truth. No self-respecting community will cheerfully obey any other than self-imposed laws. They may obey through fear, or on account of the presence of armed force, but there will always be danger of riots caused by discontent, or of insurrection in the hope of freedom. Liberty is an inalienable right. Nature has planted it in the human breast, and just as long as it exists there, many and grievous will be the troubles of colonial empires. The cases of Ireland and India under British rule are cases in point. [90]

Colonial empires are wrong in principle. The conception of the thing itself is wrong. Colonial empires are built upon arbitrary theories and force, instead of on natural law. The splendid colonial system of England is held up as an example of this type of government; but Goldsmith called upon legislators—

“... to judge how wide the limits stand

Betwixt a splendid and a happy land.”

Lord Macaulay himself denied the value of colonies, even to European nations:—

“There are some who assert that, from a military and political point of view, the West Indies are of great importance to this country. This is a common but a monstrous misrepresentation. We venture to say that colonial empire has been one of the greatest curses of modern Europe. What nation has it ever strengthened? What nation has it ever enriched? What have been its fruits?—Wars of frequent occurrence and immense cost, fettered trade, lavish expenditure, clashing jurisdiction, corruption in governments and indigence among the people. What have Mexico and Peru done for Spain, the Brazils for Portugal, Batavia for Holland? Or, if the experience of others is lost upon us, shall we not profit by our own? What have we not sacrificed to our infatuated passion for transatlantic dominion? This it is that has so often led us to risk our own smiling gardens and dear firesides for some snowy desert or infectious morass on the other side of the globe; this induced us to resign all the advantages of our insular situation, to embroil ourselves in the intrigues and fight the battles of half the continent, to form coalitions which were instantly broken, to give subsidies which were never earned; this gave birth to the fratricidal war against American liberty, with all its disgraceful defeats, and all its barren victories, and all the massacres of the Indian hatchet, and all the bloody contracts of the Hessian slaughter-house; this it was which, in the war against the French republic, induced us to send thousands and tens of thousands of our bravest troops to die in West Indian hospitals, while the armies of our enemies were pouring over the Rhine and the Alps. When a colonial acquisition has been in prospect, we have thought no expenditure extravagant, no interference perilous. Gold has been to us as dust, and blood as water. Shall we never learn wisdom? Shall we never cease to prosecute a pursuit wilder [91] than the wildest dreams of alchemy, with all the credulity and all the profusion of Sir Epicure Mammon?

“Those who maintain that settlements so remote conduce to the military or maritime power of nations, fly in the face of history.” [20]

Yet to-day the United States is flying in the face of history, and her course is not only that of bad principle, but also of bad policy. But to return to the matter of the principle involved. The war of the Revolution—the war which effected the separation between these United States and Great Britain—was fundamentally, and was fought for four long years exclusively, against the colonial system of Europe. This is a most important fact. In a war against that system, this nation originated; and that not as a matter of policy, but as a matter of principle. In the commencement of that struggle the Fathers of this nation did not contemplate independence from the mother land. “When the people of Rhode Island burned the British war sloop ‘Gaspee’ in Narragansett Bay, and the people of Massachusetts threw overboard the cargo of tea in Boston Harbor, they acted as British subjects, proclaiming their loyalty to the crown of England. When Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Light-Horse Harry Lee met at the old Raleigh tavern in Williamsburg, Va., and indorsed the action of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, they proclaimed themselves English subjects, loyal to the king, and only demanded the rights that were given to them as English-men by Magna Charta, and the Bill of Rights.

“What is the colonial system against which our Fathers protested?—It is based upon the fundamental idea that the people of immense areas of territory can be held as subjects, never to become citizens; that they must pay taxes, and be impoverished by governmental exaction without having anything to do with the legislation under which they live.

“Against taxation without representation our Fathers fought for the first four years of the Revolution, struggling against the system which England then attempted to impose upon them, and which was graphically described by Thomas Jefferson as the belief that nine tenths of mankind were born bridled and saddled, and the other tenth booted and spurred to ride them.” [21] [92]

While it is true that this nation originated in a struggle against the colonial system, it is also true that the nation or the government is not prohibited by any natural or human law from acquiring territory, but always within the limitations of right. All territory that is acquired outside of the seat of the national capital, dockyards, arsenals, etc., must be acquired with the idea that it will be admitted to statehood just as soon as possible, and the government has no right to acquire territory with any other purpose in view. This is so in the very nature of things; were it otherwise, there would be a violation of the fundamental principles that all men are created equal, and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. More than this, it has been most ably set forth in one of the most famous decisions ever handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States:—

“There is certainly no power given by the Constitution to the federal government to establish or maintain colonies bordering on the United States or at a distance, to be ruled and governed at its own pleasure, nor to enlarge its territorial limits in any way except by the admission of new States. That power is plainly given; and if a new State is admitted, it needs no further legislation by Congress, because the Constitution itself defines the relative rights and powers and duties of the State and the citizens of the State and the federal government. But no power is given to acquire a territory to be held and governed permanently in that character.

“And, indeed, the power exercised by Congress to acquire territory and establish a government there, according to its own unlimited discretion, was viewed with great jealousy by the leading statesmen of the day. And in the Federalist (No. 38), written by Mr. Madison, he speaks of the acquisition of the Northwestern Territory by the Confederated States, by the cession from Virginia, and the establishment of a government there, as an exercise of power not warranted by the articles of confederation, and dangerous to the liberties of the people. And he urges the adoption of the Constitution as a security and safeguard against such an exercise of power.

“We do not mean, however, to question the power of Congress in this respect. The power to expand the territory of the United States by the admission of new States is plainly given; and in the construction of this power by all the departments of the government, [93] it has been held to authorize the acquisition of territory not fit for admission at the time, but to be admitted as soon as its population and situation would entitle it to admission. It is acquired to become a State, and not to be held as a colony and governed by Congress with absolute authority; and as the propriety of admitting a new State is committed to the sound judgment of Congress, the power to acquire territory for that purpose, to be held by the United States until it is in a suitable condition to become a State upon an equal footing with the other States, must rest upon the same discretion.” [22]

It is true that the Dred Scott decision was the cause of a vast amount of discussion and bitter feeling; but in this part of the decision the entire bench of nine judges concurred, and Justice McLean in his dissenting opinion emphasized and elaborated the question in point. Said he:—

“In organizing the government of a Territory, Congress is limited to means appropriate to the attainment of the constitutional object. No powers can be exercised which are prohibited by the Constitution, or which are contrary to its spirit; so that, whether the object may be the protection of the property and persons of purchasers of the public lands or of communities who have been annexed to the Union by conquest or purchase, they are initiatory to the establishment of State governments, and no more power can be claimed or exercised than is necessary to the attainment of that end. This is the limitation of all the Federal powers.” [23]

These legal opinions clearly set forth the lack of power in this government to hold Territories as colonies not to be admitted as States, and with no prospect of becoming States. In fact, in both of these opinions “the fundamental idea is conveyed that all the power of Congress in regard to the Territories is to be exercised as an initiatory process to their becoming States of the American Union.”

These principles have formed a part of the political faith of men of all parties until within the last few months, and the actions of the government have uniformly been in harmony with them.

The first land held by the United States not in the form of a [94] State was the Northwestern Territory ceded by Virginia. It embraced the area now occupied by the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and a part of Minnesota. During the time when the constitutional convention was holding its sittings, the Congress of the Confederation was considering the matter of the government of the Northwest Territory. On July 13, 1787, that body passed the ordinance for the government of the Northwest Territory. It is one of the finest statues of statecraft that has ever been erected. It was sculptured by the same hand that chiseled the Declaration of Independence. Its existence and binding efficacy were expressly recognized in the legislation of the first Congress under the Constitution, that of 1789. It contains this provision:—

“Sec. 13. And for extending the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty, which form the basis whereon these republics, their laws and constitutions, are erected; to fix and establish those principles as the basis of all laws, constitutions, and governments which forever hereafter shall be formed in the said Territory; to provide, also, for the establishment of States and permanent government therein, and for their admission to a share in the federal councils on an equal footing with the original States, at as early periods as may be consistent with the general interest.

“Sec. 14. It is hereby ordained and declared, by the authority aforesaid, that the following articles shall be considered as articles of compact between the original States and the people and the States of the said territory, and forever remain unalterable unless by common consent.” [24]

In the carrying out of the letter and the spirit of this ordinance is the application of the whole principle involved. The ordinance distinctly mentions the “establishment of States and permanent government,” showing conclusively that in the minds of the Fathers the power of the federal government to hold and rule this Territory was only temporary.

Again, on April 30, 1803, the United States government completed the purchase of Louisiana from France. “The territory thus acquired embraced the area now occupied by the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, all but the southwest corner of Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota west of the Mississippi River, Nebraska, [95] Colorado east of the Rocky Mountains and north of the Arkansas River, the two Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, most of Wyoming, and the present Indian Territory.” The treaty with France by which this cession was provided contains a manifestation of the same principle:—

“The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated into the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the meantime they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess.” [25]

At the time of the making of this treaty Thomas Jefferson was president of the United States, and James Madison was secretary of state. Moreover, the treaty was signed by James Monroe and by Robert Livingston, and was ratified while many of the framers of the Constitution were still at the helm of the ship of state The whole furnishes a clear and lucid commentary upon the understanding of these men as to the principle of the government of new territory.

The next territory which was added to the national domain was that of the Floridas. These, by the terms of the treaty of Washington, were ceded to us by Spain, Feb. 22, 1819. This treaty provides:—

“The inhabitants of the territories which his Catholic Majesty cedes to the United States by this treaty shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States as soon as may be consistent with the principles of the Federal Constitution, and admitted to the enjoyment of all the privileges, rights, and immunities of the citizens of the United States.” [26]

Then came the annexation of Texas, March 1, 1845. Texas was annexed, and admitted to statehood by one and the same act, so of course no provision concerning the civil and religious status of the inhabitants was necessary.

Following this was the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Feb. 2, 1848. By this the United States acquired from Mexico the territory [96] included in the States of California, Nevada, Utah, the greater part of Arizona, the larger part of New Mexico, Colorado west of the Rocky Mountains, and the southwestern part of Wyoming. This increase of territory was further added to by the Gadsden purchase from Mexico, Dec. 30, 1853, which now constitutes the southern part of the Territories of New Mexico and Arizona. This treaty says:—

“The Mexicans, who in the territory aforesaid shall not preserve the character of citizens of the Mexican republic, conformably with what is stipulated in the preceding article, shall be incorporated into the Union of the United States, and be admitted at the proper time (to be judged by the Congress of the United States) to the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States, according to the principles of the Constitution, and in the meantime shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty and property, and secured in the free exercise of their religion without restriction.” [27]

This article was also adopted as an article of the Gadsden treaty. And again in the Alaskan treaty it was provided that “the inhabitants ... shall be admitted to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States.”

This brings us down to the present time and to the acquisition just recently made. Now all these treaties prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that, until within the last few months, at most, this nation was utterly opposed to the colonial policy, that we considered it subversive of our fundamental principles, and that in each and every case where territory was acquired, it was stipulated in clear and distinct language that such territory should be admitted to statehood in accordance with the principles of the Federal Constitution. It therefore follows that the record of the United States, until the present crisis, has been unanimously in support of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution of the United States.

But now the United States has purchased the Philippine Islands from Spain, and has paid to that government therefore the sum of twenty million dollars. For this price, paid to another nation, ten million men, women, and children have become the property of these United States. No one dreams that the nation will make [97] slaves of them; but is not the principle involved a dangerous one? Is it not a step down from the noblest plane of national principle? These people, however, declare that the title of Spain is not good, and refuse to come under submission. And the United States is now engaged in telling them plainly that she expects to rule them without their consent, whether they like it or not. For instance, in a recent speech the chief executive of the nation said:—

“Did we ask their consent to liberate them from Spanish sovereignty, or to enter Manila Bay and destroy the Spanish sea power there? We did not ask these. We were obeying a higher moral obligation which rested upon us, and which did not require anybody’s consent. Every present obligation has been met and fulfilled in the expulsion of Spanish sovereignty from the islands, and while the war was in progress we could not ask their views. Nor can we now ask their consent.” [28]

How different is this from the words found in his annual message, under date of Dec. 6, 1897:—

“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, and intervention in favor of one or the other party. I speak not of forcible annexation, for that can not be thought of. That, by our code of morality, would be criminal aggression.”

Codes of morality can not change, because morals are themselves fixed and unchangeable. But the United States simply abandoned “her code of morality,” and is now engaged in “criminal aggression.” For it is just as much a matter of criminal aggression to attempt the “forcible annexation” of the Philippines, as it would have been to attempt the forcible annexation of Cuba. In principle there can not possibly be any difference between the two cases. And when the president of the United States announces that he can not ask the consent of the Filipinos to allow him to govern them, he virtually proclaims a war of extermination. And when the commanding general of the American army in the Philippines demands unconditional surrender, and nothing but that, he also proclaims a war of extermination. But the Filipinos are fighting simply for [98] their freedom; hence this war is one of extermination against freedom. Well has Professor Sumner said:—

“The question of imperialism, then, is the question whether we are going to give the lie to the origin of our own national existence by establishing a colonial system of the old Spanish type, even if we have to sacrifice our own existing civil and political system to do it. I submit that it is a strange incongruity to utter grand platitudes about the blessings of liberty, etc., which we are going to impart to these people, and to begin by refusing to extend the Constitution over them, and still more by throwing the Constitution into the gutter here at home. If you take away the Constitution, what is the American liberty and all the rest?—Nothing but a lot of phrases....

“The cold and unnecessary cruelty of the Spaniards to the aborigines is appalling, even if when compared with the treatment of the aborigines by other Europeans. A modern economist stands aghast at the economic measures adopted by Spain, as well in regard to her domestic policy as to her colonies. It seems as if these measures could only have been inspired by some demon of folly, they were so destructive to her prosperity. She possesses a large literature from the last three centuries, in which her publicists discuss with amazement the question whether it was a blessing or a curse to get the Indies, and why, with all the supposed conditions of prosperity in her hands, she was declining all the time.

“We now hear it argued that she is well rid of her colonies, and that if she will devote her energies to her internal development, and rid her politics of the corruption of colonial officials and interests, she may be regenerated. That is a rational opinion. It is the best diagnosis of her condition, and the best prescription of a remedy which the occasion has called forth. But what, then, will happen to the state which has taken over her colonies? I can see no answer except that that nation, with them, has taken over the disease, and that it now is to be corrupted by exploiting dependent communities just as she has been. That it stands exposed to this danger is undeniable.”

These words state precisely what has been done and accomplished by this attempt to forcibly annex the Philippines. The nation has laid off the beautiful garments of righteous principles, [99] and in their place has donned the cast-off rags of despotism and of Spain. Well has Senator Tillman said:—

“As far as my observation goes, and as I understand the present status of the American people, we have no Constitution left.” [29]

“No man,” said Abraham Lincoln, “is good enough to govern another man without that other man’s consent. When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also another man that is more than self-government,—that is despotism.” [30]

It is sad, but it is so, that the United States is wandering from the bright path of her past and glorious career. No one dreams of admitting the Filipinos to the full privileges of citizenship. It is argued that they are not fit for this in any way, that they have not the mental qualifications, etc. This may all be true, and if it is, it furnishes one of the strongest proofs possible that the United States should let the islands and the people inhabiting them entirely alone. The Negritos, the Malays, the Visayos, the Moros, the Igorrotes, the Spanish Mestizos, the Chinese, and the Chinese Mestizos certainly form a witch’s caldron which it would be utterly impossible to admit through their representatives into the Senate or House of Representatives of the United States. I will not deny this; nobody will deny it. Then the only thing to do is to let them alone, and let them govern themselves. Undoubtedly they can not manage a government on exactly the same lines that we can; “but there is a fundamental truth in republican government, that a people are entitled only to such government as they can maintain. Any government which they can maintain, which brings order and peace to the people, is the government which they have the right to have and ought to have, and we have no right to interfere and say to them, ‘Unless you can maintain a better government than you now have, one as good as ours, you must let us manage your affairs, and we will give you a better government.’ A government of the people and by the people may not always be the highest form of government, but if it brings peace and protection to the people, and is the best they can do, it is all that we can demand of them.” [31] [100]

On the other hand, if they are made dependencies, as it is now seriously proposed to do, “then we shall for the first time since the abolition of slavery, again have two kinds of Americans; Americans of the first class, who enjoy the privilege of taking part in the government in accordance with our old constitutional principles, and Americans of the second class, who are to be ruled in a substantially arbitrary fashion by the Americans of the first class, through congressional legislation, and the action of the national executive, not to speak of individual ‘masters’ arrogating to themselves powers beyond the law.

“This will be a difference no better—nay, rather somewhat worse—than that which a century and a quarter ago existed between Englishmen of the first class and Englishmen of the second class; the first represented by King George and the British Parliament, and the second by the American colonists. This difference called forth that great pæan of human liberty, the American Declaration of Independence—a document which, I regret to say, seems, owing to the intoxication of conquest, to have lost much of its charm among some of our fellow citizens. Its fundamental principle was that ‘governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.’ We are now told that we have never fully lived up to that principle, and that, therefore, in our new policy we may cast it aside altogether. But I say to you that, if we are true believers in democratic government, it is our duty to move in the direction toward the full realization of that principle, and not in the direction away from it. If you tell me that we can not govern the people of those new possessions in accordance with that principle, then I answer that this is a good reason why this democracy should not attempt to govern them at all.

“If we do, we shall transform the government of the people, for the people, and by the people, for which Abraham Lincoln lived, into a government of one part of the people, the strong, over another part, the weak. Such an abandonment of a fundamental principle as a permanent policy may at first seem to bear only upon more or less distant dependencies, but it can hardly fail in its ultimate effects to disturb the rule of the same principle in the conduct of democratic government at home. And I warn the American people that a democracy can not so deny its faith as to the vital conditions of its [101] being, it can not long play the king over subject populations, without creating within itself ways of thinking and habits of action most dangerous to its own vitality,—most dangerous especially to those classes of society which are the least powerful in the assertion, and the most helpless in the defense, of their rights. Let the poor, and the men who earn their bread by the labor of their hands, pause and consider well before they give their consent to a policy so deliberately forgetful of the equality of rights.... They will be told, as they are now told, that we are in it, and can not honorably get out of it; that destiny, and Providence, and duty demand it; that it would be cowardly to shrink from our new responsibilities; that those populations can not take care of themselves, and that it is our mission to let them have the blessings of our free institutions; and that we must have new markets for our products; that those countries are rich in resources, and that there is plenty of money to be made by taking them; that the American people can whip anybody, and do anything they set out to do; and that ‘Old Glory’ should float over every land on which we can lay our hands.

“Those who have yielded to such cries once will yield to them again. Conservative citizens will tell them that thus the homogeneousness of the people of the Republic, so essential to the working of our democratic institutions, will be irretrievably lost; that our race troubles, already dangerous, will be infinitely aggravated; and that the government, of, by, and for the people will be in imminent danger of fatal demoralization. They will be cried down as pusillanimous pessimists, who are no longer American patriots. The American people will be driven on and on by the force of events, as Napoleon was when started on his career of limitless conquest. This is imperialism as now advocated. Do we wish to prevent its excesses? Then we must stop at the beginning, before taking Porto Rico. If we take that island, not even to speak of the Philippines, we shall have placed ourselves on the incline plane, and roll on and on, no longer masters of our own will, until we have reached the bottom. And where will that bottom be? Who knows?” [32]

The United States has already taken Porto Rico. She has already started down the incline plane; she has already commenced [102] to roll on; she is no longer master of her will; and she will surely reach the bottom; and as is pertinently asked by this great states man, “Where will that bottom be? Who knows?”

A war begun for humanity’s sake has been turned from its high and holy purpose into a war which has for its purpose a different aim and object. The fundamental principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution are no longer revered, but they are flung to the breezes as worthless relics, good for nothing but to “hamper the greatest nation in the world.” In the days of the Rebellion Senator Petit styled the Declaration of Independence as a “self-evident lie;” now a noted divine declares it to be a doctrine “palmed off by the devil upon a credulous world.” Again it must be said that the theories which have ruled in the conduct of governmental affairs during the past few months can only be construed as the desertion of sacred principles once held dear by the nation; and while there exists in the Philippines a state of war, there exists in the United States of America a state of NATIONAL APOSTASY.

In one of his speeches Lincoln once quoted these words from the Scriptures: “A house divided against itself can not stand.” Then he added these words:—

“I believe this government can not endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.” [33]

And it is even now equally true that this nation can not endure permanently half citizen and half subject, half representative and half colonial, half free and half vassal. Either the principles of despotism and tyranny now being advocated for and exercised in the Philippines will be utterly renounced and stamped out, or else they will grow and increase in power and strength until they shall be dominant in every State of the Union from the Atlantic to the Pacific, [103] and from the Canadian line to the Gulf of Mexico. Despotism is a dread disease. It is insidious in its beginnings. Indulge it in a few remote islands, and it will begin to work, and never cease until it has sapped the vitality of free life out of the whole body politic.

Prophetic was a recent speech:—

“If we enter upon a colonial policy, we must expect to hear the command ‘Silence!’ issuing with increased emphasis from the imperialists. If a member of Congress attempts to criticize any injustice perpetrated by a government official against a helpless people, he will be warned to keep silent lest his criticisms encourage resistance to American authority in the Orient.

