LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
DAVIS
VIEWS
OF
AN EX-PRESIDENT
BY
BENJAMIN HARRISON
BEING HIS ADDRESSES AND WRITINGS ON SUBJECTS
OF PUBLIC INTEREST SINCE THE CLOSE OF
HIS ADMINISTRATION AS PRESIDENT
OF THE UNITED STATES
COMPILED BY
MARY LORD HARRISON
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOWEN-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
COPYRIGHT, 1901
THE BOWEN-MERRILL COMPANY
VIEWS OF
AN EX-PRESIDENT
CONTENTS
PART I
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION
Introductory lecture, Stanford University 1
THE COLONIAL CHARTERS
Second lecture, Stanford University 30
LEGAL ASPECTS OF THE CONTROVERSY BETWEEN THE AMEBI-
CAN COLONIES AND GREAT BRITAIN
Third lecture, Stanford University 62
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT UNION AND THE UNION DE FACTO
Fourth lecture, Stanford University 92
THE CONFEDERATION
Fifth lecture, Stanford University 124
THE INSTITUTION OF STATE GOVERNMENTS
Sixth lecture, Stanford University 165
THE STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITOBY AND OF ITS FBEB CIVIL
IZED INHABITANTS
Lecture delivered at University of Michigan 185 *-
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS FIBST PAPEB
North American Review 222 -
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS SECOND PAPEB
North American Review 245 -
CONTENTS
PART II
SOME HINDRANCES TO LAW REFORMS
At University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 273
ILLINOIS INHERITANCE TAX CASES
General Harrison's last argument before the Supreme
Court of the United States 298
THE OBLIGATIONS OF WEALTH
Delivered before the Union League Club, Chicago 331
ON RETURNING FROM WASHINGTON
An address delivered at State House, Indianapolis 358
To THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC
Tomlinson Hall, Indianapolis 361
MILITARY INSTRUCTION IN THE SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES
The Century Magazine 367
AT THE BANQUET OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF PENN
SYLVANIA
Continental Hotel, Philadelphia 371
FOUNDERS' DAY AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY
First memorial exercises held at the University 376
IN PRESENTING MR. MCKINLEY
Tomlinson Hall, Indianapolis 382
THE GREAT MASS MEETING
Carnegie Hall, New York 388
A TALK ABOUT THE LITTLE ONES
The Interior, Chicago 419
AT THE REPUBLICAN RATIFICATION MEETING
Carnegie Hall, New York 426
COMPULSORY DISHONESTY
The Forum 454
CONTENTS
"'No MEAN CITY"
At the Commercial Club, Indianapolis 466
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Marquette Club, Chicago 472
AT THE BANQUET OF THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB
Chicago 479
PRESENTATION OF FLAG TO BATTERY A
Camp Mount, Indianapolis 482
AT THE BANQUET OF THE SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI
Asbury Park, New Jersey 486 -
IN BEHALF OF THE RED CROSS SOCIETY
Long Branch, New Jersey 488 ^
AT THE BANQUET OF THE AMERICAN CHAMBEB OF COMMERCE
Paris, France 490
OPENING ADDRESS AS HONORARY CHAIRMAN
At the Ecumenical Missionary Conference 497
BESPONSE TO WELCOME OF PRESIDENT MCKINLEY AND GOV
ERNOR ROOSEVELT
At the Ecumenical Missionary Conference 505
FAREWELL ADDRESS
At the Ecumenical Missionary Conference 511
As PRESIDING OFFICER AT INDIANAPOLIS RAILROAD CHRISTIAN
ASSOCIATION ANNIVERSARY
Indianapolis 518
<( HAIL COLUMBIA"
At the Columbia Club banquet, Indianapolis 521
PART ONE
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATIONAL
CONSTITUTION
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE
Delivered at. Stanford University, March 6, 1894
When I yielded to the request of Governor Stan
ford and consented to deliver some lectures before
the students of this university, I confidently expect
ed that he would be here to give me that stimulus
and encouragement which a genial and familiar
face, reflecting a friendly approval that does not
wait upon performance, affords to one who enters
upon an unaccustomed work. As we shall, on the
ninth instant, observe the anniversary of his birth, I
will reserve for that occasion my tribute to the vir
tues of a friend whose death I now first realize,
because he is not here.
I am glad to have even so slight and casual a
part as that of a non-resident lecturer in the work
of this young but already great university. If
my presence is only occasional, and my contact
with these eager minds and generous hearts less
i
2 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
near and constant than I could wish, I must the
more be careful that whatever direction I may
give to your thoughts and whatever impulses I
may kindle in your hearts shall be true and ele
vating though they be small.
The lectures which I contemplate will be rather
popular than technical especially while we have
under consideration the constitution of the United
States, and the history of its development and
adoption.
If the national constitution were in fact what
Mr. Gladstone described it to be "the most won
derful work ever struck off at a given time by
the brain and purpose of man," the work of the
commentator would be abbreviated, if not simpli
fied. He would not need to go back. It was,
however, not a work struck off at a given time; but,
in a strong sense, a development the ripe fruit of
experience, and not a discovery, not a revelation.
The harmonious adjustment and definition of the
powers of the national and of the state governments
was more nearly than anything else original and
constructive work. As a whole it is, perhaps, more
nearly, though not altogether, what Mr. Glad
stone described the British constitution to be, "an
organism which has proceeded from progressive
history." This being true, we can not rightly es
timate the merits of its framers, nor rightly un
derstand its articles without some knowledge of
THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION 3
the historical progression which culminated in this
admirable and enduring civil organism. I can not,
however, in these preliminary lectures, do more
than give you a hasty and not very closely
connected outline of those events and civil conten
tions which, beginning in old England, resulted
first in the establishment of popular governments
in the colonies and states and finally spread over
these necessary and inestimable local systems a na
tional popular government supreme in all things
affecting the common interests of all the people.
My aim is not so much to make lawyers as to
promote a broad and intelligent American citizen
ship. Our civil institutions are safe only while
in the keeping of a generation that loves them;
and the love of institutions however it may be
with another sort must be educated. We guard
and keep our treasures that which is not valued
we suffer others to take without resistance.
It will be my purpose to show you the beauty,
strength and adaptation of the constitution of the
United States, and thereby to make your love of
our institutions deeper and more intelligent. I
will not ask you to love everything that is Ameri
can; but I will ask you to shun the example of
those who love anything for no better reason than
that it is not American. American history and biog
raphy have had a great revival in these centennial
years, and every young American should eagerly
4 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
avail himself of his improved opportunities to be
come acquainted, not only with the great events in
our history, and with our great men, but with the
connecting chains of small events and with the
characteristics and virtues of the inconspicuous but
sturdy people. It is not my purpose to describe
what an alliterative friend of mine called the "pre
natal prophecy and preparation" of our country.
A study of English history and of the English con
stitution will greatly aid your understanding of
our colonial history and of the development of
our national and state constitutions; but I can
not go very far into that field. The English con
stitution is not, as you know, like ours, a written
instrument, containing a formulated system of fun
damental law, of permanent and paramount obli
gation, apportioning the powers of government and
providing particular methods by which amend
ments may be added. England has no such writ
ten document. The word "constitution" is there
used in its wider sense, to indicate a civil sys
tem and order defined partly by writings, as the
Magna Charta, but chiefly by long-established
usage, and recognized precedents. The limitations
of the powers of the sovereign, and the rights of
the people are, however, pretty well defined, and
very jealously guarded, though they are without
codification. We have become so accustomed to
a book to article and section that we have all
THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION 5
but lost the wider and primitive meaning of the
word "constitution" as applied to a state. It would
be impossible, I suppose, for a convention of the
publicists and statesmen of England to codify the
English constitution to the acceptance of the crown
and of the commons. The powers of the crown,
though they now give little trouble in practical ad
ministration, are hardly capable of an acceptable
definition. The codifiers would be compelled, I sup
pose, to write that the prime minister is appointed
by the crown, if they followed the letter; but if
they recorded the fact, they would write that he is
chosen by the majority in the house of commons.
And if they should attempt to define the method
of expressing that choice, they would find it im
possible to be precise for the party leader, who
must be prime minister, is not selected by ballot.
We have just now an illustration of what I
have said. Mr. Gladstone has surrendered the
privy seal and his position as prime minister in
the English cabinet. Lord Rosebery has been
called to take his place. There was no formal
vote in the house of commons. He was pointed
out as the most conspicuous and acceptable leader
of that party, after Mr. Gladstone; and so was
chosen by the queen. Perhaps she would have pre
ferred, if she had acted with absolute freedom in
her choice, to have called Lord Salisbury to be
prime minister; but the precedents would have
6 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
been so rudely violated by such a choice that
trouble would have ensued for her. Therefore,
her choice in the selection of her prime minister is
not free. He is chosen, as I have said, rather by
the assent though without formal expression of
the majority party in the house of commons, and
holds his place, as you know, subject to be sur
rendered whenever a majority in the commons
fails to sustain any measure which he has proposed.
It was quite impossible to organize the Amer
ican Union without a written constitution. Eng
land has been described as
"A land of just and old renown.
Where freedom broadens slowty down,
From precedent to precedent."
But the organization of the great republic was
a work of exigency. When government by the
king and the parliament was overthrown, and the
sovereign power seized by the people, bills of
rights, an apportionment of the powers of gov
ernment between designated officers, and popular
elections, had all to be put upon a defined and per
manent basis. The colonial charters had familiar
ized the people with the idea of written civil
compacts and guaranties; and the frequent inva
sions of their charter rights by the king and his
governors had taught them the value, nay the
necessity, of strict written limitations of the pow-
THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION 7
ers of public officers: Precedents had been denied
or distinguished there was need of a book. And,
if it was reasonable and necessary that the colo
nies, in becoming states, should substitute writ
ten constitutions for the old charters, much more
was a written constitution inherent in the propo
sition to form a permanent union of the states.
The broader freedom and the new civil organiza
tion could not wait to be fully defined by prece
dents a declaration and a constitution were de
manded.
The transition from colony to state was not
difficult, nor very radical in form. Little change
even in the official nomenclature was involved.
There were still governors, councils or senates,
assemblies, judges and sheriffs. But none were any
longer such by the gracious designation of His
Majesty, and bound by oath to his service, but
by the free choice of the freemen of the common
wealth, whose servants they were. The powers
of the legislatures were merely enlarged to in
clude some powers before exercised or claimed
by the British parliament. The revolution was, in
the states, chiefly in the source of the governing
powers. But the institution of a national govern
ment was, both in form and substance, more a
work of construction; and the difficulty and deli
cacy of the task can not be overestimated.
The national union, under the constitution, was
8 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
freely instituted in one sense; but in another sense,
and very truly, it was the product of coercion
the imperious coercion of conditions. Not only
the guiding, but the compelling hand of Provi
dence was needed. Every other way had to be
closed up. The selfishness, the petty jealousies, the
baseless forebodings, that opposed, delayed and al
most defeated the movement for an adequate gen
eral government, have saved the men of that gen
eration from deification, and have established the
legitimacy of the statesmen of our time.
The declaration of independence and the national
constitution will hold their pre-eminence among the
notable and influential acts in human history, and
the men who framed and promulgated them will
have increasing estimation and respect. But George
Buchanan, and other prophets of liberty, had already
announced the doctrine that the people were the ul
timate source of the magistrate's power, and that
the state was instituted for their good. Freedom
of conscience and of speech and the right of the
individual to the pursuit of happiness, were discov
ered truths; but they were in bonds and under sus
picion. The declaration of independence eloquent
ly and boldly proclaimed them. The new philoso
phy of human freedom was to be made a fact; a
decree to take the place of philosophic musings.
When we come to consider the work of the con
stitutional convention we shall see that its mem-
THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION 9
bers were not all wise, nor any always wise
Washington more nearly than any other. The in
strument was a compromise the product of the
average sense of the convention. Its framers found
suggestions, or warnings, in the feeble and tem
porary European federations that preceded our
union; but there was among these no satisfac
tory model. What was to be provided for, and
against, was mostly suggested by the experiences
of our English ancestors and by our own expe
riences during the colonial period and under the
articles of confederation.
The suggestion of a union of the colonies for
special purposes was much older than the sugges
tion of a separation from the crown. A brief
study of these experiences, of these plans of fed
eration, of the colonial charters, and of the first
state constitutions, will greatly aid us in under
standing the national constitution ; for it was large
ly evolved from them.
The people of the United States were a na
tion before they were aware of the fact, and be
fore they ratified the compact of government.
There were diversities of race, of religion, of pur
suit, of interests; but the colonists had ceased to
be Englishmen, in the island sense, before the
new oaths of allegiance were taken. The Ameri
can antedates Concord and Lexington. Neither
Canada, Florida, nor Louisiana was then fitted
IO VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
for partnership in an American federation. The
people of those colonies spoke a different tongue;
had no Magna Charta in their history, and had
not been exercised in local government or in re
ligious freedom. In the colonies that became
American states the English language was the lan
guage of the people, and the non-English admix
ture (the Scotch, Dutch and Huguenot) was of
adaptable stock and had, before the revolution,
been pretty thoroughly assimilated. All these were
men who had the habit of thinking for themselves,
and who valued themselves two essential traits of
a republican citizenship. Not parallels of latitude
or longitude, not the channels of commerce, not
bays, or lakes, or rivers, or mountain passes, de
termined the area and configuration of the new na
tion. The lines were run to include Anglo-Saxon
freemen, and their allies from France and Holland
and other lands, who had felt the hard hand of oppres
sions, received the new gospel of liberty, and now
waited in faith for the institution of a free state
in which religion should be a matter of conscience
and not of legal decree, and the value of a man no
longer a matter of ante-natal assignment.
Homogeneity is the essential of a true com
monwealth. A common language, common hopes
and purposes and interests are its progenitors. I
do not mean that all hopes and purposes and in
terests, great and small, must run in parallels. If
THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION II
that were the condition the state would be small
and its people few. A safe and enduring state is as
sured when the large dominating hopes, purposes,
and interests of its people are common. The strug
gle between the small local interests of the colonies
and the large and enduring benefits of a union was
fierce and long, and to human thought doubtful.
Some caught the glory of the coming day, and its
light made them blind to all small things; and for
the majority there was the inexorable alternate a
union with national powers, or the speedy resump
tion of a foreign domination made more cruel by
resistance.
Some of the influences that made the American
citizen should have our attention. And first, I re
mark, that if a free government is to have stabil
ity endurance its citizens must give their love
and allegiance to institutions, to principles, to con
stitutions, rather than to leaders. And herein is
very largely the explanation of the stability of the
American union, its comparative exemption from
domestic insurrections, and its absolute immunity
from successful revolutions. Our Spanish-Ameri
can neighbors on the south are lovers of liberty;
they are brave and spirited; but they have not
learned to value civil institutions. They follow a
cockade rather than a constitution; and the sad re
sult is that revolution succeeds revolution, and their
great resources lie undeveloped. Not so the An-
'12 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
glo-Saxon; for here, men may come and men may
go, but they can not break the fast hold of the citi
zen upon the established civil status. He follows
a man only when the man stands for a cause; and
loyally abides the judgment of appointed tribunals.
All of the conditions that surrounded the Ameri
can colonists tended to strengthen this inherited
characteristic. They fled from oppressive laws.
They came not to crown another king, but to build
institutions: Their religion tended to creeds, and
their politics to codes; and a sturdy democracy
characterized both.
Mr. Grote attributes to the Greeks that love for
a constitution rather than a ruler which is char
acteristic of the American. He says:
"But in the mind of every man, some determin
ing rule or system something like what in mod
ern times is called a constitution was indispensable
to any government entitled to be called legitimate,
or capable of creating in the mind of a Greek a
feeling of moral obligation to obey it. The func
tionaries who exercised authority under it might
be more or less competent or popular; but his per
sonal feelings toward them were commonly lost in
his attachment or aversion to the general sys
tem."
And Joseph Warren, in his Boston oration, in
March, 1772, said: "So long as this noble attach
ment to a constitution founded on free and benev-
THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION 13
olent principles exists in full vigor in any state,
that state must be flourishing and happy/'
The religious faith and practices of the people
also exercised a strong influence in developing the
American love of institutions, and in freeing men
from subserviency to leaders. The pastor was given
great deference, even reverence; but only as the ex
pounder of the written Word the Word and the
Church were before him and would be after him,
and only to them was allegiance given. In the
New England colonies this influence was domi
nant. Christ individualized men and endowed
them. He introduced a new standard of valua
tion. That every man is possessed of an immortal
spirit of equal value in the sight of God, is a lev
eling doctrine as well as an elevating one. Caesar
was to have the things that are Caesars; but the
limitations were very strict there were things that
could not be rendered to Caesar. The humblest of
the king's subjects was a brother to be loved as
himself. A king was a servant. The state bore
the sword for the defense of innocence. The ruler
must answer to the Great King. So the divine right
of kings became the divine obligation of kings.
The man for whom the Son of God died upon the
cross, for whom the material universe had been
builded, fitted and adorned, must not be enslaved
and degraded. Not Plato, nor Buchanan, nor
Locke, but the Word, read with reverence daily in
14 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
the household, and expounded in the sanctuary, was
the chief instructor of the body of the colonists in
the theories of popular rights. They were icono
clasts, but of a discriminating sort men who did
not destroy for the mere pleasure of destroying,
but to make room for better things. Independency
of thought is the first requisite of the responsible
citizen. Individual independence necessarily pre
cedes community independence. The free man came
before the free state; and the free state will not
survive him. Religion had a mighty hold upon
the men who wrought out our freedom and molded
our civil institutions; as the public fasts, thanksgiv
ings, prayers in congress and the legislatures, and
the reverent appeals and strict injunctions to reli
gious duty that abound in the military orders and
in the correspondence of Washington, very fully
show. There had been bigotry, narrowness, even
cruelty, in the colonial churches it was hard to un
learn the old lessons. But the idea of the nobility
and freedom of the individual was there, and char
ity was fast widening this thought to include the
other man. The man's estimate of himself and of
his rights was clear and strong. He only needed
to be taught that other men's rights were quite as
sacred and quite as clear.
Mr. Frothingham says: "This people a new
race, molding their institutions under Christian in
fluences were fixed in the traits that characterize
THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION 15
Americans. Without the infection of wild politi
cal or social theories, they were animated by a love
of liberty and a spirit of personal independence un
known to the great body of the people of Europe,
while at the same time recognizing the law which
united the individual to the family and to the so
ciety in which he is appointed to live, to the mu
nicipality and the commonwealth which gave him
protection, and to a great nation which met and
satisfied the natural sentiment of country."
Like the pioneer miners in your California
gulches, the colonists organized communities and
made laws adapted to the local needs. No Cortez
or Pizarro led our colonists in plundering crusades,
or organized their defense against savage neigh
bors. They were not gold-seekers, but home-seek
ers. They came in families, and were thoughtful
of posterity. They sought a country a better
country than that from which they had come out
a country not only to live and die in, but to live
and die for. The Puritan home life was austere;
but those homes produced men and women whom
no threat or danger could move from their convic
tions, nor any master enslave.
England threw her colonists much upon them
selves; and the savage effectively co-operated in
developing them into strong, self-reliant men. Both
were cruel teachers, but the product was that high
type of American manhood that finally overcame
1 6 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
both. Then men and women who came to these
distant and dangerous shores were individualized
by the very act of coming; and every incident of
pioneer life had the same tendency. The savage
introduced a new human valuation that took no ac
count of titles or ancestry, but only of achievement
the leader was the man in front. The Indian
wars exercised the colonists in arms; introduced
into every cabin an effective weapon, in the use of
which even the boys became skillful. During the
French and Indian war the colonies furnished
twenty-five thousand men to the English army.
The foot of the hunter was free; for there were
no game preserves or game-keepers in the Ameri
can forests.
The "frontier" has now disappeared; and the
loss of it is a calamity. It meant cheap or free
lands for the landless adventure for the restless,
a new chance in life for the beaten, a school for
the development of a free, unconventional Ameri
can manhood and womanhood; the exercise in gov
ernment and public affairs of our ambitious young
men the healthy distribution of population the
preservation of the revolutionary type of men; for
the men of '76 were frontiersmen.
The Indian also mightily stimulated the commu
nity idea. Organization, the next lesson in our
civil development, he enforced under frightful pen
alties. Every man a neighbor, and every man his
THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION 17
neighbor's keeper, was the condition of existence
in the feeble and exposed settlements. The town
meeting for consultation, and the village block
house for defense and safety, were the kindergar
tens of the republic. In the town meetings the
man who had something to say was heard, with
out waiting for his "betters" though he were
only the cobbler or a truant boy who had seen the
prints of moccasins in the adjacent woods.
Life and living were reduced to their simplest
elements; and, in the northern colonies, the long,
severe winters, and the ungenerous soil, condi
tioned both upon industry and an economy that
was near to parsimony. Men who conducted their
households upon lines of the strictest economy
were sure to be watchful of public expenditures,
and resentful of the smallest exaction that was not
supported by a public necessity, and laid by law
ful authority.
Public assemblages of the body of the people, an
indispensable incident of free government, were
practically coincident in time with the landing of
the colonists. They did not have their origin in
any study of the rights of man, or of the theories
of free government. They were spontaneous; they
grew out of the situation as naturally as plough
ing and seeding. What more natural than that
these infant communities, finding themselves with
out recourse to the old sources of civil authority
1 8 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT,
and direction, and feeling the necessity of concur
rence in and submission to some rules of order
and living, should assemble the whole body of the
people for deliberation, and give the sanction of
the free concurrence of all, or the controlling
weight of a majority, to rules that were to be
binding upon all. Especially was this natural to
Englishmen. Guizot says: "When there scarcely
remained traces of popular assemblages, the re
membrance of them, of the right of free men to
deliberate and transact their business together, re
sided in the minds of men as a primitive tradition
and a thing which might come about again." The
town meeting was adequate when the subjects to
be dealt with were of a municipal character. But,
as settlements were multiplied and common inter
ests were developed, representative assemblies, com
posed of chosen delegates from the towns, were
needed, and the need produced them. Professor
Seeley says the colonial assemblies "were not for
mally instituted, but grew up by themselves, be
cause it was in the nature of Englishmen to as
semble."
The threat of tribal attacks drew towns and even
colonies into consultation and co-operation. The
first union among the New England colonies, made
in 1643, recited that "Whereas we live encom
passed with people of several nations and strange
languages which hereafter may prove injurious to
THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION IQ
us or our posterity. And forasmuch as the na
tives have formerly committed sundry insolences
and outrages upon several plantations of the En
glish and have of late combined themselves against
us * * * We, therefore, do conceive it our
bounden duty without delay to enter into a present
consociation amongst ourselves for mutual help
and strength in all our future concernments." They
did not await the approval of the crown. Edward
Winslow well said : "If we in America should
forbear to unite for defense against a common ene
my till we have leave from England, our throats
might be all cut before the messenger would be
half seas over."
Nearness to the savage and remoteness from
England were both favoring conditions in the de
velopment of a hardy citizenship and of the great
republic. If our ancestors had found this conti
nent unpeopled and the ocean passage had been
what it is to-day, how different the story would
have been. Necessity, rather than philosophy, was
their instructor in civics. The colonists could not
know in time the pleasure of the crown, and so
they pleased themselves, and the habit grew. In
the absence of the anointed ruler, a count of hands
was a natural suggestion.
Our ancestors in older England had possessed,
in the hundreds, shires and counties, some powers
of local government. These had largely been as-
2O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
sumed by the crown, but the tradition of them and
the inherited adaptation to their use were in the
minds and blood of their descendants. The com
pact of government made on the Mayflower is said
to have grown out of the mutinous disposition of
a few persons, not of the Leyden church, and prob
ably servants. The Pilgrims had embarked under
a patent from the Virginia Company, and these ill-
disposed persons insisted that if the proposed land
ing, outside of the limits of that company, was
made, they would be under no legal restraint. The
emergency was met by the "solemn covenant"
whereby they combined "into a civil body politic
for our (their) better ordering and preservation."
"And by virtue hereof," they said, (we) "do en
act, constitute and frame such just and equal laws,
ordinances, acts, constitutions, and officers, from
time to time, as shall be thought most meet and
convenient for the general good of the colony; unto
which we promise all due submission and obe
dience."
Here was an exigency. If the colonists had
been of Spain it would possibly have been re
solved by the choice of a captain, with arbitrary
powers or by some bold spirit seizing the leader
ship; but they were Englishmen and protestant
Christians, and so the compact of government was
democratic. Of the Mayflower compact Judge
Story says, it was, "if not the first, at least the best
THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION 21
authenticated case of an original social compact
for the establishment of a nation which is to be
found in the annals of the world." They did not
announce any political maxims, as that civil gov
ernment derives its "just powers from the consent
of the governed," or that "all men are created
equal"; but they applied them. The compact was
introduced by the declaration that they were "loyal
subjects of our dread sovereign Lord King James,"
and they at once applied for a charter from the
crown. So far as they assumed general govern
mental powers, it was ad interim until the crown
should act. But as to local goyernment the or
dering of things that required a particular knowl
edge of the needs and changing conditions of the
community the assumption was never intermit
ted, and local government was never wholly lost
in the colonies.
A government by the English crown and parlia
ment was, as to local and municipal affairs, not
only incongruous but impossible. Things affecting
the personal security, health and comfort of the
people, must be committed in a large measure to
local control. Local needs and conditions are so
various that we have found it impossible for the
government at Washington to legislate for the terri
tories. Some general limitations, some provisions
in the nature of fundamental law, have been made;
but, subject to these and to the power of congress
22 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
to annul any territorial law a power seldom exer
cised it has been found necessary to give general
legislative powers to legislatures chosen by the peo
ple in each territory. When a civil government
was given to Alaska, the best congress could do
in the absence of a sufficient population to organ
ize a local legislature was to declare that the laws
of the state of Oregon should be the laws of Alaska.
This system of local control we have also perpet
uated in the states. Cities, towns, counties, town
ships, school, and road districts, have many impor
tant powers given to them some of them of a
legislative character. No state legislature could
satisfactorily determine all these matters though
each locality had its representative in the body,
and its sittings were within a half day's travel of
the people to be affected.
These adjustments and subdivisions of the pow
ers of government are not so much of conven
ience of philosophy as of necessity. Consider then
how impossible it was that the king and parlia
ment could satisfactorily direct the local affairs of
the colonies three thousand miles, a six weeks'
journey, full of discomfort and peril no represen
tation in the parliament conditions that had
scarce a resemblance to English life needs born
in .a night and exigent as a savage war-cry a
king and parliament absorbed by European inter
ests and intrigues, ignorant of American affairs,
THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION 23
and so selfish as to be unteachable and wholly
unsympathetic these were the conditions that,
from the landing of the first colonists, were slow
ly, unconsciously, but inevitably, bringing to birth
the Great Republic. As well might Gloucester
fishermen attempt to make laws for a Sierra min
ing camp as the English parliament for an Ameri
can colony.
A local control of local affairs is primitive and
natural. Government was begun on that basis.
The family, the original unit of human associa
tion, made its own rules of living; so the pro
gressive forms of association the tribe, the vil
lage, the city, the state, the federation were
evolved from dangers, ambitions, or needs, com
mon to several families, tribes, villages, cities or
states. The function of the state, whether single
or federal, had to do with things of a general na
ture, of common concern to the families, or tribes,
or states, composing it such as war, peace, diplo
macy. The English habit of local government was
derived from the Teutonic invaders and conquer
ors. In Germany the community organization was
called the "mark," and the town meeting, where
the affairs of the "mark" were discussed and de
cided, was the "mark-moot." The conquest was so
thorough that scarcely a trace of the Celtic inhab
itants was left. The ground was made fallow for
the unmixed planting of the civil system of the
24 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
German conquerors. Names were changed, but not
the substance. The "mark" became the "tun" or
"township", and the local assembly the "tun-moot".
These free and full assemblages of citizens chose
the local officers and selected and sent four repre
sentatives to the courts of the hundred and the
shire. This old English term, the "hundred," be
came familiar to all of us though, perhaps, not
understood by all when, during the civil war, we
heard so often from General Grant on the James
river, and the dispatches were dated "Bermuda
Hundred." Mr. Fiske says: "In these four dis
creet men sent to speak for their township in the
old country assembly we have the germ of insti
tutions that have ripened into the house of commons
and into the legislatures of modern kingdoms and
republics. In the system of representation thus in
augurated lay the future possibility of such gigan
tic political aggregations as the United States of
America."
The organization of our national government
was possible only upon the basis of a reserved lo
cal control of local affairs; and the preservation
of that system is essential to that popular con
tent which is the only security for the preserva
tion of the union. California and Maine could
not be united under a government modeled on any
other system. At the basis of this system is the
palpable incongruity of including in the govern-
THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION 2$
ing body those who have neither knowledge of
nor direct interest in the matters to be determined.
At another time I will speak of the complement
of this truth the exclusive control and direction
of all general concerns by the national govern
ment. The one is as essential as the other. It is
quite as, rather more, incongruous and intolerable
that general concerns affecting the whole body of
the republic should be controlled or unduly influ
enced by states or localities. If only such as are
directly affected by the conclusions reached are to
be admitted to the ballot and the conference, then
all such must be admitted to a free and equal
participation.