“If an orator on the fourth of July dares to speak of unalienable rights, or refers with commendation to the manner in which our forefathers resisted taxation without representation, he will be warned to keep silent lest his utterances excite rebellion among distant subjects.” [34]

Already this prophecy has begun to be fulfilled against members of Congress and United States senators in their places in the national capital; in the exercise of a rigorous press censorship; and in the stopping of documents in the United States mails, which were thought to be hurtful to the imperialistic policy. This is only the beginning. Restrictions of liberty of a similar nature but far greater in degree are bound to follow. The bottom has not yet been reached.

But it is argued that there will be anarchy in the islands unless the people thereof are ruled by us. It is said by many that all they want to do is to give liberty to these poor, ignorant people, who do not know enough to have it for and of themselves. This has ever been the argument of tyrants. This was the argument made by King George III, when the Fathers were struggling for their independence. Here are his exact words:—

“I am desirous of restoring to them the blessings of law and liberty equally enjoyed by every British subject, which they have fatally and desperately exchanged for the calamities of war and the arbitrary tyranny of their chiefs.” [104]

“Chiefs” was the title applied by the king of Great Britain to Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and the other leaders of the revolutionists; and “chiefs” is the title applied by senators to Aguinaldo and his officers. On the same day that the king made his speech there was another man who arose to speak. I refer to Fox, and Fox understood what liberty was, and he loved it. Said he in his answer to his Majesty:—

“But, sir, how is this blessed system of liberty to be established? By the bayonets of disciplined Hessians?”

And again, how is this liberty to be established in the Philippine Islands. Many say, “Peacefully if you can, but by powder if you must.” “Those arguments that are made that the inferior races are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying, that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow. What are these arguments? These are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were the better off for being ridden.... Turn it whatever way you will, whether it come from the mouth of a king as an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent; and I hold, if that course of argumentation that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about this, should be granted, it does not stop with the negro [in this case with the Filipino]. I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop? If one may say it does not mean a negro [a Filipino], why not another man say it does not mean some other man?” [35]

The armies and fleets of the United States have destroyed the soldiers and sailors of Spain; but they can not destroy a self-evident truth. Self-evident truths will burn in the breasts of all men, be they black, brown, or white, as long as the spark of life burns there.

I can not forbear at this juncture from quoting once more from [105] the great Lord Macaulay. He was speaking on the topic of the abolition of slavery in the West Indies. True, the two cases, slavery in the Indies and vassalage in the Philippines, are not altogether parallel. I do not for a moment hold that they are; yet nevertheless, the principles involved are very similar. What his lordship says in regard to the causes of revolt, the freedom of the press, the system of slavery [or in this case vassalage], is very pertinent to the present issue and the manner in which it is being handled:—

“As a friend to humanity, sir, I can not look without the greatest satisfaction on such a meeting assembled for such an object. We hear, indeed, much of the pernicious tendency of these discussions; we are told that they inflame the passions of the slave, and endanger the person and property of the master.... To me it seems somewhat singular that such assertions should proceed from the same persons by whom we have been assured that the system of colonial slavery is the glory of the British name, the envy of the British peasant; that all its evils exist only in theory, that in its practical operations it is the greatest of blessings. No assertions, however bold and pertinacious, can possibly obtain credit when they so directly contradict each other. Never was any government at once so benignant and so insecure; never were any subjects at once so happy and so turbulent. Abuses merely speculative never yet roused to revolt the great body of the people. An educated man of enlarged views and enthusiastic temper, a Thrasea or a Sidney, may convince himself that one form of government has a greater tendency than another to promote the happiness of mankind; and by such considerations he may be induced to engage in hazardous enterprises. But the multitude is not thus influenced. When they are excited to a general revolt, it is not by speeches, it is not by pamphlets, it is not by meetings; but by physical evils, by sensible privations, by the spoliation of the honest fruits of their industry, by the violation of the sacred ties of nature, by unmeasured exaction, by stripes, by insults, by the strong necessity of famine. These things sting to madness. These things turn plowshares into swords, and pruninghooks into spears. But when was it ever known that the mere exposure of theoretical evils excited a people to rebellion, while they were enjoying comfort and personal security? We need [106] not look very far for instances. Observe the state of our own country! For many years hundreds have been employed in telling the people of England that they are debarred from their just rights, that they are degraded, that they are enslaved. Every day this is heard, read, believed by thousands. More appeals are made to their passions in a week than by those of the West India slaves in a year. Yet who lives in the apprehension of rebellion? Who, except in times of temporary distress, expects even a riot? Who does not know that, while their rights of property, person, and conscience are protected by law, and while they are all well fed and clothed, Cobbett may write away his fingers, and Hunt may talk away his lungs, in vain?

“And yet, sir, with this example before us, we are required to believe that men whose situation is infinitely better than that of the English peasant—men whose condition is a realization of Utopia, a renewal of the Golden Age, an anticipation of the prophetic millennium—can not safely be permitted to hear a single whisper against the system under which they live. It requires no skilful interpreter to translate these forebodings of danger into confessions of tyranny. What are we to think of a system which, as its advocates tell us, can not be discussed without inciting insurrection? What, again, are we to think of a system under which insurrections, as its advocates also tell us, can not be suppressed without massacre? Look at the punishments inflicted a few years back on the insurgents of Barbadoes, and recently on those in Demerara. Where, in the whole history of modern Europe, shall we find an instance in which the destruction of so large a proportion of the population has been deemed necessary for the safety of the survivors? The British subjects of the New World have outdone, immeasurably outdone, all the military despots, all the fanatic Jacobins, of the Old. Their tender mercies are more cruel than the vengeance of Dundee; their little fingers are thicker than the loins of Alva. Robespierre chastised with whips, but they chastise with scorpions. But we are told that this is not wanton cruelty; it is indispensably necessary for the peace and safety of the colonies! Grant it; and what then? Must not every particle of blame which is taken away from the agents be laid on the system? What must be the state of things which makes that wholesome [107] severity which elsewhere would be diabolical atrocity? What are we to think of the condition of a people, when inflictions so tremendous are necessary to make endurance appear to them a less evil than rebellion? Woe to that society which has no cement but blood! Woe to that government, which, in the hour of success, must not dare to be merciful!

“I need no other testimony against the colonists than that with which they themselves furnish us, and that which daily and hourly forces itself on our notice. When I see institutions which tremble at every breath,—institutions which depend for support on restless suspicion, on raving calumny, on outrageous persecution, on military force, on infamous testimony, on perverted law,—I have no further need of witnesses or of arguments to convince me that they must be as flagitious and unjust as are the means by which they are upheld. We hear, indeed, that this system, in theory confessedly odious, is in practise lenient and liberal; and abundance of local testimony is adduced to this effect. Local testimony is indeed invaluable when it can be obtained unadulterated by local interest and local prejudice; but that it is adulterated I must always believe, when I see that it contradicts great general principles. Is it possible that the power with which the slave codes invest the master can be exercised without being perpetually abused? If so, then is there no truth in experience; then is there no consistency in human nature; then is history a fable, and political science a juggle, and the wisdom of our ancestors madness, and the British constitution a name! Let us break up the benches of the House of Commons for firewood, and cut Magna Charta into battledores! These assertions, then, of our opponents are not, they can not be, true; and fortunately it is not merely by reasoning on general principles that we are enabled to refute them. Out of the mouths of our adversaries themselves we can fully show that West Indian slavery is an evil, a great and fearful evil; an evil without any affinity to good principles, or any tendency to good effects; an evil so poisonous that it imparts to almost every antidote a nature as deadly as its own! When this country has been endangered either by oppressive power or by popular delusion, truth has still possessed one irresistible organ, justice one inviolable tribunal: that organ has been an English press, that tribunal an English jury. But in those wretched islands we [108] see a press more hostile to truth than any censor, and juries more insensible to justice than any star-chamber. In those islands alone is exemplified the full meaning of the most tremendous of the curses denounced against the apostate Hebrews, ‘I will curse your blessings!” [36]

The Philippines are seven thousand miles away from our western shore. Is there no way of cementing them to the larger land but by blood? Is there no truth in experience; no consistency in human nature? Is history a fable, and political science a juggle; the wisdom of our ancestors madness, and the American Constitution a name? If so, then let us break up the desks of the House of Representatives for firewood, and cut the Declaration of Independence into battledores! Let us put the “blood-red star of Mars upon the flag, with a milky way of smaller luminaries to denote dependent States.” It has been truly said that the “ramparts of republics are in the hearts of their freemen;” but when freemen turn into despots, the silent artillery of time levels those ramparts to the ground, and, like Samson shorn of his locks of strength, and bound to the pillars of the temple of the Constitution, we break them, and are ourselves crushed beneath the falling mass of the once symmetrical and beautiful governmental edifice, which itself becomes a shapeless heap of ruins, a monument of human folly and of a blasted and prematurely broken national life. [109]

[1] Speech at Springfield, Ill., Jane 26, 1857.

[2] Speech at Peoria, Ill., Oct. 16,1854.

[3] Hon. Augustus O. Bacon, speech in United States Senate.

[4] Franklin Mac Veagh.

[5] President Northrup, at Chicago Peace Jubilee Banquet.

[6] Senator Platt, of Connecticut, in the United States Senate.

[7] New York Sun.

[8] The New York Tribune.

[9] The Chicago Times—Herald.

[10] Whitelaw Reid.

[11] Rev. P. S. Henson, Chicago, in Auditorium mass meeting, Sunday, May 7, 1899, printed in the Chicago Times—Herald, May 8, 1899.

[12] W. J. Bryan, article on Jefferson versus Imperialism, published in “Republic or Empire,” Independent Company, Chicago I am indebted to this article in large degree for my technical knowledge of Jefferson’s views on this subject, and wish to give due and fair acknowledgment of such indebtedness at the beginning of this argument. I am also following quite closely Mr. Bryan’s classification and comment.

[13] Letter to William Short.

[14] Fiske, “Beginnings of New England” chap. 1, pars. 14, 15.

[15] Fiske, “American Political Ideas,’ Lectures, Federal Union, par. 17.

[16] W. J. Bryan in “Republic or Empire,” page 42.

[17] Jefferson to Monroe, June 23, 1823.

[18] Jefferson to Madison, April 27, 1809.

[19] Written from Monticello, Va., Jan. 16, 1817.

[20] Essay on the West Indies.

[21] Speech, Senator George G. Vest, United States Senate, Dec. 12, 1898.

[22] Dred Scott vs. Sandford.

[23] Dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Mc Lean, Dred Scott vs. Sandford.

[24] Revised Statutes of the United States.

[25] Article 8, Treaty of Cession.

[26] Article 6.

[27] Article 9.

[28] Mc Kinley, Boston Speech.

[29] Speech, United States Senate, Feb. 9, 1899.

[30] Speech at Peoria, Ill., Oct. 16, 1854.

[31] Speech of Hon. H. M. Teller, United States Senate.

[32] Carl Schurz, convocation address, University of Chicago, Jan. 4, 1899.

[33] Speech at Springfield, Ill., June 15, 1858.

[34] W. J. Bryan, speech at Cincinnati, Ohio, Jan. 6, 1899, on the occasion of the Duckworth Club Banquet,

[35] Lincoln, Speech at Chicago, Ill., July 10, 1858.

[36] Lord Macaulay, speech at a meeting of the Society for the Mitigation and Abolition of Slavery, held at Freemason’s Hall, June 25, 1824.

Chapter 8 — Manifest Destiny

What is manifest destiny?—God’s dealings with the nations—The case of Nebuchadnezzar—The Most High ruleth in the kingdoms of men—Story of the Philippine revolt against Spain—Cruelties of the Spaniards—Aguinaldo and the Americans—The great seal of the United States—Opinions of George Francis Adams—Principles born at Lexington and buried at Manila—Admiral Dewey’s estimate of the Filipinos—Can the Filipinos be made good American citizens?—Is it a Christian duty for the United States to forcibly annex the Philippines?—Christ and civil government—“The Bible in one hand and the shotgun in the other” doctrine—Is the United States a Christian nation?—Militarism and democracy—God uses nations as instruments—The case of Assyria—“My Country, 1899”—The Recessional Ode—The task of the forefathers and the task of the sons—Is it Live through all time, or Die by suicide?—Which way shall the tide of destiny set?

Much is being said at the present time on the subject of “manifest destiny.” Reflective minds, however, are apt to consider that but a very small portion of those using the term have the faintest conception of its real meaning. It is generally referred to in connection with exploitations concerning a “divine mission,” a “providential call,” a “summons to duty,” and “responsibility thrust upon us.” In the majority of cases, moreover, when “manifest destiny” is talked about, it is embedded in an atmosphere of mystery; it is talked about as being something wise, wonderful, and divine, altogether too deep for the common people to understand.

It is commonly argued that the present position of the United States, in and in regard to, the Philippines has been “thrust upon us,” that it is a part of our “responsibility as a world-power,” which our own greatness forces us to accept; that we are now “performing a duty” toward an “inferior race,” and that this duty is imposed upon us by Providence and our own position, prior to any request from us, and without awaiting our consent.

Now nothing can be more true than that Providence controls in the affairs of nations as well as in the affairs of men. Nations are composed of men, and it is insupposable that God could control in the affairs of every unit composing a whole, and yet not control in the affairs of that whole. Thus David said: “Put them in fear, O Lord: that the nations may know themselves to be but men.” [1]

During the years of which the Bible records form a contemporaneous history, we read of God’s giving kings their kingdoms, and nations their place in the earth. The case of Nebuchadnezzar will illustrate the point. Concerning him and his kingdom it is written:—

“In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah came this word unto Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, [110] Thus saith the Lord to me; Make thee bonds and yokes, and put them upon thy neck, and send them to the king of Edom, and to the king of Moab, and to the king of the Ammonites, and to the king of Tyrus, and to the king of Zidon, by the hand of the messengers which come to Jerusalem unto Zedekiah king of Judah; and command them to say unto their masters, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Thus shall ye say unto your masters; I have made the earth, the man and the beast that are upon the ground, by my great power and by my outstretched arm, and have given it unto whom it seemed meet unto me. And now have I given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, my servant; and the beasts of the field have I given him also to serve him. And all nations shall serve him, and his son, and his son’s son, until the very time of his land come: and then many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of him. And it shall come to pass, that the nation and kingdom which will not serve the same Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and that will not putt their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation will I punish, saith the Lord, with the sword, and with the famine, and with the pestilence, until I have consumed them by his hand.” [2]

Now what was true of Nebuchadnezzar in his sphere, is equally true of every nation in its sphere. Nevertheless, because God gave Nebuchadnezzar his kingdom, and Babylon a great place as a “world-power,” it did not keep either from going astray, and doing things which were neither lawful nor right. This Nebuchadnezzar became proud because the glory of his kingdom grew and increased. Then, heathen though he was, a dream was given him by the Almighty, and this dream he told the prophet Daniel, who interpreted it for him. In the dream and the interpretation there is a truth stated several times which is vital in the consideration of “manifest destiny.” Here is the dream:—

“I Nebuchadnezzar was at rest in mine house, and flourishing in my palace: I saw a dream which made me afraid, and the thoughts upon my bed and the visions of my head troubled me.... Thus were the visions of mine head in my bed; I saw, and behold a tree in the midst of the earth, and the height thereof was great. The tree grew, and was strong, and the height thereof reached unto [111] heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth: the leaves thereof were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and in it was meat for all: the beasts of the field had shadow under it, and the fowls of the heaven dwelt in the boughs thereof, and all flesh was fed of it. I saw in the visions of my head upon my bed, and, behold, a watcher and an holy one came down from heaven; he cried aloud, and said thus, Hew down the tree, and cut off his branches; shake off his leaves, and scatter his fruit: let the beasts get away from under it, and the fowls from his branches: nevertheless leave the stump of his roots in the earth, even with a band of iron and brass, in the tender grass of the field; and let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts in the grass of the earth: let his heart be changed from man’s and let a beast’s heart be given unto him; and let seven times pass over him. This matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones: to the intent that the living may know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men. This dream I king Nebuchadnezzar have seen. Now thou, O Belteshazzar, declare the interpretation thereof, forasmuch as all the wise men of my kingdom are not able to make known unto me the interpretation thereof: but thou art able; for the spirit of the holy gods is in thee. Then Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, was astonied for one hour, and his thoughts troubled him. The king spake, and said, Belteshazzar, let not the dream or the interpretation thereof trouble thee. Belteshazzar answered and said, My Lord, the dream be to them that hate thee, and the interpretation there of to thine enemies. The tree that thou sawest, which grew, and was strong, whose height reached unto the heaven, and the sight thereof to all the earth; whose leaves were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and in it was meat for all; under which the beasts of the field dwelt, and upon whose branches the fowls of the heaven had their habitation: it is thou, O king, that art grown and become strong: for thy greatness is grown, and reaches unto the heaven, and thy dominion to the end of the earth. And whereas the king saw a watcher and an holy one coming down from heaven, and saying, Hew the tree down, and destroy it; yet leave the stump of the roots thereof in the earth, even with a band of iron [112] and brass, in the tender grass of the field; and let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts of the field, till seven times pass over him; this is the interpretation, O King, and this is the decree of the Most High, which is come upon my lord the king: that they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, and they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and they shall wet thee with the dew of heaven, and seven times shall pass over thee, till thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will. And whereas they commanded to leave the stump of the tree roots; thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee, after that thou shalt have known that the heavens do rule. Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor; if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquillity.” [3]

Three times in the dream and the interpretation is the truth emphasized that “the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men.” And this was told by a dream, interpreted by a prophet to the king of the greatest “world-power” of that time. All the things spoken of in the dream came true. Nebuchadnezzar was driven from his throne, and dwelt with the beasts of the field for seven years. At the end of that time, he says himself:—

“I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the Most High, and I praised and honored him that liveth forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation: and all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou? At the same time my reason returned unto me; and for the glory of my kingdom, mine honor and brightness returned unto me; and my counselors and my lords sought unto me; and I was established in my kingdom, and excellent majesty was added unto me. Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase.” [4] [113]

Nebuchadnezzar learned the lesson which the King of kings knew that it was necessary for him to learn. But when in later days his grandson Belshazzar came to the throne, he refused to learn this important lesson, and to him it was that the handwriting appeared upon the wall, and he it was whose kingdom was taken away, and given to the Medes and Persians. He was reminded of what had happened to his grandfather, in these words: “And he [Nebuchadnezzar] was driven from the sons of men; and his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild asses: they fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven; till he knew that the most high God ruled in the kingdom of men, and that he appointeth over it whomsoever he will. And thou his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this.” [5]

Thus four times directly, and once indirectly, is it taught in these two chapters of this one book that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will. Is there another truth in all the Bible that is emphasized so strongly? And this is just as true to-day as it was then, for it was written “to the intent that the living may know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men.” It is for us, the living, that all this was written; and it was written for us because it applies in our time. “He looseth the bond of kings, and girdeth their loins with a girdle. He leadeth princes away spoiled, and overthroweth the mighty.... He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them: he enlargeth the nations, and straiteneth them again.” [6]

This is the basis of the Bible doctrine concerning God’s part in the affairs of nations. As far as Providence is concerned, this is “manifest destiny.” But the destiny of a nation, the same as the destiny of an individual, is a matter of choice, and not a matter of chance. It is in the power of the United States to choose the path in which it will hereafter walk. When once that path is chosen and entered upon, it may not be so easy, yea, it may not be possible, to turn back, and take another course. This is just as true of men as of nations. The voluntary choice of the government of the United States has put the nation in the Philippines. She has [114] chosen to enter these islands, not as a republican, but as a monarchical form of government. A war is now being waged to compel the Filipinos to accept this government without their consent. Thus she has chosen to abandon the tracks of the forefathers, and to return, like the prodigal son, to the doctrines of Rome and of Europe. All this has been done during the hour of victory and of power, and at a time when the nation was completely master of the situation, and entirely free to do just as she pleased. Having done all this, there is now a “manifest destiny” before the United States. It is so manifest that all can see it.

When the United States went to war with Spain, the Philippine Islands were in revolt against that government. Concerning this the United States consul at Manila wrote:—

“There is no peace, and has been none for about two years. Conditions here and in Cuba are practically alike. War exists, battles are of almost daily occurrence, ambulances bring in many wounded, and hospitals are full.... The crown forces have not been able to dislodge a rebel army within ten miles of Manila, and last Saturday a battle was there fought, and five left dead on the field.

“The governor-general, who is amiable and popular, having resigned, wishes credit for pacification, and certain rebel leaders were given a cash bribe of $1,650,000 to consent to public deportation to China. This bribe and deportation only multiplied claimants, and fanned the fires of discontent.

“Insurgents demand fewer exactions from church and state, a half of public offices, and fewer church holidays, which seriously retard business.

“A republic is organized here as in Cuba. Insurgents are being armed and drilled, are rapidly increasing in numbers and efficiency, and all agree that a general uprising will come as soon as the governor-general embarks for Spain.... All authorities now agree that unless the crown largely re-enforces its army here, it will lose possession.” 7

Soon after this Mr. Williams wrote again:—

“Insurrection is rampant; many killed, wounded, and made prisoners on both sides. A battle-ship, the ‘Don Juan de Austria,’ sent this week to the northern part of Luzon to co-operate with a land force of two thousand despatched to succor local forces, [115] overwhelmed by the rebels. Last night special squads of mounted police were scattered at danger points to save Manila.”

Thus it appears that two years ago the Filipinos were fighting for their freedom against the government and the tyranny of Spain. This was the condition of things when the United States government declared war against the throne of Madrid. With them—the Filipinos—the struggle was not a fitful insurrection, but a determined rebellion in behalf of government by the consent of the governed.

On the reverse side of the great seal of the United States is the inscription in Latin, Novus ordo seculorum, which translated means, “A new order of things.” On the same side of the seal are also the words, “God hath favored the undertaking.” But now the nation is abandoning the new order of things, and deciding that after all Great Britain was right. On this point a noted historian and citizen of Boston, Mass., has well said:—

“We now abandon the traditional and distinctively American grounds, and accept those of Europe, and especially of Great Britain, which heretofore we have made it the basis of our faith to deny and repudiate.

“With this startling proposition in mind, consider again the several propositions advanced; the first, as regards the so-called inferior races. Our policy toward them, instinctive and formulated, has been either to exclude or destroy, or to leave them in the fulness of time to work out their own destiny undisturbed by us; fully believing that, in this way, we in the long run best subserved the interests of mankind. Europe, and Great Britain especially, adopted the opposite policy. They held that it was incumbent on the superior to go forth and establish dominion over the inferior race, and to hold and develop vast imperial possessions, and colonial dependencies. They saw their interest and duty in developing systems of docile tutelage; we sought our inspirations in the rough school of self-government. Under this head the result, then, is distinct, clean-cut, indisputable. To this conclusion have we come at last. The Old World—Europe and Great Britain—were after all, right, and we of the New World have been wrong. From every point of view,—religious, ethnic, commercial, political,—we can not, it is now claimed, too soon abandon our traditional position and assume theirs. Again, Europe and Great Britain have never admitted that men were created [116] equal, or that the consent of the governed was a condition of government. They have, on the contrary, emphatically denied both propositions. We now concede that, after all, there was great basis for their denial; that certainly, it must be admitted, our forefathers were hasty, at least, in reaching their conclusions; they generalized too broadly. We do not frankly avow error, and we still think the assent of the governed to a government a thing desirable to be secured, under suitable circumstances, and with proper limitations; but, if it can not conveniently be secured, we are advised on New England senatorial authority that ‘the consent of some of the governed’ will be sufficient, we ourselves selecting those proper to be consulted. Thus in such cases as certain islands of the Antilles, Hawaii, and the communities of Asia, we admit that, so far as the principles at the basis of the Declaration are concerned, Great Britain was right, and our ancestors were, not perhaps wrong, but too general, and of the eighteenth century in their statements. To that extent we have outgrown the Declaration of 1776, and have become as wise now as Great Britain was then. At any rate, we are not above learning. ‘Only dead men and idiots never change;’ and the people of the United States are nothing unless open-minded.

“So, also, as respects the famous Boston ‘tea-party,’ and taxation without representation. Great Britain then affirmed this right in the case of colonies and dependencies. Taught by the lesson of our war of Independence, she has since abandoned it. We now take it up, and are to-day, as one of the new obligations toward the heathen imposed upon us by Providence, formulating systems of inposts and tariffs for our new dependencies, wholly distinct from our own, and directly inhibited by our Constitution, in regard to which systems those dependencies have no representative voice. They are not to be consulted as to the kind of door, ‘open’ or ‘closed,’ behind which they are to exist In taking this position it is difficult to see why we must not also incidentally admit that, in the great contention preceding our war of independence, the first armed clash of which resounded here in Lexington, Great Britain was more nearly right than the exponents of the principles for which those ‘embattled farmers’ contended.” [7] [117]

Sad though it be to pen it, it is even true that the great principles which were born at Lexington and Concord were buried at Manila, and the wheels of time turned back, and the old order of things substituted for the new. This is American imperialism. This is national apostasy; and since the course upon which the nation has entered is so manifest, the destiny to which she is doomed is equally manifest,—the condition of the military nations of the Old World, upon whom she has for so long looked down with pitying glances. Nations may be defeated by the acts of others, but they can be degraded only by their own. She has not been defeated by the deeds of others, but she has been degraded, and is even now being dragged into the mire, by her own. Her character as a nation, first formulated in the war of the Revolution, regenerated and reconsecrated in the war of the Rebellion, has been ruthlessly sacrificed to colonial greed and rapacious lust. Awake! O Fathers of the Republic, ere it is too late, and call back your posterity ere they stray into paths from which there is no returning!

But it is argued that these people are not capable of self-government. On this point one who ought to know,—Admiral Dewey himself,—whose voice is worthy of respect, has said:—

“In a telegram sent to the department on June 23, I expressed the opinion that ‘these people (the Filipinos) are far superior in their intelligence, and more capable of self-government than the natives of Cuba, and I am familiar with both races.’ Further intercourse with them has confirmed me in this opinion.” [8]

And again, Consul Wildman, of Hongkong, says:—

“I have lived among the Malays of the Straits Settlements, and have been an honored guest of the different sultanates. I have watched their system of government, and have admired their intelligence, and I rank them high among the semicivilized nations of the earth. The natives of the Philippine Islands belong to the Malay race, and while there are very few pure Malays among their leaders, I think the r stock has rather been improved than debased by admixture. I consider that the forty or fifty Philippine leaders, with whose fortunes I have been very closely connected, are the superiors of both the Malays and the Cubans. Aguinaldo, Agoncilla, and Sandico [118] are all men who would be leaders in their separate departments in any country; while among the wealthy Manila men who live in Hongkong, and who are spending their money liberally for the overthrow of the Spaniards and for annexation to the United States,—men like the Cortes family and the Basa family,—would hold their own among bankers and lawyers anywhere.” [9]

The kind of men who form the Filipino congress has been described by Mr. Roberson, who himself visited the congress while it was in session. He gives a very favorable account of the character and ability of the members. Of the eighty-three members sitting, seventeen were graduates of European universities, and the president, Pedro Paterno, took his degree as D. D. in the University of Madrid, and afterward received his degree of LL. D. from the University of Salamanca. His books are of such reputation that they have been translated into German.

It is said that we can Americanize these people. We can not, we dare not, do it. To educate them would be to make rebels of them. Could we teach them the history of our glorious past? Could we tell them of the deeds of the Fathers in behalf of freedom and independence? Just as surely as we did, the spark of liberty and independence would be kindled in their breasts, and they would demand of us by what right we were their masters. Our only hope would be to keep them in superstition and ignorance. It is far easier for Great Britain to rule colonies and to better their condition than it is for us. She has no past like ours. She never had a war of independence, nor did she ever take her stand upon the principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, or that all men are created equal. While upon our own platform of eternal truth, we stood upon a plane immeasurably superior to any which it was possible for her to occupy. Now that we have fallen from our first estate, and lost our Edenic purity, we are weaker and more impotent than it is possible for her to be. This is manifest destiny as far as the governing of the Filipinos is concerned.

It has been urged by many that there is a duty incumbent upon the United States to take the Philippines for the purpose of Christianizing [119] the natives, even although such occupation be against the wishes of the inhabitants, and contrary to the principle of government by consent. It is argued that the opportunity to purchase the islands constituted a “divine call” to this “Benjamin of nations” to enter that neglected part of the Master’s vineyard. Zealous advocates, in earnest tones, tell of the blessings which will accrue to these benighted souls when an army of missionaries, filled with an undying love for those who know Him not, can, without fear of molestation, proclaim, beneath the protecting ægis of the stars and stripes, the sufferings of the Saviour and the joys of the better world. Vividly they portray how much more rapidly the gospel can be carried to those who know it not, when the islands are controlled by the government of the United States, than it could possibly be if these isles which wait for His law were ruled by the heathen. These are for the most part a devoted and consecrated class of people, who are thoroughly conscientious in the views they express.

In these days of toil and bustle, when more is compressed into a decade than was formerly the portion of man’s allotted span, many of us Christians are like Martha of Bethany, who was “cumbered about much serving,” and “careful and troubled about many things,” and in our anxiety to work for the Lord we neglect to choose the “good part,” “the one thing needful,” which her sister Mary took, and which shall not be taken away. We fail to take the necessary time to sit “at Jesus’ feet, and hear his word.”

The weapons of carnal warfare vary and change with the onward march of scientific discovery. But the holy arms of the Christian remain ever the same. Like the Father of Lights, who changeth not, in them “is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” The same arms which apostles, prophets, and our own dear Saviour used are the only true weapons for the Christian to-day. Beautifully has it been said of the Reformers and the Reformation: “The Reformation was accomplished in the name of a spiritual principle. It had proclaimed for its teacher, the word of God; for salvation, faith; for king, Jesus Christ; for arms, the Holy Ghost; and had by these very means rejected all worldly elements. Rome had been established by ‘the law of a carnal commandment;’ the Reformation, by ‘the power of an endless life.’” Whatever is accomplished [120] in the line of Christian reformation in this day and age of the world, will be accomplished in the name of this same spiritual principle. Jesus never sought the civil power as an aid wherewith to accomplish his mission, and on one occasion, at least, he distinctly refused it.

When the Redeemer was alone in the wilderness, fasting in behalf of fallen man, it is written: “Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” [10] Here was an opportunity. The gospel was to be preached. The world, and all the governments of the world, stood arrayed in open hostility against it. But here were the kingdoms of the world, and the glory—the power—of them, freely offered. Could not the gospel be carried to better advantage if Christ controlled the reins of the civil power? He did not so believe. Was not this whispering a “providential call, a new mission, a distinct call to duty,—manifest destiny?” It was a whispering, not from the Almighty, but from Satan, and was repulsed with the words, “Get thee hence, Satan.”

In the garden of Gethsemane, Peter cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant with his sword. “But Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye thus far. And he touched his ear, and healed him. Jesus therefore said unto Peter, Put up again thy sword into the sheath: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” And to these words he added, “Or thinkest thou that I can not beseech my Father, and he shall even now send me more than twelve legions of angels?”

Again, when the Master was in the judgment hall, Pilate “called Jesus and said unto him, art thou the king of the Jews? Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me? Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight.” [11]

The triumphs of the gospel in those early days were won without [121] the aid of the civil power. The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church. Never did the Christian church make greater progress than when she stood alone, unaided by any civil power. Yea, more than this, the times of her greatest purity and progress have been the times when every earthly power has been arrayed against her. Then it was that her members sought their Lord and Master most earnestly, and reflected his blest image most brightly.

One United States senator, in the course of his speech on the Philippine question, declared that “the Anglo-Saxon advances into the new regions with the Bible in one hand and a shotgun in the other. The inhabitants of those regions which he can not convert with the Bible and bring into his markets, he gets rid of with the shotgun” This is not altogether irony. Ministers of the Christian church are everywhere praising the war in these islands, and preaching that it has come about in the providence of God in order that the gospel may go more rapidly. Just as far as this idea gets hold of the Christian sects, just that far they assent to the doctrine of a union of church and state; just that far they are extolling that system of things which we hoped we had forever discarded in “the new order of things.” Will the people whose fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons have been shot down in this ruthless war, be more ready to accept the gospel at the hands of the murderers of their relatives? Will it cause them to be kindly inclined toward the teachings of the Saviour? Will they not look upon our religion as being similar to that of the Mohammedans, who think it virtuous to propagate their faith by means of fire and sword?—Nay, verily, it will steel their souls against the gospel, and fill them with prejudice and suspicion. Better, ten thousand times better, for a few missionaries to lose their lives at the hands of heathen savages than for heathen savages to lose their lives at the hands of those calling themselves Christians. The missionaries are certain of eternal life, but not so the poor heathen.

Then again, if this doctrine of the Bible in one hand and the shotgun in the other is a good one for the Philippine Islands, how long will it be ere it is considered a good one for every State in the Union? Should one religious sect get control of the governmental affairs, why may it not use force to compel all others to come into line, and think and pray as it thinks and prays? This idea may be [122] received by some with ridicule, but the beginnings of the loss of liberty, both civil and religious, are always insidious, and very small precedents have oftentimes started tremendous changes in things. There has been persecution in the past, there is persecution for religious views even at the present, and there will be persecution for conscience’ sake in the time to come. Allow a new doctrine to pass unchallenged to-day, it quickly gains strength and standing, and by to-morrow it is heterodoxy to question its application.

There have been some fearful crimes committed in the name of justice in this gospel-enlightened land. Many a soul has suffered death in one horrible form or another, without having been duly convicted in the courts of law. Possibly it may be said with truth that there is no country on earth claiming to be Christian and civilized where there have been more deaths by mob violence, than in the United States. In times of excitement over vital questions our people have many times proved the truthfulness of the statement of Alexander Hamilton, that a man was a reasoning rather than a reasonable being. In the fierce struggles between capital and labor, in times of a strike, a boycott, or a lockout, terrible deeds of violence and bloodshed have stained the nation’s robe. Innocent lives have been placed in the most dire peril and jeopardy. It is not necessary here to give illustrations or enter into details. This class of crime is so common and so patent that the mere mention of it will suffice.

Such deeds go to show that Christianity has still a great work before her in the homeland. Civilization has indeed veneered our natures, but it has not changed and renovated them. Our passions are easily excited, and break loose with but small provocation. There is still a field for missionary effort in this part of the vineyard of the Man of Galilee. Even in the most recent years, yea, within the past few months, crimes too horrible to spread upon the pages of a decent book, have been committed without any chance for the law to take its course. These things fill the heart of the Christian with sadness, and they stand as a fact to be by all true followers of the Master deeply lamented and deplored. For nigh two thousand years the religion of Jesus Christ has been striving with all the power of the Holy Ghost to do its beneficent work upon the hearts of the human family. In view, however, of the awful crimes still filling [123] the earth, it seems hard to believe that much has been accomplished. This is no reflection on the gospel, but on those who reject the gospel.

But brutality is not confined to this class of cases. A young man, everywhere reported to be “pious,” attends a prayer-meeting; after which he waylays his rival in a love affair, beats out his brains, and throws his body into a creek.

A man conceals a knife, with a rapier-like point in a bundle which he carries under his arm, and starts out walking in a crowded thoroughfare, nudging people with the bundle purposely, and seriously wounding them as he goes along. In a State Refuge Home for Women horrible cruelties are practised. “Lashing to the floor, however, is not the worst cruelty resorted to, according to the evidence taken. It is said by eye-witnesses and participants that girls confined in houses of refuge are stripped of their clothing, and sometimes held by some of the employees, and at other times chained to the floor, and whipped with a heavy leather strap several feet long.” Recently a young mother with a babe only five months old was treated in this manner. A man with plenty of money divests his aged wife of her clothing, fastens her under the bed, and leaves her to starve. Yet to all others he is perfectly sane.

The reports from the largest city in the country are as follows: “In several quarters of the city life is no longer safe. The night streets of the district lying between Union Square and Long Acre and Seventh and Third avenues are in the possession of the disorderly elements. The police force is already demoralized, and the demoralization is progressing rapidly toward chaos.... What shall be done? What can be done to avert chaos, and restore order and security? Is it impossible for a community as intelligent as this to find some mean between the exasperating crushing of personal liberty and the terrifying domination of criminals and semi-criminals?” [12]

Even “natural affection” seems to have deserted the mother’s breast. A little child, five years old, and very puny, is kept day after day in a foul air-shaft, with nothing but an old ragged quilt to lie upon, and a little shirt to cover his nakedness. The floor was uneven, and always wet, yet day after day the little life was left, for no reason at all except cruelty, to pine away in this awful place. [124]

Crime appears to be discovering all kinds of ingenious methods. Poisoned candy or cake is sent through the mails to persons whom it is desired to destroy. The victims of this class of wickedness are becoming more and more frequent.

Moreover, crime is getting to be as common in high life as it is among the middle and lower classes, to say nothing of the criminal classes. An eastern millionaire secures a divorce from his wife, and four and a half hours afterward she is wedded to another millionaire. So blunted have morals in general become that the affair excites but little disgust anywhere. Two wealthy men have differences of opinion over business matters. One invites the other to a friendly conference. They meet, and the one who has been invited is shot without warning. The murderer gives himself up with the utmost complacency to the authorities, and hands them two sets of typewritten statements, setting forth in legal form his reason for the deed. One of these statements is four thousand five hundred words in length, and the other ten thousand. In these he had previous to the commission of the crime set forth in the coolest manner possible his object in killing his fellow millionaire.

These are only a few specific instances of crime, representing a few of the different classes. After all, with how thin a veneer has that which we call civilization covered the natural brute ferocity of our natures. True, we have steam engines, elegant railroad cars, and fast service; we have high buildings equipped with all the latest modern improvements; we have telephones, and the telegraph; but, after all, how much more civilized and Christianized are our natures above those of the poor ignorants of other climes! This is a question worth considering. The theory of our government is perfect; but how well do we live up to it? Fraud and deceit in high places of public trust are frequent; election scandals fill the very atmosphere whenever the franchise is exercised. Aldermen accept boodle; and the lowest dens of vice are allowed to run “wide-open” under the eye of the authorities. Our lives are spent in all kinds of pleasure, with but little thought or care for the sorrows and trials of the poor.

All these things lead one seriously to ask, In what position are we as a nation to bring benefit to those in benighted lands? In April of this year, 1899, it was authoritatively reported that since the [125] arrival of the Americans in Manila there had been over three hundred saloons opened in that city. Again, a statement is issued from the office of the surgeon-general in Washington that twenty-one per cent of the soldiers of the American army in the islands are afflicted with loathsome diseases.

That the poor souls in the Philippine Islands are in need of the gospel of Jesus Christ no one will deny; but that gospel must be carried to them by men endued with the power of the Holy Ghost, and armed with the weapons of faith and prayer, and not by any such means as are now being used.

I will not dwell upon this phase of the question longer, however, for it is only one of many. Suffice it to say that in view of the condition of our own spiritual experience and morals, one is hardly warranted in believing that the opportunity to become the owners of the heathen Filipinos by purchase from Spain, and the liberal use of American muskets and machine guns, constitutes a “divine call” in order that we may impart to these poor souls virtues so faintly visible in ourselves.

The next problem which demands solution is that of the large army and navy which will be continually required for the retention of the group. Militarism and democracy are incompatible. A large standing armed force is the natural adjunct of a monarchy.

“The monarch represents an authority springing not from the periodically expressed consent of the people, and relying for the maintenance of that authority, if occasion requires, upon the employment of force, even against the popular will. An army is an organization of men subject to the command of a superior will, the origin or the purpose of which it is assumed to have no right to question. The standing army is in this sense, therefore, according to its nature and spirit, an essentially monarchical institution.” [13]

It is clear from this that in a republic there is no rightful place for a large standing force. Such a thing is contrary to the very basic principles upon which republics are founded, besides being a constant menace to the free expression of the popular will and thought, and a dangerous source of arbitrary power in the hands of the men who for the time being form the government. [126]

Military virtues are in many instances the opposite of civic virtues; and in more cases than one the attributes and qualities necessary to constitute a good military man are the very ones which constitute a bad civilian. Military modes of thinking and methods of action unfit men for the duties incumbent upon the citizens of a free republic. The rise of a large, permanent armed force in a republic always portends the downfall and ruin of free government.

In Europe the armies of the great powers are a necessity, or at least they are a necessity under the present conditions. Europe is simply a conglomeration of armed camps, in which the hostile nations sit watching each other, and preparing for the conflict which their mutually rival interests are bound sooner or later to bring. But with us an army for defense is wholly unnecessary. Locked in the embraces of two broad oceans we have naught to fear from a foreign invader. Lincoln once said that “all the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasures of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.” These words are undoubtedly true. It therefore follows that with us a large standing army can only be of use for preying upon helpless peoples near us; that is, for the purpose of buccaneering. It is now being seriously urged that the standing army of the United States be increased to 100,000 fighting men; that is, about four times its size at the beginning of 1898. To train and keep standing such a force is simply to train men to become good subjects of a monarchy, and inefficient citizens of the republic. The two things can not possibly survive together. It is now for this nation to choose whether it will stick to the old paths, and discard large standing armies in times of peace, or whether it will unnecessarily adopt what the Old World monarchies would fain throw off, but which they find to be an evil necessary to their very existence. Should she choose in this matter as in others to return, like the prodigal son, to the ways of the Old World, her manifest destiny will be fixed. She will degenerate into a monarchy herself in truth, if not in name. And it may yet be with her as it was with Rome of old, concerning which Gibbon said: “The image of a free constitution [127] was preserved with decent reverence: the Roman senate appearedto possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government.” And these emperors were backed by enormous military establishments.

It is urged that war makes men brave and patriotic. On this point I must again quote words of wisdom from an author already cited:—

“Let me now pass to the institutional aspect of the case as far as it concerns this republic in particular. I am far from predicting that the organization and maintenance and use of large armaments will speedily bring forth in this country the same consequences which they did produce in England in Cromwell’s time, and in France at the periods of the first and second French republics. With us the ‘man on horseback’ is not in sight. There is no danger of monarchical usurpation by a victorious general, although it is well worthy of remembrance that even here in the United States of America, at the close of the Revolutionary war, at the very threshold of our history as a republic, a large part of the Revolutionary army, ‘turned by six years of war from militia into seasoned veterans,’ and full of that overbearing esprit de corps characteristic of standing armies, urged George Washington to make himself a dictator, a monarch; that, as one of his biographers expresses it, ‘it was as easy for Washington to have grasped supreme power then, as it would have been for Cæsar to have taken the crown from Anthony upon the Lupercal;’ and that it was only George Washington’s patriotic loyalty and magnificent manhood that stamped out the plot. However, usurpation of so gross a character would now be rendered infinitely more difficult, not only by the republican spirit and habits of the people, but also by our federative organization, dividing so large an expanse of country into a multitude of self-governing States.