The colonists brought with them, not only their
English traditions and instincts, but they stoutly
claimed their English citizenship, and the liberties
and personal rights that they would have possessed
if they had remained in the old home. Many of
the charters expressly preserved these rights.- The
first charter of Virginia, granted by King James,
in 1606, declared that all British subjects and
their children should "have and enjoy all liber
ties, franchises and immunities, within any of our
other dominions, to all intents and purposes, as if
they had been abiding and born within this our
realm of England, or any other of our said domin
ions." The charters of Connecticut, Georgia, Mas-
26 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
sachusetts, North and South Carolina, and Rhode
Island contained similar provisions.
But these rights were not well defined at home.
Some of the liberties that had been wrested from
the crown had been resumed. The English consti
tution, during the colonial period, was not only un
written, but undeveloped. The contest in the col
onies was partly concurrent and on similar lines
with the struggle of the English people against
kings who sought to attain absolute power. The
rights of Englishmen, the powers of parliament,
the limitations of the king's prerogative, were yet
to be defined and adjusted. The present magnifi
cent English constitutional government was in
growth; but it had not yet attained form and
strength in its native soil, and was not ready for
transplanting. And, besides all this, the widely dif
ferent conditions prevailing in the colonies, as we
have seen, required modification and adaptation at
the least. Self-governing, prosperous, loyal English
colonies now exist the fruit of a defined and liberal
home constitution, and of the disastrous failure of
the attempt to enslave her greater colonies but
they were impossible to that generation.
One most important principle had, after centu
ries of struggle, been established and set in the
English constitution, namely, that revenues were
not to be levied at the king's pleasure, but granted
by a body more or less representative of the peo-
THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION 2.J
pie. The representation was sometimes, as to many,
theoretical rather than actual of classes rather
than of the body of the people; but the principle
that individual property could not be taken for the
public use, except by the vote of a body more or
less fully representative of the tax-payer, had tri
umphed and the invasions of it by the king were
becoming less frequent and more perilous.
There was a long period of English history that
was characterized by successful aggressions on the
part of the crown upon the rights of the people
and the powers of the courts and of parliament.
Hume, speaking of the reign of James I (1603-16),
says:
"The great, complaisance, too, of parliaments, dur
ing so long a period, had extremely degraded and
obscured those assemblies; and as all instances of
opposition to prerogative must have been drawn
from a remote age, they were unknown to a great
many, and had the less authority even with those
who were acquainted with them. These examples,
besides, of liberty had commonly, in ancient times,
been accompanied with such circumstances of vio
lence, convulsion, civil war and disorder that they
presented but a disagreeable idea to the inquisitive
part of the people, and afforded small inducement
to renew such dismal scenes. By a great many,
therefore, monarchy, simple and unmixed, was con
ceived to be the government of England; and those
28 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
popular assemblies were supposed to form only the
ornament of the fabric, without being in any de
gree essential to its being and existence."
And, in a note it is said : "I have not met with any
English writer in that age who speaks of England
as a limited monarchy, but as an absolute one,
where the people have many privileges."
This may be accepted as the view of the king
and as an approximately true description of things
,as they were; but the great charters never ceased
to be a part of the English constitution they were
dormant, but unrevoked. Kings had trampled them
under foot; but in so doing had only bedded the
seeds of liberty in a prepared soil.
The revolution of 1640, resulting in the execu
tion of Charles I, and in the establishment of the
commonwealth under Cromwell, the restoration,
the renewal of the struggle under Charles II, and
James II the deposition of the latter by a parlia
ment assembled without the king's writ, the choice
by the same parliament of William and Mary,
their settlement upon the throne under a compact
in the nature of a bill of rights, the increasing
power of the house of commons, the substitution
of annual, for life grants of revenue to the crown,
making an annual parliament necessary all these
great episodes in English history and in human
progress were enacted before the interested vision
of the English colonists in America, and were
THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION 29
highly instructive and suggestive. Out of these
struggles, and out of the reformation, had come a
literature of liberty. The dignity and the equality
of men the state for man, and not man for the
state the universal fatherhood of God; and its
corollary, the universal brotherhood of man, liberty
of conscience and of speech all these great themes
had found impassioned expression. What wonder
that the colonists began very early to ask if the
king may not lay a charge upon Englishmen at
home by an order in council, but only by the free
votes of a representative assembly, why should he
do so upon Englishmen who have, for the glory
of God and of England, braved the perils of the
sea and of the savage? and that further and more
searching question, by what right does a parlia
ment in which we have no representation assume
sovereign legislative power over us?
The earlier charters appear to have been framed
without any adequate conception of the commer
cial and political importance which the colonies
were to attain; and for a time the king was lax
in his supervision, and not careful to maintain pre
rogatives that seemed to involve burdens rather
than benefits to the crown treasury.
In my next lecture I will ask your attention to
some of these earliest American constitutions.
THE COLONIAL CHARTERS
SECOND LECTURE
Delivered at Stanford University, March 12, 1804
It is my purpose to-day to notice some general
aspects of the charters under which the American
settlements were made, and to outline the develop
ment in the colonies of those unwritten constitu
tions which came by use to be treated though not
so accepted by the English crown as expressing
the fundamental civil rights of the inhabitants.
The colonists, in their contentions with the crown,
demanded all the rights given by their charters,
but they never accepted the charters as containing
full bills of rights. If a specification could not be
found in the charter of the colony it was sought
in the Magna Charta; and, if not found there, in
later English precedents; and, when all these gave
out, in God's great charter of original and inalien
able rights.
The earlier charters were chiefly land grants
rather conveyances than civil constitutions. The
30
THE COLONIAL CHARTERS 3!
theory of the English law upon which they pro
ceeded was that all newly-discovered lands were the
property of the king and might be granted by him
to corporations or individuals upon agreed terms
and charges. Some of these American grants were
to companies or corporations, upon which succession
and certain governing powers of a corporate nature
were conferred. The corporations were subject to
what was known as the visitorial power of the
king, and the grants or charters to forfeiture by ju
dicial decree, for cause.
The English parliament, at the beginning, had
no participation in these matters. The charters
were not submitted to it for its approval; and the
only relation between the colonists and the kingdom
was through the king. This fact should be kept
in mind; for it will appear that when, at a later
period, the English parliament asserted a sovereign
legislative supremacy over the colonies the claim
was denied, and the denial was grounded by some
upon the theory that the colonies were royal pos
sessions having the same king with the English
but not a part of the realm of England.
The introductory words of the Massachusetts
charter, of 1620, were: "J ames > by the Grace of
God, King of England, Scotland, France and Ire
land, Defender of the Faith &c. * * * of our
especiall Grace, mere motion, and certain knowledge,
by the advice of the Lords and others of our Privy
32 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
Council have for us, our heirs and successors,
granted, ordained and established," etc. The conclu
sion reads : "Witness our selfe at Westminster/' etc.
Franklin, writing in 1774, said:
"From a thorough inquiry (on occasion of
the stamp act) into the nature of the connec
tion between Britain and the colonies, I am
convinced that the bond of their union is not the
parliament, but the king. That, in removing to
America, a country out of the realm, they did not
carry with them the statutes then existing; for, if
they did, the Puritans must have been subject there
to the same grievous act of conformity, tithes,
spiritual courts, etc., which they meant to be free
from by going thither; and in vain would they
have left their native country, and all the con
veniences and comforts of its improved state, to
combat the hardships of a new settlement in a dis
tant wilderness, if they had taken with them what
they meant to fly from, or if they had left a power
behind them capable of sending the same chains
after them, to bind them in America. They took
with them, however, by compact, their allegiance to
the king, and a legislative power for the making
a new body of laws with his assent, by which they
were to be governed. Hence they became distinct
states, under the same prince, united as Ireland is
to the crown, but not to the realm, of England, and
governed each by its own laws, though with the
THE COLONIAL CHARTERS 33
same sovereign, and having each the right of
granting its own money to that sovereign."
This reasoning was not adopted by all of those
who denied the supremacy of the English parlia
ment. For the most part, as we shall see, they did
not refine very much, but were satisfied to rest
their opposition upon the principle that taxation
without representation was in violation of their
rights as Englishmen.
The early grants or charters treated the settle
ments as commercial adventures, and took little ac
count of matters of civil government. In most
cases the patentees were men who did not contem
plate an American residence. They adventured
their money, but not their persons; they sought pe
cuniary, rather than political advantages; govern
ment was an incident. The governing body of the
corporation its board of directors, as we should
say selected the resident governor and other officers
and made laws and regulations, much as a railroad
corporation does with us. But, as the visions of
sudden wealth were dissipated from the minds of
the patentees, and the colonists became more numer
ous, political interests and considerations came to
have a fuller recognition, and before long to be of
the first importance. And so the later charters
came more to resemble civil constitutions laws to
have more consideration than lands, and the settlers
more than the home adventurers.
34 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
The American colonies have been assigned to
three general classes, though several of them passed
from one class to the other before the revolution.
These classes were, first, the charter colonies. Of
these, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island
only, preserved their charter form. The later char
ters were quite distinctive from the earlier, and in
a larger or smaller degree authorized or implied
a government by the people. Representative assem
blies were, in some cases, authorized, and some of
the charters were so consonant with republican in
stitutions that they were capable of being continued
as the fundamental law of free states in the union
of the states. It is a very interesting fact that Con
necticut and Rhode Island continued under their
charters, not only during the revolution, but long
after the adoption of the national constitution. The
charter of Rhode Island, granted in 1663, was not
superseded as the constitution of that state until
1842, and the charter of Connecticut, of 1662, was
the organic law of that state until 1818.
In the second class, known as the royal or
provincial colonies, the governing powers were ex
ercised by the crown; not through interposed cor
porate boards, or proprietors, but through gover
nors and councils appointed by the king, and act
ing under royal instructions or commissions. The
instructions were made and modified at the king's
pleasure; but under these instructions and in spite
THE COLONIAL CHARTERS 35
of them, representative assemblies were organized,
and a large measure of popular control assumed.*
The proprietary colonies constituted the third
class. Here the land grants were to private indi
viduals, and were accompanied by a grant to the
patentees or proprietors of large powers of govern
ment. Before the revolution all of the proprietary
colonies had become royal colonies by the surrender
of their charters to the king, except Pennsylvania,
Delaware and Maryland.
Mr. Blackstone's classification of the American
colonies, and his view of the rights of the colo
nists, as given in his commentaries, are these:
"Besides these adjacent islands, our most distant
plantations in America and elsewhere are also, in
some respect, subject to the English laws. Planta
tions or colonies, in distant countries, are either
such where the lands are claimed by right of occu
pancy only, by finding them desert and uncultivated,
and peopling them from the mother country; or
where, when already cultivated, they have been
either gained by conquest or ceded to us by treaties.
And both these rights are founded upon the law of
nature, or at least upon that of nations. But there
is a difference between these two species of colo
nies with respect to the laws by which they are
* New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Virginia (after 1624),
North Carolina and South Carolina (after 1729), and Georgia (after
1751) were provincial colonies.
36 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
bound. For it hath been held that if an uninhabited
country be discovered and planted by English sub
jects, all the laws then in being, which are the birth
right of every subject, are immediately there in
force. But this must be understood with very
many and very great restrictions. Such colonists
carry with them only so much of the English law
as is applicable to their own situation and the con
dition of an infant colony; such, for instance, as
the general rules of inheritance and of protection
from personal injuries. The artificial refinements
and distinctions incident to the property of a great
and commercial people, the laws of police and reve
nue (such especially as are enforced by penalties),
the mode of maintenance for the established clergy,
the jurisdiction of spiritual courts, and a multitude
of other provisions, are neither necessary nor con
venient for them, and therefore are not in force.
What shall be omitted and what rejected, at what
times, and under what restrictions, must, in case of
dispute, be decided in the first instance by their
own provincial judicature, subject to the revision
and control of the king in council; the whole of
their constitution being also liable to be new-
modelled and reformed by the general superintend
ing power of the legislature in the mother country.
But in conquered or ceded countries, that have al
ready laws of their own, the king may indeed alter
and change those laws; but, until he does actually
THE COLONIAL CHARTERS 37
change them, the ancient laws of the country re
main, unless such as are against the law of God,
as in the case of an infidel country. Our American
plantations are principally of this latter sort, being
obtained in the last century either by right of con
quest and driving out the natives (with what nat
ural justice I shall not at present inquire), or by
treaties. And therefore the common law of Eng
land, as such, has no allowance or authority there;
they being no part of the mother country, but dis
tinct, though dependent dominions. They are sub
ject, however, to the control of the parliament,
though (like Ireland, Man, and the rest) not
bound by any acts of parliament, unless particularly
named.
"With respect to their interior polity, our colonies
are properly of three sorts, i. Provincial establish
ments, the constitutions of which depend on the re
spective commissions issued by the crown to the
governors, and the instructions which usually ac
company those commissions, under the authority
of which provincial assemblies are constituted, with
the power of making local ordinances not repug
nant to the laws of England. 2. Proprietary gov
ernments, granted out by the crown to individuals,
in the nature of feudatory principalities, with all
the inferior regalities, and subordinate powers of
legislation, which formerly belonged to the owners
of counties-palatine: yet still with these express
38 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
conditions, that the ends for which the grant was
made be substantially pursued, and that nothing be
attempted which may derogate from the sovereignty
of the mother country. 3. Charter governments, in
the nature of civil corporations with the power of
making by-laws for their own interior regulations,
not contrary to the laws of England, and with such
rights and authorities as are especially given them
in their special charters of incorporation. The
form of government in most of them is borrowed
from that of England. They have a governor
named by the king (or, in some proprietary colo
nies, by the proprietor), who is his representative
or deputy. They have courts of justice of their
own, from whose decisions an appeal lies to the
king and council here in England. Their general
assemblies, which are their house of commons, to
gether with their council of state, being their upper
house, with the concurrence of the king, or his rep
resentative, the governor, make laws suited to their
own emergencies. But it is particularly declared
by statutes 7 and 8, W. Ill, c. 22, that all laws, by
laws, usages, and customs, which shall be in practice
in any of the plantations, repugnant to any law,
made or to be made in this kingdom relative to the
said plantations, shall be utterly void and of none
effect. And, because several of the colonies had
claimed a sole and exclusive right of imposing taxes
upon themselves, the statute 6, Geo. Ill, c. 12, ex-
THE COLONIAL CHARTERS 39
pressly declares, that all his majesty's colonies and
plantations in America have been, are, and of right
ought to be, subordinate to and dependent upon the
imperial crown and parliament of Great Britain, who
have full power and authority to make laws and
statutes of sufficient validity to bind the colonies
and people of America, subjects to the crown of
Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever. And this
authority has been since very forcibly exemplified
and carried into act by the statute 7, Geo. Ill, c.
59, for suspending the legislation of New York, and
by several subsequent statutes/'
This view was not accepted by the colonists
and in another lecture I will point out the very con
clusive objections to some of Mr. Blackstone's con
clusions.
We will now examine the particular provisions of
some of the colonial charters, as general examples
it will not be possible to refer to all of them.
Of the charter of Massachusetts Bay, of 1629,
Mr. Story says: "It furnished them (the colonists),
however, with the color of delegated sovereignty, of
which they did not fail to avail themselves. They
assumed under it the exercise of the most plenary
executive, legislative and judicial powers."
Under Charles II this charter and these privileges
were challenged, and, in 1684, the high court of
chancery of England decreed a forfeiture of the
charter, and a non-popular government was estab-
4O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
lished by the king, which was continued until Will
iam and Mary, in 1691, granted a new charter,
uniting Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth and Maine.
This charter reserved to the crown the appointment
of a governor, in whom was vested an absolute
veto upon legislation. A council was provided to
be chosen by the assembly, and the principal officers
of the province were to be appointed by the gover
nor with the consent of the council. A general as
sembly, consisting of the governor and council, and
of representatives chosen from the towns, assembled
once a year. This body established the courts, im
posed taxes and made the necessary laws for the
government of the province. The expressed limita
tions upon the legislature lay in the veto of the
royal governor,, and in a veto reserved to the king
which might be exercised within three years.
Mr. Lodge, in his short history of the colonies,
says:
"In Massachusetts, after the loss of the old char
ter, a new charter was obtained which established
a form of government more closely resembling its
predecessor than the common provincial government
from which some features were taken. Under the
old system the charter of a trading corporation,
drawn with intentional vagueness, had, without color
of law, been converted into a foundation of an inde
pendent state. * * * The governor, the assist
ants, or the upper house, and the lower house were
THE COLONIAL CHARTERS 41
all chosen annually by the freemen; but by the new
charter the appointment of the governor was given
to the crown, the assistants or council were chosen
by the assembly, subject to the governor's approval,
and the representatives still continued to be elected
by the people."
The first patent for the Providence plantations, is
sued in 1643 by Robert, Earl of Warwick, as gov
ernor in chief of all His Majesty's plantations upon
the coast of America, and his associate commission
ers, recited the settlement by English subjects in
the towns of Providence, Portsmouth and Newport,
and conferred upon them a charter of incorporation
"with full power and authority to rule themselves,
and such others as shall hereafter inhabit within any
part of the said tract of land, by such a form of
civil government, as by the voluntary consent of all,
or the greater part of them, they shall find most
suitable to their estate and condition; and, for that
end, to make and ordain such civil laws and con
stitutions, and to inflict such punishments upon
transgressors, and for execution thereof, and to
place, and displace officers of justice, as they, or the
greater part of them, shall by free consent agree
unto."
There was here, as in other charters, a general
limitation that the laws made should be conform
able to the laws of England, so far as the conditions
would admit.
42 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
The charter granted for Rhode Island and Prov
idence plantations by Charles II, in 1663, to Ben
jamin Arnold "and the rest of the purchasers and
free inhabitants of our island, called Rhode Island,
and the rest of the colony of Providence planta
tions," provided for a governor, deputy governor
and ten assistants to be from time to time elected
and chosen out of the freemen of the company.
An assembly composed of the assistants and repre
sentatives chosen from the towns was to assemble
twice in each year "to consult, advise and determine
in and about the affairs and business of the said
company and plantations." The governor, assist
ants and delegates were constituted a general assem
bly with power to establish offices, choose officers,
and "from time to time to make, ordain, constitute
or repeal such laws, statutes, orders and ordinances,
forms and ceremonies of government and magistery
as to them shall seem meet for the good and wel
fare of the said company and for the government
and ordering of the lands and hereditaments, here
inafter mentioned to be granted, and of the people
who do, or at any time hereafter shall, inhabit or
be within the same." Power to establish courts of
law was granted, to prescribe the qualifications of
electors, to prescribe crimes and their punishments,
to organize a militia and to commission the officers
thereof.
This charter was framed upon the most liberal
THE COLONIAL CHARTERS 43
principles, and with an unselfish regard to the lib
erties and prosperity of the inhabitants, and in con
trast with some others and especially with the
nagging, unfriendly and repressive policy generally
pursued by the English kings toward the colonies
illustrates the fitfulness and caprice that always at
tends government by a man.
The charter of Connecticut was granted to John
Winthrop and others (1662), as the representatives
of settlers already located and who had organized a
provisional government, under a commission from
the general court of Massachusetts, as early as 1636.
The grant was to the persons named and "such oth
ers as now are, or hereafter shall be admitted and
made free of the company and society of our col
ony of Connecticut." A governor, deputy governor
and twelve assistants were named in the charter
to hold office until a day named, when an election
by the people of their successors was provided for.
Provision was made for a general assembly, repre
sentative of the freemen of the colony, having full
legislative powers, subject to the laws of England
power was given to constitute courts, to organize a
militia, and generally to exercise full powers of
local government. It was expressly declared that
all English subjects who should go to or inhabit
within the colony, and their children, should enjoy
all the liberties and immunities of free and natural
subjects of the English crown.
44 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
Here also, as you will observe, popular govern
ment was, as in the case of Rhode Island, fully pro
vided for. The governor and all other officers were
chosen by the people the king is in the back
ground the parliament is seen only in the shadow
of those vague words that made the colonial legis
lation subject to the laws of England; the provis
ion being "to make, ordain, and establish all man
ner of wholesome and reasonable laws, statutes, or
dinances, directions, and instructions, not contrary
to the laws of this realm of England."
The charter of 1606, granted by James I to the
Plymouth Company, and to the London companies,
under which Virginia was colonized, was without
any concessions or guaranties of civil rights or pow
ers to the colonists, save the general reservation to
the settlers of all "liberties, franchises, immunities,
within any of our other dominions to all intents
and purposes as if they had been abiding and born
within this our realm of England." A local coun
cil, to consist of thirteen members, was provided
for each colony, to be appointed by the king, which
should "govern and order all matters and causes
which shall arise, grow, or happen, to or within the
same several colonies according to' such laws, ordi
nances and instructions, as shall be, in that behalf,
given and signed with our hand or sign manual,
and pass under the privy seal of our realm of Eng
land." A home council (in England), also to be ap-
THE COLONIAL CHARTERS 45
pointed by the king, and to consist of thirteen per
sons, was provided for, to "have the superior man
aging and direction, only of and for all matters
that shall or may concern the government, as well
of the said several colonies, as of and for any other
part or place, within the aforesaid precincts." It
will be seen that, in the last resort, everything re
lating to government was, under this charter, re
served to the crown.
Speaking of this charter, Mr. Lodge says: "A
more awkward scheme could hardly have been de
vised. An arbitrary and irresponsible council in
America, another almost equally so in England, the
legislative powers reserved to the king, the govern
ing body a commercial monopoly, and the chief
principle of society community of property, togeth
er formed one of the most ingeniously bad systems
for the government of men which could be de
vised."
The extension of this charter, in 1609, gave
somewhat larger powers of government to the com
pany. It established "one council here [in Eng
land] resident," according to the tenor of the for
mer charter, the members of which were named.
To this council "here resident," power was given
to appoint the governor and other officers and min
isters and to make laws necessary for the govern
ment of the said colony. The council was to be
thenceforth chosen out of the company of the said
46 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
adventurers by the votes of the greater part in their
assembly for that purpose.
The charter of 1611-12 provided that the treas
urer and company of adventurers might once a
week or oftener, at their pleasure, hold a court and
assembly for the ordering and government of the
plantation, which was to be composed of five per
sons of the council and fifteen others of "the gen
erality" of said company, assembled in such man
ner as had been customary. This body was author
ized to order and dispatch "all such casual and par
ticular occurrences, and accidental matters, of less
consequence and weight, as shall from time to time
happen, touching and concerning the said planta
tion." All matters of greater weight and impor
tance affecting the public weal and general good
and especially the manner of government to be used
was committed to a general assembly of the com
pany which met four times in the year and was em
powered to choose persons to be of the king's coun
cil for the colony and to nominate and appoint such
officers as were requisite for the government of the
affairs of the company and to make such laws and
ordinances for the good of the plantation as were
thought requisite, not contrary to the laws of Eng
land. (These assemblies met in England.) In
1624 the charter of Virginia was annulled by quo
warranto in the king's bench, and Virginia became
a royal colony.
THE COLONIAL CHARTERS 47
New Hampshire never had a charter; but under
the royal commission for the government of the
colony, issued in 1680, the civil organization con
sisted of a president and council appointed by the
king, and of a house of burgesses, or general as
sembly, to be composed of inhabitants of the col
ony elected by the people; but all questions as to
the qualification of electors and of the persons
chosen were reserved for the decision of the presi
dent and council. The judicial powers were vested
in the president and council, and all laws required
their sanction.
The charter of Carolina (which included the ter
ritory now known as North and South Carolina
until the division in 1732), granted in 1663 to the
Earl of Clarendon and others, vested in the pro
prietors full power to make laws "with the advice,
assent and approbation of the freemen of the said
province, or of the greater part of them, or of their
delegates or deputies, whom for enacting of the
said laws," should be assembled by the proprietors.
All customs and subsidies in the province were to
be assessed by and with the consent of the major
ity of the free people there. Carolina became a
provincial colony in 1729 by the surrender of the
charter to the crown.
In the grant to Lord Baltimore of the territory
that became the colony of Maryland, made in 1632,
it was provided that the proprietor and his succes-
48 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
sors might make laws for the government of the
colony with the assent and advice of the majority
of the freemen or their representatives, and the gov
ernment put into force consisted of a governor,
council and assembly. In the latter, at the begin
ning, every freemen was entitled to appear. Sub
sequently a representative system was adopted and
the legislative body divided into two chambers; the
lower body was chosen by a vote of the freemen,
and the upper was composed of a council* of per
sons specially designated and summoned by the pro
prietor.
In Pennsylvania, a proprietary colony, under the
wise and liberal administration of William Penn,
representative government prevailed from the be
ginning. In a prelude to his frame of government
he declares that "any government is free to the peo
ple under it (whatever be the frame) where the
laws rule and the people are a party to those laws."
The charter (1681) provided that all legislation
should be with the consent of the freemen of the
province or of their delegates who should be called
in general assembly. A veto was reserved to the
king within five years of the passage of the laws.
The appointment of all officers was vested in the
proprietor. But the frame of government agreed
upon between Penn and the freemen of the prov
ince, in 1683, provided for the election of a council
consisting of seventy-two members, one-third to re-
THE COLONIAL CHARTERS 49
tire each year; and in the choice of this body the
right to vote was extended to all freemen of the
colony.
In 1701 a "Charter of Privileges for Pennsyl
vania" was granted by Penn, with the approval of
the general assembly. It provided for a yearly
meeting of an assembly to be chosen by the free
men of the province, for the election by the assem
bly of its own officers, and gave to the assembly
the power to judge of the qualifications of its mem
bers, and to sit upon its own adjournments. The
council did not participate in legislation, but was an
advisory board to the governor so that the legis
lative body was single and not bicameral, as the
general practice was. The local officers were to be
appointed by the governor upon the nomination of
the freemen of the district in which the officer was
to serve.
This hasty sketch of the frames of government
provided for these colonies will serve to show the
measure of popular government stipulated for by
the king; but, as I have said, the measure exercised
by the people was much larger.
Judge Story says that the colonists of Massachu
setts "extended their acts far beyond its [the char
ter's] expression of powers, and while they boldly
claimed protection from it against the royal de
mands and prerogatives, they nevertheless did not
feel that it furnished any limit upon the freest ex-
50 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT.
ercise of legislative, executive or judicial functions/'
And this was, in a degree, true of the other colo
nies. The provision in the charter of William and
Mary to Massachusetts, for a representation of the
freemen in a general assembly, was rather a recog
nition of a former practice than a new grant. For,
as early as 1634, the colonists of Massachusetts had
demanded and secured the admission of delegates
chosen by the towns to the general court, and
Plymouth had a representative assembly as early as
1639.
The royal colonies felt the common need of repre
sentative assemblies that should participate in law-
making, and were not slack in securing them. In
Virginia, in the year 1619, the governor was au
thorized, in order to allay popular discontent, to
summon representatives and when, on July thirtieth of
that year, the burgesses chosen by the people as
sembled with the governor and his council, the rep
resentative principle had its first exemplification in
America.
Speaking of this event and of the general sub
ject, though not, as you will see, with perfect accu
racy, Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts said:
"It is observable that all the colonies before the
reign of King Charles II, Maryland excepted, set
tled a model of government for themselves. Vir
ginia had been many years distracted under the
government of presidents and governors, with coun-
THE COLONIAL CHARTERS 51
cils, in whose nomination or removal the people had
no voice, until in the year 1620 a house of bur
gesses broke out in the colony; the king, nor the
grand council at home not having given any powers
or directions for it. The governor and assistants
of the Massachusetts at first intended to rule the
people; and, as we have observed, obtained their
consent for it, but this lasted two or three years
only; and, although there is no color for it in the
charter, yet a house of deputies appeared suddenly,
in 1634, to the surprise of the magistrates, and the
disappointment of their schemes for power. Con
necticut soon after followed the plan of the Mas
sachusetts. New Haven, although the people had
the highest reverence for their leaders, and for near
thirty years in judicial proceedings submitted to
the magistracy (it must be remembered, however,
that it was annually elected) without a jury; yet
in matters of legislation the people, from the begin
ning, would have their share by their representa
tives. New Hampshire combined together under
the same form as Massachusetts."
It is not my purpose to follow any further the
origin and development of representative legislative
assemblies in the colonies the examples given will
suffice. The important fact to be noted is that such
assemblies had, before the year 1700, become a
part of the constitution of every colony except
Georgia, and of that colony in 1754. In all of the
52 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT.
colonies, except Pennsylvania and Delaware (the
latter was under the Penn proprietorship, but had a
separate assembly) the legislative bodies had very
naturally assumed the form of an upper and lower
house sitting apart. In Massachusetts, Connecticut,
and Rhode Island, both the council and the assem
bly were chosen by the people the council at large,
or by the assembly, and the members of the assem
bly in specified towns or districts. In other colo
nies the council was appointed by the crown, while
the delegates or assemblymen were chosen by the
people. It does not appear that the question of the
relative merits of a legislature consisting of a single
body, and of one consisting of two bodies sitting
apart was debated. That was the English system,
and the popular or delegate body was generally an
addition of men chosen by the people to other men
chosen by the crown or the governor; and then,
and most naturally, of a popular body sitting apart
to a smaller and more permanent body chosen by a
different method. The separate concurrence of
each, and of the king or his representative, estab
lished the law. In Pennsylvania there was no
struggle for a representative assembly it was a
part of the frame of government. Under the frame
of government of 1682 the legislative power was
exercised by a council and general assembly sitting
apart; the first proposing and framing the laws,
and the latter approving or rejecting them. The
THE COLONIAL CHARTERS 53
members of both bodies, however, were chosen by
the people, and the laws ran: "By the governor
with the assent and approbation of the freemen in
provincial council and general assembly." The new
frame of government, proposed and accepted in
1701, provided for a single legislative body, or
general assembly, and the laws then ran: "By the
governor with the consent and approbation of the
freemen in general assembly met." Penn had been
a student of the new theories of government.
Writing to a friend, shortly after obtaining his
grant, he said: "And because I have been some
what exercised at times about the nature and end of
government among men, it is reasonable to expect
that I should endeavor to establish a just and right
eous one in the province that others may take ex
ample by it."
His frames of government are instruments most
worthy of your attention and study. What more
discriminating, more comprehensive, or more noble
than the end and purpose of civil government as
described by him : "To support power in rever
ence with the people, and to secure the people from
the abuse of power; that they may be free by their
just obedience, and the magistrates honorable, for
their just administration; for liberty without obe
dience is confusion, and obedience without liberty is
slavery."
Let us see now how far some of the other inci-
54 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
dents of free government were in exercise in the
colonies. The right of petition, which afterward
came into such prominence in the relation of the
colonies to the crown, was generally admitted, in
the relation of the local legislative assemblies and
other authorities, to the people. An early law of
Massachusetts guaranteed to every one, whether set
tler or foreigner, slave or free, the right, in an or
derly and respectful manner, to present to any pub
lic court or assembly any complaint or petition. So
the right of free discussion or free speech was an
incident of these popular public assemblages. They
were gathered for discussion, for the exchange of
views; and these implied, as I have before said, a
certain equality among those who assembled a per
fect freedom to every member of the assembly to
express by voice, as well as by vote, his view of
the matters to be resolved. It was not until after
these rights of free assembly and of free discus
sion had been long in practical use in the colonies
that the origin and natural and legal basis of them
came to be much discussed. They were used as
necessary appliances of the state in which the colo
nists found themselves.
A system of small civil subdivisions for the con
trol and ordering of neighborhood affairs had been
established in all the colonies. The titles by which
the smaller civil subdivisions were known were va-
THE COLONIAL CHARTERS 55
rious; but they were quite alike and quite close in
their resemblance to the early English subdivisions.
In Virginia these subdivisions were, at the begin
ning, designated as cities, hundreds and plantations.
Some of these hundreds still survive as local desig
nations. Subsequently the divisions came to be
known, in some colonies, as parishes and counties.
The designation of the smaller subdivisions as par
ishes was common in the southern colonies, while
the word town or township prevailed in the north
ern colonies. The laying out of highways, the
building of bridges, of prisons, of workhouses, the
relief of the poor, and the making of other local
regulations were committed to these neighborhood
boards. In some of the colonies, as in Pennsylva
nia, county commissioners were given the power to
fix rates and to levy taxes for county purposes, and
the townships to make rates for the support of the
poor an arrangement still existing in many of the
states. The general court of Massachusetts, in
1636, passed a law reciting that "whereas particu
lar towns have many things which concern only
themselves, and the ordering of their own affairs,
and disposing of business in their own towns/' and
granting to the towns power to make orders or
laws affecting the town, not repugnant to the gen
eral laws, to choose constables, surveyors, etc. The
practice of choosing selectmen in the towns already
56 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
prevailed. A law quite similar had been adopt
in the Plymouth colony a few years before; a:
the same general order prevailed in Connecticut a:
throughout the New England colonies.
Mr. Frothingham says, speaking generally of
the colonies and of the local subdivisions therei
"In each the voters chose their own officers; ea
had its courts of justice; each, in relation to its j
culiar local interests, had a jurisdiction as wide
its territorial limits. In this way, each locali
provided for the concerns of social comfort and
police, of education and of religion. This wo
was never done for the people, but always by thei
they tested their own decisions, and could corn
their own judgments."
It appears then that at and before the breaki:
out of the revolutionary war the constitutions
civil organizations of all the colonies had in coi
mon, though in different degrees by charter or i
these elements:
First. They were subdivided into towns, to\v
ships or parishes, and these smaller and prima
subdivisions were combined into hundreds or cou
ties, according to convenience. The officers of the
were mostly chosen by the people, and were charg
with the administration of the business of the to\\
parish or county.
Second. A colonial legislature generally coi
posed of two bodies, one at least of which w
THE. COLONIAL CHARTERS 57
chosen by the inhabitants which had power to
make laws, not inconsistent with the laws of En
gland, and subject to the approval of the king, act
ing directly or through his representative. In some
of the colonies this right was rested on the char
ters; in others its foundation was disputed, the peo
ple claiming it as a natural right, the crown hold
ing that it was of and at the king's pleasure. The
limitation that the colonial laws were not to be in
consistent with the laws of England was not, how
ever, construed by the colonists to subject colonial
legislation to all such laws as might thereafter be
made by parliament, but only to the "primitive, an
cient and fundamental laws of England," as the
phrase ran in the West Jersey concessions. In
New England the assemblies were chosen annually;
in the other colonies the term of office varied, being
three years in Maryland and seven in New York.
Third. The right of petition, of public assem
blage, of free speech, of trial by jury, of habeas
corpus, were claimed; and the practice of them was
generally allowed. Judge Story says: "It was
under the consciousness of the full possession of
the rights, liberties and immunities of British sub
jects, that the colonists in almost all the early leg
islation of their respective assemblies insisted upon
a declaratory act, acknowledging and confirming
them. And for the most part they thus succeeded
in obtaining a real and effective Magna Charta of
58 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
their liberties. * * * The trial by jury in all cases,
civil and criminal, was as firmly and as universally es
tablished in the colonies as in the mother country."
If these things were a part of the British con
stitution they were also a part of the civil order
in each British colony. They were not all at all
times in full exercise in England any more than in
the colonies; but they were none the less the rights
of Englishmen; and the colonists were English sub
jects.
Fourth. The supreme executive powers were
vested in the king, and were exercised by a gover
nor (though in New Hampshire he was styled
president), or by a governor and council. The gov
ernor was chosen by the people in Connecticut and
Rhode Island; appointed by the proprietors in
Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, and by the
crown in the other colonies. The powers of the
governor were not, either in law or usage, uniform.
In most of the colonies he had power to summon
and prorogue the legislature though in Pennsyl
vania his right to prorogue was successfully resisted
by the assembly. He commanded the militia; had
a veto upon legislation; the pardoning power, gen
eral or limited; and the appointment of judicial and
other important civil officers. He stood for the
king; he was the alien element in the government;
and his lot was for the most part and increasingly
an unhappy one. If he strove to please the people
\
\
THE COLONIAL CHARTERS 59
he lost the favor of the king; if he was subservient
to the king, he was pounded with remonstrances
and petitions, and opposed by the assembly, to
which he must look for supplies.
Fifth. A judiciary whose judges were appoint
ed generally by the governor (but in Connecticut
and Rhode Island by the legislature) ; whose sal
aries were, with a few exceptions, fixed by the leg
islatures and paid out of the colonial treasuries.
Speaking of the colonial judiciaries, Franklin
said they were formerly, in most colonies, "ap
pointed by the crown and paid by the assemblies;
that, the appointment being during the pleasure of
the crown, the salary had been during the pleasure
of the assembly: That when it had been urged
against the assemblies, that their making judges de
pendent on them for their salaries was aiming at
an undue influence over the courts of justice; the
assemblies usually replied that making them depend
ent on the crown for continuance in their places,
was also retaining an undue influence over those
courts, and that one undue influence was a proper
balance for the other; but that whenever the crown
would consent to acts making the judges during
good behavior, the assemblies would at the same
time grant their salaries to be permanent during
their continuance in office. This the crown has,
however, constantly refused."
The judgments of these courts were final, except
6O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
when appealed to the privy council of the king.
They were domestic courts. The judges were taken
from the inhabitants. Provision for an appeal in
certain cases to the privy council, "to the king," or
to "the king in council," was expressly made in
some of the charters.
Mr. Story says: "In a practical sense, however,
the appellate jurisdiction of the king in council was
in full and undisturbed exercise throughout the col
onies at the time of the American revolution; and
was deemed rather a protection than a grievance."
It was held, however, by the governor in council,
holding the supreme court of New York, in 1764,
that the appeal did not involve a re-examination of
the facts settled by the verdict of a jury; that the
proceeding was rather in the nature of a writ of
error.
Of the relation of the colonies to each other
prior to the revolution, Mr. Story says : "Each
was independent of all the others; each, in a
limited sense, was sovereign within its own terri
tory. There was neither alliance nor confederacy
between them. * * * They were known only as
dependencies; and they followed the fate of the
parent country both in peace and war, without hav
ing assigned to them, in the intercourse or diplo
macy of nations, any distinct or independent exist
ence. They did not possess the power of forming
any league or treaty among themselves which
THE COLONIAL CHARTERS 6l
should acquire an obligatory force without the as
sent of the parent state." He adds, however, that
notwithstanding this they were "fellow-subjects, and
for many purposes one people."
Every colonist had a right to inhabit in any
other colony; and, as a British subject, was capable
of inheriting land.
A writer says that Chalmer's researches "con
firm and illustrate the fact that the colonists lived
in the enjoyment of a more real autonomy and a
do as you please enfranchisement than was shared
by home subjects."
And Sir Richard Sutton said, in the debate on
the Boston port bill: "If you ask an American
who is his master, he will tell you he has none
nor any governor but Jesus Christ."
In my next lecture I will ask your attention to
some of the legal aspects of the contentions be
tween the colonies and the mother country.
LEGAL ASPECTS OF THE CONTROVERSY
BETWEEN THE AMERICAN COLO
NIES AND GREAT BRITAIN
THIRD LECTURE
Delivered at Stanford University, March 19, 1894
It does not consist with my purpose to pursue
the history of the controversies between the colo
nies and the mother country; but a glance at the
legal aspects of the great contentions is necessary.
The contest was, in a large sense, single and
common; though it naturally had diverse manifes
tations, at different times and in the different col
onies. It was one assault breaking upon different
salients of the fortress of liberty. As a debate it
was conducted, on the part of the colonies, with
wonderful moderation, with the highest courage,
and the most conspicuous ability. The petitions,
addresses, and public papers of that time, proceed
ing from American sources, are not excelled in
style or strength by any state papers of that great
historical period. In the earlier and middle stages
62
AMERICAN COLONIES AND GREAT BRITAIN 63
of the controversy the remonstrances and petitions
were full of expressions of the most devoted loyalty
to the English king. No doubt these expressions
were sincere, as such things go. The conception of
a free republican state came late and doubtingly
into the minds of the most radical of the colonial
leaders, and could not be sent out without a cloak
until war was flagrant. Habit, family associations,
a proud and reverent love for the old kingdom and
the old home, and the need of a powerful protec
tor against foreign enemies, kept the colonists loyal,
in a sense much as those who deposed James and
set William and Mary upon the throne, under the
act of settlement, were loyal Englishmen. The col
onists did not desire separation; they were more
than willing to remain English subjects; but they
would suffer no curtailment of the traditional rights of
Englishmen. More liberty, rather than less, was the
suggestion of their experience and of the conditions
that surrounded them. There has been much de
bate as to the sincerity of the colonists in their fre
quent protestations of loyalty, in view of their fre
quent acts of resistance to the royal edicts. But
the solution is easy; they were loyal to an English
king who ruled within constitutional limitations and
within their special charters, and made his govern
ment subserve the right ends of government; but
they would judge these matters themselves. The
motto "The king can do no wrong" implies the
64 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
amenability in English law of his councilors and
ministers for wrongs done.
This view was thus expressed in a resolution of
the congress of 1775 (December 6th) : "But is
this traitorously or against the king? We view him
as the constitution represents him. That tells us he
can do no wrong. The cruel and illegal attacks,
which we oppose, have no foundation in the royal
authority. We will not, on our part, lose the dis
tinction between the king and his ministers: happy
would it have been for some former princes had it
always been preserved on the part of the crown."
Speaking with fine satire of the charge that
Americans had from the beginning contemplated in
dependence, Justice Drayton, of South Carolina, in
a charge to the grand jury in 1776, said: "There
was a time when the American army before Boston
had not a thousand-weight of gunpowder the
forces were unable to advance into Canada, until
they received a small supply of powder from this
country, and for which the general congress expressly
sent and when we took up arms a few months be
fore, we begun with a stock of five hundred-weight!
These grand magazines of ammunition demonstrate,
to be sure, that America, or even Massachusetts Bay,
was preparing to enter the military road to independ
ence!"
And George Mason, writing in 1778, says of the
question of the first intention of the colonists:
AMERICAN COLONIES AND GREAT BRITAIN 65
"Equally false is the assertion that independ
ence was originally designed here. Things have
gone such lengths, that it is a matter of moonshine
to us whether independence was first intended or
not, and therefore we may now be believed. The
truth is, we have been forced into it."
The inherited English reverence for the king had
a strong hold upon the minds of the colonists. The
most ardent and radical of the colonial leaders held
his tongue and pen under a severe restraint when
he spoke of the king. Such was the reverence of the
masses of the people for the crown that, almost up
to the time of the spilling of blood, denunciation
of the king, or a proposal to throw off their
allegiance to him, would have been received with
general disfavor. When the congress of 1774 as
sembled, the general thought and hopes of the
people ran in the direction of a peaceable adjust
ment upon the basis of the continued sovereignty
of the English king. They did not complain of
the king, but to him much as a boy might com
plain to an absent father of the cruelties of his tu
tor. There were historical precedents for this
strange mingling of deference and resistance.
The men of Flushing swore fidelity to the king
and to William of Orange as his stadt-holder when
they were in arms against Alva, the king's gover
nor; and Henry of Navarre wrote to Henry III,
66 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
"Thank God, I have beaten your enemies and your
army."
So the convention of deputies of New Hamp
shire, in January, 1775, urged the training of the
militia for the defense of the country if it should
"ever be invaded by his majesty's enemies/' who
were his majesty's soldiers.
The colonists were quite sincere when they said
they did not aim at independence; but there was
never a time when, presented as the alternative of
arbitrary rule, they would not have embraced it.
Barre, in his famous speech upon the stamp act, in
the English house of commons, said of the colo
nists: "The people there are as truly loyal, I be
lieve, as any subjects the king has; but a people
jealous of their liberties, and who will vindicate
them if they should be violated."
In an address to the people of Great Britain, Oc
tober, 1774, congress said: "Permit us to be as
free as yourselves, and we shall ever esteem a union
with you to be our greatest glory and our greatest
happiness; we shall ever be willing to contribute all
in our power to the welfare of the empire; we
shall consider your enemies as our enemies, and
your interests as our own. But, if you are deter
mined that your ministers shall wantonly sport with
the rights of mankind if neither the voice of jus
tice, the dictates of the law, the principles of the
constitution, or the suggestions of humanity, can re-
AMERICAN COLONIES AND GREAT BRITAIN 67
strain your hands from shedding human blood in
such an impious cause, we must then tell you that
we will never submit to be hewers of wood or
drawers of water for any ministry or nation in the
world."
And the congress of 1775 made this response:
"We are accused of 'forgetting the allegiance which
we owe to the power that has protected and sus
tained us/ Why all this ambiguity and obscurity
in what ought to be so plain and obvious as that he
who runs may read it? What allegiance is it that
we forget? Allegiance to parliament? We never
owed we never owned it. Allegiance to our king?
Our words have ever avowed it, our conduct has
ever been consistent with it."
The English government by a cabinet was not
then in as perfect operation as now; but our an
cestors were not pursuing an altogether fanciful
line when they appealed to the king against the
ministry. If one of the present English colonies
should suffer oppression, it would justly and strictly
be chargeable to Lord Roseberry and not to the
queen.
It may be well here to say a further word as to
the source of the British dominion in the American
colonies. If that dominion had its origin in discov
ery and occupancy, the powers of the crown and
the rights of the colonists were very different from
68 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
what they would have been if the dominion had
been acquired by conquest.
Mr. Blackstone's view was that the lands in
America had been acquired by conquest; and the
rules as to such colonies he states thus: "But in
conquered or ceded countries, that have already
laws of their own, the king may, indeed, alter and
change those laws; but, till he does actually change
them, the ancient laws of the country remain, un
less such as are against the law of God, as in the
case of an infidel country." While as to newly
discovered lands he says: "For it hath been held,
that if an uninhabited country be discovered and
planted by English subjects, all the laws then in be
ing, which are the birthright of every subject, are
immediately there in force."
Judge Story, in his commentaries, satisfactorily
refutes this view and shows that the claim of En
gland and, indeed, of all the European governments,
to American territory, was based upon discovery.
This was true, he thinks, even of the Dutch settle
ments of New York, for England did not rest her
title to that province upon conquest, but rather the
conquest upon an antecedent right founded upon
discovery.
The Indians, Judge Story shows, were not a con
quered people; and, if they were such, had no laws
or organized government which could be assumed
and enforced until the pleasure of the king was
AMERICAN COLONIES AND GREAT BRITAIN 69
known. He says : "Even in case of a conquered
country where there are no laws at all existing, or
none which are adapted to a civilized community,
or where the laws are silent, or are rejected and
none substituted, the territory must be governed ac
cording to the rules of natural equity and right.
And Englishmen removing thither must be deemed
to carry with them those rights and privileges which
belong to them in their native country."
He further shows that, even if the doctrine of
Blackstone were right upon general principles, it
did not apply to the American colonies.
That we may understand what particular rights
were claimed by the colonists as Englishmen, or
under their charters, and the view taken of these
claims in England, I quote here from* some of the
most careful and notable expressions of the time.
The right that came most to the front in the debate
was, as I have said, the right to be exempt from
taxes not voted by themselves; but it was soon
found that this involved the larger question as to
the power of parliament to legislate in other, or in
deed in any matters, affecting the colonies.
The prevailing English view was that the legis
lative power of parliament extended to all colonial
matters and was supreme. This view was ex
pressed in a declarative act in these unambiguous
and sweeping sentences: "All his majesty's colo
nies and plantations in America have been, are, and
7O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
of right ought to be, subordinate to and dependent
upon the imperial crown and parliament of Great
Britain, who have full power and authority to make
laws and statutes of sufficient validity to bind the
colonies and people of America, subjects to the
crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever."
But there were not a few liberal and learned En
glish statesmen who took a different view and boldly
opposed the oppressive measures of the ministry.
The power of the parliament to tax the colonies
was denied by some of these.
About 1680 the Marquis of Halifax, a member
of the privy council, in opposing arbitrary measures
against the colonies, declared that "he could not
agree to live under a king who' should have it in
his power to take when he pleased the money
which he (Halifax) had in his pocket."
Mr. Burke, in his speech on the taxation of
America in 1774, says, speaking of the contest for
liberty in England: "They took infinite pains to
inculcate, as a fundamental principle, that in all
monarchies the people must in effect themselves me
diately or immediately possess the power of grant
ing their own money, or no shadow of liberty could
subsist. The colonies draw from you, as with their
life-blood, these ideas and principles. Their love of
liberty, as with you, is fixed and attached on this
specific point of taxing. Liberty might be safe or
might be endangered in twenty other particulars,
AMERICAN COLONIES AND GREAT BRITAIN 7!
without their being much pleased or alarmed. Here
they felt its pulse; and, as they found that beat,
they thought themselves sick or sound. I do not
say whether they were right or wrong in applying
your general argument to their own case. It is not
easy, indeed, to make a monopoly of theorems and
corollaries. The fact is, that they did thus apply
those general arguments; and your mode of gov
erning them, whether through lenity or indolence,
through wisdom or mistake, confirmed them in the
imagination that they, as well as you, had an in
terest in these common principles."
Among other circumstances which had brought
the colonists to the views of liberty held by them,
Mr. Burke speaks of the effect of education, and
says that in no country, perhaps, in the world was
the law so generally studied.
The Earl of Chatham, speaking on the bill de
claring the sovereignty of Great Britain over the
colonies, said: "My position is this I repeat it
I will maintain it to my last hour taxation and
representation are inseparable; this position is found
ed on the laws of nature; it is itself an eternal law
of nature; for whatever is a man's own is abso
lutely his own; no man has a right to take it from
him without his consent, either expressed by him
self or representative; whoever attempts to do it at
tempts an injury; whoever does it commits a rob
bery; he throws down and destroys the distinction
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between liberty and slavery. Taxation and repre
sentation are coeval with and essential to this con
stitution." In the same speech he recites the fact
that the palatinate of Chester had resisted a tax
upon the ground of non-representation; and, upon
their petition, the king had allowed their plea. "In
short, my lord," said he, "from the whole of our
history, from the earliest period, you will find that
taxation and representation were always united."
Pitt, in his speech in the house of lords, in De
cember, 1/75, said: "Let the sacredness of their
property remain inviolate; let it be taxable only by
their own consent, given in their provincial assem
blies, else it will cease to be property." And again,
in the same speech, he said: "Let this distinction
then remain forever ascertained. Taxation is theirs,
commercial regulation is ours. As an American,
I would recognize to England her supreme right of
regulating commerce and navigation. As an En
glishman by birth and principle, I recognize to the
Americans their supreme, unalienable right to their
property; a right which they are justified in the de
fense of, to the extremity."
A few quotations now setting forth the Ameri
can view chiefly from the resolves of congress
and the colonial assemblies will enable us to have
a clear comprehension of the great issue that was
about to be set down for trial.
As early as 1680 we have a voice from New Jer-
AMERICAN COLONIES AND GREAT BRITAIN 73
sey declaring that "it was a fundamental in their
constitution and government that the king of En
gland could not justly take his subject's goods with
out their consent."
Among the declarations of the continental con
gress of 1765 was this: "That all supplies to the
crown, being free gifts of the people, it is un
reasonable and inconsistent with the principles and
spirit of the British constitution, for the people of
Great Britain to grant to his majesty the property
of the colonists."
In the address of this congress to the house of
commons it is said "that the parliament, adhering
strictly to the principle of the constitution, have
never hitherto taxed any but those who were therein
actually represented; for this reason we humbly ap
prehend, they never have taxed Ireland, nor any
other of the subjects without the realm." In this
congress there was much discussion as to the basis
or origin of the rights claimed by the colonies, and
in the course of the discussion Christopher Gads-
den said : "A confirmation of our essential and
.common rights as Englishmen may be pleaded from
charters safely enough; but any further dependence
on them may be fatal. We should stand upon the
broad common ground of those natural rights that
we all feel and know as men and as descendants
of Englishmen. I wish the charters may not en
snare us at last by drawing different colonies to
74 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
act differently in this great cause. Whenever that
is the case, all will be over with the whole. There
ought to be no New England man, no New Yorker,
known on the continent; but all of us Americans."
How wisely, how nobly spoken! And this voice
was from South Carolina "All of us Americans."
The way was long from provincial narrowness and
jealousy to a broad nationalism; from a local citi
zenship, of which the world took no notice, to a
national citizenship that boldly challenged the world's
deference. But in 1865 just one hundred years
after the speaking of these immortal words the
hope of the eloquent South Carolinian bursts into
the dawn; and to-day, as never before, we are "all
of us Americans."
Among the resolutions adopted by the congress
of 1774 (October 14), was the following: "Re
solved, 4, that the foundation of English liberty,
and of all free government, is a right in the peo
ple to participate in their legislative council; and,
as the English colonists are not represented, and
from their local and other circumstances, can not
properly be represented in the British parliament,
they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of
legislation in their several provincial legislatures,
where their right of representation can alone be pre
served, in all cases of taxation and internal polity,
subject only to the negative of their sovereign, in
such manner as has heretofore been used and accus-
AMERICAN COLONIES AND GREAT BRITAIN 75
tomed. But, from the necessity of the case, and a
regard to the mutual interest of both countries, we
cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of
the British parliament as are bona fide, restrained
to the regulation of our external commerce, for the
purpose of securing the commercial advantages of
the whole empire to the mother country, and the
commercial benefits of its respective members, ex
cluding every idea of taxation internal or external
for raising a revenue on the subjects in America
without their consent/'
It seems that the committee was hopelessly di
vided on the question of the powers of parliament
and that the terms used in the fourth resolution, as
adopted, were accepted as a compromise, not of
opinions but of phrases; a practice quite familiar
in modern political conventions. Mr. John Adams
suggested the declaration that, from "the necessity
of the case" the colonists "consented" to the opera
tion of laws regulating external commerce, exclud
ing "every idea of taxation internal or external for
raising a revenue on the subjects in America with
out their consent." The one side could argue that
this was a consent to the rightfulness of such laws,
and the other that the laws derived their rightful-
ness from the consent; while the denial of every
idea of taxation left the one side free to say, in a
particular case, that taxation was not the idea, but
only an incident of the law; and the other to argue
76 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
that where taxation resulted it must have been in
tended.
This resolution has an especial significance in two
particulars first, it declares that the colonies could
not be properly represented in the British parlia
ment; and second, it expresses a consent to the gen
eral regulations of commerce by the parliament,
provided every idea of revenue was excluded. The
last was a compromise view a concession in the
interests of peace; but the binding force of parlia
mentary navigation acts was distinctly put upon the
consent of the colonies.
In a declaration by the congress of 1775 justify
ing resistance after enumerating some of the colo
nial grievances it is said: "But why should we
enumerate our injuries in detail? By one statute
it is declared that parliament can 'of right make
laws to bind us in all cases whatsoever/ What is
to defend us against so enormous, so unlimited a
power? Not a single man, of those who assume it,
is chosen by us; or is subject to our control or in
fluence; but on the contrary, they are all of them
exempt from the operation of such laws, and an
American revenue, if not diverted from the ostensi
ble purposes for which it is raised, would actually
lighten their own burdens in proportion as they in
crease ours."
The colonists would not be bound by acts of par
liament because they were not represented there; but
AMERICAN COLONIES AND GREAT BRITAIN 77
would they have accepted representation in parlia
ment as a basis of settlement? I think not. The
letter of appointment and instruction from the as
sembly of Massachusetts to the delegates of the col
ony to the congress of 1765, which assembled in
New York, contained these paragraphs: "If it
should be said that we are in any manner repre
sented in parliament you must by no means concede
to it; it is an opinion which this house can not see
the least reason to adopt. Further, the house think
that such a representation of the colonies as British
subjects are to enjoy, would be attended with the
greatest difficulty, if it is not absolutely impracti
cable, and therefore, you are not to urge or consent
to any proposal for any representation, if such be
made in the congress."
In speaking of the English opposition to the sug
gestion that the difficulties between the mother coun
try and the colonies might be obviated by admit
ting representatives of the colonies in parliament,
Doctor Franklin said: "But the pride of this peo
ple can not bear the thought of it, and therefore it
will be delayed. Every man in England seems to
consider himself as a piece of a sovereign over Amer
ica, seems to jostle himself into the throne with the
king and talk of 'our subjects in the colonies.' '
They would not be taxed by parliament, because
they were not represented in parliament, and they
did not seek representation in parliament because it
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could not in the nature of things be adequate. It
would have been delusive no better practically than
the then prevailing system of maintaining colonial
agents in London. The colonial members in the
house of commons could not defeat, and their pres
ence there could only give sanction to hostile legisla
tion. Taxes might have been voted without the
consent of a single representative of the communi
ties from which the levies were to be raised, and
by the votes of those whose burdens would have
been lightened by the legislation. The grants would
still have been by the people of Great Britain of
the property of the colonists. The argument of
the colonists stated in full was: We can not law
fully be taxed by a body in which we have no repre
sentation. We are not represented in the English
parliament; therefore we can not be taxed by par
liament. We can not in the nature of things have
any real representation in the parliament therefore
we will be taxed only by our colonial assemblies.
Our forefathers were wise, but very practical men;
not mere casuists or philosophers. They saw that
an admission of the power of the parliament to tax
them involved the destruction of their liberties and
the confiscation of their property and with an alert
ness and courage that was admirable they resisted.
They would not admit the tip of the camel's nose
inside the tent. They maintained with much learn
ing, and with convincing force, that the parliament
AMERICAN COLONIES AND GREAT BRITAIN 79
could not do this or that and this or that in
cluded pretty much every act that affected them in
juriously; but they made no schedule of the things
parliament might do. They at once boldly joined
issue with the parliamentary declaration that it was
authorized "to bind the colonies and people of Amer
ica in all cases whatsoever." Possibly there were
cases in which parliament might legislate for them
in an indirect way; but they would not attempt
general definitions; they would deal only with par
ticulars with the concrete and not with the ab
stract they would see the proposed statute and ad
mit or exclude it. Just what the powers of parlia
ment over the colonies were was a hard question,
and is still a hard question for the student of con
stitutional history. ' There seems to have been no
safe middle ground found between the admission
of full powers on the one hand, and a total denial
of any on the other. Satisfactory English prece
dents were wanting. That taxes were grants to be
freely voted by those who were to pay them,
through their representatives, was an established
principle. But how far general laws, such as laws
regulating navigation and other general interests of
the whole kingdom, might be made for the colo
nies by the parliament in which they were not rep
resented was not clear. It turned upon the ques
tion, how far the principle that all laws derive their
sanction from the consent of the governed, was a
8O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
part of the English constitution, and upon the fur
ther question, whether the right of Englishmen to
have a voice in the making of the laws that were to
govern them was possessed by the colonists.