“But even in such a country and among such a people it is possible to demoralize the constitutional system, and to infuse a dangerous element of arbitrary power into the government without making it a monarchy in form and name. One of the most necessary conservative agencies in a democratic republic is general respect for constitutional principles, and faithful observance of constitutional forms; and nothing is more apt to undermine that respect and to foster disregard of those forms than warlike excitements, which at [128] the same time give to the armed forces an importance and a prestige which they otherwise would not possess.

“No candid observer of current events will deny that even to-day the spirit of the new policy awakened by the victories and conquests achieved in the Spanish war, and by the occurrences in the Philippines, has moved even otherwise sober-minded persons to speak of the constitutional limitations of governmental power with a levity which a year ago would have provoked serious alarm and stern rebuke. We are loudly told by the advocates of the new policy that the Constitution no longer fits our present conditions and aspirations as a great and active world-power, and should not be permitted to stand in our way. Those who say so forget that it is still our Constitution; that while it exists, its provisions as interpreted by our highest judicial tribunal are binding upon our actions as well as upon our consciences; that they will be binding, and must be observed until they are changed in the manner prescribed by the Constitution itself for its amendment; and that if any power not granted by the Constitution is exercised by the government or any branch of it, on the ground that the Constitution ought to be changed in order to fit new conditions, or on any other grounds, usurpation in the line of arbitrary government is already an accomplished fact. And if such usurpation be submitted to by the people, that acquiescence will become an incentive to further usurpation which may end in the complete wreck of constitutional government.

“Such usurpations are most apt to be acquiesced in when, in time of war, they appeal to popular feeling in the name of military necessity, or of the honor of the flag, or of national glory. In a democracy acting through universal suffrage, and being the government of public opinion informed and inspired by discussion, every influence is unhealthy that prevents men from calm reasoning. And nothing is more calculated to do that than martial excitements which stir the blood. We are told that war will lift up people to a higher and nobler patriotic devotion, inspire them with a spirit of heroic self-sacrifice, and bring their finest impulses and qualities into action, This it will, in a large measure, if the people feel that the war is a necessary or a just one. But even then its effects upon the political as well as the moral sense are confusing. When the fortunes of war are unfavorable, almost everything that can restore them will be [129] called legitimate, whether it be in harmony with sound principles or not. When the fortunes of war are favorable, the glory of victory goes far to justify, or at least to excuse, whatever may have been done to achieve that victory, or whatever may be done to secure or increase its fruits.

“History shows that military glory is the most unwholesome food that democracies can feed upon. War withdraws, more than anything else, the popular attention from those problems and interests which are, in the long run, of the greatest consequence. It produces a strange moral and political color-blindness. It creates false ideals of patriotism and civic virtue.

“Nobody is inclined to underestimate the value of military valor; but compared with military valor we are apt to underestimate the value of other kinds of valor which are equally great, and no less, sometimes even more, useful to the community. I do not refer only to such heroism as that of the fireman, or the member of the life-saving service on the coast, who rescues human beings from the flames or from the watery grave at the most desperate risk of his own life, and whose deeds are all the more heroic as they are not inspired by the enthusiasm of battle, and pale into insignificance by the side of any act of bravery done in killing enemies in the field; I speak also of that moral courage more important in a democracy, which defies the popular outcry in maintaining what it believes right, and in opposing what it thinks wrong.

“Blood spilled for it on the battle-field is often taken to sanctify and to entitle to popular support, however questionable. It is called treason to denounce such a cause, be it ever so bad. It is called patriotism to support it however strongly conscience may revolt against it. Take for instance the man who honestly believes our war against the Filipinos to be unjust. If that man, faithfully obeying the voice of his conscience, frankly denounces that war, and thereby risks the public station he may occupy, or the friendship of his neighbors, and resolutely meets the clamor vilifying him as a craven recreant and an enemy to the republic, he is, morally, surely no less a hero than the soldier who at the word of command and in the excitement of battle rushes against a hostile battery. You can no doubt find in our country an abundance of men who would stand bravely under a hail-storm of bullets. But many of [130] them, if their consciences condemned the Filipino war ever so severely, would be loath to face the charge of want of patriotism assailing everybody who opposes it. This is no new story. War makes military heroes, but it makes also civic cowards. No wonder that war has always proved so dangerous to the vitality of democracies; for a democracy needs to keep alive, above all things, the civic virtues which war so easily demoralizes.

“You will have observed that I have treated the matter of militarism in the United States in intimate connection with our warlike enterprises, as if they were substantially the same thing. I have done so purposely. As I endeavored to set forth, the development of militarism in European states can be explained on the theory that each power may think the largest possible armaments necessary for the protection of its safety among its neighbors, and for the preservation of peace. With us such a motive can not exist. Not needing large armaments for our safety,—for this Republic, if it maintained its old traditional policy, would be perfectly safe without them,—we can need them only in the service of warlike adventure undertaken at our own pleasure for whatever purpose. And here I may remark, by the way, that in my opinion, although such a course of warlike adventure may have begun with a desire to liberate and civilize certain foreign populations, it will be likely to develop itself, unless soon checked, into a downright and reckless policy of conquest with all the ‘criminal aggression’ and savagery such a policy implies. At any rate, that policy of warlike adventure and militarism, will, with us, go together as essentially identical. Without the policy of warlike adventure, large standing armaments would, with us, have no excuse, and would not be tolerated. If we continue that policy, militarism with its characteristic evils will be inevitable. If we wish to escape those evils and to protect this democracy against their dangerous effects, the policy of warlike adventure must be given up, for the two things are inseparable.” [14]

Thus it is that the matter of American imperialism and expansion is inseparably linked with the question of large standing armies. They are Siamese twins, both alike being pregnant with a “manifest destiny” for this Republic; namely, the ruin of free government.

Again, the size of our armies and our navies, if the imperialistic [131] policy is persisted in, can not be regulated by our own wishes. Our program in this respect must be arranged to suit and to fit the programs of the other “world-powers.” This is strikingly illustrated by a speech recently made in the British House of Commons by Mr. Goshen, the first lord of the admiralty, “when he asked the House of Commons to appropriate the enormous sum of $132,770,000 for the British navy, saying that so startling an estimate had not originally been contemplated, but that it had been framed after a careful study of the programs of the other powers; that the United States, Russia, France, Japan, Italy, and Germany had under construction 685,000 tons of warships, and that England was compelled to shape her action accordingly. He prayed that, if the czar’s hope for disarmament were not realized, those who proposed to attack the country’s expenditures would not attempt to dissuade the people from bearing the taxation necessary to carry on the duties of the empire.” [15]

Our lot in this respect will now be the same as that of Great Britain, and this again is another link in the cable of manifest destiny.

For violating eternal principles of right and justice, Spain was called to a strict account. This nation was the instrument in the hand of God to mete out her punishment. There have been similar instances at other times in the history of the world. Once the Lord called the Assyrians to punish the people of Israel, and concerning them it is said in the Scriptures:—

“O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation. I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few. For he saith, Are not my princes altogether kings? Is not Calno as Carchemish? is not Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus? As my hand hath found the kingdoms of the idols, and whose graven images did excel them of Jerusalem and of Samaria; shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols? Wherefore it shall come to pass, that [132] when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon Mt. Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks. For he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures, and I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man: and my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people: and as one gathereth eggs that are left, have I gathered all the earth; and there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped. Shall the ax boast itself against him that heweth therewith? or shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood. Therefore shall the Lord, the Lord of hosts, send among his fat ones leanness; and under his glory he shall kindle a burning like the burning of a fire. And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame: and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briars in one day; and shall consume the glory of his forest, and of his fruitful field, both soul and body: and they shall be as when a standard-bearer fainteth. And the rest of the trees of his forest shall be few, that a child may write them.” [16]

Assyria, in the course of a war to which she was called by the Lord for the purpose of punishing a wicked nation, grew proud, and became filled with ideas of her own greatness; and in the hour of her triumph she laid the foundations for her ruin.

Pensive, beautiful, and filled with veriest truth are the stanzas of Owen Wister, in his magnificent poem, “My Country—1899,” just written. The verses are descriptive of the condition of the country at the present time, and are in the form of a dialogue between Uncle Sam and Columbia. Columbia has been chiding Uncle Sam concerning the corruption of voters and the spoils system, and the forty-second stanza opens with his answer:—

“Drowsing!” he answered. “Why, I’ve waked the world!
The scornful powers, the sovereign close-throned few,
The sceptered circle, whose dull lips once curled
Because they were so old, and I so new,
To-day count me, and what I say, and do; [133]

I sit among them, chaired in equal state;
They have obeyed my knock, and opened me their gate.

Drowsing! ‘t is you that walk in blindfold sleep,
With sight but imaged in a senseless eye;
‘T is you that should awake, so you may keep
Pace with my ocean-spreading destiny.
My banners-” “Hold!” she cried. “I know the cry.
‘War of humanity;’ ‘In Freedom’s name;’
A spangled cloak of words to screen their game and shame.

“Hark to the babel and cajoling din.
Paid orators and bedlam prophets raise,
While corporate greed conspires to make you sin
Against your birthright and your ancient ways.
‘War of humanity!’ mouth-feeding phrase!
‘Beneficent assimilation’-how
Drivels the jargon that hypocrisy speaks now?

‘These puffed wind-swollen sounds your land have flung
To such commotion, shaken so her poise,
That every jackanapes who wags a tongue
And thumps a fist must lead into the noise,
While Folly, rabid to make heard her voice,
Mounts the high pulpit and outscreams the mass,
Profane ‘mid tinkling cymbals and ‘mid sounding brass.

“‘God’s instrument,’ they style you, bid you be,
And ‘Carry Christ to heathens.’ Will you dare
Search your own mansion and your hearth, and see
How much of Christ this day have you to spare?
Your fraud-bespattered ballot-reigns He there?
Your pension bureau-does that crime reveal
Acknowledgment of Him who said: ‘Thou shalt not steal’

“What shall you tell the heathen of those thieves
That sway Manhattan, and decree her laws,
And spin the meshes that corruption weaves
Around each right and honorable cause?
And Pennsylvania’s unjailed bird that draws
His fetid vultures round her heart, that rules
A government of knaves at the expense of fools?

“What shall you tell of Carolina’s stain?
Of blood-spilt polls, and smoking butchery?
Of dastard brag about her victims slain?
If they were savages, what thing is she?
Georgia’s outlawed tribunals view, and see [134]

Men roasted at the stake. Then, if you will,
Go teach the heathen how God said: Thou shalt not kill.

“Ah, through the shaking tinsel of the day How easy for Truth’s golden gaze to shine! Truth’s in your heart; then let her lend a ray To your bedazzled eyes, ere you resign Your birthright, ere your separate path entwine With alien tangles. What concern have you To sit with sceptered powers, the sovereign close-throned few?

O Benjamin of nations! has your coat
Not enough colors [17] that ye must in weave
New skeins of savag’ry, unknown, remote,
New wards in motley guardianship receive?
Was it for this you bade the Old World leave
You to yourself, and set the vacant seas
Between your youth and her age-worn iniquities?

“O Benjamin of nations, best beloved!
Still let your isolated beacon show
Its steadfast splendors from their rock unmoved,
Mixed with no lanterns that flare, fall, and go.
Still may your fortunate twin oceans flow
To island you from neighbors’ broils aloof:
Teach liberty to live! be your life still the proof!

“So long in heaven I waited for your birth,
Such joy filled me when I became your soul,
So close I have companioned you on earth,
Walked with each step you’ve trodden toward our goal,
O stray not now aside and mar the whole
Bright path!” She stopped; she laid her hand on him;
He, looking up, beheld how her clear eyes were dim.

True principles are the strength of nations as well as of men. But almost every principle ever held and prized as sacred in this nation has been prostituted to base perfidy and passion for foreign possession. Those priceless principles, the goodly heritage which the Fathers bequeathed us, have been bartered for a mess of Philippine pottage. Well would it be for every nation if its legislators [135] would constantly keep before them the sentiment in Rudyard Kipling’s great “Recessional Ode,” for it is only by the cherishing of such lofty and noble truths that states can derive a substantial prosperity, and statesmen an immortal renown:—

“The tumult and the shouting dies,
The captains and the kings depart;
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget-lest we forget!

“Far-called our navies melt away,
On dune and headline 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!

“If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not thee in awe,
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the law-
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget-lest we forget!

‘For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard-
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not thee to guard-
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy mercy on thy people, Lord!

Amen.”

One by one the silent artillery of time sweeps us from the scenes of life’s strife. Short is the span of vital breath; quick comes the hour when our feeble forms are laid to molder in the dust. Soon we are forgotten. But the deeds which we have done are undying; they live on through all time as monuments of our greatness or our folly. The verdict of history is seldom unjust, and at its bar, as the cycles of the century speed on, we are all arraigned for trial. It was the task of our political forefathers, and nobly they performed it, “to possess themselves, and through themselves us, of this goodly land, and to up-rear upon its hills and its valleys [136] a political ‘edifice of liberty and equal rights;’ ‘t is ours only to transmit these—the former unprofaned by the foot of an invader, the latter undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation—to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task, gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.

“How then shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean, and crush us at a blow?—Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.

“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, If it ever reach us, it must spring up among us; it can not come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

These were the words of the immortal Lincoln. Now the crisis has been reached; the hour of temptation is here. Will it be a stepping-stone, or will it be a stumbling-block? Present proceedings indicate the latter. The burning question blazes up before us now: As a nation of freemen shall we live through all time, or shall we die by suicide? The heavenly seraph holds the scale in which the state is swinging. We are a spectacle not only unto the world, and to angels, and to men, but the ever-watchful eye of the Most High, who ruleth in the kingdom of men, is riveted upon the trembling indicator, nervously made to quiver on its course as events of weal or woe affect it. Which way the tide of our destiny shall set is now for us to decide. Once more let it be said that this is wholly a matter of choice, and not in any way a question of chance. The manifest destiny of the nation waits upon the actions of men, while expectancy sits on the brow of the universe. [137]

[1] Psalm 9:20.

[2] Jeremiah 27:1-8.

[3] Daniel 4:4-27.

[4] Daniel 4:34-37.

[5] Daniel 5:21, 22.

[6] Job 12:18, 19, 23.

[7] “Imperialism and the Tracks of our Forefathers,” a paper read by Charles Francis Adams before the Lexington, Mass., Historical Society.

[8] Admiral Dewey to secretary of navy, Aug. 29,1898. Senate Document No. 62, part 1, Fifty-fifth Congress, third session.

[9] United States Consul Rounsevelle Wildman to Mr. Moore, No. 63, Hongkong, July 18,1898. Senate Document No. 62, part 1.

[10] Matthew 4:8, 9.

[11] John 18:33-36.

[12] New York World, July 10, 1899.

[13] Address by Hon. Oarl Schurz before the American Academy of Political Science, April 7, 8, 1899.

[14] Schurz, address on “Militarism and Democracy.”

[15] Ibid.

[16] Isaiah 10:5-19.

[17] The poet’s reference to the Scripture incident slightly limps; it was Joseph, not Benjamin, whose coat had many colors.

Chapter 9 — In the Trail of Rome

The two great republics—Cause of the transformation of Rome from a republic to a military monarchy—How nations lose their own freedom—The case in the Philippines—Parallel between the last days of the republic of Rome and the present time in the United States—Roman expansion—A Roman war in the cause of humanity—The liberty that was not given to the Greek republics—Rome’s treatment of allies—Opinion of Rollin on the Roman expansion policy—American expansion in reality contraction—When will Cuba be vacated—How God punishes nations—Not political theories, but prophetical principles—The Bible concerning the Roman republic—The Bible concerning Roman expansion—Bible prophecies relating to the United States—The sealed book, why opened now?—The ruin of Rome and the peril of the United States

Among the great nations of ancient times the republic of Rome is at once the most gigantic and striking figure. In the history of mankind only two republics have ever risen to a pitch of grandeur and prominence sufficient to entitle them to a rank in the galaxy of “great world-powers.” Of these the republic of the Romans is one, and that of the United States of America is the other.

Aside from the Anglo-Saxon race, no people have ever possessed the faculty of self-government to such an extent as the Roman nation. Theirs was a commonwealth, which, as Cicero, one of their own greatest orators, said, ought to be immortal, and forever renew its youth. His words contain a truth, but sad to state, a truth unrealized beneath the sun. Republican forms of government have proved even less enduring than the other systems which have been devised for the ruling of mankind. This constitutes no criticism of the principle on which republics are based. Popular government is an experiment upon the heart of man; a higher, that is, a more self-sacrificing, grade of citizenship is required from the individual in order that the higher form of national life may survive and prosper. It is possible for a monarchy to continue to exist, even although great crimes are committed in the name of the state; even though justice and the rights of men and peoples are mired beneath the mailed heel of arbitrary authority. In the doing of these things a monarchy violates no natural law of its being or its life. It is not so with a republic. This is founded upon right, not power; this is laid in righteousness, not iniquity. When once power is substituted for right, and iniquity for righteousness, the republic, in the nature of things, is transformed by these very acts into a despotic grade of government. It may continue to wear the insignia and badge of freedom, but the life, the sacred fire, has flickered and gone out in darkness. The image may remain, but ‘t is only a death mask; the vital breath has fled. If republics endure, their citizens must not only know the right, but they must [138] do the right. This the people of the Roman republic, in early days, knew and appreciated. Hence, they worshiped the virtues. They built temples, and offered sacrifices “to the highest human excellences,’ to ‘Valor,’ to ‘Truth’ to ‘Good Faith,’ to ‘Modesty,’ to ‘Charity’ to ‘Concord.’” Hence it was that they said to every man: “You do not live for yourself. If you live for yourself, you shall come to nothing. Be brave, be just, be pure, be true in word and deed; care not for your enjoyment, care not for your life; care only for what is right. So, and not otherwise, it shall be well with you. So the Maker of you has ordered, whom you will disobey at your peril.” [1] These words give at least a strong intimation of how even the people of that “elder day” regarded popular government as being an experiment on the heart. When once the heart is unchained and personal or national ambition is allowed to have full sway, then freedom’s rule is at an end. “Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.” [2]

From being a republic, Rome was converted into a military empire. The cause of this conversion is of remarkable interest to the people of the United States. This cause is well understood by all students of history, and has been stated in a few masterly sentences by James Anthony Froude:—

“In virtue of their temporal freedom the Romans became the most powerful nation in the known world; and their liberties perished only when Rome became the mistress of conquered races, to whom she was unable or unwilling to extend her privileges.... If there is one lesson which history clearly teaches, it is this, that free nations can not govern subject provinces. If they are unable or unwilling to admit their dependencies to share their own constitution, the constitution itself will fall in pieces from mere incompetence for its duties.”

Rome became imperial because she was unable or unwilling to extend the privileges of her constitution to the nations which she conquered. This was the cause of her imperialism. The result to the Roman people themselves was that “their own liberties perished.” In refusing the privileges of her constitution to the peoples whom she had conquered, Rome denied a fundamental law of [139] her own governmental being, and nothing else could logically follow but ruin of her government, of her constitution; that is, the ruin of the republic of Rome.

To-day the republic of the United States is coursing over the same track to the same goal. But when the tape at the end of the track is reached, the dead line of republican life will have been passed. The nation is riding for a fall just as certainly as did ancient Rome, that other great republic of the West. The one lesson which history teaches, “that free nations can not govern subject provinces,” is now being ignored and scoffed at, as if it were the veriest fairy-tale, totally unworthy of contemplation by reflective and intelligent minds. It is now being seriously urged that this nation is not “unwilling,” but only “unable,” to extend her privileges to the “conquered races.” This inability is said to be caused, not by any inherent weakness or lack upon the part of the conqueror; but because of the conditions and circumstances of the conquered. Precisely the same thing was argued in the Roman times; but such arguments availed nothing to prevent loss of liberty to the people of Rome themselves, and ruin to her constitution. Rome violated a natural law of her being, and all violations of natural law, governmental as well as physical, bring, by nature, punishment upon the transgressor In the Declaration of Independence this nation declared that she “assumed among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitled her.” The very foundation stones of this nation then are laid in natural law. That natural law is “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The United States is now engaged in a war, the avowed purpose of which is to deprive a poor people of “liberty,” their “unalienable right.” But the natural law by means of which this nation came into existence and being declares that “to secure this right,”—liberty,—“governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” But now, the government of the United States is being “instituted among men,”—the Filipinos,—not to “secure” to them, but to [140] “deprive” them of their “rights.” If this is not the violation of a natural law of our own national being, then there never has been such a thing in the history of the world.