Mr. Story says: "In respect to the political re
lations of the colonies with the parent country, it
is not easy to state the exact limits of the depen
dency which was admitted, and the extent of sov
ereignty which might be lawfully exercised over
them, either by the crown or by parliament."
Of the authority of parliament, he says: "In re
gard to the authority of parliament to enact laws
which should be binding upon them, there was quite
as much obscurity and still more jealousy spreading
over the whole subject. * * * No acts of par
liament, however, were understood to bind the colo
nies unless expressly named therein.
"But it was by, no means an uncommon opinion
in some of the colonies, especially in the proprie
tary and charter governments, that no act of parlia
ment whatsoever could bind them without their own
consent."
Mr. Story says that after the passage of the stamp
act the subject was re-examined in the colonies,
especially in connection with the declaration by par
liament of an absolute power of legislation; and
that many of the leading minds "passed by an easy
transition to a denial, first, of the power of tax-
AMERICAN COLONIES AND GREAT BRITAIN 8 1
ation, and next, of all authority whatever to bind
them by its laws."
He quotes James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, as
saying that he entered upon the inquiry "with a
view and expectation of being able to trace some
constitutional line between those cases in which we
ought and those in which we ought not to acknowl
edge the power of parliament over us" ; but that in
the prosecution of his inquiries he became convinced
that such a line did not exist and that there could
be "no medium between acknowledging and deny
ing that power in all cases."
When Governor Hutchinson, in 1773, said in an
address to the general court of Massachusetts that
he "knew of no line that should be drawn between
the supreme authority of parliament and the total
independence of the colony," it was answered by
the general court that parliament was not supreme
and that "the drawing the line between the supreme
authority of parliament and total independence was
a profound question and not to be proposed without
their consent in a general congress."
The governor undertook and with some success
to point out the many illustrations in the legisla
tion of the colony of the recognition of the validity
and force of acts of parliament. Among these he
mentions the settlement of the crown upon William
and Mary by an act of parliament, and the accom-
82 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
panying act of parliament by which oaths of alle
giance to King James were discharged and pro
vision made for oaths to King William and Queen
Mary.
The assembly, replying to this address of the gov
ernor, argued that the words of limitation in the
charter, upon the legislative power of the colonies
namely, that the laws made should not be re
pugnant to the laws of England had relation to
the great charter and other laws of England by
which the lives, the liberties, and property of En
glishmen were secured, and not to the general legis
lation of parliament. The right to be represented
in the legislative body was asserted as a fundament
al principle of the English constitution, and one
that the parliament could not impair or disregard.
The particular instances cited by the governor of
submission by the colony to particular acts of par
liament they met by the declaration that the acces
sion of William and Mary, while not proclaimed by
an act of the colony, was based upon the universal
consent of the people. They declared that "a purely
voluntary submission to an act, because it is highly
in our favor and for our benefit, is in all equity
and justice to be deemed as not at all proceeding
from the right we include in the legislators, that
thereby obtain an authority over us, and that ever
hereafter we must obey them of duty." That while
"they may have submitted, sub silentio, to some
AMERICAN COLONIES AND GREAT BRITAIN 83
acts of parliament, that they conceived might oper
ate for their benefit, they did not conceive them
selves bound by any of its acts which, they judged,
would operate to the injury even of individuals."
Concluding, they said: "We think your excellency
has not proved, either that the colony is a part of
the politic society of England, or that it has ever
consented that the parliament of England or Great
Britain, should make laws binding upon us, in all
cases, whether made expressly to refer to us or not."
In the notes of Mr. Jefferson on the debate upon
the adoption of the declaration of independence he
represents John Adams, Lee, and others who favored
the adoption, to have held this view of the powers
of parliament: "That, as to the people or parlia
ment of England we had always been independent
of them, their restraints on our trade deriving effect
from our acquiescence only and not from any rights
they had of imposing them, and that so far our
connection had been federal only and was now dis
solved by the commencement of hostilities." The
declaration itself makes no direct reference to par
liament, but, in the schedule of the unlawful acts
of the king, refers to the parliament in these terms :
"He has combined with others to subject us to a
jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unac
knowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their
acts of pretended legislation.
It would seem that, if any power to legislate for
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the colonies was possessed by parliament, it would
include the power to establish a system of import
duties, common to them all for this was a subject
that colonial legislation could not adequately deal
with ; and yet the tea tax was generally resisted in the
colonies as an invasion of their liberties.
Mr. Curtis, in his work on the Constitutional His
tory of the United States, speaking of the colonial
congress of 1774, says: "The second question re
lated to the authority which they should allow to
be in parliament; whether they should deny it wholly
or deny it only as to internal affairs; admitting it
as to external trade; and if the latter, to what ex
tent and with what restriction. It was soon felt
that this question of the authority of parliament was
the essence of the whole controversy. Some denied
it altogether. Others denied it as to every species
of taxation; while others admitted it to extend to
the regulation of external trade, but denied it as to
all internal affairs." He adds that in view of the
fact that the right of regulating the trade of the
whole country could not be well exercised by the
separate colonies the alternative was either to set
up an American legislature that could regulate such
trade or to give the power to parliament.
The congress, he says, determined to do the lat
ter, thinking that they could limit the admission by
denying that the power extended to taxation and ad
mitting it only so far as was necessary to regulate the
AMERICAN COLONIES AND GREAT BRITAIN 85
external trade of the colony for the common benefit
of the whole empire. "They grounded this conces
sion," he says, " 'upon the necessities of the case'
and 'upon the mutual interests of both countries' '
meaning by this expression to assert that all legis
lative control over the external and internal trade
of the colonies belonged of right to the colonies
themselves.
It is difficult to conceive of any theory of the re
lation of the colonies to the mother country that
will support the pretentions and resistance of the
colonies throughout, except that which denies in toto
the power of the parliament to legislate for the col
onies. If the relation was as described in the de
bate upon the declaration of independence, from
which I have quoted, and by Franklin a federal
one like that of England and Scotland before the
union then the British parliament had no authority
to legislate for the colonies. Yet it is certain that
many acts of parliament not involving taxation or
revenues were recognized in the colonies as an il
lustration, the act of 1766 forbidding the issue of
legal tender paper by the colonies.
In an essay by a Virginian, published in London
in 1701, the uncertainty of the law in the colonial
age is thus described: "It is a great unhappiness
that no one can tell what is law and what is not in
the plantations. Some hold that the law of England
is chiefly to be respected, and, where that is de-
86 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
ficient, the laws of the several colonies are to take
place; others are of opinion that the laws of the col
onies are to take the first place, and that the law
of England is of force only where they are silent;
others there are who contend for the laws of the
colonies, in conjunction with those that were in
force in England at the first settlement of the colo
nies, and lay down that as the measure of our obe
dience, alleging that we are not bound to observe
any late acts of parliament in England except such
only where the reason of the law is the same here
that it is in England. But, this leaving too great
a latitude to the judge, some others hold that no
late act of the parliament of England do bind the
plantations, but those only wherein the plantations
are particularly named. Thus are we left in the
dark in one of the most considerable points of our
rights; and, the case being so doubtful, we are too
often obliged to depend upon the crooked cord of
a judge's discretion in matters of the greatest mo
ment and value."
Perhaps the following is a fair summary of the
colonial view, just prior to the revolution, as to
the force of English statute law in the colonies :
First, the general statutes enacted before the insti
tution of any government in the respective colonies
were of continued obligation there, so far as they
were applicable. This upon the principle that such
laws were enacted by parliaments in which the col-
AMERICAN COLONIES AND GREAT BRITAIN 87
onists, being then residents of England, were rep
resented.
Second, that no later act of parliament had any
inherent validity in the colonies; but that the su
preme legislative power was vested in the colonial
legislature.
Certainly this is the view of the declaration of
independence. The debate that preceded the formu
lation and general adoption of this view was long
and heated. Particular acts of parliament were im
peached on narrow grounds; but there was no hold
ing ground short of the full denial of the power of
parliament to legislate for the colonies. The par
liament was not a representative body as to the colo
nies; and a system which recognized the right of
parliament to legislate for the colonies was not a
representative system of government. A just colo
nial system that should preserve by suitable limita
tions the imperial and general powers of parliament
and reconcile them with free institutions in the col
onies was not possible to that generation of English
men; and a system of parliamentary government
without representation and without agreed limita
tions was impossible to that generation of Ameri
cans.
It will be noticed that very many of the griev
ances, catalogued in the declaration of independence,
do not involve questions affecting the constitutional
or charter rights of the colonies, but rather bad and
88 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
vindictive administration, and so a violation of nat
ural rights. The English government in the colo
nies, as administered, subverted the true purposes
of government, namely, to secure to the people the
enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi
ness. It was not unlawful for the king to refuse
his assent to laws, or to prorogue an assembly, or
perhaps to fix another than the usual place for its
assembling. But when these things were done, not
in the exercise of a just discretion, but vexatiously
to deprive the people of their rights or to coerce
them into a surrender of them to punish them for
things lawfully done the executive power was
abused. This power was not to be directed by whim
or malice; but like all other forms of government,
for the public welfare. Protection was the condi
tion of allegiance; when the existing government did
not protect, the natural right became the supreme
law. The resistance made by the colonies to the
stamp tax, the tea tax, and other assertions of the
powers of parliament, naturally brought on a con
flict with the king and his governors, and this con
flict marched in the familiar and inevitable lines
edict and proclamation, thundered against the town
meeting and the assembly. The solitary and power
less civil governor was reinforced by ships and sol
diers, and the town meeting became a training
band it only remained that these should meet and
war was flagrant.
AMERICAN COLONIES AND GREAT BRITAIN 89
But there were some other constitutional rights
that were invaded. The right to transport persons
accused of crime to England for trial was asserted
by the crown. The English cabinet issued orders
directing Governor Barnard, of Massachusetts, to
prosecute an inquiry into the conduct of some of
the popular leaders in Massachusetts with a view to
transporting them to be tried for their lives, under
the pretended authority of a statute of Henry VIII.
In 1772 royal instructions were issued to the gov
ernor of Rhode Island to organize a commission to
inquire into the facts connected with the burning of
the royal schooner "Gaspee." The governor was di
rected by the commission to arrest the parties and
to send them with the witnesses upon a naval ves
sel to England for trial. The colonial assembly,
upon the appeal of the governor and Chief Justice
Hopkins, referred the matter to the discretion of
the chief justice, who declared that he would not
give an order to arrest any person for transporta
tion to England for trial. The commission, in its
report, condemned the conduct of the commander of
the "Gaspee," and after much passion had been ex
cited by this high-handed invasion of the right of
trial, the- matter was dropped. The result of these
attempts was widespread excitement and indignation
in the colonies; The Virginia house of burgesses,
on the sixteenth of May, 1769, passed a resolution de
claring that "all trials for treason, misprision of
QO VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
treason, or for any felony or crime whatsoever, com
mitted and done in his majesty's said colony and
dominion, by any person or persons residing therein,
ought of right to be had and conducted in and be
fore his majesty's courts, held within his said col
ony, according to the fixed and known course of
proceeding," and that the "sending such person or
persons to places beyond the sea t be tried is highly
derogatory of the rights of British subjects, as
thereby the inestimable privilege of being tried by a
jury from the vicinage, as well as the liberty of
summoning and producing witnesses on such trial,
will be taken away from the party accused. "
In 1770 the privy council inaugurated a series of
royal instructions which ruthlessly disregarded not
only the usages of the colonies but directly set at
naught the provisions of the colonial charters. They
proceeded upon the theory that these royal instruc
tions had the force of law and practically asserted
an unlimited and arbitrary power in the crown.
In 1772 Governor Hutchinson, of Massachusetts,
under instructions from the crown, refused to re
ceive his salary from the legislature, and the judges'
salaries were also ordered to be paid out of the
crown treasury. This was regarded as making these
officers dependents of the crown and freeing them
from that restraint which the power to vote their
salaries in the general court imposed. This "in
definite, imperious and mysterious," as Mr. Frothing-
AMERICAN COLONIES AND GREAT BRITAIN gi
ham calls it, assertion of the royal prerogative seemed
to put every right in jeopardy.
The passage of laws vesting the nomination of
the council in Massachusetts in the crown, investing
the governor with the power to appoint and remove
judges of the inferior courts and other minor officers,
and the governor and council with power to ap
point sheriffs who were to select the juries, forbid
ding town meetings except for the choice of officers,
without the permission of the governor, and pro
viding for the transportation of offenders and wit
nesses to other colonies or to England for trial, was
a complete and undeniable expression of the pur
pose of the English government to overthrow not
only local government, but liberty, in the colonies.
It was said, even in the house of lords, that
these acts invested "the governor and council with
powers with which the British constitution had not
trusted his majesty and his privy council'*; and
that "the lives, liberties and properties of the sub
ject were put into their hands without control."
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT UNION AND THE
UNION DE FACTO
FOURTH LECTURE
DeliTered at Stanford University, April .2, 1894
I desire to call your attention first to some of
the efforts that were made to effect a union of the
English colonies in America, upon the basis of a
continued allegiance to the British crown.
The first American confederation was of certain
of the New England colonies, and took form in
1643. At that time New York, a Dutch province,
intervened between New England and the middle
and southern English colonies, while Canada, a
French possession on the north, was a special
menace to New England. Serious disputes as to
settlements and boundaries had arisen with the
Dutch; and the purpose of the French to restrict,
if not to subdue, the English colonies, was not con
cealed. The Indians, especially the Narragansetts, a
near and strong tribe, had become unfriendly and
were threatening the settlements. The dangers were
92
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT UNION Q3
common and imminent, and the conditions out of
which they grew lasting. Not one campaign, but
many; not the foreseen, but the unforeseen also,
must be provided for. England was wasted by civil
-war; and the king was thinking of his crown, not
of his provinces. His military resources were over
taxed in the defense of his prerogative at home and
of his life. Neither English money nor English
troops, neither English direction nor leadership was
available to the New England colonies. The feder
ation was as natural and reasonable as a block house
in a frontier village. The articles of union were
subscribed by the representatives of Massachusetts,
New Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven.
Rhode Island, with Connecticut and New Haven,
had three years before united in a joint letter to the
general court of Massachusetts, suggesting a con
federation; but poor little Rhode Island, upon the
spiteful objection of Massachusetts, was not allowed
to enter the confederation that was formed. These
articles of union are of great interest; but we have
time to notice only a few of their most important
provisions. A common name was assumed: "The
United Colonies of New England." The things that
are not said in these articles are quite as noticeable
as the things that are said. No reference whatever
is made to the crown, save by this recital in the
preamble :
"And seeing by these sad distractions in England,
94 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
which they have heard of, and by which they know
we are hindered from that humble way of seeking"
advice or reaping those comfortable fruits of pro
tection which at other times we might well expect."
Neither the taking effect of the articles nor the
continuance of the confederation is made depend
ent upon the consent of the king. The confedera
tion was not limited to the exigency described in
the preamble, but was expressly declared to be per
petual. It was "for mutual help and strength in all
our future concernments." The league was described
as "a firm and perpetual" one; and, in the twelfth
and last article, it is called "this perpetual confeder
ation." It was instituted for "offense and defense,
mutual advice and succor, upon all just occasions;
both for preserving and propagating the truth and
liberties of the gospel, and for their own mutual
safety and welfare." If any one of the colonies
should be invaded "by any enemy whomsoever" the
other members of the confederation were required
forthwith to send aid to the "confederate in dan
ger." The expenses of the confederation were ap
portioned. Its affairs were to be managed by two
commissioners from each colony, who were to bring
from their respective general courts full power "to
hear, examine, weigh and determine all affairs of
our war or peace, leagues, aids, charges and num
bers of men for war, division and spoils and what
soever is gotten by conquest, receiving of more
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT UNION 95
confederates for plantations into combination with
any of the confederates, and all things of like na
ture which are the proper concomitants of conse
quence of such a confederation, for amity, offense
and defense." There was to be no intermeddling
with the government of any of the jurisdictions,
which by the third article is preserved entirely to
themselves. Six of the eight commissioners were
empowered to determine any matter presented; but
if six did not agree, then the matter was to be re
ferred to the general courts of the confederated col
onies. The commissioners were to meet once every
year; provision was made for extraordinary sessions
and the places of meeting designated. No colony
was allowed to declare or undertake a war, except
upon sudden exigency, without the consent of the
commissioners or of six of them.
But the purposes of the confederation were not,
as I have said, limited by the occasion which sug
gested it, viz., the unfriendly and hostile attitude of
their neighbors. The commission was required by
the eighth article "to frame and establish agree
ments and orders in general cases of a civil nature
wherein all the plantations are interested for pre
serving peace among themselves and preventing as
much as may be all occasions of war or difference
with others, as about the free and speedy passage
of justice in every jurisdiction, to all the confeder
ates equally as their own, receiving those that re-
96 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
move from one plantation to another without due
certificates." Provision was also made for the ren
dition of servants and of prisoners fleeing from
one jurisdiction into another. The annexation, by
royal decree, of New Haven to Connecticut extin
guished one of the parties to this compact of gov
ernment; but the agreement was revised and con
tinued as a league of three colonies, with occasional
meetings of the commissioners, until 1684, when the
charter of Massachusetts was annulled. The united
colonies, through the commissioners, exercised the
sovereign power of war and peace, conducted ne
gotiations with the Indians, the French and the
Dutch, adjusted a boundary dispute between New
Haven and New Netherland, and exercised the
highest powers of government; and by this early
experiment confirmed the opinion of the necessity
and usefulness of a union of the colonies. The
powers of the commissioners under this confedera
tion were quite similar to the powers of the con
gress under the later confederation of the thirteen
colonies. Both were leagues of friendship insti
tuted for the general welfare and defense. The
provision that no colony should engage in war, with
out the consent of the others, except upon an exi
gency, was quite like the article of the later con
federation upon the same subject. The New En
gland league has a suggestion also of the provision
of the federal constitution that the citizens of each
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT UNION: 97
state shall be entitled to all the privileges and im
munities of the citizens of the several states, and
of the provisions for the rendition of criminals and
fugitives from labor. The provision that no mem
bers should be admitted to the confederation, nor
any other plantation be received by any of the
united colonies, nor any two of the colonies united
in one jurisdiction without the consent of the rest,
is quite suggestive of section 3 of article IV of the
constitution, which provides that new states may be
admitted by congress, but that no new states shall
be formed within the jurisdiction of any other
state nor by the conjunction of two states or parts
of states without the consent of congress. An equal
voice was given to the colonies, in the joint meet
ings, though they differed so widely in population
and wealth, Massachusetts having fifteen thousand
out of an aggregate population of twenty-four thou
sand. This plan of representation was followed in
the congress of 1774, passed into the articles of con
federation and continued to be used until the adop
tion of the national constitution. The contest that
afterward became so threatening between the larger
and the smaller colonies had its earliest mani
festation in this earliest confederation. The efforts
of Massachusetts to exert more than the prescribed
influence in the New England confederation was
sharply resented by the smaller colonies.
The confederacy was not unnaturally, and in
98 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
spite of the loyal protestations of the colonial au
thorities regarded by the crown as a movement
full of danger to the royal authority. The commis
sioners of Charles II arraigned the confederation as
illegal, holding that there was no right conferred
upon any of the colonies by charter "to incorpo
rate with the other colonies, nor to exercise any
power by that association"; both of these powers be
longing to the king's prerogative. The answer of
the Massachusetts general court declared that this
charge was "contrary to the light of reason that al
lows all whose journey's end is the same and whose
way lies together to combine for their mutual help
in all things common and just, without the least
suspicion of taking upon them any usurped au
thority."
Mr. Frothingham says of this confederation:
"The powers reserved to each jurisdiction proved
impracticable, and the provisions to promote the
common welfare were crude. Notwithstanding
these vital defects, the service which the confed
eracy rendered was never forgotten: It was re
ferred to in every period of the colonial age; and
in seasons of peril there was a call for its revival.
The embodiment of the idea of union was imper
fect; but the principle of the equality of distinct
jurisdictions, the inviolability of their local govern
ments, and the aim of providing one system of law,
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT UNION 99
securing to the people of all the colonies their
rights, became fundamentals of a republican polity."
It is probable at least that is the view most gen
erally taken by the historians that in forming this
union no thought of independency or of a separa
tion from the English crown was in the minds of
its promoters. The suggestions they followed were,
as I have said, the natural outgrowth of conditions;
and that these conditions were pregnant of further
suggestions of a larger union and of separation from
the crown was yet to be unfolded. Yet it is true,
as was said by John Quincy Adams, in his dis
course on the New England confederacy, delivered
in 1843, that the confederation was "the exercise of
sovereign power in its highest attributes." There
was no declaration against the king in the articles,
but he was wholly left out of them.
Upon the accession of Charles II to the throne,
the advantage of a union of the English colonies
in America from a royal standpoint was recog
nized. The hostile environment of the colonies
menaced England through them. A union of forces
and of resources was needed by the colonists for
the protection of their lives and property ; by the
king for the defense of his dominions. The advan
tage of taking the direction of the movement was
apparent; and, in 1660, Charles organized a com
mission for the purpose of bringing the scattered
colonies into a "more certain civil and uniform gov-
IOO VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
ernment." James II, pursuing the same line, planned
to unite the colonists between the Delaware *and the
St. Lawrence under one royal governor and a sin
gle legislative council to be appointed by the king,
but was deposed before the plan was executed: These
incidents and others of a later date of the same char
acter are worthy of note as admissions by the crown
of the advantage of a union of the colonies under
one resident executive and one council or congress.
This sentiment was expressed in 1696 by the lords
of trade and plantations thus: "We humbly con
ceive that the strength of the English there [in
America] can not be made use of with that advan
tage it ought for the preservation of those colonies,
unless they be united."
In 1677 a joint conference was held at Albany
by Virginia, Maryland and New York with the
Seneca Indians; and in 1684 another congress, in
which Massachusetts participated with the colonies
named, was held at the same place with the Five
Nations of Indians. In 1690 the general court of
Massachusetts, moved by the massacre at Schenec-
tady, invited "New York, Virginia and Maryland,
and parts adjacent" to meet the New England
colonies in a conference to organize the common de
fense. Only Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut
and New York were represented in the conference
which was held in New York. Plans of defense
were discussed covering the northern frontier, and
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT UNION IOI
an organization of the military forces, to be contrib
uted by each, was agreed upon. Mr. Bancroft and
other historians characterize this assemblage as the
first American congress.
About the same time William Penn appeared be
fore the lords of trade and plantations with a sug
gestion of a plan of union of the colonies which
was afterward presented by him in writing, and
embraced the following provisions: First, that the
several colonies, by appointed deputies, should
meet once a year in time of war and once in two
years in time of peace, to debate and resolve meas
ures for their "better understanding and the public
tranquillity and safety," and particularly to adjust
matters of difference between province and province
relating to debtors or fugitives from justice fleeing
one province to the other, disputes as to commerce
and matters relating to the defense of the provinces
against public enemies; that this conference or con
gress should be presided over by the king's com
missioner, and that in time of war, the king's high
commissioner should be commander-in-chief of the
forces organized for defense.
A memorial by the general court of Massachu
setts to the king, in 1696, proposed that the royal
governor of Massachusetts should also be the civil
governor of New York and New Hampshire, and
general of all the forces of Massachusetts, New
York, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island
IO2 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
and the Jerseys. This project was naturally resist
ed by the agents of Connecticut, New Hampshire
and New York. But a distinguished writer says:
"This line of recommendation had so much weight
with the lords of trade, and harmonized so com
pletely with their views and designs that a remod
eling of the internal affairs of the colonies and
unity became at length the corner-stone of their
policy."
In reporting upon the matters submitted the lords
of trade said: "We now humbly crave leave to add
that the distinct proprieties, charters and different
forms of government in several of those neighboring
colonies, make all other union except under such a
military head (in our opinion) at present impracti
cable."
The recommendation submitted was that the king
should appoint a suitable person to be governor of
the provinces of New York, Massachusetts Bay and
New Hampshire and that he should be also captain
general of all the king's forces in the colonies
named, as also in Connecticut, Rhode Island and
the Jerseys, the chief residence of the governor to
be at New York. The report concluded as fol
lows: "And, in the last place, we are also humbly
of the opinion that the general assemblies of all
those neighboring colonies, by the prudent conduct
of such a captain general, may be made to under
stand their own true interests and thereby induced
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT UNION 103
to enact such laws in their respective governments
as shall be necessary to enable the said captain gen
eral to execute your majesty's commissions so as
shall be most for your majesty's service, their own
defense and general advantage."
Lord Bellomont was accordingly commissioned
captain general over the provinces of Massachu
setts, New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York.
Many plans of union were, during these protract
ed discussions, propounded in pamphlet and me
morial; and in the course of the discussion, some
of those elements of division which afterward ap
peared so threateningly in the continental congress
and in the constitutional convention are disclosed
especially that of the basis of representation in any
general congress or council, and a jealousy as to
the place of its assemblage.
The lords of trade in 1721, in a report to the
king on colonial affairs, adopted the suggestion
that all of the provinces from Nova Scotia to South
Carolina should be put under the government of
"one lord lieutenant or captain general from whom
all other governors of particular provinces should
receive their orders in all cases for your majesty's
service, and cease to have any command respectively
in such province where the said captain general
shall at any time reside." The captain general was
to be attended by two or more councilors deputed
by each plantation.
IO4 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
All of these efforts by the crown to effect a con
solidation of the colonies were intended, first, to
make a more effective use of the military resources
of the colonies against the king's enemies, and sec
ond, to curb, by the institution of a stronger royal
government, the increasing demands of the colo
nists for a fuller control of their own affairs or,
as a writer of the time expressed it, to "prevent
them from setting up for an independency of gov
ernment, to the unspeakable loss and detriment of
the kingdom." But the colonists were all the while,
and very naturally, looking at this question from an
American standpoint. And, running through this
whole period, conferences between the governors or
delegates appointed by the different colonies, to
take into consideration the threatening attitude of the
French and Indians, to confer with friendly tribes,
to arrange the quota of men and supplies of the sev
eral colonies, and other such matters of common in
terest, were frequent. A correspondence, too,
sprang up between the governors and even be
tween the general assemblies, without the concur
rence of the governors in which all these and
other matters of common interest were the subject
of conference.
In September, 1753, the lords of trade directed
the governors of the provinces to appoint commis
sioners with a view of holding a conference and
negotiating a treaty with the Six Nations in order
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT UNION IO5
to prevent them from aiding the French. This has
been described as the "second call for an Ameri
can congress, based upon the principle of represen
tation." The congress convened at Albany in June,
1754, and was composed of commissioners from
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode
Island, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New York.
Benjamin Franklin was a member. One of the ob
jects of the congress, as stated in the call, was to
determine whether the colonists would "enter into
articles of union and federation with each other for
the mutual defense of his majesty's subjects and in
terests in North America as well in times of peace
and war." It was resolved unanimously that a
union of the colonies was necessary, and a commit
tee was appointed to examine the plans of union of
fered and to report a plan. Of this committee
Franklin was a member. A plan prepared by him
was submitted, and the congress directed that copies
of it should be sent to the respective colonies, to
those not represented as well as to those present by
delegates, for such suggestions as might be made;
the purpose being afterward to submit the plan to
parliament for enactment into law. Franklin had,
previous to the meeting of the congress, prepared
what he called short hints toward a scheme for
uniting the northern colonies. The device append
ed was a serpent separated into parts, each part rep
resenting a colony and over it the motto, "Join or
IO6 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
Die." These hints were the basis of the plan sub
mitted by him to the congress. This scheme of
government is especially worthy of attention; first,
by reason of its distinguished authorship; and sec
ond, by reason of some special provisions of it
which, after long resistance, found effective expres
sion in the constitution of 1787. It will be remem
bered that Franklin, in his old age, was a member
of the convention of 1787 also.
The plan contemplated, as I have said, an act of
parliament to give it effect and was intended to or
ganize one general government which should in
clude all the colonies; "within and under which
government each colony (as it was expressed) may
retain its present constitution, except in the partic
ulars wherein a change may be directed by the said
act." The scheme was briefly this: A president
general was to be appointed and paid by the crown;
and a grand .council was to be chosen by the rep
resentatives of the people of the colonies in their
respective assemblies. This council was to consist
of forty-eight members. The representation of the
several colonies was not, as in the New England con
federation, and afterward in the revolutionary con
gresses and in the articles of confederation, equal;
but a specific apportionment was made which gave
to Massachusetts Bay and Virginia seven mem
bers, to Connecticut and New Hampshire two each,
and to the other colonies numbers in proportion to
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT UNION 1 07
their importance. Twenty-five members were to
constitute a quorum, provided there were among
them one or more representatives from a majority
of the colonies. A new election was provided for
at the end of three years, when the apportionment
of the members was to be upon the basis of the
money contributions of the respective colonies to the
general treasury; no colony, however, to have more
than seven or less than two representatives. All
acts of the general council were made subject to the
assent of the president general; and, in the discus
sions upon the plan, this provision was construed
to require the assent of the president to the selec
tion of a speaker of the council. The council was
to meet once every year, and could not be dissolved,
nor prorogued; nor continued in session longer than
six weeks at one time, without their own consent
or the special direction of the crown. The powers
of this general government were: To make all In
dian treaties affecting the general interest; to make
peace or declare war with the Indian tribes; to make
such laws as were necessary for regulating Indian
trade; to make all purchases from the Indians of
lands not within the bounds of particular colonies;
to make new settlements upon such purchases, by
granting lands in the king's name; and to make
laws for governing such new settlements till they
should be formed into particular governments; to
raise and pay soldiers, build forts and equip vessels;
IO8 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
to guard the coast and protect trade. It was de
clared that for these purposes "they have power to
make laws and lay and levy such general duties, im
post or taxes as to them shall appear most equal
and just, considering the ability and other circum
stances of the inhabitants in the several colonies."
A general treasurer and a particular treasurer for
each colony were to be selected by the president and
general council to receive the taxes levied. The
joint order of the president and council was made
necessary to the expenditure of money. All military
officers were to be nominated by the president gen
eral and confirmed by the grand council before they
were commissioned; and all civil officers were to be
nominated by the grand council and to be approved
by the president general before they entered upon
their offices.
Unlike the New England confederation and the
confederation of the revolution this plan did not
propose a league or confederation; but instituted a
general government that acted, not upon constituent
states, but directly upon the people of all the colonies.
The laws made by the president and council, with
in the powers committed to them, were the su
preme laws of the land. The revenues for support
ing the general government proposed were to be
levied and collected by it and taken into its own
treasury. In all matters not expressly confided to
the general government the separate autonomy and
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT UNION IOQ
administration of each colony were preserved. In a
word we have here the principle which, after years
of heated discussions and threatening divisions, was
finally adopted in our national constitution. The
proposition was premature; but it was a seed that
was to have glorious fruitage. It was a rejected
stone that was yet to become the chief corner
stone.
Power is never graciously surrendered and the
colonies did not surrender to the general govern
ment powers which they had long exercised until
they had been brought, under the Providence of
God, to the inexorable contingency of the loss of
all the powers of free government or the surrender
of such part thereof to the general government as
was necessary to the establishment and equipment
of a nation. Writing after the adoption of the
constitution, of this Albany plan, Franklin says:
"On reflection it now seems probable, that, if the
foregoing plan, or something like it, had been
adopted and carried into execution, the subsequent
separation of the colonies from the mother coun
try might not so soon have happened, nor the
mischief suffered on both sides have occurred, per
haps, during another century." How far the
thought of Franklin was, in some respects, in ad
vance of that of his contemporaries is shown by
the fact that the Albany plan, when submitted to
the several colonies, did not secure the approval
IIO VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
of a single one. The objections to it were vari
ous, and some of them were good. The power of
parliament, impliedly recognized in the very open
ing paragraph, to make changes in the present
constitutions of the colonies would lay them open
to an unrestricted invasion of their liberties. The
absolute negative of the president general upon all
acts of the council gave too much power to the
king's agent; but, after all, the most potent in
fluence in the firm and unanimous rejection of this
scheme is to be found in the unwillingness of the
colonies to admit of any general government that
should act directly upon the citizen. The fact
that, when threatened by armies and fleets, they
would only give to the confederation advisory
powers shows how tenaciously the colonies held
on to all taxing power. At the root of this ob
jection lay that dominant principle of English and
American civil life the love of local control. The
idea of subjecting the citizen or his property to
the direct control of any power outside of the
colony was repugnant to the people.
Franklin, speaking further of the plan, in the
same note from which I have just quoted, says:
"The crown disapproved it as having too much
weight in the democratic part of the constitu
tion; and every assembly as having allowed too
much to prerogative; so it was totally rejected."
Of this plan, Mr. Bancroft says: "This plan,.
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT UNION III
which foreshadowed the present constitution of the
Dominion of Canada and the federation which
with hope and applause was lately offered by rival
ministries to South Africa, was at that day re
jected by the British government with abhorrence
and disdain."
The failure of all these efforts to organize a
union of the colonies under the crown might have
been easily predicted. The plans were bottomed
upon an act of parliament, which involved a broad
admission of the power of parliament to legislate
for the colonies, and left the organic act open to
amendment by the same authority. From this time
forward the efforts for a union of the colonies
were to find their suggestion, not in the fear of the
French or of the Indian, but of England the moth
er country and to have for their object a re
dress of civil injuries involving the liberties of all
the colonies.
The efforts of the crown were now naturally to
divide, not to unite, the colonies. The conquest of
Canada had destroyed the English interest in the
increase of the military strength of the American
colonies to repress and diminish it was henceforth
the English policyr But as the interest in a union
of the colonies waned in England it increased in
America.
The stamp act, and the accompanying declara
tory resolves affirming the power of parliament to tax
112 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
the colonies resulted in a congress which assembled
in the city hall in New York on October 7, 1765. The
movement for this congress had its origin in Massa
chusetts. In May, 1764, a meeting was assembled
in Boston to instruct the delegates of that, town to
the general court, to remonstrate against the powers
assumed and declared by parliament. The resolu
tions concluded with these words: "As his majesty's
other northern American colonies are embarked with
us in this most important bottom, we further desire
you to use your endeavors, that their weight may be
added to that of this province; that, as by the united
application of all who are aggrieved, all may hap
pily obtain redress."
A committee of the general court was appointed
to correspond with the other colonies and to request
their co-operation in such measures as might be
necessary to present effectively the opposition to the
stamp act. The other colonies generally acted, but
separately, in presenting their remonstrances to the
crown; but, in spite of these, the stamp act received
the royal assent March 22, 1765.
On the eighth of June following, the legislature of
Massachusetts issued a circular proposing a meeting
of committees from the houses of representatives
"or burgesses of the several British colonies on this
continent, to consult together on the present circum
stances of the colonies, and the difficulties to which
they are and must be reduced by the operation of
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT UNION 113
the acts of parliament for levying duties and taxes
on the colonies." It proposed that the meeting
should be held in New York on the first Tuesday
in October, and invited the appointment of delegates
by the other colonies.
The congress assembled in October and was com
posed of twenty-eight delegates, nine colonies being
represented. The other four, however, sympathized
with the movement, though they did not choose rep
resentatives. The colonies represented were Massa
chusetts, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode
Island, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New
Jersey and New York. The congress agreed, after
being in session eleven days, upon a declaration con
sisting of a preamble and fourteen resolutions, and
prepared an address to the king, a memorial to the
house of lords, and a petition to the house of com
mons. They denied the power of parliament to tax
the colonies without their consent, affirmed that rep
resentation in the house of commons was not practi
cable, and therefore that taxes could only be imposed
by their own legislatures. These resolutions and
memorials were signed by the representatives of six
of the colonies present; and Connecticut and South
Carolina, which had not authorized their representa
tives to sign, afterward gave their concurrence. The
New York assembly, while approving the repre
sentation of the colony in the congress, sent a sepa
rate petition to the king. This congress did not pro-
114 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
pose or set up any union of the colonies. It was
called for the sole purpose of giving a joint expres
sion of the grievances complained of and a united
remonstrance against them.
The union began with the next continental con
gress that of 1/74, and has had, under the revo
lutionary which was its first form the confeder
acy, and the constitution, continuance and succes
sion to this hour.
The revolutionary government practically began
with the assembling of congress on the fifth day of
September, 1774, at Carpenter's hall, Philadelphia,
and continued until the articles of confederation went
into effect.
Delegates were present from New Hampshire,
Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence
Plantations, Connecticut, from the city and county
of New York, and other counties in the province
of New York, from New Jersey, from Pennsylvania,
from New Castle, Kent and Sussex, in Delaware;
from Maryland, from Virginia, and from South
Carolina.
The powers of this congress are to be gathered
from the credentials or commissions the delegates
brought with them.
The credentials of the New Hampshire delegates
empowered them "to devise, consult, and adopt such
measures as may have the most likely tendency to
extricate the colonies from their present difficulties;
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT UNION
to secure and perpetuate their rights, liberties and
privileges, and to restore that peace, harmony and
mutual confidence which once happily subsisted be
tween the parent country, and her colonies."
The objects were stated in the Massachusetts
credentials as follows : "To consult upon the present
state of the colonies, and the miseries to which they
are and must be reduced, by the operation of certain
acts of parliament respecting America, and to de
liberate and determine upon wise and proper meas
ures, to be by them recommended to all the colonies,
for the recovery and establishment of their just
rights and liberties, civil and religious, and the
restoration of union and harmony between Great
Britain and the colonies, most ardently desired by
all good men."
From Rhode Island the credentials ran as follows :
To join the other colonies "in consulting upon prop
er measures to obtain a repeal of the several acts of
the British parliament, for levying taxes upon his
Majesty's subjects in America, without their con
sent, and particularly an act lately passed for block
ing up the port of Boston, and upon proper meas
ures to establish the rights and liberties of the col
onies, upon a just and solid foundation."
The credentials from Connecticut were broader,
viz. : "to consult and advise with the commissioners
or committees of the several English colonies in
Il6 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
America on proper measures for advancing the best
good of the colonies."
The resolve of Pennsylvania was that "there is an
absolute necessity that a congress of deputies from
the several colonies, be held as soon as conveniently
may be, to consult together upon the present un
happy state of the colonies, and to form and adopt
a plan for the purposes of obtaining redress of
American grievances, ascertaining American rights
upon the most solid and constitutional principles,
and for establishing that union and harmony be
tween Great Britain and the colonies, which is
indispensably necessary to the welfare and happines
of both."
Delaware stated the evils to be remedied with
more particularity; the object stated in the pre
amble of the resolution of appointment being to
take into consideration "the several acts of the
British parliament, for restraining manufactures in
his Majesty's colonies and plantations in North
America, for taking away the property of the
colonists without their participation or consent,
for the introduction of the arbitrary powers of
excise into the customs here, for the making of
all revenue causes triable without jury, and under
the decision of a single dependent judge, for the
trial, in England, of persons accused of capital
crimes, committed in the colonies, for the sliut-
ting up the port of Boston, for the new-model-
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT UNION
ing the government of the Massachusetts Bay;
and the operation of the same on the property, liber
ty and lives of the colonists.
The commission of the delegates from Maryland
ran: "To effect one general plan of conduct, oper
ating on the commercial connection of the colonies
with the mother country, for the relief of Boston
and preservation of American liberty."
The object was stated in the Virginia resolutions
to be "to consider of the most proper and effectual
manner of so operating on the commercial connec
tion of the colonies with the mother country, as to
procure redress for the much injured province of
Massachusetts Bay, to secure British America from
the ravage and ruin of arbitrary taxes, and speedily
to procure the return of that harmony and union,
so beneficial to the whole empire, and so ardently
desired by all British America."
The South Carolina resolution ran as follows:
"To consider the acts lately passed, and bills depend
ing in parliament with regard to the port of Bos
ton and colony of Massachusetts Bay, which acts
and bills in the precedent and consequences affect
the whole continent of America also the grievances
under which America labors, by reason of the sev
eral acts of parliament that impose taxes or duties
for raising a revenue, and lay unnecessary restraints
and burdens on trade; and of the statutes, parlia
mentary acts, and royal instructions, which make an
Il8 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
invidious distinction between his Majesty's subjects
in Great Britain and America, with full power and
authority to concert, agree to, and effectually prose
cute such legal measures, as in the opinion of the
said deputies, shall be most likely to obtain a repeal
of the said acts, and a redress of those grievances."
The delegates from North Carolina appeared in
the convention on the fourth day of September and
their credentials authorized them "to deliberate upon
the present state of British America, and to take
such measures, as they may deem prudent, to effect
the purpose of describing with certainty the rights of
Americans, repairing the breach made in those
rights, and for guarding them for the future from
any violations done under the sanction of public
authority."
The plan of giving to each colony one vote in the
congress was agreed upon on the second day of the
meeting, September sixth; but it appears, from the
resolution adopted, that the plan was not assumed
to be just or permanent; but was adopted for the
time being and until the data necessary to the estab
lishment of a proper basis of representation could be
gathered. The resolution was as follows: "That in
determining questions in this congress, each colony
or province shall have one vote, the congress not
being possessed of or at present able to procure
proper materials for ascertaining the importance
of each colony."
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT UNION
The union was expressed by the act of sending
delegates; and the powers exercised by the congress
rested wholly upon the acquiescence of the people.
Mr. Story says that it "exercised, de facto and de
jure, a sovereign authority; not as the delegated
agents of the governments of the colonies de facto,
but in virtue of original powers derived from the
people."
The principal work of this congress was the re
statement of the rights and grievances of the
colonies, the preparation of further petitions and
addresses looking to the correction of these evils,
and a resolve against the importation of British
goods and the exportation of merchandise to Great
Britain. Articles of agreement to carry this resolu
tion into effect were signed, and commercial retalia
tion inaugurated. A general congress to assemble
in May, 1775, was recommended.
The delegates to the congress of 1775 were prin
cipally chosen by conventions of the people; and
upon assembling the petitions of the prior con
gress to the king having been rejected, and war
inaugurated a state of war was accepted on be
half of the colonies; a continental army was or
ganized, and Washington commissioned as com-
mander-in-chief. The congress authorized the is
suing of bills of credit, to the redemption of which
the faith of the colonies was pledged ; framed articles
of war for the government of the army; created a
I2O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
general postoffice; apportioned the cost of the war
among the colonies; authorized and prepared regula
tions for a continental navy; and recommended, to
the colonies asking advice, the organization of state
governments.
The next important act affecting the relation of
the colonies to each other and to the world was the
declaration of independence.
It is well, I think, to state and emphasize here two
or three historical facts of the highest significance, in
the study of constitutional law:
First. Union preceded independence, and was
by every American recognized to be a necessary ante
cedent.
Second. Independence was declared by the peo
ple of "the united colonies/' achieved by the arms
of the people of the "United States," and confirmed
by treaties signed by the ambassadors of the United
States.
Third. The state governments were organized in
the union and as a part of it. The states never were
independent states, except as constituent parts of a
free nation. No one of them was ever recognized
as an independent state by any other state or king
dom in the world; no one of them ever sent or re
ceived an ambassador; no one of them ever unfurled
a flag that was saluted on the sea. As colonies they
had numerous agents in London; but, only as the
United States of America, an ambassador. Inde-
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT UNION 121
pendence was as impossible to the individual colony
after Yorktown as before Bunker Hill. Union was
as essential to the permanence as to the procurement
of independence. Paine said truly that nothing but
a continental form of government can "keep the
peace of the continent."
It was implied, from the first association of
the colonies in a continental congress, that gen
eral powers must be exercised by and through
a general government. It was years before this
necessary implication was fully declared in the
constitution; but each of those years made the
conclusion more certain.
In his Commentaries on the Constitution, Judge
Story says: "In the first place, antecedent to the
declaration of independence, none of the colonies
were or pretended to be sovereign states, in the sense
in which the term 'sovereign' is sometimes applied
to states. * * * So far as respects foreign
states the colonies were not, in the sense of the
laws of nations, sovereign states, but mere depen
dencies of Great Britain. They could make no
treaty, declare no war, send no embassadors, regu
late no intercourse or commerce, nor in any other
shape act, as sovereigns, in the negotiations usual
between independent states. In respect to each
other they stood in the common relation of British
subjects. The legislation of neither could be con
trolled by any other; but there was a common sub-
122 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
j action to the British crown. If in any sense they
might claim the attributes of sovereignty it was
only in that subordinate sense to which we have al
luded, in exercising, within a limited extent, cer
tain usual powers of sovereignty. They did not
even affect to claim a local allegiance."
And of the declaration of independence he says:
"It was an act of original, inherent sovereignty by
the people themselves resulting from their right to
change the form of government and to institute a
new one whenever necessary for their safety and
happiness. So the declaration of independence treats
it. No state has presumed of itself to form a new
government or to provide for the exigencies of the
times without consulting congress on the subject;
and, when they acted, it was in pursuance of the
recommendation of congress."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, speaking of the
declaration of independence in the legislature of
South Carolina, in 1788, says: "The several states
are not even mentioned by name in any part, as if
it was intended to impress the maxim on America
that our freedom and independence arose from our
union and that without it we could never be free
or independent. Let us then consider all attempts
to weaken this union, by maintaining that each
state is separately and individually independent, as
a species of political heresy, which can never bene-
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT UNION 123
fit us, but may bring on us the most serious dis
tresses."
But, clear as these propositions are, historically
and legally, the mischievous doctrine that the union
is a mere confederation of independent states
with its corollary that each state may declare an
infraction of the federal compact and withdraw
from the union at its pleasure found root and sus
tenance in the sectional interests which human slav
ery engendered; and brought upon the nation the
"serious distresses" which the eloquent South Caro
linian foresaw and deprecated.
Mr. Story closes the discussion of this question
in the following words: "Whatever, then, may be
the theories of ingenious men on the subject it is
historically true that before the declaration of in
dependence these colonies were not, in any absolute
sense, sovereign states; that that event did not find
them or make them such; but that at the moment
of their separation they were under the dominion
of a -superior controlling national government whose
powers were vested in and exercised by the general
congress with the consent of the people of all the
states."
The grievances set forth in the declaration are
scheduled as common ills, though some of them .had
only touched individual colonies. They were com
mon because the people of all the colonies were one
people.
THE CONFEDERATION
FIFTH LECTURE
Delivered at Stanford University, Ap'ril 9, 1894
Confederation was a fact ^ before independence
was declared; but it was a confederation for the re
dress of grievances, not for independence. The re
monstrances still proceeded upon the theory that a
benevolent king was being misled by wicked min
isters. In the general order issued by Washing
ton, upon the evacuation of Boston, he speaks of
the ministerial army, not the royal army. In fact,
King George was the real enemy. It was his proud
and resentful spirit that sent British soldiers and
ships to our shores and reinforced them with mer
cenaries hired from continental rulers. But, under
the rough touch of war, the veneer of royalty dis
appeared, and at last the conservative and the timid
were brought to see that a confederacy for inde
pendence, supported by a war against the king, was
essential. A delegate declared "we must apply for
pardon if we do not confederate"; and to the ex-
124
THE CONFEDERATION 12$
hortation of another, "we must hang together/'
Franklin replied, "Yes, or hang separately."
A declaration of independence, in the nature of
a formal announcement of the severance of the po
litical ties which had bound the colonies to the
crown, was the necessary preface of the articles of
confederation. Only a free people can act in the
organization of a government. "Off with the old;
on with the new" was the natural order; but it was
not an easy transition. The attachment of the col
onies to the mother country was stronger than they
had themselves realized; and the fear that the as
sociated colonies were too weak to organize a sta
ble and successful government was strong in the
hearts of many. John Adams, speaking of his ex
perience in the congress of 1775, said: "But now
these people began to see that independence was
approaching, they started back. In some of my
public harangues, in which I had freely and explic
itly laid open my thoughts, on looking around the
assembly I have seen horror, terror and detesta
tion strongly marked on the countenances of some
of the members."
On the eleventh day of June, 1776, a committee of
congress was appointed to prepare a declaration of
independence; and, on the same day, a resolution
was passed for the organization of a committee to
prepare articles of confederation. The work of the
first committee had been w r ell outlined, and an
126 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
agreement as to grievances was not difficult. These
had been many times scheduled in the petitions and
addresses of the colonies and of congress. The
hesitation was over the deduction, not over the
premises; not that the deduction was not logical
and imperative, but that it was so tremendous. The
work of the committee charged with the prepara
tion of articles of confederation was, on the other
hand, one of great delicacy and difficulty. Less
than a month sufficed for the preparation, adoption
and signing of the declaration of independence; but
nearly a year and a half intervened between the ap
pointment of the committee to prepare articles of
confederation and their adoption by congress. It
was not until the fifteenth of November, 1777, that
congress gave its approval to the report of the
.committee. The subject was not, of course, in this
interval, continuously under debate. Time and
again the debate led up to difficulties that seemed
so insurmountable, and differences so irreconcilable,
that the subject was laid aside. The longest such
interval was from August, 1776, to April, 1777,
during which time the question was not debated in
congress. When the articles had received the con
currence of congress they were sent to the states
for approval, accompanied by an eloquent and ur
gent letter which concluded with this appeal: "Let
them be examined with a liberality becoming breth
ren and fellow-citizens, surrounded by the same
THE CONFEDERATION
imminent dangers, contending for the same illus
trious prize, and deeply interested in being forever
bound and connected together by ties the most in
timate and indissoluble. And finally let them be
adjusted with the temper and magnanimity of wise
and patriotic legislators who, while they are con
cerned for the prosperity of their own more imme
diate circle, are capable of rising superior to local
attachments, when they are incompatible with the
safety, happiness and glory of the general confed
eracy."
The debate was now transferred to the states; and
many objections were made, and many amendments
proposed. It was not until July 9, 1778, that the
articles were engrossed for signing and the first
signatures attached. Several states signed on that
day, and others at short intervals, as the delegates
were thereto authorized; and, before January i,
1778, eleven states had signed. Delaware and
Maryland still held aloof, insisting upon their objec
tions chiefly upon a settlement as to the western
boundaries of the colonies, and the recognition of
the principle that the crown lands became the com
mon property of all the colonies. Delaware came in
in February, 1779; and Maryland finally persuad
ed, under stress and urgency which now broke sin
gly upon her, to defer the settlement of the land
question and to confide in the justice and generos
ity of the larger colonies signed March i, 1781.
128 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
The ratification of the articles of confederation,
therefore, dates from March i, 1781. Twelve
states had previously signed; but the articles con
tained no provision for their taking effect without
the assent of all the colonies. It was thus nearly
six years after the battle of Lexington, four years
and eight months after the declaration of inde
pendence, and only about eighteen months before
the preliminary treaty of peace, that a written con
stitution was adopted by all the colonies.
A union for the purpose of defense against a
common present enemy is instinctive a matter of
impulse, which we share with the brutes. We leave
our humble brother a little way when we make the
alliance an offensive, defensive one, and altogether,
when we organize a permanent union to promote
the uses of peace. Here the highest intelligence
and something higher than intelligence unselfish
ness, a regard for others, an appreciation of the
common good, as the highest good, is essential. The
history of the colonies had been characterized by
a constant struggle for local government. The af
fections of the people had centered there. It had
been the source of their most prized blessings, and,
as they believed, their defense against tyranny.
Their experience of government outside the colony
had been a sad one. It had always taken the form
of oppressive and selfish meddling. It had been
often brutal; and had become the object of their
THE CONFEDERATION"
watchful jealousy. Of a beneficent and central rep
resentative government, that should leave all local
matters in local control, while administering com
mon affairs for the common good, they had had no
experience, and the world none that was satisfac
tory. Mr. Bancroft well says: "They had rightly
been jealous of extending the supremacy of En
gland, because it was a government outside of
themselves; they now applied that jealousy to one
another, forgetting that the general power would be
in their own hands."
Still there were many very pleasant and very
noble manifestations of sympathy and brotherhood
between the colonies. The bells tolled in Virginia
for the sorrows of Massachusetts, and the injuries
specially directed against her were scheduled as
common injuries. But, when the articles of a per
manent union came to be settled, jealousy and self
ishness again asserted their malign presence and in
fluence, and well-nigh made vain the work of
Washington and the continental congress and army.
The dean of Gloucester wrote: "As to the fu
ture grandeur of America and its being a rising
empire, under one head, whether republican or mon
archical, it is one of the idlest and most visionary
notions that was ever conceived even by writers of
romance. The mutual antipathies and clashing in
terests of the Americans; their difference of gov
ernments, habitudes and manners, indicate that they
I3O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
will have no common center of union and no com
mon interest. They never can be united into one
compact empire under any species of government
whatever; a disunited people until the end of time,
suspicious and distrustful of each other, they will
be divided and subdivided into little common
wealths or principalities, according to natural bound
aries, by great bays of the sea, and by vast rivers,
lakes and ridges of mountains."
The long delay which preceded the adoption of
the articles of confederation indicates that from a
domestic point of view the urgency was not felt by
the colonies. The revolutionary government, repre
sented by congress, was in the exercise of per
haps even larger powers than those proposed to
be conferred upon it by the articles of confeder
ation. A revolutionary government, being one of
necessity, is not restrained in its powers, other
wise than by the will of those who have instituted
it. It probably seemed to many that the questions
involved in a peace settlement and perfect union
might well abide the issue of the war; and it seems
to be quite probable, but for the necessity which
became more and more apparent and more and
more urgent, of presenting to the outside world an
organized national government, that the adoption of
the articles of confederation might have been yet
further postponed. The congress had very early sent
its diplomatic representatives to the continent; and
THE CONFEDERATION 131
they had opened negotiations which had made more
or less progress with France, Holland, and Spain,
involving loans of money and schemes of commer
cial treaties, which should recompense the risks
which the friendliness of these governments toward
the colonies involved. Large loans had been se
cured upon the pledge of a national credit. These
pledges ran for their redemption into peace times.
They were in fact, if not in form, conditioned upon
the independence of the united colonies as a nation.
The confidence of our foreign friends was being
shaken by the delay in the adoption of a plan of
government, and by the manifestations of jealous
unfriendliness between the colonies. Their demand
that the colonies should subscribe and publish a plan
of government was imperious. The efforts of En
gland to treat separately with the states greatly
alarmed our friends. These overtures, to be sure,
had in every instance been scornfully rejected; Gov
ernor Trumbull, of Connecticut, saying that such
proposals should be addressed to the supreme au
thority, the congress of the United States.
Lord North had taken notice in parliament of
the failure to ratify the articles of confederation,
and had based upon this fact conclusions unfavor
able to the American cause. The adhesion of
Maryland to the confederation was largely based
upon such considerations as these. It was expressly
recited that she was induced to forego her objec-
132 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
tions because "the enemies of the country took ad
vantage of the circumstance to disseminate opinions
of an ultimate dissolution of the union."
The address of congress accompanying the arti
cles of confederation, contained this suggestion:
"More than any other consideration, it will con
found our foreign enemies * * * and add
weight and respect to our councils at home and to
our treaties abroad."
But, after all, and notwithstanding the govern
ment now organized under the articles of confed
eration was called "a perpetual union", it was in
fact little more than an emergency government, de
riving all of its practical force from the pressure
of a common danger, from external rather than in
ternal forces. Its efficiency diminished in the ratio
of the success of the continental arms, and disap
peared altogether with the treaty of peace. It suf
ficed only so long as an urgent self-interest sup
ported the recommendation of congress, so long as
the conflicts of small interests were held in abey
ance by the supreme present demands of a larger
common interest.
As I have already said, the articles rather lim
ited than enlarged the powers of congress. Mr.
Winsor, in his article upon the confederation, says:
"The fact was that congress, before 1781, with no
defined powers, stretching what it had as it could,
THE CONFEDERATION 133
was stronger than it became when those powers
were defined under the confederation."
The inadequacy of the plan of confederation had
been demonstrated in the long interval between its
adoption by congress and its ratification by the col
onies. "A government by supplication," as Ran
dolph afterwards described it, whether administered
under a written constitution, or under a revolution
ary organization, was in everything shamefully in
adequate for all national purposes.
The two subjects that presented the chief elements
of difference in the debate in congress on the arti
cles of confederation, were the basis of representa
tion in congress, and the question of state boun
daries, involving the question of the ownership of
the vast western domain over which an ignorant
geography had stretched the boundaries of some of
the early colonies. It is not my purpose here even
to outline the debate upon these questions.
The articles do not, either in form or substance,
attract our admiration. The defects were so glaring
and radical that Hamilton's characterization of it
as a "senseless and futile confederation" was hardly
too severe. The instrument opens by providing a
severe rule of interpretation: "Each state retains
* * * every power, jurisdiction and right which
is not, by this confederation, expressly delegated to
the United States in congress assembled." No room
134 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
was to be left for the assumption of implied pow
ers; jealous strictness, rather than a beneficial con
struction, was to be the rule. All the powers granted
by the articles were lodged in the congress. The
statesmen who framed this plan of government were
not unfamiliar with the threefold division of the
powers of government. Such of the states as had
already framed their constitutions had adopted this
plan; and it had been in use almost from the begin
ning in the colonies. A governor or chief execu
tive, with a legislature consisting generally of two
branches or houses, and a judiciary distinct from
both, was a familiar organization; yet in the arti
cles of confederation, no provision was made for a
separate executive; and the exceptional form of a
legislature consisting of a single branch was adopted.