“Goethe compares life to a game at whist, where the cards are dealt out by destiny, and the rules of the game are fixed; subject to these conditions, the players are left to win or lose, according to their skill or want of skill. The life of a nation, like the life of a man, may be prolonged in honor into the fulness of its time, or it may perish prematurely, for want of guidance, by violence or internal disorders. And thus the history of national revolutions is to statesmanship what the pathology of disease is to the art of medicine. The physician can not arrest the coming on of age. Where disease has laid bold upon the constitution, he can not expel it; but he may check the progress of the evil if he can recognize the symptoms in time. He can save life at the cost of an unsound limb. He can tell us how to preserve our health when we have it; he can warn us of the conditions under which particular disorders will have us at disadvantage. And so with nations: amid the endless variety of circumstances there are constant phenomena which give notice of approaching danger; there are courses of action which have uniformly produced the same results; and the wise politicians are those who have learned from experience the real tendencies of things, unmisled by superficial differences, who can shun the rocks where others have been wrecked, or from foresight of what is coming can be cool when the peril is upon them.” [3]

In so many ways the times when Rome fell from her lofty estate as a republic and degenerated into a military empire are akin to our own. No historian has discerned this so clearly as Froude, and his delineation of that drama is powerful beyond description. He says:—

“With such vividness, with such transparent clearness, the age stands before us of Cato and Pompey, of Cicero and Julius Cæsar; the more distinctly because it was an age in so many ways the counterpart of our own, the blossoming period of the old civilization, when the intellect was trained to the highest point which it could reach; and on the great subjects of human interest, on morals and politics, on poetry and art, even on religion itself, and the speculative [141] problems of life, men thought as we think, doubted where we doubt, argued as we argue, aspired and struggled after the same objects. It was an age of material progress and material civilization; an age of civil liberty and intellectual culture; an age of pamphlets and epigrams, of salons and dinner parties, of senatorial majorities and electoral corruption. The highest offices of state were open in theory to the meanest citizen; they were confined, in fact, to those who had the longest purses, or the most ready use of the tongue on popular platforms. Distinctions of birth had been exchanged for distinctions of wealth. The struggles between plebeians and patricians for equality of privilege were over, and a new division had been formed between the party of property and the party who desired a change in the structure of society. The free cultivators were disappearing from the soil. Italy was being absorbed into vast estates and held by a few favored families, and cultivated by slaves, while the old agricultural population was driven off the land, and was crowded into towns. The rich were extravagant, for life had ceased to have practical interests except for its material pleasures; the occupation of the higher classes was to obtain money without labor, and to spend it in idle enjoyment. Patriotism survived on the lips, but patriotism meant the ascendency of the party which would maintain the existing order of things, or would overthrow for a more equal distribution of the good things which alone were valued. Religion, once the foundation of the laws and rule of personal conduct, had subsided into opinion. The educated, in their hearts, disbelieved it. Temples were still built with increasing splendor; the established forms were scrupulously observed. Public men spoke conventionally of Providence, that they might throw on their opponents the odium of impiety; but of genuine belief that life had any serious meaning, there was none remaining beyond the circle of the silent, patient, ignorant multitude. The whole spiritual atmosphere was saturated with cant—cant moral, cant political, cant religious; an affectation of high principle which had ceased to touch the conduct, and flowed on in an increasing volume of insincere and unreal speech. The truest thinkers were those who, like Lucretius, spoke frankly out their real convictions, declared that Providence was a dream, and that man and the world he lived in were material phenomena generated by [142] natural forces out of cosmic atoms, and into atoms to be again dissolved.

“Tendencies now in operation may a few generations hence land modern society in similar conclusions, unless other convictions revive meanwhile and get the mastery over them; of which possibility no more need be said than this, that unless there be such a revival, in some shape or other, the forces, whatever they be, which control the forms in which human things adjust themselves, will make an end again, as they made an end before, of what are called free institutions. Popular forms of government are possible only when individual men can govern their own lives on moral principles, and when duty is of more importance than pleasure, and justice than material expediency.” [4]

Then it was that there came upon the Romans that extraordinary spirit of expansion, which led them to believe that theirs was a manifest destiny to rule the entire world; and in a few short years, from being a snug little country, locked in the arms of twin seas, Rome was transformed into an imperialism, set for the despoliation of every conquerable nation. On this point Froude has said:—

“Italy had fallen to them by natural and wholesome expansion; but from being sovereigns of Italy, they became a race of imperial conquerors. Suddenly and in comparatively a few years after the one power was gone which could resist them, they became the actual or virtual rulers of the entire circuit of the Mediterranean. The southeast of Spain, the coast of France from the Pyrenees to Nice, the north of Italy, Illyria and Greece, Sardinia, Sicily, and the Greek islands, the southern and western shores of Asia Minor, were Roman provinces, governed directly by Roman magistrates. On the African side, Mauritania (Morocco) was still free. Numidia (the modern Algeria) retained its native dynasty, but was a Roman dependency. The Carthaginian dominions, Tunis and Tripoli, had been annexed to the empire. The interior of Asia Minor up to the Euphrates, with Syria and Egypt, were under sovereigns, called allies, but like the native princes in India, subject to a Roman protectorate. Over this enormous territory, rich with the accumulated treasures of centuries, and inhabited by thriving, industrious races, the energetic Roman men of business had spread and settled [143] themselves, gathering into their hands the trade, the financial administration, the entire commercial control of the Mediterranean basin. They had been trained in thrift and economy, in abhorrence of debt, in strictest habits of close and careful management. Their frugal education, their early lessons in the value of money, good and excellent as these lessons were, led them, as a matter of course, to turn to account their extraordinary opportunities. Governors with their staffs, permanent officials, contractors for the revenue, negotiators, bill-brokers, bankers, merchants, were scattered everywhere in thousands. Money poured in upon them in rolling streams of gold. The largest share of the spoils fell to the Senate and the senatorial families. The Senate was the permanent council of state, and was the real administrator of the empire. The Senate had the control of the treasury, conducted the public policy, appointed from its own ranks the governors of the provinces. It was patrician in sentiment, but not necessarily patrician in composition. The members of it had virtually been elected for life by the people, and were almost entirely those who had been quæstors, ædiles, prætors, or consuls; and these offices had been long open to the plebeians. It was an aristocracy, in theory a real one, but tending to become, as civilization went forward, an aristocracy of the rich. How the senatorial privileges affected the management of the provinces will be seen more and more particularly as we go on. It is enough at present to say that the nobles and great commoners of Rome rapidly found themselves in possession of revenues which their fathers could not have imagined in their dreams; and money, in the stage of progress at which Rome had arrived, was convertible into power.” [5]

This is a good description of the territory of Rome’s expansion, and what she did with it, when once it fell into her possession. The next question that calls for solution is, How did Rome get started in her “expansion policy”? The answer is short, simple, and, with the sound of recently uttered phrases still ringing in our ears, perhaps familiar: the expansion of Rome, which also means the imperialism of Rome, began in a “war for humanity, in the cause of humanity, solely for humanity.” This is the story.

When the second Punic war came to an end, with such a disastrous [144] issue for the Carthaginians, and such a favorable outcome for the Romans, the latter determined immediately to crush the power of Philip, king of Macedon. True, peace had been concluded with him two or three years before, “yet the grounds of a new quarrel were soon discovered.” He was accused of having attacked the Athenians and some of the other friends of Rome. At this time the southern part of Greece was divided into a number of small republics, all of which paid more or less tribute to Philip of Macedon. Rome was a republic, a great and a strong republic, and she considered it her duty to assist these poor, little, weak, struggling republics against the tyranny of the king of Macedonia. “The war was undertaken by the Romans chiefly, as was pretended, on their [the small republics of Greece] account.” [6] It was “under pretext of an invitation from the Athenians to protect them from the king of Macedon that the ambitious republic secured a foothold in Greece.” [7] To all appearances this was a piece of disinterestedness not common among nations; but it was only “to all appearances.” “The barbarous tribes on the north and west of Macedonia were also led, by the temptation of plunder, to join the confederacy; and their irruptions served to distract the councils and the forces of Philip.” [8]

The parallel or analogy between that war “solely for humanity” and the one through which the United States has just passed, is quite complete. The little republics of Southern Greece stood related to Philip of Macedon much the same as Cuba, Porto Rico, and other places stood related to Spain at the time when this nation, “solely in the cause of humanity,” declared war in their behalf. And, moreover, it may not be out of the way to compare “the barbarous tribes on the north and west of Macedonia,” who were led to join the confederacy, and whose irruptions served to distract the councils and forces of Philip,—it may not be out of the way to compare these to Aguinaldo and his “barbarous” hordes of Negritos, who, by a United States consul and a commodore of the United States navy, were led to “join the confederacy,” and whose “irruptions served to distract the councils and forces of Spain.” [145]

At the battle of Cynocephale, in 197 b. c., Philip was signally defeated, his country was exposed to invasion, “and he was reduced to accept peace on such terms as the Romans thought proper to dictate.”

“These, as usual, tended to cripple the power of the vanquished party, and at the same time to increase the reputation of the Romans, by appearing more favorable to their allies than to themselves.

“Philip was obliged to give up every Greek city that he possessed beyond the limits of Macedonia, both in Europe and in Asia; a stipulation which deprived him of Thessaly, Achaia, Phthiotis, Perrhæbia, and Magnesia, and particularly of the three important towns of Corinth, Chalcis, and Demetrias, which he used to call the fetters of Greece.” [9]

In other words, Philip of Macedon lost all his outlying dependencies; and this is just about what happened to Spain at the treaty of Paris. Both alike were stripped of by far the greater part of their territory outside of the home land.

“All these states were declared free and independent, except that the Romans (pretending that Antiochus, king of Syria, threatened the safety of Greece) retained, for the present, the strong places of Chalcis and Demetrias in their own hands.” [10]

The war had been waged by Rome at an infinite cost of blood and treasure to herself. Freely she had sacrificed the blood of her sons, and caused the tears of her daughters to be shed, in this war, “solely for humanity.” She had marshaled her armies, and mobilized her fleets, put the former in the field, and the latter in the sea, solely and only for the purpose of bringing liberty to these small and distressed dependencies, the little sister republics, who were struggling for their freedom. She asked no money nor land for all this; her cup of joy was full to the overflowing, because she had done such a great act of disinterested kindness “in the cause of humanity.” In a striking proclamation she published to the world the liberty of these people, won by her valor at arms, and freely given to them:—

“The senate and people of Rome, and Titus Quintius the general, having conquered Philip and the Macedonians, do set at liberty from all garrisons, imposts, and taxes, the Corinthians, the Locrians, the [146] Phocians, the Phthiot-Achaians, the Messenians, the Thessalians, and the Perrhebians, declare them free! and ordain that they shall be governed by their respective customs and usages.

“Then followed the memorable scene at the Isthmian games, when it was announced to all the multitude assembled on that occasion, that the Romans bestowed entire freedom upon all those states of Greece which had been subject to the kings of Macedonia. The Greeks, unable to read the future, and having as yet had no experience of the ambition of Rome, received this act with the warmest gratitude; and seemed to acknowledge the Romans in the character they assumed, of protectors and deliverers of Greece.” [11]

Following this was a war with Antiochus, king of Syria. He was reduced to the condition of a suppliant in b. c. 190, by the event of the battle of Magnesia. Philip of Macedon had helped the Romans in their campaigns against him. This king seems “vainly to have hoped that by a faithful and a zealous observance of the treaty of peace, he might soften the remorseless ambition of the Romans.” The Ætolians fell before the Roman arms, and then the Galatians, and now the way was open for Rome to continue her ambitious designs against Perseus, king of Macedon. At the battle of Pydna his army was overthrown, and his power broken. This was in b. c. 168. “Macedonia was then divided into four districts, each of which was to be under a republican government. Half of the tribute formerly paid to the king was henceforward to be paid to the Romans, who also appropriated to themselves the produce of all the gold and silver mines of the kingdom. The inhabitants were forbidden to fell timber for ship-building; and all intermarriages and sales of land between the people of the several districts were forbid den. With these marks of real slavery, they were left, for the present, nominally free; and Macedonia was not yet reduced to the form of a Roman province.”

Then, says Arnold, and his words are pregnant with deepest instruction for the people of the United States at the present time:—

“It is curious to observe, how, after every successive conquest, the Romans altered their behavior to those allies who had aided them to gain it, and whose friendship or enmity was now become [147] indifferent to them. Thus, after their first war with Philip, they slighted the Ætolians; after they had vanquished Antiochus, they readily listened to complaints against Philip; and now the destruction of Macedon enabled them to use the language of sovereigns rather than of allies to their oldest and most faithful friends, Eumenes, the Rhodians, and the Achaians. The senate first tampered with Attalus, the brother of Eumenes, hoping that he might be persuaded to accuse his brother, and to petition for a share of his dominions; but when they found him deaf to their temptations, they retracted some promises which they had made him, in the hope that he would listen to them. Afterward, when Eumenes himself landed in Italy on his way to Rome, with a view to removing the suspicions entertained against him, the senate, aware of his purpose, issued an order that no king should be allowed to come to Rome; and despatched one of the quæstors to announce it to him at Brundusium, and to command him to leave Italy immediately. The Rhodians had offended by declaring openly ‘that they were tired of the war with Perseus; that he, as well as the Romans, was the friend of their commonwealth; that they should wish to see the contending parties reconciled; and that they would themselves declare against those whose obstinacy should be an impediment to peace.’ This declaration, which was received at Rome most indignantly, had been privately recommended by Q. Marcius, the Roman consul, to one of the Rhodian ambassadors, who had visited him in his camp in Macedonia, during the preceding year; and Polybius reasonably conjectures that Marcius, confident of a speedy victory over Perseus, gave this advice to the Rhodians, with the treacherous purpose of furnishing the senate with a future pretense for hostility against them. However, their fault was punished by the loss of Lycia and Caria, which the senate now declared independent; and the individuals who were accused of favoring Perseus were given up to the Romans, or at the instigation of Roman officers were put to death by the Rhodian government. Nor should it be omitted that a general inquiry was instituted throughout Greece into the conduct of the principal men in the several states during the late war. Those who were accused by their countrymen of the Roman party of having favored Perseus were summoned to Rome to plead their cause as criminals; and some were even put to death. [148] But if the mere opinions and inclinations of individuals were thus punished, the states which had actually taken part with Macedon met with a still heavier destiny. Let it be forever remembered that by the decree of the senate seventy towns of Epirus were given up to be plundered by the Roman army, after all hostilities were at an end; that falsehood and deceit were used to prevent resistance or escape; and that in one day and one hour seventy towns were sacked and destroyed, and one hundred and fifty thousand human beings sold for slaves. The instrument employed on this occasion was L. Emilius Paulus, the conqueror of Macedon, and one of those whom we are taught to regard as models of Roman virtue. There is no reason to doubt his sincere affection for his country, his indifference to money, and his respectability as a citizen, husband, son, and father. But it is useful to see what dreadful actions the best men of ancient times were led unhesitatingly to commit, from the utter absence of a just law of nations, and the fatal habit of making their country the supreme object of their duty. Nor is it possible that these evils should be prevented, unless truer notions have insensibly established themselves in the minds of men, even of those who are least grateful to the source from which they have derived them; and if modern Europe be guided by purer principles, the Christian historian can not forget from what cause this better and happier condition has arisen.

“It remains now that we speak of the conduct of the Romans toward the Achaians. The early history of the Achaian League, and the leaning of its councils toward a friendly connection with Macedon, has been already noticed. In the war between the Romans and Philip, however, the Achaians were persuaded to join with the former, a step which Polybius describes as absolutely necessary for their safety; whether it were altogether equally honorable we have hardly the means of deciding. But their new connection, whatever may be thought of its origin, was ever afterward faithfully observed, insomuch that the Romans, though sufficiently adroit in finding matter of complaint, when they were disposed to do so, and though offended by the free and independent tone which the Achaian government always maintained toward them, could yet obtain no tolerable pretext for attacking them. There was, however, a traitor among the Achaians, named Calicrates, who, jealous [149] of the popularity of the ruling party in the councils of his country, endeavored to supplant them through the influence of Rome; and to ingratiate himself with the senate by representing his opponents as despisers of the Roman authority, which he and his friends vainly endeavored to uphold. After the Macedonian war, his intrigues were carried to a greater extent than ever. He accused a great number of the most eminent of his countrymen of having favored the cause of Perseus; and although the conduct of the Achaian government toward Rome had been perfectly blameless, and nothing was found among the papers of the king of Macedon which confirmed the charge, even against any of its individual citizens, yet, on the demand of the Romans, more than a thousand of the most eminent men in the commonwealth were arrested and sent into Italy, under pretense that they should be tried for their conduct at Rome. On their arrival in Italy, they were confined in the different cities of Tuscany, and there remained nearly seventeen years. The senate repeatedly refused the petition of the Achaian government, that they might either be released or else be brought to trial. It is added that whoever among them were at any time detected in endeavoring to escape were invariably put to death. At last, after most of them had died in captivity, the influence of Cato, the censor, was exerted in behalf of the survivors, at the request of Scipio Æmilianus, who was anxious to serve one of their number, his own familiar friend, the historian Polybius. But the manner in which Cato pleaded their cause deserves to be recorded. He represented the Achaian prisoners as unworthy of the notice of the senate of Rome. ‘We sit here all day,’ said he, ‘as if we had nothing to do, debating about the fate of a few wretched old Greeks, whether the undertakers of Rome or of Achaia are to have the burying of them.’ We have dwelt the more fully on this treatment of the Achaians, because it sets in the clearest light the character of the Roman government; and enables us to appreciate the state of the world under the Roman dominion, when such men as Polybius were subject to the worst oppression and insolence from a nation which boasted of Cato the censor as one of its greatest ornaments.

“Hitherto, however, Achaia and the rest of Greece still enjoyed a nominal independence, notwithstanding the real supremacy of the Roman power. But within little more than twenty years from the [150] overthrow of Perseus, even these poor remains of freedom were destroyed.” [12]

Into the details of this it is not necessary to go; suffice it to say that the same course of treachery, duplicity, and base perfidy which had marked the course of Rome in other cases also marked her trail in this one. Achaia was one of the last allies of Rome, in whose behalf she had entered upon war “solely in the cause of humanity,” but with other enemies or friends, as the case might be, disposed of, it was decided that her hour for destruction was now arrived. The Achaian league was dissolved, and Greece was henceforth treated as a province, was subjected to tribute, and was governed by a Roman proconsul, or prætor.

Such are the military facts connected with the story of the “expansion” and “imperialism” of Rome. Upon them, the historian Rollin has written some “Reflections on the conduct of the Romans with regard to the Græcian states, and the kings both of Europe and Asia.” His reflections contain the wisest philosophy on these events that the writer has ever discovered. His words are full of instruction concerning that time; but they are also full of truths applicable to all times and places, and the present crisis in the United States, perhaps more than any other. He says:—

“The reader begins to discover, in the events before related, one of the principal characteristics of the Romans, which will soon determine the fates of all the states of Greece, and produce an almost general change in the universe; I mean, a spirit of sovereignty and dominion. This characteristic does not display itself at first in its full extent; it reveals itself only by degrees; and it is only by insensible progressions, which at the same time are rapid enough, that it is carried at last to its greatest height.

“It must be confessed that this people, on certain occasions, show such a moderation and disinterestedness as (judging them only from their outside) exceed everything we meet with in history, and to which it seems inconsistent to refuse praise. Was there ever a more delightful or more glorious day than that in which the Romans, after having carried on a long and dangerous war, after crossing seas, and exhausting their treasures, caused the heralds to proclaim in a general assembly that the Roman people restored all the cities [151] to their liberty, and desired to reap no other fruit from her victory than the noble pleasure of doing good to nations, the bare remembrance of whose ancient glory sufficed to endear them to the Romans? The description of that immortal day can hardly be read without tears, and without being affected by a kind of enthusiasm of esteem and admiration.

“Had this deliverance of the Græcian states proceeded merely from a principle of generosity, void of all interested motives; had the whole tenor of the conduct of the Romans never belied such exalted sentiments,—nothing could possibly have been more august, or more capable of doing honor to a nation. But, if we penetrate ever so little beyond this glaring outside, we soon perceive that this specious moderation of the Romans was entirely founded upon a profound policy; wise indeed, and prudent, according to the ordinary rules of government, but, at the same time, very remote from that noble disinterestedness, so highly extolled on the present occasion. It may be affirmed that the Græcians had abandoned themselves to a stupid joy; fondly imagining that they were really free, because the Romans declared them so.

“Greece, in the times I am now speaking of, was divided between two powers; I mean the Græcian republics and Macedonia; and they were always engaged in war, the former to preserve the remains of their ancient liberty, and the latter to complete their subjection. The Romans, being perfectly well acquainted with this state of Greece, were sensible that they needed not to be under any apprehensions from those little republics, which were grown weak through length of years, intestine feuds, mutual jealousies, and the wars they had been forced to support against foreign powers. But Macedonia, which was possessed of well-disciplined troops, inured to all the toils of war, which had continually in view the glory of its former monarchs; which had formerly extended its conquests to the extremities of the globe; which harbored ardent, though chimerical desire of attaining universal empire; and which had a kind of natural alliance with the kings of Egypt and Syria, sprung from the same origin, and united by the common interest of monarchy,—Macedonia, I say, gave just alarms to Rome, which, from the time of the ruin of Carthage, had no obstacle left with regard to their ambitious designs, but those powerful kingdoms that shared [152] the rest of the world between them, and especially Macedonia, as it lay nearer to Italy than the rest.

“To balance, therefore, the power of Macedon, and to dispossess Philip of the aid which he flattered himself he should receive from the Greeks, which, indeed, had they united all their forces with his, in order to oppose this common enemy, would perhaps have made him invincible with regard to the Romans; in this view, I say, this latter people declared loudly in favor of those republics, made it their glory to take them under their protection, and that with no other design in outward appearance than to defend them against their oppressors; and further to attach them by a still stronger tie, they hung out to them a specious bait (as a reward for their fidelity); I mean liberty, of which all the republics in question were inexpressibly jealous; and which the Macedonian monarchs had perpetually disputed with them.