Only the feeblest and most limited judicial powers
were given to the union. Congress was authorized
to appoint courts "for the trial of piracies and fel
onies committed on the high seas," and courts for
"receiving and determining finally appeals in all
cases of capture." The congress itself was made
"the last resort on appeal" in all disputes between
the states, "concerning boundary, jurisdiction, or
any other cause whatever." An executive depart
ment was apparently so impossible as not to have
been seriously thought of. A president from any
state would, it was thought, unduly magnify the
power and importance of that state; and was
THE CONFEDERATION 135
wholly inadmissible. Every state must participate
on a basis of absolute equality in every act of
government. Not only was the congress so organ
ized; but the "committee of the states" which
was to sit in the recess of congress was made
to consist of one from each state. The special
committees appointed by congress generally took
the same organization. The delegates were to be
paid by their respective states; and so fearful were
the states that their delegates might, from long
service, become unduly attached to the union, that
it was provided that the term should be one year, and
that no person should serve as a delegate "for more
than three years in any term of six years." And
further to limit the independent action of the dele
gates the power of the states to recall them at any
time and to send others in their stead was reserved.
The early state constitutions contained similar lim
itations, as to the delegates in congress; and the
same spirit appears in the provision that the presi
dent of congress should not serve as such for more
than one year in any term of three years. The ad
ministrative functions of government were at first
discharged directly by congress. Contracts large
and small were negotiated and voted in the full
body. Let us take a sample day from the Journal:
(Nov. 6, 1775.)
"The committee on claims reported that there is
due:
136 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
"To John Forbes, for goods and necessaries de
livered to several rifle companies, the sum of 35 II
10, equal to 94.9 dollars, of which sum Capt. Clug-
gage ought to be charged with 6 2 10, and Captain
Chambers with 4 10, the remainder to the conti
nent; that this is to be paid per order to Blair
M'Clenachan.
"To Jane Allen, the sum of 47 o 7, and the Ven-
dal Lands the sum of 2 o o, both sums being 130.7
dollars, and that the same be paid, per order, to
Henry Wisner, Esq., and be charged to the con
tinent.
"To Judah Harbow 7 12 4, and to Captain Jack
son 13 4 6, for necessaries furnished several rifle
companies, and that both sums be paid, per order,
to Henry Wisner, Esq., and charged to the conti
nent, being 52.1 dollars.
"To Andrew Graff, for wagonage, the sum of 27
2 6, and to Christopher Crawford, for blankets, the
sum of 6 15, both which sums to be paid, per order,
to George Graff, and charged to the continent, be
ing 90.3 dollars.
"To Richard Backhouse, for wagonage, the sum
of 51, being 136 dollars..
"To Miles and Wister, by sundry certificates, 26 6
4, equal to 70.1 dollars, of which 13 10 be charged to
Captain Rice's company, and 35 to Captain Cres-
sop's company; the remainder to the continent.
"To Frederick Leinbach, by sundry certificates,
THE CONFEDERATION 137
'58 ii 5, equal to 156.2 dollars; of which 4 13 6
to be charged to Captain Price, 3 15 to Captain Stev
enson, 6 15 i to commissary Biddle, until it appears
to be otherwise accounted for, and the remainder
to the continent, to be paid, per order, to George
Schlosser.
"To John Murrow, for goods delivered to Captain
Stevenson, 71 18 10, to be paid, per order, to George
Davis, and charged to said Stevenson, being 191.8
dollars.
"To Robert Erwin, for wagonage, 169 9 3, equal
to 451.9 dollars.
"To Timothy Matlack, money by him paid to
Joseph Brown, an express to Cambridge, 17 4 I,
equal to 45.9 dollars.
"To Jasper Stimes and Abraham Storm, for pro
visions and carriage furnished by them to the rifle
companies 14 9 2, New York currency, 36.1 dol
lars, to be paid, per order, to John Alsqo, Esq.
"Ordered that the above sums be paid."
Soon, however, boards composed of members of
congress were instituted; but their powers were
not well denned, and the supervision of congress
was constant and particular. A little later a board
of war, composed of five members, not members
of congress, was established. A committee of
claims, one from each colony, developed into a
crude treasury department; and other executive
functions were similarly administered. But the
138 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
lack of a constitutional executive department, with
defined but independent powers, placed a heavy
and well-nigh fatal weight upon the energies of
the union. The powers of congress, under the
articles of confederation, were these: The ex
clusive right of determining on peace and war,
save when a state was invaded or about to be
invaded; of receiving and sending ambassadors,
and entering into treaties; of deciding questions
of capture and prize; of granting letters of marque
and reprisal, "in times of peace;" the states being au
thorized to issue such letters after a declaration of
war by the United States; of appointing courts for
trial of offenses on the seas, and of appeals in prize
cases; to be the tribunal of last resort in con
troversies between states; to regulate the value and
alloy of coin, whether struck by the United States
or the states; of fixing the standard of weights and
measures; regulating the trade and managing all af
fairs with the Indians, "not members of any of the
states, provided that the legislative right of any state
within its own limits be not infringed or violated;"
of establishing and regulating postofHces and post
routes; of appointing all officers of the land forces,
except regimental officers, all officers of the naval
forces, and of making regulations for the army
and navy; to appoint a committee to sit in the recess
of congress, and such civil officers as might be neces
sary; to ascertain and apportion the moneys needed,
THE CONFEDERATION 139
and to appropriate the same; to borrow money or
emit bills on the credit of the United States; to
build a navy; to fix the land forces and make requisi
tion for state quotas.
There were some important express limitations,
however, placed upon these general powers. The
power to negotiate commercial treaties was so
limited that except as to "treaties already pro
posed by congress, to the courts of France and
Spain," the power of each state to levy im
posts and duties upon foreign merchandise or to
prohibit the importation or exportation of any
merchandise at its pleasure was not restrained,
save by the provision that these duties should be
equal as between foreigners and its own citizens.
Nearly all of the important powers given were fur
ther limited to be exercised only by vote of nine
states; and over all was the practical and destruc
tive, though unexpressed limitation, that no act of
congress, even within the powers most clearly con
ferred could be executed in any state until the state
legislature had added its sanction. There can be
no government in any just sense without a body of
citizens upon which it can directly act citizens who
owe to it a primary allegiance and upon whose per
sons and. estates it may lay its restraints and its exac
tions. Under the confederation congress had no
power to draft a single man for military service, nor
to lay and collect a single dollar of taxes, direct or
I4O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
indirect. It is true that the congressional resolves
might have been mandatory in their form; "re
quired" might have been substituted for "request
ed;" for the articles bound the states to furnish
quotas of men, and allotments of money as appor
tioned by congress. Article XIII was as follows:
"Every state shall abide by the determinations of
the United States in congress assembled, on all
questions which by this confederation are submitted
to them. And the articles of this confederation
shall be inviolably observed by every state, and
the union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alter
ation at any time hereafter be made in any of them;
unless such alteration be agreed to in a congress of
the United States, and be afterward confirmed by
the legislature of every state."
But, as the use of an armed force against a de
linquent state was the only method of enforcing a
requisition, congress wisely used the politer term
"request." Notwithstanding this clear provision in
the articles,, binding the states to comply with the
resolves of congress, instances were not infrequent
where a state, not by inaction only, but by affirma
tive action and explicit declaration, refused to abide
by the determination of congress, on questions clear
ly by the articles submitted to it.
In December, 1779, the legislature of Virginia
passed a resolution declaring "that the legislature
of this commonwealth are greatly alarmed at the
THE CONFEDERATION
assumption of power lately exercised by congress.
While the right of recommending measures to each
state by congress is admitted, we contend for that of
judging of their utility and expediency, and, of
course, either to approve or reject. Making any
state answerable for not agreeing to any of its
recommendations would establish a dangerous pre
cedent against the authority of the legislature and
the sovereignty of the separate states."
And in the matter of appeals in prize cases New
Hampshire attempted by law to cut off the appeal
expressly provided for in the articles of confedera
tion.
We have had a good deal of modern talk about
the power of the nation to "coerce a state;" but the
thought is not only inaccurate but obsolete. Under
the confederation such a question might indeed,
did arise ; but *under the national constitution we lay
exactions and visit penalties upon citizens of the
United States. No commission under a state seal;
no resolve of a state legislature, can stand between
the national authority and the citizen who resists
it. No power was given to congress by the articles
of confederation to regulate commerce. Each state
made its own tariff and took the receipts from cus
toms into its own treasury. As a source of revenue
this power was essential to the union; but it was
much more than a revenue question. It was the
sine qua non of an enduring 'union. We who have so
142 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
much division over one tariff can appreciate the in
describable confusion and disaster resulting from
thirteen customs schedules. Until there was unity
here there could be none elsewhere. The competi
tions between the ports of different states begat new
and revived old jealousies and animosities, and con
fused traders by their intricacies and frequent
changes. We could have no standing among com
mercial nations until the power to regulate com
merce, by granting favors or imposing exactions,
and instituting a uniform schedule of duties was
conferred. Our commerce was destroyed during
the revolutionary war; and yet the absence of
power in congress to regulate this subject left the
enemy that had wrought its destruction at liberty
to shut out our ships from the trade of the West
India colonies, without fear of the retaliatory re
strictions which her conduct suggested and de
manded.
Story says: "While, for instance, British ships
with their commodities had every admission into
our ports, American ships and exports were loaded
with heavy exactions or prohibited from entry into
British ports: We were, therefore, the victims of our
own imbecility, and reduced to a complete subjec
tion to the commercial regulations of other coun
tries, notwithstanding our boasts of freedom and
independence."
John Adams, writing from France in May, 1785,
THE CONFEDERATION 143
to Secretary Jay, gives a graphic description of the
embarrassments and humiliation which our foreign
representatives suffered. He says:
"But you will see, by a letter from the Duke of
Dorset, which your ministers here some time since
transmitted, that the British cabinet have conceived
doubts, whether congress have power to treat of
commercial matters, and whether our states should
not separately grant their full powers to a minister.
I think it may be taken for granted, that the states
will never think of sending separate ambassadors,
or of authorizing directly those appointed by con
gress. The idea of thirteen plenipotentiaries meet
ing together in a congress at every court in Europe,
each with a full power and distinct instructions from
his state, presents to view such a picture of con
fusion, altercation, expense, and endless delay, as
must convince every man of its impracticability.
Neither is there less absurdity in supposing that all
the states should unite in the separate election of
the same man, since there is not, never was and
never will be a citizen whom each state would sepa
rately prefer for conducting the negotiation. It is
equally inconceivable that each state should sepa
rately send a full power and separate instructions
to the ministers appointed by congress. What a
heterogeneous mass of papers, full of different ob
jects, various views, and inconsistent and contra
dictory orders, must such a man pull out of his
144 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
portfolio, from time to time, to regulate his judg
ment and his conduct! He must be accountable, too,
to thirteen different tribunals for his conduct; a
situation in which no man would ever consent to
stand, if it is possible, which I do not believe, that
any state should ever wish for such a system. I
suppose too that the confederation has already set
tled all these points, and that congress alone have
authority to treat with foreign powers, and to ap
point ambassadors and foreign ministers, and that
the states have separately no power to do either.
Yet it is plain from the Duke of Dorset's letter, that
the British cabinet have conceived a different opin
ion. This is to be accounted for, only by conjectur
ing that they have put an erroneous construction on
the limitation, restriction, or exception in the arti
cle of our confederation, which gives to congress
the power of appointing ambassadors and making
treaties. This limitation is confined to treaties of
commerce; all others congress have full power to
make. From this limitation, however, will proba
bly arise a great deal of difficulty and delay to me.
If the British ministry wish and seek for delays this
will be their pretext. But, even if they should wish
for despatch, which is not likely, they may have
propositions to make which will fall within the lim
itation; and, in such cases, it will not be in my pow
er to agree with them. I can only transmit the
propositions to congress, who will perhaps trans-
THE CONFEDERATION 145
mit them to the states; and no man can foresee when
the answers will be received so that the business
can be brought to a conclusion.
"It is very possible that the cabinet of St. James
may decline even entering into any conference at
all upon the subject of a treaty of commerce, until
the powers of congress are enlarged.'*
And Washington wrote of this matter as follows:
"America -must appear in a very contemptible point
of view to those with whom she was endeavoring to
form commercial treaties without possessing the
means of carrying them into effect. They must see
and feel that the union, or the states individu
ally, are sovereign as best suits their purposes.
In a word, that we are a nation to-day and
thirteen to-morrow. Who will treat with us on
such terms ?"
The English statesmen saw our fatal inability.
Lord Sheffield said: "There should be no treaty
with the American states because they will not place
England on a better footing than France and Hol
land, and equal rights will be enjoyed, of course,
without a treaty. * * * It will not be an easy
matter to bring the American states to act as a na
tion ; they are not. to be feared as such by us. The
confederation does not enable congress to form more
than general treaties; when treaties become neces
sary, they must be made with the states separately.
Each state has reserved every power relative to im-
146 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
posts, prohibitions, duties, etc., to itself. If the
American states choose to send consuls, receive them
and send a consul to each state. Each state will soon
enter into all necessary regulations with the consul,
and this is the whole that is necessary."
So apparent was the necessity of a single control
of these matters that the congress had, as we have
seen in the resolves of 1774, declared that "from the
necessity of the case" they cheerfully consented to
the regulation by parliament of their "external com
merce." But when the confederacy was formed this
necessary power was withheld from a congress com
posed of delegates from each state and in which each
state had an equal voice. The representation of
New Jersey to the congress, in June, 1777, of the
objections of that colony to the articles of confed
eration, contained this paragraph, which is an early
and forcible presentation of this matter: "By the
sixth and ninth articles, the regulation of trade
seems to be committed to the several states within
their separate jurisdiction, in such a degree as may
involve many difficulties and embarrassments, and
be attended with injustice to some states in the union.
We are of opinion that the sole and exclusive pow
er of regulating the trade of the United States with
foreign nations ought to be clearly vested in the con
gress, and that the revenue arising from all duties
and customs imposed thereon ought to be ap
propriated to the building, equipping and manning
THE CONFEDERATION 147
a navy, for the protection of the trade and defense
of the coasts, and to such other public and general
purposes as to the congress shall seem proper, and
for the common benefit of the states."
This suggestion was rejected, but the "necessity
of the case" remained, and its voice became more
imperious as the years went on, until it was recog
nized and fully provided for in Article I, section 8,
of the constitution. The obstinacy with which some
of the states held on to the power over commerce, of
which they could make no really beneficial use, even
in the most selfish sense, is inexplicable to us who
have seen the happy influence of a national use of
that power. Strenuous efforts were made, before
and after the adoption of the articles of confedera
tion, to get the consent of the states to the levying
of an impost duty by congress. In February, 1781,
congress asked the states for power to lay a duty
upon imposts to pay the public debt and to continue
only until it should be paid. Rhode Island selfishly
blocked the way, though the cause of independence
was in extremis from a lack of revenue. The rea
sons given were that the impost would bear unduly
upon the commercial states; that officers unknown
to the constitution would be introduced; and that a
revenue not directly derived from a grant of the
states would render congress independent and be
dangerous to the liberties of the United States.
While congress, by a committee, was trying to re-
148 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
move these unpatriotic objections, Virginia which
had assented under the leadership of Richard Hen
ry Lee, withdrew its assent, placing this action
upon the declaration that such a tax would be in
jurious to its sovereignty and might prove destruc
tive of the rights and liberties of the people. Only
the compelling and scourging intervention of provi
dence opened the way to union and safety, and
brought to naught these freaks of pride and selfish
ness.
In April, 1783, congress asked the states for au
thority, for a period of twenty-five years, to lay cer
tain duties on specific articles, and a general duty
of five per cent, ad valorem on all others. The
emergency was stated by congress in the following
terms: "It has become the duty of congress to de
clare most explicitly that the crisis has arrived
when the people of these United States, by whose
will and for whose benefit the federal government
was instituted, must decide whether they will sup
port their rank as a nation by maintaining the pub
lic faith at home or abroad; or whether, for want
of a timely exertion in establishing a general reve
nue, and thereby giving strength to the confed
eracy, they will hazard not only the existence of
the union, but of those great and invaluable privi
leges for which they have so arduously and so hon
orably contended."
In 1784 congress requested the states to vest the
THE CONFEDERATION 149
general government with power, for fifteen years, to
prescribe some general regulations of commerce, not
involving revenue, but intended solely to give effect
to our commercial treaties and to protect our peo
ple against the hostile provisions of the navigation
acts of Great Britain.
Neither of these requests was granted. The
appeal of 1783 was defeated by the refusal of New
York to concur with the other states. That of 1784
had no response.
The inadequacy of the confederation, and the re
fusal of the states to grant powers that would have
given some force and dignity to the national gov
ernment, drove out of congress many of the ablest
public men. The members could not but feel as a
personal humiliation the powerlessness of the body
to respond to the urgent and even pathetic appeals
of the national creditors. Washington, in one of
his letters, notices the absence of these men from
the national councils; but it was quite natural that
they should prefer to serve in the assemblies of their
own states and to participate in decrees that could
be put into execution. It is said that, at no time
between October, 1783, and June, 1784, were nine
states present by their representatives in congress.
Nothing could more strongly emphasize the decay
of the confederacy. Mr. Winsor says: "Congress
had not the inherent dignity to allure statesmen,
nor did it offer temptations even to politicians."
150 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
The appeals of congress and of Washington, of
the impoverished veterans, driven almost to frenzy
by want; of the friendly states of France and Hol
land, that had so generously supplied our need by
loans were all unavailing. The refusal of New
York to accede to the measures proposed for a na
tional revenue, it has been said, virtually decreed
the dissolution of the existing government. The
states had now finally not only refused to give to
congress a general power to regulate commerce,
but even to concede the power when limited to a
term of years and to particular subjects.
The story of the discreditable and cruel treatment
of our creditors, home and foreign, and especially
of the veterans of the war, can not be read with
out shame; but perhaps it was well that the arti
cles of confederation were not patched up, and that
humiliation, disaster and decay should go on un
til the people were driven to the adoption of an ade
quate plan of government.
The want of any power in congress to regulate
commerce between the states was not so disastrously
and immediately felt, because it did not have any
relation to revenue; but this subject, like that of
foreign commerce, was left by the articles of con
federation, in the anomalous condition that there
was no power of regulation anywhere. The states
were forbidden to make treaties with each other,
and congress was given no power to legislate on
THE CONFEDERATION 151
the subject. Some questions of internal commerce
presented themselves and added to the general con
fusion and distress.
The articles contain some general provisions that
are worthy of note. The free inhabitants of each
state were secured in all the privileges and immu
nities of free citizens in the several states; and in
free ingress and regress and all the privileges of
trade and commerce, subject to the same duties and
restrictions as the inhabitants of the particular
state. The reclamation of fugitives from justice
was provided for. Full faith and credit were to be
given in each of the states to the records, acts and
judicial proceedings of the courts and magistrates
of every other state. The subordination of the sev
eral states was established by the provision that no
.state, without the consent of the United States,
should send an embassy to, or enter into any confer
ence, or alliance, or treaty, with any foreign nation;
nor should any two states enter into any such
treaty or alliance between themselves; nor engage
in any war; nor maintain any ships of war, or
armed forces in time of peace, except as authorized
by congress.
In view of these limitations, it was wholly in
congruous to describe the states as sovereign, either
in their relations to each other or to the nations of
the world.
It is an interesting fact that article n provided
152 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
for the admission of Canada to the union. It was
as follows: "Article XI. Canada acceding to this
confederation, and joining in the measures of the
United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled
to all the advantages of this union; but no other
colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such
admission be agreed to by nine states."
As a frame of government for peace, the ab
sence of any adequate provision for a federal ju
diciary was another glaring defect in the articles of
confederation. The power to judge, interpret and
enforce the constitution, treaties and laws made by
the national government, is essential to the very ex
istence of the government.
Judge Story thus summarizes the defects of the
confederation: "But they [the congress] possessed
not the power to raise any revenue, to levy any tax,
to enforce any law, to secure any rights, to regulate
any trade, or even the poor prerogative of command
ing means to pay their own ministers at a foreign
court. They could contract debts, but they were
without means to discharge them. They could
pledge the public faith, but they were inca
pable of redeeming it. They could enter into trea
ties; but every state in the union might dispute
them with impunity. They could contract alliances,
but could not command men or money to give them
vigor. They could institute courts for piracies and
felonies on the high seas; but they had no means
THE CONFEDERATION 153
to pay either the judges or the jurors. In short, all
powers which did not execute themselves were at
the mercy of the states, and might be trampled
upon at will with impunity."
These defects, as I have said, had been disclosed
before Maryland ratified the confederation; and we
wonder why the accession of that state should
have produced so much rejoicing in the army and
throughout the colonies; but our glance is a back
ward one. We contrast the articles of confedera
tion with the perfected constitution the tree with
the germ and we rightly give the tree the glory;
but wrongly despise the germ. The masses are not
much taught by philosophy; it does not reach them;
experience is their faithful teacher. The national
^constitution, like the constitutions of the states, could
only come by development. It was not, as a whole,
in the brain of the wisest of our statesmen. Jefferson,
Hamilton, Franklin, Adams, either would have made
bad work of the business if it had been left to
either. They were wise to contribute, but not wise
enough to complete.
The chief use and glory of the articles of confed
eration were that, by and through them, "a perpet
ual union" was declared and subscribed by each of
the thirteen colonies; and that the use of the scheme
of government provided, by disclosing its fatal de
fects, infallibly pointed out the essentials of a per
fect union. They organized a general representa-
154 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
tive government a shadowy outline; but an outline
that, when these suggestions were defined and
rounded, should be the most free and perfect sys
tem of government that men have ever enjoyed.
Bancroft says of it: "A better one could not
then have been accepted; but, with all its faults, it
contained the elements for the evolution of a more
perfect union."
THE INSTITUTION OF STATE GOVERN
MENTS
SIXTH LECTURE
Delivered at Stanford University, April 18, 1894
The institution of state governments was a most
important and necessary step in the development of
the republic. The king had denounced the penal
ties of treason against the colonists; his armies and
fleets had inaugurated war; and the old forms of
oath and writ had become incongruous. Independ
ence had not yet been declared, but local affairs
were in disorder. The assemblies had been pro
rogued, and the royal governors had abandoned
their duties, or sought to exercise them from gar
risoned towns or from the decks of royal cruisers.
Committees of safety and defense had by popular
acquiescence assumed some measure of public direc
tion and control; but the necessity for a more for
mal organization of the powers of government was
pressing hard upon many of the colonies, especially
upon Massachusetts. It was, however, well under-
ISS
v
156 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
stood by the people of Massachusetts that this for
ward step to which their necessities so strongly
pressed them was only to be ventured in unison
with the other colonies.
On June 2, 1775, John Hancock, the president,
laid before the congress a letter from the provincial
convention of Massachusetts, dated May 16. This
letter set forth the difficulties they suffered for want
of a regular form of government, and requested
"explicit advice respecting the taking up and exer
cising the powers of civil government," and declar
ing their readiness to "submit to such a general
plan as the congress may direct for the colonies."
In response to this communication, the congress
resolved, on the ninth of June, as follows:
"That no obedience being due to the act of par
liament for altering the charter of the colony of
Massachusetts Bay, nor to a governor, or a lieuten
ant-governor, who will not observe the directions
of, but endeavor to subvert that charter, the gov
ernor and lieutenant-governor of that colony are
to be considered as absent, and their offices vacant;
and as there is no council there, and the inconven
iences, arising from the suspension of the powers
of government, are intolerable, especially at a time
when General Gage hath actually levied war, and
is carrying on hostilities, against his majesty's
peaceable and loyal subjects of that colony; that, in
order to conform, as near as may be, to the spirit
INSTITUTION OF STATE GOVERNMENTS 1 57
and substance of the charter, it be recommended to
the provincial convention, to write letters to the in
habitants of the several places, which are entitled
to representation in assembly, requesting them to
choose such representatives, and that the assembly,
when chosen, do elect councilors, and that such as
sembly, or council, exercise the powers of govern
ment, until a governor, of his majesty's appoint
ment, will consent to govern the colony according
to its charter."
This advice was closely followed by Massachu
setts, and the action taken was declared to be "in
observance of the resolve of the continental con
gress." The action was provisional the govern
ment was an ad interim one, and it followed as far
as might be the lines of the charter. But even this
tentative step was not taken by Massachusetts
without the direction of the general government.
Again, on October 6, the committee of corre
spondence of Massachusetts addressed congress and,
after stating the condition of the colony that the
governor had by proclamation prevented the meet
ing of the general court, and that all laws were,
therefore suspended solicited the advice of con
gress in the premises.
New Hampshire, following the course adopted
by Massachusetts, also applied to congress for ad
vice and direction as to the organization of a local
government; and with deferential patience awaited
158 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
the delayed answer. On October 18, 1775, her*
delegates laid before congress the following from
their instructions: "We would have you immedi
ately use your utmost endeavors to obtain the ad
vice and direction of the congress, with respect to
a method for our administering justice, and regu
lating our civil police. We press you not to delay
this matter, as, its being done speedily, will prob
ably prevent the greatest confusion among us." On
November 3, congress recommended that New
Hampshire "call a full and free representation of
the people, and that the representatives, if they
think it necessary, establish such a form of govern
ment as, in their judgment, will best produce the
happiness of the people, and most effectually secure
peace and good order in the province, during the
continuance of the present dispute between Great
Britain and the colonies."
On November 4, 1775, South Carolina received
similar advice, a provision being added for an army
to defend the colony at "the continental expense."
On December 4, 1775, in response to a com
munication from Virginia, the congress resolved
"that if the convention of Virginia shall find it
necessary to establish a form of government in that
colony, it be recommended to that convention to
call a full and free representation of the people, and
that the said representatives, if they think it neces
sary, establish such form of government as in their
INSTITUTION OF STATE GOVERNMENTS 159
judgment will best produce the happiness of the
people, and most effectually secure peace and good
order in the colony, during the continuance of the
present dispute between Great Britain and the col
onies."
On the tenth of May, 1776, congress determined
to deal generally with the question of instituting
state governments in the colonies, and accordingly
resolved: "That it be recommended to the respec
tive assemblies and conventions of the united colo
nies, where no government sufficient to the exigen
cies of their affairs hath been hitherto established,
to adopt such government as shall, in the opinion of
the representatives of the people best conduce to
the happiness and safety of their constituents in
particular and America in general." On the I5th
of May a preamble to this resolution was reported
and adopted; and the resolution is usually referred
to that date.
Of this resolution, John Adams, who drafted it,
says: "It was, indeed, on all hands, considered by
men of understanding as equivalent to a declara
tion of independence."
As the war progressed and fresh outrages
aroused the people, opposition to measures like the
resolution of May 15 was over-borne in all the
colonies by popular uprisings, and the delegates to
congress were freshly empowered and strengthened.
The expressions from the several colonies favoring
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independence and a confederation usually had a
limitation like this, in the case of Rhode Island:
"Taking the greatest care to secure to this col
ony, in the strongest and most perfect manner,
its present established form, and all the powers of
government, in so far as it relates to its internal
police and the conduct of its own affairs, civil and
religious." Or, as the Virginia convention ex
pressed it: To form a confederation "provided that
the power of forming government for and the regu
lations of the internal concerns of each colony be left
to the colonial legislatures."
The state constitutions, adopted before the con
federation (November, 1777), assumed a perma
nent union, and made provision for local and do
mestic affairs only. In the Connecticut act of 1776,
continuing the charter of 1662 in force, there is this
explicit recognition of an existing general govern
ment.
"3. That all the free inhabitants of this or any
other of the United States of America * * *
shall enjoy the same justice and law within this
state," etc.
The first constitution of Delaware was instituted
under the resolution of May 15 and went into
effect September 21, 1776. It provided for the an
nual election of delegates to "the congress of the
United States of America" thus assuming the fact
of a union, and that its life was to be concurrent
INSTITUTION OF STATE GOVERNMENTS l6l
with that of the state. The superior authority of
the acts of congress in matters within its sphere
was declared in the twenty- fourth article, as follows:
"Art. 24. All acts of assembly in force in the state
on the fifteenth of May last (and not hereby altered
or contrary to the resolutions of congress * * * )
shall continue."
The preamble of the constitution of Georgia,
adopted February, 1777, recited the resolution of
congress of May 15 and the fact that "the inde
pendence of the United States of America" has been
declared as the base from which it sprang; and pro
vided for an appeal in admiralty cases to the "conti
nental congress," and for the annual election of
"continental delegates."
The first constitution of Maryland went into force
in November, 1776. The declaration of rights,
which accompanied it, recited the declaration of in
dependence, and declared that "the people of this
state ought to have the sole and exclusive right of
regulating the internal government and police there
of," and prohibited public officers from receiving
any present from any foreign prince or state, or
from the United States. The control of general or
external affairs by congress was assumed as the ex
isting status. It further provided for the annual
choice of delegates to congress, prescribed the quali
fications of such delegates and provided that no
delegate should serve for more than three in any;
1 62 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
term of six years, nor hold any office of profit "in
the gift of congress."
The general court of Massachusetts adopted a
constitution in 1778, but on submission to the
people it was rejected; and it was not until 1780
that the first constitution of the state went into
operation.