“The bait was artfully prepared, and swallowed very greedily by the generality of the Greeks, whose views penetrated no farther. But the most judicious and most clear sighted among them discovered the danger that lay concealed beneath this charming bait; and accordingly they exhorted the people from time to time, in their public assemblies to beware of this cloud that was gathering in the west, and which, changing on a sudden into a dreadful tempest, would break like thunder over their heads, to their utter destruction.

“Nothing could be more gentle and equitable than the conduct of the Romans in the beginning. They acted with the utmost moderation toward such states and nations as addressed them for protection; they succored them against their enemies, took the utmost pains in terminating their differences, and in suppressing all commotions which arose among them, and did not demand the least recompence from their allies for all these services. By this means their authority gained strength daily, and prepared the nations for entire subjection.

“And, indeed, upon pretense of offering them their good offices, of entering into their interests, and of reconciling them, they rendered themselves the sovereign arbiters of those whom they had restored to liberty, and whom they now considered, in some measure, as their freedmen. They used to depute commissioners to [153] them, to inquire into their complaints, to weigh and examine the reasons on both sides, and to decide their quarrels; but when the articles were of such a nature that there was no possibility of reconciling them on the spot, they invited them to send their deputies to Rome. Afterward, they used, with plenary authority, to summon those who refused to be reconciled, obliged them to plead their cause before the senate, and even to appear in person there. From arbiters and mediators being become supreme judges, they soon assumed a magisterial tone, looked upon their decrees as irrevocable decisions, were greatly offended when the most implicit obedience was not paid to them, and gave the name of rebellion to a second resistance; thus there arose, in the Roman senate, a tribunal which judged all nations and kings, from which there was no appeal. This tribunal, at the end of every war, determined the rewards and punishments due to all parties. They dispossessed the vanquished nations of part of their territories, in order to bestow them on their allies, by which they did two things from which they reaped a double advantage; for they thereby engaged in the interest of Rome such kings as were in no way formidable to them, and from whom they had something to hope; and weakened others, whose friendship the Romans could not expect, and whose arms they had reason to dread.

“We shall hear one of the chief magistrates in the republic of the Achaians inveigh strongly in a public assembly against this unjust usurpation, and ask by what title the Romans are empowered to assume so haughty an ascendent over them; whether their republic was not as free and independent as that of Rome; by what right the latter pretended to force the Achaians to account for their conduct; whether they would be pleased, should the Achaians, in their turn, officially pretend to inquire into their affairs, and whether matters ought not to be on the same footing on both sides? All these reflections were very reasonable, just, and unanswerable; and the Romans had no advantage in the question but force.

“They acted in the same manner, and their politics were the same in regard to their treatment of kings. They first won over to their interest such among them as were the weakest, and consequently the least formidable; they gave them the title of allies, whereby their persons were rendered in some measure sacred and inviolable; and it was a kind of safeguard against other kings more [154] powerful than themselves; they increased their revenues, and enlarged their territories, to let them see what they might expect from their protection. It was this which raised the kingdom of Pergamus to so exalted a pitch of grandeur.

“In the sequel the Romans invaded, upon different pretenses, those great potentates who divided Europe and Asia, and how haughtily did they treat them, even before they had conquered! A powerful king, confined within a narrow circle by a private man of Rome, was obliged to make his answer before he quitted it; how imperious was this! But then how did they treat vanquished kings? They command them to deliver up their children, and the heirs to their crown, as hostages and pledges of their fidelity and good behavior; oblige them to lay down their arms; forbid them to declare war, or conclude any alliance, without first obtaining their leave; banish them to the other side of the mountains; and leave them, in strictness of speech, only an empty title, and a vain show of royalty, divested of all its rights and advantages.

“We are not to doubt but that Providence had decreed to the Romans the sovereignty of the world, and the Scriptures had prophesied their future grandeur; but they were strangers to those divine oracles; and besides, the bare prediction of their conquest was no justification of their conduct. Although it be difficult to affirm, and still more difficult to prove, that this people had from their first rise formed a plan, in order to conquer and subject all nations, it can not be denied but that, if we examine their whole conduct attentively, it will appear that they acted as if they had a foreknowledge of this, and that a kind of instinct determined them to conform to it in all things.

“But be this as it will, we see by the event, to what this so much boasted lenity and moderation of the Romans was confined. Enemies to the liberty of all nations, having the utmost contempt for kings and monarchy, looking upon the whole universe as their prey, they grasped, with insatiable ambition, the conquest of the whole world; they seized indiscriminately all provinces and kingdoms, and extended their empire over all nations; in a word, they prescribed no other limits to their vast projects, than those which deserts and seas made it impossible to pass.” [13] [155]

The expansion fever which laid such firm hold upon the people of the Roman republic has come upon the people of the republic of the United States. In both cases the game of the despoliation of nations and peoples has opened with a war “solely in the cause of humanity.” In the former instance, the Romans did declare the people of the small Greek republics free and independent. The United States has not yet even done this much. The republics of Greece never became free. The “war for humanity” never gave them their liberty. They soon found, and that to their bitter disappointment, that they had only exchanged masters, and that the little finger of Rome was thicker than the loins of Philip of Macedon, and that if the king had chastised them with whips, the republic chastised them with scorpions. They soon found to their intense sorrow that in the “war for humanity” there had been a transfer made, and that they had been the subject of barter. It did not take them long to discover that they had only acquired a slavery more abject and complete than that which they had endured under their previous ruler. It was as much more complete as Rome was more powerful than Macedon.

Rome never withdrew her foot from the Greek states, and it is even now doubtful whether the United States will ever withdraw from Cuba. Recent public utterances indicate that a great change of sentiment is sweeping over the country on this point. At the meeting of the members of the Associated Press, held in Chicago, May 18, 1899, in the star speech of the evening, St. Claire McKelway, editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, said:—

“There is no newspaper which believes that we are in Porto Rico ever to get out. We are there to stay. There is none which believes that we are in Cuba to get out—soon. I think we will stay there about as long as Great Britain will stay in Egypt, and that Great Britain will stay in Egypt about as long as the Anglo-Saxon race has a habit of staying where it settles down. I am willing to differ from my brethren on this subject, but as my estimate has been only comparative, perhaps there is less room for difference than might superficially appear. The duration of our stay in the Philippines is prodigiously debated. While the debate goes on, we stay. If the debate coincides with our stay, I think it will be a protracted debate.” [156]

Indeed, as time goes on, the prospects of this country’s withdrawing from Cuba seem to be more and more remote. A silent revolution has been taking place, a revolution more fatal to the United States than any that ever went on in Cuba could possibly have been to the Spanish throne and power.

The things which have come to pass, and which are written out in this book, both those concerning Rome and the United States, have also been written long before in the prophecies of the Book of books, on the sacred leaves of the Holy Scriptures. This is not a chimera, but a fact, a reasonable fact, and one of deepest interest to all the citizens of the United States. It is fashionable nowadays to scoff at the idea that the Bible gives any instructions concerning the affairs of nations; but nevertheless a very large portion of the Word of God is simply a history of the nations, and a record of God’s dealings with them. Nothing can be more true or evident than that God keeps an account, not only with every individual, but also with every family, every city, and every State.

When Abraham and his followers entered the land of Canaan, they were not permitted to destroy the sinful inhabitants; but, said Jehovah, addressing the father of the faithful, and referring to Israel: “In the fourth generation they shall come hither again, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.” [14] And “in the fourth generation” they did “come hither again,” and by the command of the Lord they slew and spared not; and wrote of Sihon: “Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his people, to fight at Jahaz. And the Lord our God delivered him before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain: only the cattle we took for a prey unto ourselves, and the spoil of the cities which we took. From Aroer, which is by the brink of the river Arnon, and from the city that is by the river, even unto Gilead, there was not one city too strong for us: the Lord our God delivered all unto us: only unto the land of the children of Ammon thou earnest not, nor unto any place of the river Jabbok, nor unto the cities in the mountains, nor unto whatsoever the Lord our God forbade us.” [15] These wars of the Israelites are often taken to prove the position that God [157] approves of war and acts of bloodshed. But the truth is not so. When Israel was commanded to destroy the people of the land into which she entered, it was because their cup of iniquity was full, and because it would be only cruelty on the part of the Creator to permit them a longer existence. Had God permitted them to live longer, their accumulation of sin would only have grown greater, and the penalty which they would have had to receive as individual sinners would necessarily have been more severe. They were utterly destitute of the Spirit of God; it had fled away forever. And being utterly destitute of that which alone can make us holy and good, there was nothing left in them for God to ally himself to, or which he could use as a means to bring them salvation. In principle they were demons; for what are Satan and his angels but beings entirely destitute of the Spirit of God? It is in mercy, therefore, that God brings the career of wicked individuals and evil nations to a close. It is not an arbitrary act, it is the kindest thing that a merciful God can do.

When the angels visited Abraham under the oaks on the plains of Mamre, the Lord spake through them, concerning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah:—

“And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment: that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him. And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.” [16]

The angels went on their way, and Abraham remained before the Lord, and pleaded with him, first that he should spare the cities if there could be found fifty righteous persons there; and then if there could be found forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, or even ten righteous persons within their walls. And the Lord said, “I will not destroy it for ten’s sake.” Only righteous Lot and his family were found, and to them it was said: “Escape for thy life; look [158] not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plains; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.... Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.” [17]

In the case of these cities the limit of God’s forbearance had been reached, the hour of their probation had closed. It was useless to give their inhabitants a further opportunity for salvation; they had sinned away their day of grace, and were given over to wickedness.

The same God who watched over the nation of the Amorites, and destroyed them when their cup of iniquity was full; the same God who kept record of the gay pleasures and grievous sins of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, and who consumed them in the fearful flames when they had passed the unseen line,—that same One also kept watch over the republic of Rome, and is keeping watch over the republic of the United States. In the wonderful prophecies traced with the pencil of the Holy Ghost, the history of these last two is written, and was written long before either came into existence. It was written “to the intent that the living might know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.”

There are many who believe that the churches and churchmen should have nothing to do with politics. None hold this view more stanchly than I do. Nevertheless, it is as true to-day as it was in centuries past and gone that prophets and priests are sent by the Lord to warn kings and nations concerning the retribution which will be visited upon them by the King of kings and Lord of lords, if they depart from the path which a divine hand has mapped out for their feet. In this sense, and in this sense only, do I believe that the voice of the ambassadors of Jesus Christ should be heard in the courts and congresses of human powers, of earthly governments. And it is because I firmly believe that if the United States persists in the course she has entered upon, her ruin and the ruin of the world can be the only result, that I have penned these lines. Prophets were sent to heathen kings, as well [159] as to the monarchs who sat on Israel’s throne. They were sent because God loved the people, and did all that infinite love and mercy could do to save them from a general doom. If the nation as a whole heeded not, as was often the case, there were individuals who listened to the voice of the ambassadors of the Lord, and were kept from the dire troubles which God sent upon the rebellious state. My life has been devoted to the affairs of religion and spirituality. I have never been a member in any sense of any political party, and have never in my life cast a vote in city, State, or national elections. In saying this I would in no sense judge my brethren who have considered it their duty to do this; suffice it to say that it has been my conviction that as a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, and as an ambassador of Jesus Christ, I would serve humanity the best by holding entirely aloof from the political strifes which divide men into factions and parties, and devoting my strength to the sweetest of all ministries, that of reconciliation between Christ and sinners. It is only in instances like the present, when the things which are done are the things which are warned against in the Word of God, that I feel free to lift my voice and pen, trusting and praying that the spirit in which I write may rest upon and enter into those who read. With me the events which are now transpiring are not the working out of mere political theories, but of great prophetical principles. It is for this reason that I write. It is because I wish my position upon this matter of Christians in politics to be clearly understood that I have taken time and space for this digression.

In the Bible, by the pen of the prophet Daniel and of the revelator John, we have in advance of its enactment the history of Rome and the United States, the two great republics of the West. Daniel spake, and said:—

“I saw in my vision by night, and, behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another. The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man’s heart was given to it. And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth [160] of it: and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh. After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it. After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it.” [18]

Such is a part of the vision. Daniel was grieved and troubled, and he asked one of “them that stood by,” “the truth of all this.” He was told that the great beasts are “four kings which shall arise out of the earth.” Not content with this answer he said: “I would know the truth of the fourth beast, which was diverse from all the others, exceeding dreadful, whose teeth were of iron, and his nails of brass; which devoured, brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with his feet.... Thus he said, The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon the earth, which shall be diverse from all the kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and tread it down, and brake it in pieces.” [19]

Now these four kingdoms are named outright in other places in the Bible. They were Babylon, Medo-Persia, Grecia, and Rome. Rome was the fourth, and was diverse from all before it, in that it was a republic. Now it was while it was a republic that Rome “devoured, brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with his feet.” Moreover, in Daniel 8:24, 25 it is written of this same power: “And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people. And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand. And the vision of the evening and the morning which was told is true: wherefore shut thou up the vision; for it shall be for many days.”

Just what was this crafty, peaceful, destroying policy, and how his power became mighty, but not by his own power, has already [161] been set forth clearly from the history in this chapter. By the history I have shown that Rome, being a republic, a government of the people, made high pretensions to liberty and to the love of liberty, only for the sake of liberty; that for this reason Rome pretended to love and desire liberty for other people; that the little states of Greece were struggling against monarchies, that they might themselves be free and be republics. Solely from love of liberty for the sake only of liberty, and for the sake of humanity, Rome sent her armies and navies across seas to fight the battles, and win the causes of those other peoples, only to set them free from oppressive powers, to enjoy the blessings of liberty of which Rome was the conservator in the world. And then when the battles were fought, the victories won, and the peoples delivered, those peoples were not free. They were more bound, and more hopeless than ever before, because of Rome’s greater power than that of the former oppressors. And to-day no man can intelligently read that history of the republic of Rome before any audience in the United States without that audience seeing the republic of the United States perfectly outlined up to date.

Now a point particularly to be considered is that this history of the republic of Rome was sketched in the book of Daniel three hundred and forty years before it occurred; and then that sketch was closed up and sealed, notfor three hundred and forty years, nottill 198 b. c. and onward; butfor twenty-four hundred years, till “the time of the end.”

Why was that sketch of the Roman republic written, and then closed up and sealed until a time two thousand years after that republic had failed as a republic and become imperial?—It was because at this time, “the time of the end,” there would be another republic that would go over the same course as did that republic,—would apostatize from republicanism into imperialism.

Moreover it was a state composed of this apostasy of a republic into imperialism,—it was such a state with which the apostate church of early days, the man of sin, of the Bible, united, and thisunion made the papacy, “the first beast” of the Bible, as mentioned in Revelation 13.

In the same thirteenth chapter of Revelation it is written: “And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two [162] horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.” [20] Here is depicted the rise of the United States, coming up peacefully out of the earth, instead of forming amidst long years of tumults and fightings, as was the case with all the other powers. It is represented as having two horns like a lamb. A horn in prophecy signifies power, and the two great principles which have given power to the United States and made her what she is to-day are Protestantism and Republicanism. But Protestantism and Republicanism are both in their spirit pacific; that is, they are lamblike, hence the words, “had two horns like a lamb.” It is obvious from this that should these two horns of power be plucked up, as it were, should they be abandoned, and Roman Catholic principles in things religious, and monarchical ideas in things civil, take possession of this government; then, at once, everything that is lenient and lamblike in the government would at that very moment disappear, and nothing but despotism be in their place. In other words, it is the prevalence of these two principles, Protestantism and Republicanism, which alone makes the government lamblike in its nature.

Now the nature of Protestantism is well set forth by D‘Aubigne, the historian of the Reformation. Speaking of the diet of Spires, where the famous Protest of the Princes was drawn up, and from which we get the name of Protestant, and the word Protestantism, he says:—

“The principles contained in this celebrated protest of the 19th of April, 1592, constitute the very essence of Protestantism. Now this protest opposed two abuses of man in matters of faith: the first is the intrusion of the civil magistrate, and the second the arbitrary authority of the church. Instead of these abuses, Protestantism sets the power of conscience above the magistrate, and the authority of the Word of God above the visible church.” [21]

This is the essence of Protestantism in very truth. There may be sects many and varied; but this is the underlying, fundamental, basic principle. True Protestantism opposes the “intrusion of the civil magistrate” in things pertaining to the church.

On this point George Bancroft, the great historian of the United States Constitution, has also said of the new nation:— [163]

“Vindicating the right of individuality in religion, and in religion above all, the new nation dared to set the example of accepting in its relation to God the principle first divinely ordained of God in Judea. It left the management of temporal things to the temporal power; but the American Constitution, in harmony with the people of the several States, withheld from the federal government the power to invade the home of reason, the citadel of conscience, the sanctuary of the soul; and not from indifference, but that the infinite Spirit of eternal truth might move in its freedom and purity and power.”

And the very first amendment to the national Constitution reads:—

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Thus was the horn of power, the principle of Protestantism, established as a fundamental doctrine of the United States.

With equal truth it may be said that the “essence” of republicanism is, that “all men are created equal,” and that “governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The principles of Protestantism are the true principles of Christianity,—the Christianity of the Bible. The principles of Republicanism are also the principles of God and the Bible in things civil.

But it is said concerning the beast which symbolizes the United States in the Bible that “he had two horns like a lamb, and spake as a dragon.” Here are two things happening together, at the same time, and totally incompatible with one another,—that which is lamblike speaking as a dragon. Now a thing that is lamblike can not possibly speak as a dragon, and still retain its lamblike disposition. It therefore follows that the Scriptures have portrayed that the United States will in name retain its lamblike principles of Protestantism and Republicanism, but in nature and in practise it will deny them. This is national hypocrisy; yea, it is national apostasy. There may never in these United States exist, openly, avowedly, and in name, a union of church and state, which constitutes in itself the abandonment of Protestantism; but the thing itself will be, and even now is, here. We may never have an emperor with a crown upon his brow; but Rome was imperial, and [164] an empire for long years, while still retaining the image and name of a republic.

Now the “first beast” was Rome, once a republic, but apostatized into an imperial monarchy, degenerated into a military despotism; united with a church once Protestant in principle, but apostatized into the papacy. The union of these two was, I say, the “first beast.”

Now when in the prophecy the image of the beast is to be made, it is said “to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast.” This shows that it is a government of the people where the image is made. And it is said to them that they shall make a union of church and state. This shows that this is all done in a place where there is no union of church and state. That is true of the United States at its formation, and it is not true of any other nation that was ever on earth.

These things show that the nation is first a republic, and that this nation is the one where these things are at last done. But these things can not be done in a true republic, for they are positively antagonistic to it in principle. For these things to be done in a country professing to be a republic, there must be an apostasy from the principles of a true republic.

Already there has been an apostasy from the principles of Protestantism, from the principle of a separation of church and state. The Congress of the United States, the executive, and the judiciary of the United States are already committed to the papal principles as opposed to Protestantism. This has already been done, by congressional legislation, executive action, and judicial decision. All three arms of the federal government have already interfered in behalf of a religious institution,—in behalf of Sunday and Sunday laws. Already here in the home of freedom men have been arrested and thrown into prison, and even committed to the chain-gang, in company with loathsome criminals, simply because they could not conscientiously observe the first day of the week. Into the history of this apostasy from Protestant principle I can not go. It is fully written out in other works. [22] [165]

A true republic can never unite with papal principles; but now the Republic is apostatizing from republicanism and uniting with apostate Protestant principles, and this is in itself an “image to the beast.”

Already this nation has commenced to war against men who plead for republican principles in their island home; and according to the prophecy it is yet to go the furthest step in this awful path, and kill men for desiring Protestant principles in these United States. For it is written of the United States:—

“And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.” [23]

The union of church and state in Rome hastened and actually wrought the ruin of that apostate republic. So even now will this union hasten and cause the ruin of this so far apostate republic. And the sketch of the history of the former was written in the book of the prophet Daniel then, and closed up and sealed until now,so that they that be wise may understand what to do to escape the evil and the ruin that will come, and even now hastens,—a ruin that will come to this modern great Republic as surely as came the ruin of that ancient great Republic.

This national apostasy is proceeding daily before the eyes of all the people; and as national apostasy progresses, national ruin hastens. And with this national ruin comes the ruin of the world, and of every nation in the world. [166]

[1] Froude, “Cæsar; a Sketch.”

[2] Washington, letter of congratulation and advice.

[3] Froude, Ibid.

[4] Froude, Ibid.

[5] Froude, Ibid.

[6] Arnold, “History of Rome.”

[7] Draper, “Intellectual Development of Europe,” Vol. I, chap. 8, par. 14.

[8] Arnold, Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Arnold, Ibid.

[13] Rollin, “Ancient History,” book 18, sec. 7.

[14] Genesis 15:16.

[15] Deuteronomy 2:32-37.

[16] Genesis 18:17-21.

[17] Genesis 19:17, 24, 25.

[18] Daniel 7:2-7.

[19] Daniel 7:19, 23, R V.

[20] Verse 11.

[21] D‘Aubigne, “History of the Reformation,” book 13, chapter 6.

[22] Vide“The Two Republics of Rome and the United States of America,” by Alonzo T. Jones, and “The Rights of the People” by the same author. Review and Herald Pub. Co., Battle Greek, Mich.

[23] Revelation 13:15.

Chapter 10 — Amity or Armageddon?

Proclaiming peace and preparing for war—China the storm center—The czar’s manifesto and the Peace and Disarmament Conference—The United States formerly the champion of peace—The Monroe doctrine—The advent of the United States in the Orient, does it portend peace or war?—Washington’s farewell address—Carl Schurz on the English alliance—“What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?”—Position of Jerusalem in the world—Position of the United States in the world—The vision of the great image—The ten kingdoms of prophecy—The God of heaven shall set up a kingdom—The image struck upon the feet—The reason for this—The kings of the East—Turkey and the great powers—Prophecies concerning Russia—The apostasy of the United States—All nations in rebellion—The armies of heaven—The kingdom and citizens of our Lord and of his Christ

The people of this world are proclaiming peace, and preparing for war. Never has there been a state of affairs so utterly incongruous. With one voice men unite in declaring that the halcyon days are at hand, while at the same time they get ready for the biggest game of powder and projectile that has ever been proposed during the history of the earth. Europe presents the appearance of one vast battle-field, with the rival armies of every nation drawn up in military array, waiting for the signal which will announce that the time has come for the fray to commence. In Africa, from the Cape to Cairo, and from Sierra Leone to Zanzibar, the powers and potentates of the Old World have staked out their claims, and in a state of delirium incident to the dread fever of earth-hunger, they are ready at a moment’s warning to fly at each others’ throats, or to tear out each others’ vitals. Around the China Sea we again find them all encamped, watching for and hastening on the breakup of the Middle Kingdom. The empire of the Celestials is the storm-center round which the international typhoon is whirling, and even now almost bursting from its own inherent power,—power so sensitive and dangerous that it is scarcely possible for it to keep from detonating like a charge of dynamite or guncotton. Into this awful vortex of angry nations the United States has voluntarily leaped, now henceforward to be reckoned as one of the sceptered kings of the East.

In 1898 the world was startled by the peace and disarmament proclamation of the Russian czar, through which he called for all the nations to join him in a peace conference, the purpose of which should be to bring about some scheme of general disarmament on the part of the nations. Of that appeal this is the leading and most important part:—

“In the course of the last twenty years the longings for a general appeasement have grown especially pronounced in the consciences of civilized nations. The preservation of peace has been [167] put forward as the object of international policy; it is in its name that great states have concluded between themselves powerful alliances; it is the better to guarantee peace that they have developed in proportions hitherto unprecedented their military forces, and still continue to increase them without shrinking from any sacrifice.

“All these efforts, nevertheless, have not yet been able to bring about the beneficent results of the desired pacification. The financial charges following an upward march strike at the public prosperity at its very source.

“The intellectual and physical strength of the nations, labor and capital, are for the major part diverted from their natural application, and unproductively consumed. Hundreds of millions are devoted to acquiring terrible engines of destruction, which, though to-day regarded as the last word of science, are destined to-morrow to lose all value in consequence of some fresh discovery in the same field.

“National culture, economic progress, and the production of wealth are either paralyzed or checked in their development. Moreover, in proportion as the armaments of each power increase, so do they less and less fulfil the object which the governments have set before themselves.

“The economic crisis, due in great part to the system of armaments, à outrance [to the point of outrage, or to the bitter end], and the continued danger which lies in this massing of war material, are transforming the armed peace of our days into a crushing burden, which the people have more and more difficulty in bearing. It appears evident, then, that if this state of things were prolonged, it would inevitably lead to the very cataclysm which it is desired to avert, and the horrors of which make every thinking man shudder in advance.”

Whatever may have been the underlying reasons which caused the czar of all the Russias to issue this invitation to his brother potentates, one thing is certain, that whether his object and design was sinister or sincere, men stand aghast when they view the terrible effects which must needs be produced by modern warfare. Within hundreds of thousands of breasts there exists a desire for a change in this state of affairs so horrible to contemplate.

Until the year 1899 the United States has stood before the [168] world as the champion of small standing armies, and squadrons of war-ships sufficient only for the patrol of the coast. While clinging to this doctrine, the United States has become one of the greatest of the world-powers, without possessing a fleet worth speaking of, and without calling upon her few soldiers to step beyond the boundaries of her own continent. Small armies and navies have been made possible for this country on account of that magnificent clause in the political creed of all parties, known as the Monroe Doctrine. This was announced by the president of the country full seventy-five years ago, and the essence of it is: “We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers, to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.” And immediately after this there was enunciated the solemn declaration: “With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered, and shall not interfere.”

The Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed at a time when the “allied powers” of Europe, whose representatives, assembled at Vienna, took to themselves the name of the “Holy Alliance,” were attempting to give renewed prominence to the idea that kings govern by divine right. “It was intended to teach the people that all the liberties they were entitled to possess were such only as the governing monarchs deemed expedient to grant them; that they were entitled to none whatsoever by virtue of the natural law; that the attempt to establish representative and liberal government, like that of the United States, was an unpardonable sin against God; and that the highest duty of citizenship was obedience to monarchical authority.” [1]

Such were the principles of the Holy Alliance of the crowned heads of Europe; its specific object was to re-establish the despotism of Spain upon her revolted colonies in South America and in Mexico. On the other hand, the essence of the Monroe Doctrine as then understood by all the world was that “while we forbid the establishment of despotic governments upon the American continent, we recognize the corresponding obligation to refrain from any attempt to force our political system upon any part of the Old World.” [2] [169]

Now we have abandoned the Monroe Doctrine, and entered into the arena for foreign possessions, and this, of course, naturally calls for a large increase of the army and the navy. If the American nation persists in this policy, the time is past and gone forever when she can look down with condescending pity upon the nations of Europe groaning beneath the weight of tremendous military establishments. It is now seriously urged that the United States requires an army of at least 100,000 fighting men. This would mean an annual cost of about $150,000,000. It must also be remembered that to-day the nation is carrying a pension roll of most enormous proportions. Last year there was paid to the pensioners of the Civil war the gigantic sum of $145,000,000. This is an amount larger than the cost per annum of the entire peace establishment of Germany, including her pension roll.

However, the item of cost is but a small one compared with the principle involved. Had the czar’s peace and disarmament conference been called a year or so earlier, the United States could have gone to take a part in its deliberations, and joyfully told the monarchies of the Old World the benefits to be derived from having no large standing armies, or huge navies. The representatives of this government could have told those people that peace and disarmament were the two things She had been not only advocating, but of which she had been a living example during all her national history. The United States would have then been entitled to the chief place in the van, and could have led all the other nations to the full fruition of the harvest of peace so ardently desired. But now the one nation which could have rightfully and with power born of a principle lived up to, changed the course of the other powers, has herself apostatized from these principles of peace and disarmament, and has now taken up a position which will necessarily entail walking in the labyrinth from which they are so vainly trying to extricate themselves.

The Peace and Disarmament Conference has met, deliberated, and come to a close. Many are of the opinion that something has been accomplished; but in reality nothing of real worth or merit has been accomplished. That anything of real worth or merit should have been accomplished is impossible in the very nature of things. Many are saying that the time has come when strong nations shall [170] “beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against a nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his own vine, and under his fig-tree.” [3]

The advent of the United States in the Orient will not tend to amity, but rather to animosity. This was cleverly stated by Lord Salisbury, when at the last lord mayor’s banquet, he said the “appearance of the United States as a factor in Asiatic affairs is likely to conduce to the interests of Great Britain, but might not conduce to the interests of peace.” It can not possibly conduce to the interests of peace, for the very reason that in entering the Orient this nation has deserted her policy of peace, and has adopted in principle, at least, the bellicose spirit; she has now departed from that doctrine of the “father of his country,” which, if it never brought to her military glory, most certainly has been the cause of her material greatness. The words in the “Farewell Address” are a pearl of great price. They may be familiar, but they can not too often be recalled:—

“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government....

“The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.

“Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations or collisions of her friendships or enmities.

“Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a very different course. If we remain one people, under an [171] efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take suck an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interests, guided by justice, shall counsel.

“Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?

“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”

But all the nations interested in the Chinese and Oriental problem in general are continually making and breaking alliances. This is absolutely necessary in the very nature of things. One nation may on account of its own internal policy and traditions desire to keep aloof from the others; but when combinations are formed against it, there is no other choice but to join forces with some other power. England has been, more than any other nation, perhaps, friendly to the idea of having the United States in the Oriental caldron. Many think that this friendship will conduce to peace, but that it can not possibly do this is clearly set forth by Carl Schurz in his address before the convocation of the Chicago University last January:—

“If we take those new regions, we shall be well entangled in that contest for territorial aggrandizement which distracts other nations and drives them far beyond their original design. So it will be inevitably with us. We shall want new conquests to protect that which we already possess. The greed of speculators working upon our government will push us from one point to another, and we shall have new conflicts on our hands, almost without knowing how we got into them. It has always been so under such circumstances, and always will be. This means more and more soldiers, ships, and guns.

“A singular delusion has taken hold of the minds of otherwise clear-headed men. It is that our new friendship with England will [172] serve firmly to secure the world’s peace. Nobody can hail that friendly feeling between the two nations more warmly than I do, and I fervidly hope it will last. But I am profoundly convinced that if this friendship results in the two countries setting out to grasp ‘for the Anglo-Saxon,’ as the phrase is, whatever of the earth may be obtainable—if they hunt in couple—they will surely soon fall out about the game, and the first serious quarrel, or at least one of the first, we shall have, will be with Great Britain. And as family feuds are the bitterest, that feud will be apt to become one of the most deplorable in its consequences.

“No nation is, or ought to be, unselfish. England, in her friendly feeling toward us, is not inspired by mere sentimental benevolence. The anxious wish of many Englishmen that we should take the Philippines is not free from the consideration that, if we do so, we shall for a long time depend on British friendship to maintain our position on that field of rivalry, and that Britain will derive ample profit from our dependence on her. This was recently set forth with startling candor by the London Saturday Review,thus:—

“‘Let us be frank, and say outright that we expect mutual gain in material interests from this rapprochementThe American commissioners at Paris are making this bargain, whether they realize it or not, under the protecting naval strength of England, and we shall expect a material quid pro quofor this assistance. We expect the United States to deal generously with Canada in the matter of tariffs, and we expect to be remembered when the United States comes in possession of the Philippine Islands, and above all we expect her assistance on the day, which is quickly approaching, when the future of China comes up for settlement, for the young imperialist has entered upon a path where it will require a strong friend, and a lasting friendship between the two nations can be secured not by frothy sentimentality on public platforms, but by reciprocal advantages in solid, material interests.’

“And the cable despatch from London bringing this utterance added:—

“‘The foregoing opinion is certainly outspoken enough, but every American moving in business circles here knows this voices the expectations of the average Englishman.’

“This is plain. If Englishmen think so, we have no fault to find [173] with them. But it would be extremely foolish on our part to close our eyes to the fact. British friendship is a good thing to have, but, perhaps, not so good a thing to need. If we are wise, we shall not put ourselves in a situation in which we shall need it. British statesmanship has sometimes shown great skill in making other nations fight its battles. This is very admirable from its point of view, but it is not so pleasant for the nations so used. I should be loath to see this republic associated with Great Britain in apparently joint concerns as junior partner with a minority interest, or the American navy in the situation of a mere squadron of the British fleet. This would surely lead to trouble in the settling of accounts.”

This is a correct statement of what awaits the United States in the case. It therefore follows, that as far as the nativity of the “United States of America and Asia” is concerned, the cause of Armageddon, rather than that of amity, will be served. And aside from all matters of accident or policy there is a principle which will work to this end, one foretold in the Bible, and worth considering here.

In Matthew 24 there is a wonderful prophecy which fell from the lips of the Saviour himself. As he sat on the Mount of Olives the disciples came unto him “privately,” saying, “Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of the world?” They came to him privately,and it was then that these questions were asked. There is a wonderful significance in these words. It is only to those who come to the Lord privately, alone on their knees in the secret chambers, or by themselves in some quiet place,—it is only to such that there is revealed the sign of his coming and of the end of the world. Away from the hurry and the bustle of the things of life, and shut in alone with the Master, the “still, small voice” communicates with the pleading soul, anxious for knowledge concerning the greatest event in human and divine history.

It was not even all of the disciples who came to the Master, and thus besought him in private for this precious knowledge. In the gospel of Mark it is written that there were only four of them,—Peter, James, John, and Andrew. These were the most faithful and trusty of his followers, and yet to them the Saviour replied: [174]

“Take heed that no man deceive you.” Not simply the careless and sinful ones are in danger of being deceived concerning the sign of his coming and of the end of the world. It must ever be remembered that these words were spoken for the benefit of those who of all people were most constant in prayer and communion with God; and if they were needful for them, how much more so for the thoughtless and indifferent. The true knowledge of the sign of the coming of the Lord is a matter of the heart, rather than of the head and the mind. We may hear it discoursed upon from pulpits, we may read arguments upon it in books and papers; but the only knowledge of it which will nave power to keep from deception in the day of deception is that which is gained alone with Jesus in sacred and spiritual communion.

“Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.” Just prior to the destruction of Jerusalem there was fearful political commotion in the world. The Roman empire filled the earth, but this gave no peace or security. Men struggled for the mastery. Emperor after emperor was slain by the hand of political foes, and all was turmoil, all was confusion. Favorite parasites of the throne to-day were galley-slaves to-morrow. There will be these wars and rumors of wars, said Jesus, but the end of the Jewish nation “is not yet.”

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.... And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” In the last great conflict for the souls of men which will be waged between the powers of light and darkness, there will be many of those who have once loved and known the Saviour whose affection will not only wane, but will “wax cold.” These words have not been placed in the Bible to discomfort and discourage the fainthearted, but rather that through them we might gain strength, and be prepared for the trial which awaits us. It is in mercy to his children that the Master utters them, for in them, if accepted in living faith and applied to the soul and life, is power and strength to resist spiritual declension.

“But he that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved.” [175] The Redeemer does not say, he that shall liveto the end, but he that shall endure;and this shows something of the temptation and trial which the latter-day Christian will have to withstand. We speak about enduringpain, or torture of mind or body, and signify thereby that every fiber of our being is brought into play, and put to the utmost strain and test in order to cope with that which was brought to bear against us. It is even so in the end, the struggle will require every nerve and fiber of spiritual strength to wage successful combat.

“And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.” Then said the Saviour, “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (whoso readeth let him understand): then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains: let him which is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house: neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes. And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.”

The gospel is now being preached to all the world. This is so as never before in the history of the world. Missionaries are compassing sea and land to herald to those who sit in darkness the glad tidings of the cross and crown of Calvary. So manifest is this movement that it does not need argument here. But said the Saviour, when this has been done, “Then shall the end come.”

What is the “abomination of desolation” spoken of by Daniel the prophet? It was to stand in the “holy place.” The Syriac version renders it “the abominable sign of desolation.” And Luke in the contemporaneous record of this prophecy says: “And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh.” It follows from this that the “abomination of desolation” spoken of by Matthew is the army of the Romans surrounding Jerusalem, spoken of by Luke. That the term “abomination of desolation” used by Matthew fitly describes the Roman army, there can be no question. Wherever the army of the Romans planted their eagles, there desolation and ruin followed. [176] It was everywhere the same. Self-government became a thing of the past, and a Roman governor arbitrarily appointed in the capital city took its place, while the people mourned beneath the heavy load of taxes. In the year a. d. 70 the Roman army did invest Jerusalem, and they did stand “in the holy place.” The armies of the Romans no longer exist. Long since their legions and centuries have been laid to molder in the dust. But the principleswhich were back of the Roman armies still live, and will live until the end of the world. The armies themselves, the men who formed the legions, were no more abominable or desolating in their behavior than the troops of any army. War is inhuman, but war by the Romans was no more inhuman than by scores of other nations. The Roman rule was a denial of the doctrine that all men are created equal, and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. And it is these principles of arbitrary government which have always everywhere caused abominable desolation, which still live, and which will live till the history of this earth in its present form is brought to a close.

The Lord had set Jerusalem in the earth to be a light to all the nations round about. It was the will of God that from the sacred citadel at Jerusalem should emanate right principles concerning the relations which should exist between man and man, and man and his Maker. But Jerusalem apostatized, and left the true faith and love of God, so that when the Saviour came, he was denied and rejected, instead of being acknowledged and received. Then, and not till then, was it given over to the armies of Rome, and the devastating principles of Rome. Jerusalem had passed the unseen line of her probation, and only desolation and destruction could come.

Now in this latter day the Lord set the nation of the United States for a light in the world, that from and through it there should go forth to all the world the right principles of government both concerning the relation of the state to the church, and the relation of the state to the citizen. As long as the United States held fast to these two principles, Republicanism and Protestantism,—government by the consent of the governed, and no interference by the civil magistrate in the things of the church,—as long as the United States remained true to these things, she was impregnable in the rocky strength of her principles and convictions. But now the principles [177] of Protestantism have been deserted, and the principles of Republicanism are being deserted. The principles of Rome have invested the United States, and naught but “the abomination of desolation” can possibly follow.

The territorial expansion of the United States has been purchased at the cost of the contraction of the principles of the United States. The United States is now in the East, not as a republic of the East, but as one of the “kings of the East.” But these kings of the East are spoken of in the Scriptures. Here is what is said by John the revelator: “And the sixth angel poured out his vial on the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the East might be prepared. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. Behold I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame. And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.”

These kings of the East, then, with all the kings of the earth, are to be gathered together to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. And that battle is to be in a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.

Now who are the kings of the East at the present time. Is the king of Greece one of them?—Assuredly not, for he is subject to the dictum of the great powers in all external affairs of his kingdom. Is the sultan of Turkey one of them?—No, for he has been taken in charge by the great powers. Are the native princes of India, or is the shah of Persia, or the ameer of Afghanistan?—Again the answer can only be in the negative. Is the emperor of China?—In his case it goes without the saying of it that he is a mere puppet in the hands of the great powers of Western Europe. Now to the prophecy, that “more sure word,” “whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts.”

In Daniel, the second chapter, compressed in a few short verses [178] is the most wonderful outline history of the nations of earth that has ever been written.

To Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, a dream was given. On awakening he could not recall the things which he had seen in his dream, and after the wise men of his government had failed to tell him what these things were, Daniel, the young Hebrew captive, was permitted to make manifest before the king of that great world-power the skill and understanding which God had given him, and to that great monarch he said: “Thou, O King, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feetthat were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer thrashing-floors; and the wind carried them away that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth. This is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king. Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold. And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they [179] shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Forasmuch as thon sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.” [4]

Babylon, the head of gold, was the first of the universal empires; and when the day of Babylon passed away, Medo-Persia occupied her place. For a while Babylon had been true to her trust, and had done the work required at her hand by the Lord; but when she neglected this, and turned from it, God took the Medes and the Persians and through them brought punishment upon the guilty nation. Then the power of Medo-Persia filled the world; but she also apostatized from the task assigned her by the Lord, and her place and her station was taken by Greece, the kingdom of brass. And when the iniquity of the transgressors in Greece was come to the full, God took the Romans, and, evil as they were, used them to punish Greece. But they, instead of turning to the Lord, only increased in their wickedness, until in 476 a. d. the empire of the Romans fell into ruins; and from her ruins and ashes arose the ten kingdoms represented by the ten toes of the image, part of iron and part of potter’s clay, partly strong and partly brittle. Of these, three were plucked up by the roots, as brought to view in Daniel 7, and the remaining seven stand till the present day as the kingdoms of Western Europe.

It is in the days of these kingdoms that the God of heaven is to set up his kingdom, which shall never be destroyed, “but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.” We are living in the days of these kingdoms, and therefore we are living in the days when the kingdom of the God of heaven shall be set up.

In the vision, when the stone, cut out without hands, struck the image, it struck the image on the feet;and the record says that [180] then was the rest of the body, “the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer thrashing-floors.”

The stone was made to strike the image on the feet. This is unnatural. The missile is always aimed at the head, or some vital portion of the body. It is aimed at the head, because there is the seat of life.This shows, therefore, that, at the end of time, when this world is to be brought to an end, the seat of the life of the world will be in the feet, that is, in the nations of Western Europe. And this is now precisely the case. It is more the case to-day than it was one year ago, and it is getting more and more so all the time. To-day it is the nations of Western Europe which rule the greater part of the earth, and all that portion formerly ruled over by Babylon, Medo-Persia, and Greece, to say nothing of the territory of Rome, is ruled over by them. The nations of Western Europe are the rulers of all the Oriental countries, and especially of China. They are in deed and in fact the “kings of the East.” But more than this, it could never be truthfully said that they were the kings of the East until within the last year or two. For years England held that China should be kept intact, and that the dissolution of the Celestial empire should be prevented. But just recently England has agreed with Russia that the “spheres of influence” system shall be admitted as the law governing the great powers in the case of China, and now all the great nations are grabbing every portion of that vast empire that is worth having. Into the details of this it is not necessary to go. The facts are well known to all, and the boundary lines of to-day might be all upset by some fresh move upon the part of one of the great powers to-morrow.

And now, into the East, as one of the “kings of the East,“ the United States has gone. For this nation is not in the Philippines as a republic, but as a king. The United States is in the East as one of the kings of the East, and with all the others only waiting one event, and that event every day threatened,—to be gathered together to the great day of the battle of God Almighty, into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.