The first constitution of New Hampshire, which
was completed January 5, 1776, before the declara
tion of independence, opened with this recital:
"We, the members of the congress of New Hamp
shire, chosen and appointed by the free suffrages
of the people of the said colony, and author
ized and empowered by them to meet together,
and use such means and pursue such measures
as we should judge best for the public good;
and in particular to establish some form of gov
ernment, provided that measure should be recom
mended by the continental congress; and a recom
mendation having been transmitted to us from the
said congress" do, etc. It was further resolved,
"That, if the present unhappy dispute with Great
Britain shall continue longer than this present year,
and the continental congress give no instruction or
direction to the contrary" that a council be chosen
by the people, etc.
The constitution of New Jersey, adopted in 1776
by a convention assembled in May of that year, con
tains this recital in the preamble: "As the hon-
INSTITUTION OF STATE GOVERNMENTS 163
orable the continental congress, the supreme council
of the American colonies has advised such of
the colonies as have not yet gone into meas
ures, to adopt for themselves, respectively, such
government as shall best conduce to their own
happiness and safety, and the well being of Amer
ica in general: We, the representatives," etc.
The convention which framed the first constitu
tion of New York, assembled at White Plains,
July 10, 1776, and the instrument was completed
at Kingston, April 20, 1777. The preamble recites
the resolution of congress of May 15, advising
the institution of state governments. The declara
tion of independence is then recited at length
and is followed by this: "In virtue of which sev
eral acts, declarations, and proceedings mentioned
and contained in the aforecited resolves or resolutions
of the general congress of the United American
States and of the congresses or conventions of this
state, all power whatever therein hath reverted to
the people thereof."
The first constitutional convention of the state of
North Carolina assembled at Halifax in November,
1776, and completed its work in the following
month. The second paragraph of the declaration
of rights is as follows: "That the people of this
state ought to have the sole and exclusive right of
regulating the internal government and police there
of." The constitution contained the provision "that
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no officer in the regular army or navy, in the serv
ice and pay of the United States," should have a
seat in the assembly; and provided for the annual
election of delegates to the continental congress.
The first constitution of Pennsylvania was
framed by a convention which assembled at Phila
delphia on the fifteenth of July, 1776, and completed
its labors in September of the same year. The pre
amble declares: "Whereas, it is absolutely neces
sary for the welfare and safety of the inhabitants
of said colonies, that they be henceforth free and
independent states, and that just, permanent, and
proper forms of government exist in every part of
them, derived from and founded on the authority
of the people only, agreeable to the directions of the
honorable American congress." The third article
of the declaration of rights was as follows: "That
the people of this state have the sole, exclusive and
inherent right of governing and regulating the in
ternal police of the same."
In South Carolina a provincial congress adopted,
in March, 1776, a form of government. It provid
ed for delegates- to the continental congress and de
clared "that the resolutions of the continental con
gress, now of force in this colony, shall so continue
until altered or revoked by them." This constitution
and the one adopted by the general assembly in
1778 were declared by the supreme court to be sim
ple acts of the general assembly and subject to re-
INSTITUTION OF STATE GOVERNMENTS 165
peal by that body. The constitution of 1778 re
ferred to the former as temporary only and re
cited: "Whereas, the united colonies of America
have been since constituted independent states, and
the political connection heretofore subsisting be
tween them and Great Britain entirely dissolved
by the declaration of the honorable continental con
gress;" and provided for the annual election of "dele
gates to the congress of the United States."
It appears, I think, from what I have said:
First, that the state governments were not distinct
and separate ventures, antedating the union, but
were incident to and grew out of the union; and,
second, that the sovereignty assumed in these first
state constitutions was of local, or internal affairs,
while the larger sovereignty, that had to do with
the world, was either expressly or impliedly left to
the union as represented by the continental con
gress. There was nothing in any of these constitu
tions save that of South Carolina that looked to
or provided for any intercourse between the state
and any foreign power.
It will be instructive to examine with some de
tail these first state constitutions, for in them we
have the first systematic expressions of the Ameri
can form of government. Most of them were in
troduced by bills of rights, and these, upon exam
ination, will be found to be largely re-statements of
the natural and inherited rights that had been so
1 66 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
often and so fervently defended in the addresses to
the crown. Seeing that the powers of government
had been so cruelly and selfishly used by kings and
parliaments and royal governors we do not wonder
that there 'should have been a popular affection for
bills of rights and a most watchful care that the
powers of public officers should be strictly defir-ed
and limited. The objection to the national consti
tution of 1787 that it did not contain a bill of
rights was well-nigh fatal to its adoption, and was
only waived in the belief that it would be as it
was speedily removed by amendments.
The bill of rights of Maryland, adopted Novem
ber n, 1776, may be taken as a good general ex
ample. It declared that the people were the source
of all government and that the object of govern
ment was the general good; that public officers
were "the trustees of the public" ; that the legisla
tive, executive and judicial functions should be kept
forever separate; that justice should be administered
freely, without sale, denial or delay; that trials
should be by a jury of the neighborhood; that free
dom of speech and of the press should be held in
violate; the right of the people to assemble peace
ably and to petition for a redress of grievances was
affirmed; cruel and unusual punishments were for
bidden; the accused was guaranteed the right to a
speedy trial, to confront witnesses, to be defended
by counsel; excessive bail was forbidden; ex post
INSTITUTION OF STATE GOVERNMENTS 1 67
'facto laws were prohibited; the right of search limit
ed; the right to bear arms and the freedom of wor
ship affirmed, and test oaths and titles of nobility
prohibited.
It was a noble summary of human rights, an en
during basis for free government. The individual
rights asserted were, in the main, the rights which
Englishmen had achieved and the colonists had in
herited. The division of governmental powers was
a modification of the forms of the English consti
tution. The king was eliminated. The dread and
redoubtable sovereign, by the grace of God, king,
etc., was no longer a man, but the law; and that
law the expression of the will of the people.
The constitutions of Delaware, Maryland, Massa
chusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecti
cut, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Geor
gia and Virginia provided for the organization of
a legislature to consist of two distinct and co-ordi
nate branches.
In Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, North
Carolina and Virginia, the members of both branches
of the legislature were chosen by popular vote.
In Georgia the legislative body, chosen annually
by the freemen, on the first day of their meeting
elected an executive council from their own body.
The remainder of the body constituted the house
of assembly and had full legislative power; but all
1 68 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
laws were required to be sent to the executive coun
cil for their perusal and advice.
In New Hampshire the assembly, or house of rep
resentatives, chose a council which, when chosen,
was charged jointly with the assembly with legisla
tive powers. In the constitution of 1784 a senate
and house of representatives were provided for,
vested with supreme legislative power, and the mem
bers of both houses were to be chosen by popular
election.
In Pennsylvania, by the constitution of 1776, the
supreme legislative power was vested in a single
house of representatives chosen by the freemen of
the commonwealth. A council was also provided
for to be chosen by popular vote; but it was
charged with executive rather than legislative duties.
In South Carolina, under the constitution of 1776,
a general assembly was elected by the freeholders,
and this assembly chose from its own body a legis
lative council, and the two bodies chose a president
and vice-president. The supreme legislative power
was vested in the president, the legislative council
and the assembly.
The constitution adopted by the convention of
Vermont in 1777 provided for a single legislative
body or assembly, but all bills were required to be
laid before the governor and council for perusal
and proposals for amendment; and, except in case of
INSTITUTION OF STATE GOVERNMENTS 169
sudden necessity, were to lie over until the next as
sembly for final passage.
In Connecticut and Rhode Island, under their
charters, which were continued, the legislative
powers were vested in a council and delegates which
at first met in one body, but had afterwards
come to sit separately. The members of both
branches were elected by popular vote.
It thus appears that in eleven of the states the
bicameral form had been adopted for the supreme
legislature.
George Mason, writing in 1778, said of the or
ganization of the state governments: "There is a
remarkable sameness in all the forms of government
throughout the American union, except in the states
of South Carolina and Pennsylvania, the first hav
ing three branches of legislature, and the last only
one ; all the other states have two : This difference
having given general disgust, and it is probable an
alteration will take place to assimilate these to the
constitutions of the other states."
The idea of giving greater permanence to the up
per branch of the legislature appears in many of
these constitutions. In Delaware one of the three
councilors chosen for each county retired every year
and the vacancy was filled by a new election.
Under the first constitution of Maryland the term
of office of the senators was five years, while that
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of the members of the assembly was one year. Two
persons were chosen by popular vote from each
county to be "electors of the senate," and these elect
ors chose the senators. The electors of senators
were required to take an oath "to elect without favor,
affection, partiality, or prejudice, such persons for
senators as they, in their judgment and conscience,
believe best qualified for the office."
In New York the senators first chosen were di
vided by lot into four classes, the term of one class
expiring each year ; thus, after the first election, mak
ing the term of office four years, while the mem
bers of the assembly were chosen for one year
only.
In Virginia the senate was divided into four
classes of six members each, and one class chosen
annually.
The reservation, suggested by the English con
stitution, of the power of originating revenue bills
to the lower and more popular branch of the legis
lature appears in several of these early constitu
tions.
In Delaware it was declared "that all money bills
for the support of government shall originate in the
house of assembly, and may be altered, amended or
rejected by the legislative council. All other bills
and ordinances may take rise in the house of assem
bly or legislative council, and may be altered, amend
ed or rejected by either."
INSTITUTION OF STATE GOVERNMENTS
The constitution of Maryland contained a similar
provision. But a wise provision, which ought to
have been embodied in the national constitution, pre
served the legislative liberty of the senate. It was
expressed thus: "That the senate may be at full
and perfect liberty to exercise their judgment in pass
ing laws and that they may not be compelled by
the house of delegates, either to reject a money bill,
which the emergency of affairs may require, or to
assent to some other act of legislation, in their con
science and judgment injurious to the public wel
fare the house of delegates shall not, on any oc
casion, or under any pretense, annex to, or blend
with a money bill, any matter, clause or thing not
immediately relating to, and necessary for the im
posing, assessing, levying or applying the taxes or
supplies, to be raised for the support of government
or the current expenses of the state."
This additional provision defining money bills is
interesting in view of the questions that have been
raised between the national senate and house of rep
resentatives in connection with the provision of the
national constitution upon the subject : "And to pre
vent altercation about such bills, it is declared, that
no bill imposing duties or customs for the mere reg
ulation of commerce, or inflicting fines for the ref
ormation of morals, or to enforce the execution of
the laws, by which an incidental revenue may arise,
shall be accounted a money bill."
172 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
In the Massachusetts constitution also it was pro
vided that all "money bills" should originate in the
house of representatives, the power of amendment,
however, being reserved to the senate; and in the
constitution of New Hampshire, adopted in 1784,
the same provision appears.
In the constitution of New Jersey, of 1776, the
limitation of the powers of the council was expressed
as follows : "That the council shall also have power
to prepare bills to pass into laws, and have other
like powers as the assembly, and in all respects be
a free and independent branch of the legislature of
this colony, save only that they shall not prepare or
alter any money bill which shall be the privilege
of the assembly."
The constitution of South Carolina (1776) pro
vided that "all money bills for the support of gov
ernment shall originate in the general assembly and
shall not be altered or amended by the legislative
council, but may be rejected by them."
In the first constitution of Virginia (1776) this
provision appears : "All laws shall originate in the
house of delegates, to be approved or rejected by
the senate, or to be amended with consent of the
house of delegates, except money bills, which in no
instance shall be altered by the senate, but wholly
approved or rejected."
Some other general provisions, found in the first
state constitutions, relating to the powers of the
INSTITUTION OF STATE GOVERNMENTS 173
state legislatures, were that each house should be
the judge of the election and qualification of its
members, should have power to sit upon its own ad
journments in some cases with the limitation that
neither should adjourn without the consent of the
other except for two or three days.
The assembly, or popular branch, was invested
with the power of presenting articles of impeach
ment against public officers to be tried before the
council or senate.
The returns of the votes for governor were to be
canvassed by the general assembly and the result de
clared; in the event of a tie the choice was devolved
upon the legislature. The provisions touching these
matters were not, of course, uniform in all states.
I call attention to these matters here as, in some
cases, furnishing the suggestion, and in some cases
almost the very form afterwards adopted in the na
tional constitution.
THE EXECUTIVE
Let us now notice briefly the provision made for
the exercise of the executive powers in these con
stitutions.
In Delaware provision was made for the choice
by joint ballot of both houses, "to be taken in the
house of assembly," of a president or chief magis
trate, whose term was three years. He was author
ized to draw for moneys appropriated by the legis-
174 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
lature and required to account for the same. Dur
ing the recess of the legislature, and for a period
not exceeding thirty days, he was allowed to lay
embargoes and prohibit the exportation of any com
modity. A limited pardoning power was given him,
and other general executive powers of government.
On the death, inability or absence from the state
of the president or chief magistrate the office was
devolved upon the speaker of the council "as vice-
president"; and, in case of his death, inability, or
absence from the state, the powers of "the presi
dency" were devolved upon the speaker of the
house of assembly.
In Georgia the chief executive officer was styled
governor and was chosen by the house of represen
tatives on the first day of their meeting. He was
authorized, with the advice of the executive coun
cil, to exercise the executive powers according to
the constitution and laws of the state; to call the
assembly together in an emergency and to fill va
cancies in office until the next general election. He
was to preside in the executive council at all times
except "when they are taking into consideration and
perusal the laws and orders offered to them by
the house of assembly." He was elected by popular
vote to hold office for one year, and was not eli
gible for more than one year in three. In case of
the sickness or absence of the governor the presi-
INSTITUTION OF STATE GOVERNMENTS 175
dent of the executive council was to exercise the
powers of the office.
Neither here nor in the case of Delaware does it
seem that any power was given to the governor
either to approve or disapprove of acts of the legis
lature. In Georgia, as we have seen, the acts of
the legislature were submitted to the executive coun
cil for advice and amendment; but the governor
usually the presiding officer was excluded from the
sittings of the council when they were exercising
this legislative power.-
In Maryland the chief executive was also desig
nated by the title of governor; was elected annually
by the "joint ballot of both houses to be taken in
each house separately/' In case of a tie a second
ballot was to be taken, confined to the persons who,
on the first ballot, had an equal number of votes;
and, if a tie again resulted, the election was to be
determined by lot. The governor could not con
tinue in office longer than three years, and was
afterwards ineligible for four years. On the death
or resignation of the governor the "first named of
the council, for the time being," acted as gover
nor. The governor was vested with general execu
tive powers under the law, but was expressly re
strained from the exercise, under any pretense, of
any power or prerogative "by virtue of any law,
statute, or custom of England or Great Britain."
He was authorized, with the advice and consent of
1^6 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
the council, to appoint the chancellor, judges, jus
tices, attorney-general and other civil officers, except
such as had been otherwise specially provided for,
and to suspend any officer not appointed during
good behavior. It was his duty to sign all bills
passed by the general assembly and to affix the great
seal of state.
In Massachusetts "a supreme executive magistrate,"
to be styled the governor of the commonwealth of
Massachusetts, was provided for. He was to be
chosen annually by popular vote ; the returns were to be
canvassed and declared before the senate and house of
representatives ; the house of representatives, by ballot,
was to select two f the four persons having the highest
number of votes, and the senate was then, by bal
lot, to elect one of these, who should be declared
governor. He was commander-in-chief of the mili
tary forces of the state, appointed all judicial officers
and other officers designated, "by and with the ad
vice and consent of the council." The election of
a lieutenant-governor was also provided for who,
in case of the death or absence of the governor,
performed the duties of the office during such va
cancy. All bills and resolves of the senate or
house of representatives, before having force as laws,
were required to be laid before the governor "for
his revisal." If he approved he was to signify his
approval by signing the bill, "but, if he have any
objection to the passing of such bill or resolve, he
INSTITUTION OF STATE GOVERNMENTS 177
shall return the same, together with his objections
thereto, in writing, to the senate or house of rep
resentatives, in whichsoever the same shall have
originated, who shall enter the objections sent down
by the governor, at large, on their record, and pro
ceed to reconsider the said bill or resolve; but if,
after such reconsideration, two-thirds of the said
senate or house of representatives shall, notwith
standing the said objections, agree to pass the same,
it shall, together with the objections, be sent to the
other branch of the legislature, where it shall also
be reconsidered, and if approved by two-thirds of
the members present, shall have the force of law;
but in all such cases the vote of both houses shall
be determined by yeas and nays; and the names of
the persons voting for or against the said bill or
resolve shall be entered on the public records of the
commonwealth. And in order to prevent unneces
sary delays, if any bill or resolve shall not be re
turned by the governor within five days after it
shall have been presented, the same shall have the
force of law."
In the first brief and temporary frame of gov
ernment adopted in New Hampshire, 1776, no pro
vision was made for a separate executive depart
ment; the executive duties were assumed by the
house of representatives and council; but in the con
stitution of 1784 "a supreme executive magistrate"
was provided for who was styled the president of
178 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
the state of New Hampshire. He was elected an
nually by a popular vote, which was to be canvassed
and declared by the senate and house of representa
tives; and, if there was no election, the same
method of choice was adopted as in Massachusetts.
The president was the presiding officer of the sen
ate and had "a vote equal with any other member/'
and a casting vote in case of a tie. This constitu
tion was closely modeled on that of Massachusetts.
The constitution of New Jersey, 1776, vested the
government in a governor, legislative council and
general assembly. The governor was chosen an
nually by the council and assembly in a joint
meeting, and he became president of the council,
where he had a casting vote. The council chose a
vice-president, who was authorized to act in the ab
sence of the governor.
In New York the first constitution provided that
the supreme executive power and authority should
be vested in a governor, who was to be chosen at
a popular election and to hoH office for three years.
He was to "inform the legislature at every session
of the condition of the state, so far as may respect
his department; to recommend such matters to their
consideration as shall appear to him to concern its
good government, welfare and prosperity; to corre
spond with the continental congress and other states;
to transact all necessary business with the officers
of government, civil and military; to take care that
INSTITUTION OF STATE GOVERNMENTS 179
the laws are faithfully executed, to the best of his
ability, and to expedite, all such measures as may
be resolved upon by the legislature." The governor,
the chancellor and the judges of the supreme court,
or any two of them, were constituted a council to
revise bills about to be passed by the legislature. If
the council, or a majority of them, were of the
opinion that the bill should not become a law it* was
to be returned to the house in which it originated
with the objections. If, upon a reconsideration, two-
thirds of each branch still agreed to the law, not
withstanding the objections, the bill became a law.
It was provided, however, that if a bill should not
be returned within ten days after the presentation
to the council it should be a law, unless the legisla
ture "shall, by their adjournment, render a return
of the said bill within ten days impracticable, in
which case the bill shall be returned on the first day
of the meeting of the legislature, after the expira
tion of the said ten days." A lieutenant-governor
was provided for, to be chosen in the same manner
as the governor. He was, by virtue of his office,
president of the senate, and upon an equal division
had a casting vote. In case of the death, resigna
tion or absence of the governor from the state the
lieutenant-governor exercised the powers of the of
fice. In case the lieutenant-governor should die, re
sign, or be absent from the state, the president of
l8o VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
the senate in like manner succeeded to the office of
governor.
In North Carolina the senate and house, at their
first meeting, elected a governor by ballot for one
year. General executive powers were given to him;
and, in case of his death, inability or absence, the
speaker of the senate, for the time being, exercised
the powers of governor; and in the case of his death,
absence or inability, the speaker of the house of com
mons assumed the office. No veto power was vested
in the governor.
In Pennsylvania the supreme executive power was
vested in a president and council. The executive
council was chosen by popular vote, and the president
and vice-president annually by the joint ballot of the
general assembly and council.
In South Carolina provision was made for the
choice by the general assembly and council of a
president and commander-in-chief and a vice-president.
It was provided that "bills having passed the gen
eral assembly and legislative council may be assent
ed to or rejected by the president and commander-
in-chief. Having received his assent, they shall have
all the force and validity of a general act of this
colony"; and, further, "where a bill has been re
jected it may, on a meeting after adjournment of
not less than three days of the general assembly
and legislative council, be brought in again." I
think the provision which I now quote from the
INSTITUTION OF STATE GOVERNMENTS l8l
constitutions of South Carolina of 1776 and 1778
is the only one in any of the state constitutions
which so much as suggests that a state might come
into treaty relations with other states. The pro
vision is as follows: "That the president and com-
mander-in-chief shall have no power to make war
or peace, or enter into any final treaty without the
consent of the general assembly and legislative coun
cil." This peculiar provision does not appear in the
constitution of 1790.
The constitution of Virginia, 1776, provided for
a governor or chief magistrate, to be chosen annu
ally by joint ballot of both houses. With the ad
vice of the council of state he was authorized to ex
ercise the executive powers of government according
to the laws of the commonwealth. The privy coun
cil, also chosen by the legislature, were authorized
to choose out of their own number a president who,
in case of the death, inability or absence of the gov
ernor, was to act as lieutenant-governor.
These state constitutions greatly instructed the
members of the constitutional convention of 1787 in
their work. In fact, an outline model of a free,
representative government its grand subdivisions
the division of powers between these and the gen
eral limitations upon each department, was offered
to their hand in these state constitutions, and the
suggestion was obvious that the more nearly the
general government followed these outlines the more
1 82 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
likely it was to meet with popular favor. I do not
mean to be understood as saying that these state
constitutions themselves were in any strict sense cre
ations. They were largely the development and mod
ification of principles and usages of the English con
stitution, which had before been enlarged, defined
and modified by a century and a half of American
colonial experience. But the work of applying these
principles, of organizing a government without a
king, or a house of lords a republic deriving all
of its powers from the people and exercising de
fined powers, through officers having limited terms,
and by prescribed methods, was a task so large and
delicate that the first state constitution may well
excite our admiration and surprise. My chief ob
ject, however, in giving you so full an abstract
of their provisions is that you may see their likeness
each to the other and to the national constitution.
When we contrast these admirable state consti
tutions with the articles of confederation, we do not
wonder that the states became strong and the union
weak.
The state service attracted the competent and the
ambitious, and only the most resolute and the most
obscure remained in congress. The condition of the
federation was so strikingly like that of a barrel
from which the hoops had been withdrawn, ready to
fall to pieces at a touch, that one of the favorite
toasts of this period was "A hoop to the barrel."
INSTITUTION OF STATE GOVERNMENTS 183
Speaking of the situation of congress about this
time, Mr. McMaster, in his History of the People
of the United States, says: "The stimulus derived
from the presence of a hostile army was withdrawn
and the representation and attendance fell off fast.
Delaware and Georgia ceased to be represented.
From the ratification of the treaty to the organiza
tion of the government under the constitution six
years elapsed, and during those six years congress,
though entitled to ninety-one members, was rarely
attended by twenty-five. The house was repeatedly
forced to adjourn day after day for want of a quo
rum. On more than one occasion these adjourn
ments covered a period of thirteen consecutive days.
* * * No occasion, however impressive or im
portant, could call out a large attendance. Seven
states, represented by twenty delegates, witnessed the
resignation of Washington. Twenty-three members,
sitting for eleven states, voted for the ratification of
the treaty. * * * Neglected by its own members,
insulted and threatened by its mutinous troops, re
viled by the press and forced to wander from city
to city in search of an abiding place, its acts pos
sessed no national importance whatever."
In the South Carolina convention for the ratifi
cation of the constitution, the Hon. Jacob Reed said
that he "looked on the boasted efficiency of congress
to be farcical, and instanced two cases in proof of
his opinion. One was that when the treaty should
184 VIEWS OF 'AN EX-PRESIDENT
have been ratified a sufficient number of members
could not be collected in congress for that purpose,
so that it was necessary to despatch a frigate, at the
expense of four thousand dollars, with particular di
rections to Mr. Adams to use his endeavors to gain
time. His application proved successful; otherwise
very disagreeable consequences must have ensued.
The other case was, a party of Indians came to
Princeton for the purpose of entering into an ami
cable treaty with congress; before it could be con
cluded, a member went to Philadelphia to be mar
ried, and his secession had nearly involved the west
ern country in all the miseries of war."
THE STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITORY
AND OF ITS FREE CIVILIZED
INHABITANTS
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, December, 1900
North American Review, January, 1901
A legal argument upon this subject is quite out
side of my purpose, which is to consider, in a pop
ular, rather than a professional way, some of the
questions that arise, some of the answers that have
been proposed, and some of the objections to these
answers.
We have done something out of line with Ameri
can history, not in the matter of territorial expan
sion, but in the character of it. Heretofore, the re
gions we have taken over have been contiguous to
us, save in the case of Alaska and, indeed, Alaska
is contiguous, in the sense of being near. These
annexed regions were also, at the time of annexa
tion, either unpeopled or very sparsely peopled, by civ
ilized men, and were further, by their situation, cli
mate and soil, adapted to the use of an increasing
American population. We have now acquired in-
185
1 86 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
i
sular regions, situated in the tropics, and in another
hemisphere, and hence unsuitable for American set
tlers, even if they were not, as they are, already
populated, and their lands already largely taken up.
We have taken over peoples rather than lands, and
these chiefly of other race stocks for there are "di
versities of tongues/' The native labor is cheap and
threatens competition, and there is a total absence
of American ideas and methods of life and govern
ment among the eight or more millions of inhabit
ants in the Philippines. We have said that the Chi
nese will not "homologate"; and the Filipinos will
certainly be slow. Out of the too late contempla
tion of these very real and serious problems has
arisen the proposition to solve them, as many think,
by wresting our government from its constitutional
basis; or at least, as all must agree, by the introduc
tion of wholly new views of the status of the peo
ple of the territories, and of some startlingly new
methods of dealing with them. It is not open to
question, I think, that, if we had taken over only
the Sandwich islands and Porto Rico, these new
views of the status of the people of our territories,
and these new methods of dealing with them, would
never have been suggested or used.
The question of the constitutional right of the
United States to acquire territory, as these new re
gions have been acquired, must, I suppose, be taken
by every one to have been finally adjudged in favor
STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITORY 187
of that right. The supreme court is not likely to
review the decision announced by Chief Justice Mar
shall.
It is important to note, however, that the great
chief-justice derives the power to acquire territory,
by treaty and conquest, from the constitution itself.
He says :
"The constitution confers absolutely on the govern
ment of the Union the powers of making war and of
making treaties; consequently that government pos
sesses the power of acquiring territory either by con
quest or by treaty."
While this decision stands, there is no room for
the suggestion that the power of the United States
to acquire territory, either by a conquest con
firmed by treaty, or by a treaty of purchase from
a nation with which we are at peace, is doubtful, and
as little for the suggestion that this power is an
extra-constitutional power. The people, then, have
delegated to the president and congress the power
to acquire territory by the methods we have used in
the cases of Porto Rico and the Hawaiian and Phil
ippine islands. But some have suggested that this
power to acquire new territory is limited to certain
ends; that it can only be used to acquire territory
that is to be, or is capable of being, erected into
states of the Union. If this view were allowed, the
attitude of the courts to the question would not be
:i
much changed; for they could not inquire as to the
1 88 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
purposes of congress, nor, I suppose, overrule the
judgment of congress as to the adaptability of ter
ritory for the creation of states. The appeal would
be to congress to limit the use of the power.
The islands of Hawaii, of Porto Rico and of the
Philippine archipelago have been taken over, not for
a temporary purpose, as in the case of Cuba, but to
have and to hold forever, as a part of the region
over which the sovereignty of the United States ex
tends. We have not put ourselves under any pledge
as to them, at least not of a written sort. Indeed,
we have not, it is said, made up our minds as to
anything affecting the Philippines, save this : that
they are a part of our national domain and that the
inhabitants must yield obedience to the sovereignty
of the United States, so long as we choose to hold
them.
Our title to the Philippines has been impeached by
some upon the ground that Spain was not in pos
session when she conveyed them to us. It is a prin
ciple of private law that a deed of property adversely
held is not good. If I have been ejected from a
farm to which I claim title and another is in pos
session under a claim of title, I must recover the pos
session before I can make a good conveyance. Other
wise, I sell a law suit and not a farm, and that the
law counts to be immoral. It has not been shown,
however, that this principle has been incorporated into
international law; and, if that could be shown, there
STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITORY 189
would still be need to show that Spain had been ef
fectively ousted.
It is very certain, I suppose, that if Great Britain
had, during our revolutionary struggle, concluded
a treaty of cession of the colonies to France, we
would have treated the cession as a nullity and con
tinued to fight for liberty against the French. No
promises of liberal treatment by France would have
appeased us.
But what has that to do with the Philippine situa
tion? There are so many points of difference. We
were Anglo-Saxons! We were capable of self-gov
ernment. And, after all, what we would have done
under the conditions supposed has no bearing upon
the law of the case. It is not to be doubted that any
international tribunal would affirm the completeness
of our legal title to the Philippines.
The questions that perplex us relate to the status
of these new possessions, and to the rights of their
civilized inhabitants who have elected to renounce
their allegiance to the Spanish crown, and either by
choice or operation of law have become American
somethings. What? Subjects or citizens? There
is no other status, since they are not aliens any
longer, unless a newspaper heading that recently at
tracted my attention offers another. It ran thus:
"Porto Ricans not citizens of the United States
proper" Are they citizens of the United States im
proper, or improper citizens of the United States?