The event for which all the nations are waiting before they can be gathered together to this great conflict is stated in the Scriptures [181] as being the drying up of the waters of the great river Euphrates. No one, upon a moment’s thought, can entertain the proposition that by the term “the great river Euphrates” here used, the literal river is intended. In the first place the book of Revelation is a book of symbols, for it is “the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John.” To signify is to make manifest by a sign, or symbol. The term “river Euphrates” is therefore only a sign, or symbol, of the power occupying or holding possession of the territory through which that river runs, and this power is the Ottoman, or Turkish, empire.

For about half a century the great powers of Europe have been of the belief that the preservation of the Turkish empire was a necessity to the peace of Christendom. So thoroughly is this now an established part of the political creed of all nations that it maybe considered as an axiom in statesmanship. The idea was very clearly set forth by Lord Salisbury in his Mansion House speech, Nov. 9, 1895. He had been discussing the state of affairs in Armenia, at that time quite acute, and the possibility of bringing pressure by means of persuasion to bear upon the sultan, and in the course of his remarks said:—

“But, supposing the sultan will not give these reforms, what is to follow? The first answer I should give is that, above all treaties, and above all combinations of external powers, ‘the nature of things,’ if you please, or ‘the providence of God,’ if you please to put it so, has determined that persistent and constant misgovernment must lead the government which follows it to its doom; and while I readily admit that it is quite possible for the sultan of Turkey, if he will, to govern all his subjects in justice and peace, he is not exempt more than any other potentate from the law that injustice will bring the highest on earth to ruin. Well, it is not only the necessary action of the law,—of the law of which I have spoken,—there is the authority of the great powers. Turkey is in that remarkable condition that it has now stood for half a century mainly because the great powers of the world have resolved that for the peace of Christendom it is necessary that the Ottoman empire should stand. They came to that conclusion nearly half a [182] century ago. I do not think that they have altered it now. The danger that if the Ottoman empire should fall, would not merely be the danger that would threaten the territories of which that empire consists; it would be the danger that the fire there lit should spread to other nations, and should involve all that is most powerful and civilized in Europe in a dangerous and calamitous contest. That was a danger that was present to the minds of our fathers when they resolved to make the integrity and independence of the Ottoman empire a matter of European treaty, and that is a danger which has not passed away.”

The only thing that has kept the Ottoman empire in place for about half a century has been the authority of the powers. Should that help be withdrawn, the Turkish empire would be doomed. And this is precisely what will be done. This is foretold in the Word of God. “And he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain; yet he shall come to his end and none shall help him.” [5] Then says the prophets, “And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”

With the removal of the Turkish government from Constantinople to the glorious holy mountain,—that is, to Jerusalem,—there comes the “time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation, even to that same time.” This trouble, then, is national trouble.

We have now seen that it is the nations of Western Europe who are the “kings of the East.” But it is the nations of Western Europe who constitute the feet and toes of the image, which is stricken on the feet with the stone cut out of the mountain without hands. And it is the “kings of the East” who are to be gathered together to the battle of the great day of God Almighty, at a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon. And it is also the “kings of the East” who are only waiting for the reduction of the [183] Turkish power before this last grand move is made; and that the wiping out of the Turkish power in Europe may occur at any moment is evident to any one who endeavors at all to keep pace with the affairs agitating the minds of the statesmen of the great powers of the earth.

Just at present Russia appears to be the nation which is forcing things more than any other in the far East. This also is foretold in the Scriptures in the book of Ezekiel. There it is written: “And the word of the Lord came unto me saying, Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech [Moscow] and Tubal [Tobolsk], and prophesy against him.”

This is the rendering in the King James version. But the Revised Version reads, “I am against thee, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal.” From this word Rosh comes the modern name and nation of the Russians (Rosh, Roas, Rouss, Russ, Russians). Of this power, Russia, the Lord says, “I am against thee.” In the late aggressive movements of the king of Rosh, is he not already beginning to come up from “the north parts” just as the Bible said he would? And he is doing it, even although the Lord says, “I am against thee.”

The prophet continues:—

“And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses, and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armor, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords: Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya [6] with them; all of them with shield and helmet: Goiner, [7] and all his bands; the house of Torgarmah [8] of the north quarters, and all his bands: and many people with thee. Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them.

“After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, [184] which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them. Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm, thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land, thou, and all thy bands, and many people with thee.... It shall be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against my land, that the heathen may know me, when I shall be sanctified in thee, O Gog, before their eyes.... And it shall come to pass at the same time when Gog shall come against the land of Israel, saith the Lord God, that my fury shall come up in my face.... And I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains, saith the Lord God: every man’s sword shall be against his brother. And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone. Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself: and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the Lord.” [9]

It is clear from all of this that when the king of Rosh, the emperor of the Russians, comes forth from the “north quarters” with all his bands with him, that he comes forth to war, and that that war is “against the mountains of Israel.” It is also clear that the Lord is “against” the emperor of the Russians, and at that time and place pleads with him with “great hailstones, fire, and brimstone.” And what is this but the battle of Armageddon in which all the “kings of the East” and “of the whole world” are involved? And where is it but in the land of Palestine, on the “mountains of Israel,” the place to which the Ottoman empire is to go when driven out from Constantinople?

In the book of the prophet Micah it is written that in “the last days” there shall “many nations come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any [185] more. But they shall sit every man under his vine, and under his fig-tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it. For all people will walk every one in the name of his God, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.” [10]

It will be observed that in this scripture it is not the Lord who says all of this, but “many nations.” This is precisely what the nations are saying at the present time. They are talking of amity, but they are preparing for Armageddon. But while many nations are talking about beating their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks, and saying that nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,—while they are saying all this, God declares what they are actually doing:—

“Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong. Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of concision [margin]: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of concision. The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the Lord will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel. So shall ye know that I am the Lord your God dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain: then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more.” [11]

In the years of the past, when a nation had done evil, and transgressed the principles which God has laid down for the guidance of all nations, he has taken another and purer nation with which to visit punishment upon the guilty one. Thus it was that he took the [186] armies of Medo-Persia with which to punish Babylon; thus it was that when Medo-Persia became corrupt and departed from the path he had marked for her feet, that he took Greece and her armies, and through them brought punishment upon the Medes and the Persians. And when the “iniquity of the transgressors” was “full” in Greece, God took the Romans, and they were an instrument in his hand to chastise this dissolute people; and when in their turn the Roman nation rejected the ways of the Lord, when the figures of their account had reached a certain limit which God had fixed, he took the barbarous Germans of the North, unlettered and ignorant, but knowing far more of the true principles of government, and with them brought the Roman empire to an end. The nations of Western Europe to-day are the descendants of these Germans, and from their loins have come forth the people of the new nation, of the United States. This nation above them all has been the recipient of great light from heaven. But now when the United States, the last of them all, has turned from the ways of the Lord, there is no nation which God can take to punish her, for every one has rejected the counsels of the “King of kings and Lord of lords.”

When the Lord comes to earth again in this latter day, he comes not only as the Saviour of the redeemed, but as the judge of the nations, to plead with them with fire and sword. He comes with an army of angels, and with his army he smites the armies of princes of the earth. All of this is plainly set forth in the Scriptures:—

“Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand; a day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not ever been the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations.

“A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them. The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses; and as horsemen, so shall they run. Like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains shall they leap, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as a strong people set in battle array. Before [187] their faces the people shall be much pained: all faces shall gather blackness. They shall run like mighty men, they shall climb the wall like men of war; and they shall march every one on his ways, and they shall not break their ranks; neither shall one thrust another; they shall walk every one in his path: and when they fall upon the sword, they shall not be wounded. They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief. The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, the stars shall withdraw their shining: and the Lord shall utter his voice before his army; for his camp is very great: for he is strong that executeth his word: for the day of the Lord is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?” [12]

This is a description of the second coming of the Lord; and when the Saviour comes to earth again, he comes as King of kings and Lord of lords. He comes with all the angels of heaven with him. These are in the form of men of war, who give battle to the princes and the potentates of the earth, who, with the nations they rule, have rejected the principles of High Heaven, and filled up the cup of their iniquity. And when the kings of the East, and of the whole world meet in the valley of Jehoshaphat, at Armageddon, they meet to settle with the one whose principles they have trampled under foot. That Christ comes to punish the nations as such for their rebellion against him, is clearly set forth by John the revelator:—

“And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called the Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and [188] he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great. And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them which had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshiped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone. And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.” [13]

* * * * * * * * *

In the proud parade of nations,—princes, potentates, and powers,—which, since the gray dawn of the nineteenth century, have with serried ranks, in tramping column and marching file, maneuvered and deployed upon the grand plateau of human history, one, one only, and one alone,—the United States, has broken out her banners to the breezes, and nobly declared her right to a place in the galaxy of great world-powers because she stood for a priceless principle, eternal as the heavens. All others have stood upon might; this one, and this one alone, upon irresistible, impregnable right.

On the folds of the flag of Columbia have been woven in glittering strands, “By the laws of nature and of nature’s God, to establish justice.” Her silver stars have shone forth like ambassadors of better things from the blue dome of the goodly land beyond. In the breasts of her freemen has burned the sacred flame of “liberty for all mankind.” This flame has partaken, of the nature of the cloven tongues of fire which once rested upon the apostles of our Lord. It has gone forth and attracted tens of thousands of the oppressed, yet still the best and blest of every nation, kindred, tongue, and tribe. [189]

They have come by the millions. And when, all tired from their voyages across the stormy seas, they have touched the sands of our shining shores, Columbia, innately good, arising in the peaceful purity of her nature to bid them welcome, has with her gentle, unmailed hand pointed their weary eyes and longing souls to the precious pillars of priceless principle upon which the great temple of the nation is upreared. And then the magnetic light whose mellow beams had penetrated distance and annihilated space, drawing these pilgrims of the night from every clime on earth, has flashed forth in power from the pillars, kindling itself in their eyes and sitting itself down upon the altar of their hearts. For these stones of principle upon which the national fabric rests may be, dimly perhaps, but truly, nevertheless, compared to the foundations of the New Jerusalem,—“having the glory of God, and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone clear as crystal.” Quickly then have these pilgrims become one with the people of the land, and their natures and voices have blended in unison with those whose happy lot they have become privileged to share.

Viewed in the gaze of the Old World monarchies, from the standpoint of army and navy, the United States has been weak. But there is such a thing as the “irresistible might of weakness.” This the United States has possessed in a remarkable degree. True, her cities have not been garrisoned, nor have her sons been taken from the arts of agriculture to learn the art of arms. In the peaceful hours of the morning, as the scions of the soil go to the beautiful fields and vineyards, and the daughters of the hearth to the duties of domestic life, no sharp sound of the reveille has broken upon their ear. The air has not reverberated with the thundering of artillery perfecting itself in the dark sciences of death. No clash and clank of trotting cavalry have they heard upon their highways. There has been no measured tread of infantry upon their country roads.

By the sea, the fishers of this land have gone down into the deep with their nets. On the bosom of the twin oceans their boats of commerce have gently rocked. Scarce a steel-clad ship protected them. No cruiser bristling with great guns has been necessary to make them safe, or to guard the shores from which they came. A [190] stronger arm than that of sailor or marine with Gatling gun and fighting-top has been here to ward away all harm.

Last summer I visited a “cousin from the motherland across the sea.” He had come to the great republic to make his home at a quiet spot on the banks of the lone Columbia River. His cottage stands upon the very brink of the noble stream. I stood by the window. On the table beside me lay a London illustrated paper. On the open page was a picture of Rudyard Kipling writing his great “Recessional Ode.” He sat by a desk, his elbow rested upon it, his hand supporting his head. Behind him, as it were upon the wall, was a great panorama of the British navy. There were the cruisers “Powerful” and “Terrible,” and the battle-ships “Majestic” and “Revenge,” with a host of half a thousand other craft of war.

But the back of the writer was turned upon these terrible engines of destruction. He was rapt in deep meditation. His thoughts were far away. Upon the edge of the desk lay a partially unfolded scroll upon which in plain letters was penciled the thought which occupied Kipling’s mind,—“A Fleet in Being.”

A new chord of life and emotion had been touched and awakened in my soul. I looked at the dark, disdainful, swirling waters of the great Columbia. I gazed upon the stern and rocky headlands, which in places looked as if they were about to close upon the proud waters, and challenge their right of way. The whole scene was symbolic of great power.

From the river and the headland to the tracings on the scroll my mind wandered to and fro, and forth and back again. Over and over, like the ever-heaving, swelling billows of old ocean, those words kept rising to the surface of my soul, “A fleet in being.” And as I pondered, my heart gave answer to my thought: yes, there is a “fleet in being;” in being not only true, but in being the truth. There is a host of power in being, a power immeasurably superior to that of soldiers and sailors, of parapet on frowning fort, or turret on ship of steel. Blessed an hundredfold is the man who is great for what he is above the man who is great only for what he does. There have been legions of the latter, but the numbers of the former are few. There is wonderful power in being—in being pure, in being holy, in being firm as adamant, loyal as lead in the rock, to convictions inspired and guided from above. [191]

Luther was the all-powerful figure at the Diet of Worms. He was all-powerful in the irresistible might of his weakness. All that was great and grand on earth was arrayed against him. There he stands, garbed in the humble robe of an Augustine monk. Around him in that marble hall was a galaxy of princes. They were bedecked in gorgeous gowns and resplendent uniforms, and bejeweled with countless orders of royalty. But the lowly habit of the friar concealed a breast burning with the power of God,—the power of eternal truth. That poor, lone priest had the power of being. Those princes had naught but the power of position. This latter, though to human vision it may appear great, is so feeble that its light is to the power of being like the little flickerings of the glowworm to the effulgence of the sun in the meridian.

On his way to the hall, Luther had passed the old general, George of Freundsberg, who touched his shoulder, and shaking his head, blanched in many a battle, kindly said, “Poor monk, poor monk, thou art going to make a nobler stand than I or any other captain have ever made in the bloodiest of our battles. But if thy cause is just, and thou art sure of it, go forward in God’s name, and fear nothing; God will not forsake thee.”

And Luther did go forward in God’s name. Spellbound sat the princes through his speech. It’s close resembled the grand finale of a sacred oratorio. His very form and figure grew majestic. His bosom heaved with conscious power; his eye flashed fire more deadly to those who opposed him than the thunderbolts of artillery; while his voice swelled in resonant, stentorian tones like the music of the great pipe organ in the cathedral at Friberg, and that immortal sentence was hurled forth as by creative energy, and sent rolling and reverberating through that hall of princes: “Here I stand; I can do no other; may God help me; amen.”

Ah, there was a power of being in the monk; a power which a few brief years later changed the map of Europe, hurled the emperor from his throne, and caused the crowns to topple from the heads of tottering princes. Before the power of truth, the power of position became “as the waters that pass away.”

And it is the power of being, the power begotten by the possession and living out of truth, wonderful truth, that has caused the name of the Republic of the United States to be reverenced and [192] revered through all the earth. Hitherto the United States has stood like a rock for the truth, and her very being has been the truth. Her very being has been impregnated with the thoughts of liberty and equal rights to all mankind. Hitherto she has set to herself the bounds and metes of right. And when vaunting ambition in the breasts of her sons would strive to break beyond these natural barriers, her voice has been heard in the words of a Greater One, saying to their ambition, “Hitherto [as far as the line of right] shalt thou come but no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.”

The ember hours of the nineteenth century are here. The gloaming time of this cycle of a hundred years is upon us. Shall the ship of state be held upon the course which God through the Fathers set for her, or shall the brilliant star of her peace and power be allowed to be diverted, be made to grow dim, and to lose its heavenly luster?

That a dark time of trouble is before this land and before the world, and is swiftly closing in upon the sons and daughters of men, is evident to many of different faiths both spiritual and secular. We hear the mutterings of the storm, the distant roar of the angry billows of strife in things religious and civil. The tempest will surely break, but let it be our holy glory, our sacred joy, that, although we may be broken by it, we shall never bend before it. Infinitely happier is the man who is defeated in a good cause than the man who is victorious in a bad one.

But the tempest produced by transgression in things individual and things national will not last forever; it can not last for long. Sin and transgression are terrible things; but they carry in their breasts a poison which not only destroys all that it touches, but ultimately breeds destruction to themselves. In sin and wickedness Providence has fixed an evolution unto death.

After the night there will come the glorious dawning of the better morn. It will be for the good and the pure. We may differ as to how it will come, but that it will come, we all believe. Soon will be heard great voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”

The citizens of that blest kingdom will be those who have known the power of being,—of being true as steel to priceless principle of [193] right in things national as well as in things personal. For the kingdom of God itself is founded upon the principle of right, founded upon the consent of the governed, and the voices of the redeemed will whisper gently among the amaranthine flowers, saying, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power.”

Therefore let us work for right principles while it is day, for the night cometh when no man can work. Let us gird up the loins of our minds, and be sober, and hope to the end for the grace which is to be brought unto us at the coming of Jesus Christ. [194]

[1] Thompson, “Footprints of the Jesuits,” page 249.

[2] From article by the Hon. Adlai F. Stevensen.

[3] Micah 4:3, 4.

[4] Daniel 2:31-45.

[5] Daniel 11:45.

[6] The term “Libya” formerly applied to the whole northern coast of Africa, from the confines of Egypt to the straits of Gibraltar, and southward as far as it was known to the Greeks and Romans.

[7] The term “Gomer” refers to the modern Crimea, also under the control of the king of Rosh, or Russia, the older form of the same was Cimmeria.

[8] Armenia.

[9] Ezekiel 38.

[10] Micah 4:1-5.

[11] Joel 3:9-17.

[12] Joel 2:1-11.

[13] Revelation 19:11-21.

Appendix — The United States and Slavery in the Sulus

After the pages of this book were all in type and for the most part plated, another incident occurred in the policy of abandoning the Constitution of the United States. It constitutes a radical departure from principles in behalf of which every day of the years 1861 to the spring of 1865 was steeped in the blood of the noblest sons of the Northern States. Therefore I have considered it of sufficient importance to append here.

The Sulu Archipelago is the most southerly group of the Philippines. The inhabitants number about 110,000. They are “Mohammedan by religion and more or less pirates by instinct.” They, and the sultan who rules over them, practise concubinage and polygamy. Slavery is an established institution among them.

According to President Jacob G. Schurman, of Cornell University, and United States commissioner to the Philippines, this slavery is “not the cruel inhuman slavery, but beneficent in form.” Some time ago the president of the United States announced that the policy of this government toward the Filipinos was one of “beneficent assimilation.” This “beneficent assimilation” policy has been pushed forward by powder and projectile ever since it was first promulgated. Now it has become so exceedingly beneficent and assimilative in character that it has assimilated into the body politic of the United States of America and Asia the beneficent poisons of concubinage, polygamy, and slavery. And as seemingly these were too good to be garnered by gunboats and Gatling guns like everything else in the Philippines, they were purchased with Mexican dollars.

Recently a treaty, or treaty-like arrangement, has been effected by General Bates in behalf of the United States with the sultan of Sulu. According to the agreement this government pays to the sultan of Sulu a cash bonus of ten thousand Mexican dollars, and in addition to this he is to get an annual subsidy of four thousand dollars. The sultan, on his side, agrees that in consideration of the payment [195] of the sums aforesaid he and his people will be subject to the power and jurisdiction of the United States. This was a cheaper way of securing recognition of the undisputed sovereignty of the United States than by their “benevolent assimilation” through bayonet and bullet.

As a part of the bargain the United States agrees not to disturb the domestic institutions of the sultan and people of the Sulus; viz., concubinage, polygamy, and slavery. In other words, the United States has agreed to recognize polygamy in the Sulu Islands, and to pay four thousand dollars per annum to the polygamous ruler there for the glory of exercising sovereignty over them.

At the present time there are many petitions being circulated by the churches in this country requesting Congress to expel Congressman-elect Roberts, of Utah, because, as alleged, he is a polygamist. Will these churches plead with the Senate of the United States not to approve this treaty, or bargain, which recognizes polygamy in the Sulu jurisdiction of the United States? Will they petition Congress not to appropriate the four thousand dollars which the administration has agreed to pay to the order of the Sulu polygamist? “If they do, what will become of their boasted loyalty to the government? If they do not, what will become of their consistency?” This is a serious phase of the incident; but there is still another phase of it which is much more serious.

The United States has agreed not to disturb the institution of slavery in her Sulu jurisdiction. Now what shall be done with the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which declares that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”?

It follows from this that when the administration agreed not to disturb slavery in the Sulu Islands, the same being part of the Philippines and consequently under the jurisdiction of the United States, it agreed both in principle and in practise that it would openly violate and publicly disregard the Constitution of these United States. Possibly the administration is proceeding upon the plan hinted at and proposed last winter, that the Philippines and other islands be ruled without the Constitution! But to do this is [196] only to trample upon and abandon the Constitution which by and according to the very wording of the instrument itself, extends to all places within the jurisdiction of the United States.

Since the Declaration of Independence is repudiated, accounted as a “nursery rime” only fit to “hamper the greatest nation of earth;” and since the Constitution is abandoned, and this by the very government of the United States itself,—since all this is so, it may be pertinent to inquire, how much of the original government of the United States remains?

And further, in view of the revived discussion of the “race problem,” since slavery is an undisturbed institution in one corner of the territory under the jurisdiction of the United States, what assurance is there that slavery will not be established, yea, and re-established, in other places “subject to their jurisdiction”? Will the sun upon the dial of the nation’s day be set back where it stood before the mighty conflict of ‘61? With sadness we turn from the contemplation of this checkered spectacle of a great nation whose beginnings were in so much glory, but whose latter day must be in so much shame.

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