I9O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
It seems clear that there is something improper. To
call them "citizens of Porto Rico" is to leave their
relations to the United States wholly undefined.
Now, in studying the questions whether the new
possessions are part of the United States, and their
free civilized inhabitants citizens of the United
States, the constitution should, naturally, be exam
ined first. Whatever is said there, is final any
treaty or act of congress to the contrary notwith
standing. The fact that a treaty must be constitu
tional, as well as an act of congress, seems to have
been overlooked by those who refer to the treaty
of cession as giving congress the right to govern
the people of Porto Rico, who do not retain their
Spanish allegiance, according to its pleasure. Has
the queen regent, with the island, decorated congress
with one of the jewels from the Spanish crown?
In Pollard v. Hogan, 3 Howard, the court says:
"It can not be admitted that the king of Spain
could by treaty, or otherwise, impart to the United
States any of his royal prerogatives; and much less
can it be admitted that they have capacity to receive
or power to exercise them."
A treaty is a part of the supreme law of the land
in the same sense that an act of congress is, not
in the same sense that the constitution is. The con
stitution of the United States can not be abrogated
or impaired by a treaty. Acts of congress and trea
ties are only a part of the "supreme law of the land"
STATUS OP ANNEXED TERRITORY
when they pursue the constitution. The supreme
court has decided that a treaty may be abrogated by
a later statute, on the ground that the statute is the
later expression of the sovereign's will. Whether a
statute may be abrogated by a later treaty, we do
not know; but we do know that neither a statute nor
a treaty can abrogate the constitution.
If the constitution leaves the question open
whether the inhabitants of Porto Rico shall or shall
not upon annexation become citizens, then the presi
dent and the senate may exercise that discretion by
a treaty stipulation that they shall or shall not be
admitted as citizens; but if, on the other hand, the
constitution gives no such discretion, but itself con
fers citizenship, any treaty stipulation to the contrary
is void. To refer to the treaty in this connection is
to beg the question.
If we seek to justify the holding of slaves, in a
territory acquired by treaty, or the holding of its
civilized inhabitants in a condition less favored than
that of citizenship, by virtue of the provisions of
a treaty, it would seem to be necessary to show that
the constitution, in the one case, allows slavery, and,
in the other, a relation of civilized people to the
government that is not citizenship.
Now the constitution declares (i4th amendment)
that "all persons born or naturalized in the United
States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citi
zens of the United States." This disposes of the
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question, unless it can be maintained that Porto Rico
is not a part of the United States.
But the theory that any part of the constitution,
of itself, embraces the territories and their people,
is contested by many. Congress seems to have as
sumed the negative, though among the members
there was not entire harmony as to the argument by
which the conclusion was reached. It is contended,
by most of those who defend the Porto Rican bill,
that the constitution expends itself wholly upon that
part of the national domain that has been organized
into states, and has no reference to, or authority in,
the territories, save as it has constituted a govern
ment to rule over them.
No one contends that every provision of the con
stitution applies to the territories. Some of them
explicitly relate to the states only. The contention
of those who oppose the Porto Rican legislation is
that all of those general provisions of the constitu
tion which impose limitations upon the powers of the
legislative, executive and judicial departments must
apply to all regions and people where or upon whom
those powers are exercised. And, on the other hand,
those who deny most broadly that the constitution
applies to the territories seem practically to allow
that much of it does. The powers of appointment
and pardon in the territories, the confirmation of ter
ritorial officers, the methods of passing laws to gov
ern the territories, the keeping and disbursement of
STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITORY 193
federal taxes derived from the territories, the veto
power, and many other things, are pursued as if the
constitution applied to the cases.
But, in theory, it is claimed by these that no part
of the constitution applies except the thirteenth amend
ment, which prohibits slavery, and that only because
the prohibition expressly includes "any place subject
to their jurisdiction." This amendment was proposed
by congress on February i, 1865 the day on which
Sherman's army left Savannah on its northern
march ; and the words "any place subject to their juris
diction" were probably added because of the uncer
tainty of the legal status of the states in rebellion,
and not because of any doubt as to whether Nebras
ka, then a territory, was a part of the United States.
The view that some other general limitations of
the constitution upon the powers of congress must
relate to all regions and all persons was, however,
adopted by some members of the Senate committee
in the report upon the Porto Rican bill, where it is
said:
"Yet, as to all prohibitions of the constitution laid
upon congress while legislating, they operate for the
benefit of all for whom congress may legislate, no
matter where they may be situated, and without re
gard to whether or not the provisions of the consti
tution have been extended to them; but this is so be
cause the congress, in all that it does, is subject to
and governed by those restraints and prohibitions.
194 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
As, for instance, congress shall make no law respect
ing an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof; no title of nobility shall be
granted; no bill of attainder or ex post facto law
shall be passed; neither shall the validity of contracts
be impaired, nor shall property be taken without due
process of law; nor shall the freedom of speech or of
the press be abridged; nor shall slavery exist in any
place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
These limitations are placed upon the exercise of the
legislative power withouf regard to the place or the
people for whom the legislation in a given case may
be intended."
That is to say, every general constitutional limi
tation of the powers of congress applies to the ter
ritories. The brief schedule of these limitations
given by the committee is all put in the negative
form, "congress shall not"; but surely it was not
meant that there may not be quite as effective a
limitation by the use of the affirmative form. If
a power is given to be used in one way only,
all other uses of it are negatived by necessary im
plication. When it is said, "All duties, imposts, and
excises shall be uniform throughout the United
States," is not that the equivalent of "No duty or
excise that is not uniform shall be levied in the
United States?" And is not the first form quite as
effective a limitation of the legislative power over
the subject of indirect taxation as that contained in
STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITORY 195
the fourth clause of the section is upon the power
to lay direct taxes?
In the latter the negative form is used, thus:
"No capitation or other direct tax shall be laid,
unless in proportion to the census or enumeration
hereinbefore directed to be taken."
This discrimination between express and implied
limitations, benevolently attempted to save for the
people of the territories the bill of rights provision
of the constitution, will not, I think, endure dis
cussion.
There are only three views that may be offered,
with some show of consistency in themselves:
First, that congress, the executive and the judi
ciary are all created by the constitution as govern
ing agencies of the nation called the United States;
that their powers are defined by the constitution and
run throughout the nation; that all the limitations
of their powers attach to every region and to all
civilized people under the sovereignty of the United
States, unless their inapplicability appears from the
constitution itself; that every guaranty of liberty, in
cluding that most essential one, uniform taxation, is
to be allowed to every free civilized man and woman
who owes allegiance to the United States; that the
use of the terms "throughout the United States' '
does not limit the scope of any constitutional pro
vision to the states that would otherwise be appli
cable to the territories as well; but that these terms
196 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
include the widest sweep of the nation's sovereignty,
and so the widest limit of congressional action.
Second, that the terms, "The United States/' de
fine an inner circle of the national sovereignty com
posed of the states alone; that, whenever those terms
are used in the constitution, they must be taken to
have reference only to the region and to the people
within this inner circle; but that, when these terms
of limitation are omitted, the constitutional pro
visions must, unless otherwise limited, be taken to
include all lands and people in the outer circle of
the national sovereignty.
Third, that the constitution has relation only to the
states and their people; that all constitutional limi
tations of the powers of congress and the executive
are to be taken to apply only to the states and their
citizens; that the power to acquire territory is nei
ther derived from the constitution, nor limited by it,
but is an inherent power of national life; that the
government we' exercise in the territories is not a
constitutional government, but an absolute govern
ment, and that all or any of the things prohibited by
the constitution as to the states, in the interest of
liberty, justice and equality, may be done in the ter
ritories; that, as to the territories, we are under no
restraints save such as our own interests or our benev
olence may impose.
I say "benevolence"; but must not that quality be
submerged, before this view of the constitution is pro-
STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITORY 1 97
mulgated? It seems to have had its origin in a sup
posed commercial necessity, and we may fairly con
clude that other recurring necessities will guide its
exercise. Is it too much to say that this view of
the constitution is shocking?
Within the states, it is agreed that the powers
of the several departments of the national govern
ment are severely restrained. We read that congress
shall have power, and again that congress shall not
have power. But neither these grants nor these in
hibitions have, it is said, any relation to the terri
tories. Against the laws enacted by the congress, or
the acts done by the executive, there is no appeal, on
behalf of the people of the territories, to any writ
ten constitution, or bill of rights, or charter of lib
erty. We offer them only this highly consolatory
thought: a nation of free Americans can be trusted
to deal benevolently with you.
How obstinately wrong we were in our old answer
to the Southern slave-holder! It is not a question of
kind or unkind treatment, but of human rights; not
of the good or bad use of power, but of the power,
we said. And so our fathers said, in answer to
the claim of absolute power made on behalf of the
British parliament. As to the states, the legislative
power of congress is "all legislative powers herein
granted." (Art. I, Sec. i.) As to the territories,
it is said to be all legislative power all that any par
liament ever had or ever claimed to have, and as
198 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
much more as we may claim for there can be no ex
cess of pretension where power is absolute. No law
relating to the territories, passed by congress, can,
it is said, be declared by the supreme court to be
inoperative, though every section of it should con
travene a provision of the constitution.
An outline of a possible law may aid us to see
more clearly what is involved:
Sec. i. Suspends permanently the writ of habeas
corpus in Porto Rico.
Sec. 2. Declares an attainder against all Porto
Ricans who have displayed the Spanish flag since the
treaty of peace.
Sec. 3. Grants to the native mayors of Ponce and
San Juan the titles of Lord Dukes of Porto Rico,
with appropriate crests.
Sec. 4. Any Porto Rican who shall speak disre
spectfully of the congress shall be deemed guilty of
treason. One witness shall be sufficient to prove the
offense, and on conviction the offender shall have
his tongue cut out; and the conviction shall work
corruption of blood.
Sec. 5. The Presbyterian church shall be the Es
tablished church of the island, and no one shall be
permitted to worship God after any other form.
Sec. 6. All proposed publications shall be submit
ted to a censor and shall be printed only after he
has approved the same. Public meetings for the dis-
STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITORY 199
cussion of public affairs are prohibited and no peti
tions shall be presented to the government.
Sec. 7. No inhabitant of Porto Rico shall keep
or bear arms.
Sec. 8. The soldiers of the island garrison shall
be quartered in the houses of the people.
Sec. 9. The commanding officer of the United
States forces in the island shall have the right, with
out any warrant, to search the person, house, papers
and effects of any one suspected by him.
Sec. 10. Any person in Porto Rico, in civil life,
may be put upon trial for capital or other infamous
crimes upon the information of the public prosecutor,
without the presentment or indictment of a grand jury;
may be twice put in jeopardy for the same offense;
may be compelled to be a witness against himself,
and may be deprived of life, liberty or property with
out due process of law, and his property may be
taken for public uses without compensation.
Sec. ii. Criminal trials may, in the discretion of
the presiding judge, be held in secret, without a
jury, in a district prescribed by law after the com
mission of the offense, and the accused shall, or not,
be advised before arraignment of the nature or cause
of the accusation, and shall, or not, be confronted
with the witnesses against him, and have compul
sory process to secure his own witnesses, as the pre
siding judge may in his discretion order.
2OO VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
Sec. 12. There shall be no right in any suit at
common law to demand a jury.
Sec. 13. A direct tax is imposed upon Porto Rico
for federal uses without regard to its relative pop
ulation; the tariff rates at San Juan are fixed at 50
per cent, and those at Ponce at 15 per cent, of
those levied at New York.
New Mexico, or Arizona, or Oklahoma might be
substituted for Porto Rico in the bill; for, I think,
those who affirm that the constitution has no relation
to Porto Rico do so upon grounds that equally apply
to all other territories.
Now, no one supposes that congress will ever as
semble in a law such shocking provisions. But, for
themselves, our fathers were not content with an as
surance of these great rights that rested wholly upon
the sense of justice and benevolence of the congress.
The man whose protection from wrong rests wholly
upon the benevolence of another man or of a con
gress, is a slave a man without rights. Our fathers
took security of the governing departments they or
ganized; and that, notwithstanding the fact that the
choice of all public officers rested with the people.
When a man strictly limits the powers of an agent of
his own choice, and exacts a bond from him, to se
cure his faithfulness, he does not occupy strong
ground when he insists that another person, who had
no part in the selection, shall give the agent full
powers without a bond.
STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITORY 2OI
If there is anything that is characteristic in
American constitutions, state and national, it is the
plan of limiting the powers of all public officers
and agencies. "You shall do this; you may do this;
you shall not do this" is the form that the schedule
of powers always takes. This grew out of our ex
perience as English colonies. A government of un
limited legislative or executive powers is an un-Amer
ican government. And, for one, I do not like to
believe that the framers of the national constitution
and of our first state constitutions were careful only
for their own liberties.
This is the more improbable when we remember
that the territory then most likely to be acquired
would naturally be peopled by their sons. They
cherished very broad views as to the rights of men.
Their philosophy of liberty derived it from God. Lib
erty was a divine gift to be claimed for ourselves
only upon the condition of allowing it to "all men."
They would write the law of liberty truly, and suf
fer for a time the just reproach of a departure from
its precepts that could not be presently amended.
It is a brave thing to proclaim a law that con
demns your own practices. You assume the fault and
strive to attain. The fathers left to a baser genera
tion the attempt to limit God's law of liberty to
white men. It is not a right use of the fault of
slavery to say that, because of it, our fathers did
not mean "all men." It was one thing to tolerate
2O2 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
an existing condition that the law of liberty con
demned, in order to accomplish the union of the
states, and it is quite another thing to create a con
dition contrary to liberty for a commercial profit.
In a recent discussion of these questions, sent me
by the author, I find these consolatory reflections:
"And yet the inalienable rights of the Filipinos, even
if not guaranteed by the constitution, are amply se
cured by the fundamental, unwritten laws of our civ
ilization/' Does this mean that the specific guaran
tees of individual liberty found in our constitution
have become a part of "our civilization," and that
they apply in Porto Rico and the Philippines in such
a sense that, if there is any denial of them by con
gress or the executive, the courts can enforce them
and nullify the law that infringes them? If that is
meant, then as to all such rights this discussion is
tweedledum and tweedledee the constitution does
not apply, but all these provisions of it are in full
force, notwithstanding.
Perhaps, however, it should be asked further,
whether the rule of the uniformity of taxation is a
part of the "law of our civilization" ; for, without
it, all property rights are unprotected. The man
whose property may be taxed arbitrarily, without re
gard to uniformity within the tax district and with
out any limitation as to the purposes for which taxes
may be levied, does not own anything; he is a ten
ant at will.
STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITORY 203
But if these supposed "laws of our civilization" are
not enforcible by the courts, and rest wholly for their
sanction upon the consciences of presidents and con
gresses, then there is a very wide difference. The
one is ownership; the other is charity. The one is
freedom; the other slavery however just and kind
the master may be.
The instructions of the president to the Taft Phil
ippine commission seem to allow that any civil gov
ernment under the authority of the United States,
that does not offer to the people affected by it the
guarantees of liberty contained in the bill of rights
sections of the constitution, is abhorrent. Speaking
of these, he said :
"Until congress shall take action, I directed that,
upon every division and branch of the government
of the Philippines must be imposed these inviolable
rules :
" 'That no person shall be deprived of life, liberty
or property without due process of law; that private
property shall not be taken for public use without
just compensation; that in all criminal prosecutions
the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and
public trial, to be informed of the nature and cause
of the accusation, to be confronted with the wit
nesses against him, to have compulsory process for
obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the
assistance of counsel for his defense; that excessive
bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines im-
2O4 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
posed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted;
that no person shall be put twice in jeopardy for the
same offense, or be compelled in any criminal case
to be a witness against himself; that the right to
be secure against unreasonable searches and seiz
ures shall not be violated; that neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude shall exist except as a punish
ment for crime; that no bill of attainder, or ex post
facto law shall be passed; that no law shall be
passed abridging the freedom of speech or of the
press, or of the rights of the people to peaceably
assemble and petition the government for a redress
of grievances; that no law shall be made respect
ing the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof, and that the free exercise and
enjoyment of religious profession and worship with
out discrimination or preference shall forever be al
lowed/ "
The benevolent disposition of the president is well
illustrated in these instructions. He conferred freely
"until congress shall take action" upon the Fili
pinos, who accepted the sovereignty of the United
States and submitted themselves to the government
established by the commission, privileges that our
fathers secured only after eight years of desperate
war. There is this, however, to be noted, that our
fathers were not content to hold these priceless gifts
under a revocable license. They accounted that to
hold these things upon the tenure of another man's
STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITORY 2O5
benevolence was not to hold them at all. Their bat
tle was for rights, not privileges for a constitution,
not a letter of instructions.
The president's instructions apparently proceed
upon the theory that the Filipinos, after civil gov
ernment has superseded the military control, are not
endowed under our constitution, or otherwise, with
any of the rights scheduled by him; that, if he does
nothing, is silent, some or all of the things prohib
ited in his schedule may be lawfully done upon, and
all the things allowed may be denied to, a people
who owe allegiance to that free constitutional gov
ernment we call the United States of America.
It is clear that those Porto Ricans who have not,
under the treaty, declared a purpose to remain Span
ish subjects, have become American citizens or 'Ameri
can subjects. Have you ever read one of our com
mercial treaties with Great Britain or Germany, or
any other of the kingdoms of the world? These
treaties provide for trade intercourse, and define and
guarantee the rights of the people of the respective
nations when domiciled in the territory of the other.
The descriptive terms run like this : "the subjects of
Her Britannic Majesty" on the one part, and "the
citizens of the United States" on the other. Now,
if the commercial privileges guaranteed by these trea
ties do not, in their present form, include the Porto
Ricans who strewed flowers before our troops when
they entered the island, we ought at once to propose
2O6 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
to our "Great and Good Friends/' the kings and
queens of the Earth, a modification of our conventions
in their behalf.
Who will claim the distinction of proposing that
the words "and subjects" be introduced after the word
"citizens"? There will be no objection on the part
of the king, you may be sure; the modification will
be allowed smilingly.
We have never before found it necessary to treat
the free civilized inhabitants of the territories other
wise than as citizens of the United States.
It is true, as Mr. Justice Miller said, that the ex
clusive sovereignty over the territories is in the na
tional government; but it does not follow that the
nation possesses the power to govern the territories
independently of the constitution. The constitution
gives to congress the right to exercise "exclusive leg
islation" in the District of Columbia; but "exclu
sive" is not a synonym of "absolute." When the con
stitution says that "treason against the United States
shall consist only in levying war against them, or
in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and
comfort," there is a limitation of the legislative
power; and it necessarily extends to every venue
where the crime of treason against the United
States may be laid, and to every person upon whom
its penalties may be imposed.
This constitutional provision defining the crime of
treason and prescribing the necessary proofs is a bill
STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITORY 20?
of rights provision. In England, under Edward II,
"there was," it was said, "no man who knew how
to behave himself, to do, speak or say, for doubt
of the pains of such treasons." The famous statute
of Edward III, defining treasons, James Wilson de
clares, "may well be styled the legal Gibraltar of
England."
Mr. Madison, speaking of this section of the con
stitution, says in the Federalist:
"But as new fangled and artificial treasons have
been the great engines by which violent factions, the
natural offspring of free government, have usually
wreaked their malignity on each other, the conven
tion have with great judgment opposed a barrier to
this peculiar danger, by inserting a constitutional defi
nition of the crime," etc.
Mr. Madison believed that there was a real dan
ger that statutes of treason might be oppressively
used by congress. What have we been doing, or
what have we a purpose to do, that we find it neces
sary to limit the safeguards of liberty found in our
constitution, to the people of the states? Is it that
we now propose to acquire territory for coloniza
tion, and not, as heretofore, for full incorporation?
Is it that we propose to have crown colonies, and
must have crown law? Is it that we mean to be a
world power, and must be free from the restraints
of a bill of rights? We shall owe deliverance a
second time to these principles of human liberty, if
2O8 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
they are now the means of delivering us from un-
American projects.
The particular provision of the constitution upon
which congress seems to have balked, in the Porto
Rican legislation, was a revenue clause, viz., the first
paragraph of section 8 of Article I, which reads:
"The congress shall have power to lay and collect
taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts,
and provide for the common defense and general wel
fare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and
excises shall be uniform throughout the United
States."
There was only one door of escape from allowing
the application of this clause to Porto Rico. It was
to deny that the territories are part of the United
States.
It will be noticed that the descriptive term, "The
United States," is twice used in the one sentence
once in the clause defining the purposes for which
only duties and imposts may be levied, and once in
the clause requiring uniformity in the use of the
power. Is there any canon of construction that au
thorizes us to give to the words, "The United
States," one meaning in the first use of them and an
other in the second? If in the second use the ter
ritories are excluded, must they not also be excluded
in the first? If the rule of uniformity does not ap
ply to the territories, how can the power to tax be
used in the United States, to pay the debts and pro-
STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITORY 2OQ
vide for the defense and general welfare of the ter
ritories? Can duties be levied in New York and
other ports of the states, to be expended for local
purposes in Porto Rico, if the island is not a part
of the United States? Are the debts that may be
contracted by what the law calls the body politic
of "The People of Porto Rico" for local purposes,
part of the debt of the United States notwithstand
ing that the island is no part of the United States
and the people are not citizens of the United States?
But some one will say that the island is one of our
outlying defenses, and that fortifications and naval
stations and public highways there are necessary to
the "common defense." Well, is it also true that
education and poor relief, and fire and police and
health protection, and all other agencies of local order
and betterment in Porto Rico, are included in the
words "the general welfare of the United States"?
It would seem that a region of which it can be said
that its general welfare is the general welfare of the
United States, must be a part of the United States, and
its people citizens of the United States.
For the first time congress has laid tariff duties
upon goods passing from a territory into the states.
The necessity for this radical departure from the es
tablished practice of the government seems to have
been to find a safe basis for the holding and gov
erning of regions, the free introduction of whose
2IO VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
products might affect the home industries unfavor
ably, and the admission of whose people to citizen
ship might imply future statehood or at least the
right of migration and settlement in the states of an
undesirable population. That the diversity of tongues
in the Philippines, and the utter lack of the Amer
ican likeness in everything there, presented strong
reasons against the acquisition of the islands, I free
ly admit.
It must also be conceded that when, as we are
told, Providence laid upon us the heavy duty of tak
ing over and governing these islands, it was very
natural that we should seek to find a way of govern
ing them that would save us from some of the un
pleasant consequences which a discharge of the duty
in the old way involved. But do we not incur a
greater loss and peril from the new doctrine, that our
congress and executive have powers not derived from
the constitution, and are subject to no restraints or
limitations in the territories, save such as they may
impose upon themselves?
Are the civil rights of the dwellers on the main
land well secured against the insidiousness of
greed and ambition, while we deny to the island
dwellers, who are held to a strict allegiance, the only
sure defense that civil rights can have the guar
antees of constitutional law? Burke saw in the ab
solute powers claimed for parliament, in the Ameri-
STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITORY 211
can colonies, danger to the liberties of parliament
itself. As so often quoted, he said:
"For we are convinced, beyond a doubt, that a
system of dependence which leaves no security to the
people for any part of their freedom in their own
hands, can not be established in any inferior mem
ber of the British empire without consequently de
stroying the freedom of that very body in favor of
whose boundless pretensions such a scheme is adopt
ed. We know and feel that arbitrary power over
distant regions is not within the competence, nor
to be exercised agreeably to the forms or consist
ently with the spirit, of great popular assemblies."
Are we, in this day of commercial carnival, inca
pable of being touched by such considerations, either
in our fears or in our sense of justice? Is it not
likely to be true that the moral tone of the republic
our estimation of constitutional liberty will be
lessened by the creation of a body of civilized people
over whom our flag waves as an emblem of power
only? The flag can not stand for the benevolent pol
icies of an administration. It stands for more per
manent things for things that changing adminis
trations have no power to change. Is it not in the
nature of a mockery to raise the flag in Porto Rico
and bid its hopeful people hail it as an emblem of
emancipation, while the governor we have sent them
reads a proclamation, from the foot of the staff, an
nouncing the absolute power of congress over them?
212 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
How would the pioneers of the West have regarded
a declaration that they were not citizens of the United
States, or a duty laid upon the furs they sent to the
states, or upon the salt and gunpowder sent from
the states in exchange, even if a preference of 85
per cent, had been given them over the people of
Canada? It is safe to say that no such interpre
tation of the constitution or of the rights of the peo
ple of a territory, will ever be offered to men of
American descent.
If the constitution, so far as it is applicable, at
taches itself, whether congress will or no, to all ter
ritory taken over as a part of the permanent ter
ritory of the United States, it is there to stay as fun
damental law. But if it is not so, an act of congress
declaring that the constitution is "extended" is not
fundamental law, but statute law, and may be re
pealed and is repealed by implication, pro tanto, when
ever congress passes a law in conflict with the pro
visions of the "extended" constitution. If the con
stitution as such, as fundamental law, is extended
over new territory, it must be the result of an act
done an act the effect of which is in itself, not in
any accompanying declaration.
If the act of annexation does not carry the con
stitution into a territory, I can think of nothing that
will, save the act of admitting the territory as a state.
The situation of the Porto Rican people is scarcely
less mortifying to us than to them; they owe alle-
STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITORY 213
glance but have no citizenship. Have we not spoiled
our career as a delivering nation? And for what?
A gentleman connected with the beet-sugar indus
try, seeing my objections to the constitutionality of
the law, and having a friendly purpose to help me
over them, wrote to say that the duty was abso
lutely needed to protect the beet-sugar industry.
While appreciating his friendliness, I felt compelled
to say to him that there was a time for considering
the advantages and disadvantages of a commercial
sort involved in taking over Porto Rico, but that that
time had passed; and to intimate to him that the
needs of the beet-sugar industry seemed to me to be
irrelevant in a constitutional discussion.
The wise man did not say there was a future time
for everything; he allowed that the time for danc
ing might be altogether behind us, and a less pleas
ant exercise before us. We are hardly likely to
acquire any territory that will not come at some
cost.
That we give back to Porto Rico all of the rev
enue derived from the customs we levy, does not
seem to me to soften our dealings with her people.
Our fathers were not mollified by the suggestion that
the tea and stamp taxes would be expended wholly
for the benefit of the colonies. It is to say: We do
not need this money; it is only levied to show that
your country is no part of the United States, and
that you are not citizens of the United States, save
214 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT,
at our pleasure. When tribute is levied and immedi
ately returned as a benefaction, its only purpose is to
declare and maintain a state of vassalage.
But I am not sure that the beet-sugar objection
is not more tenable than another, and probably more
controlling consideration, which ran in this wise :
"We see no serious commercial disadvantages, and
no threat of disorder, in accepting Porto Rico to
be a part of the United States in that case it seems
to be our duty; but we have acquired other islands
in the Orient, of large area, populated by a turbu
lent and rebellious people; and, if we do by the
Porto Ricans what our sense of justice and of their
friendliness prompts us to do, some illogical person
will say that we must deal in the same way with
the Philippines. And some other person will say that
the free intercourse was not given by the law, but
by the constitution."
I will not give a license to a friend to cut a treo
upon my land to feed his winter fire, because my
enemy may find in the license a support for his claim
that the wood is a common!
If we have confidence that the constitution does
not apply to the territories, surely we ought to use
our absolute power there with a view to the circum
stances attending each call for its exercise. Not to
do this, shows a misgiving as to the power.
The questions raised by the Porto Rican legislation
have been discussed chiefly from the standpoint of
STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITORY 215
the people of the territories; but there is another
view. If, in its tariff legislation relative to mer
chandise imported into the territories and to mer
chandise passed from the territories into the state,
congress is not subject to the law of uniformity pre
scribed by the constitution, it would seem to follow
that it is within the power of congress to allow the
admission to Porto Rico of all raw materials com
ing from other countries free of duty, and to admit
to all ports of the "United States proper," free of
duty, the products manufactured from these raw ma
terials. As the people of the "United States proper"
choose the congressmen, there may be no great alarm
felt over this possibility; but it is worth while to
note that a construction of the constitution adopted
to save us from a competition with the territories on
equal grounds, is capable of being turned against us
and to their advantage.
The courts may not refuse to give to the explicit
words of a law their natural meaning, because of
the ill consequences that may follow; but they may
well take account of consequences in construing doubt
ful phrases, and resolve the doubts so as to save the
purpose of the law-makers, where, as in the case of the
constitutional provision we are considering, that pur
pose is well known. They will not construe a doubt-
'ful phrase so as to allow the very thing that the
law was intended to prevent.
These constitutional questions will soon be decided
2 1 6 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
by the supreme court. If the absolute power of con
gress is affirmed, we shall probably use the power
with discrimination by "extending" the constitution
to Porto Rico and by giving to its people a full ter
ritorial form of government, and such protection in
their civil rights as an act of congress can give. If
the court shall hold that the constitution, in the parts
not in themselves inapplicable, covers all territory
made a permanent part of our domain, from the mo
ment of annexation and as a necessary part of the
United States, then we will conform our legislation,
with deep regret that we assumed a construction con
trary to liberty, and with some serious embarrass
ments that might have been avoided.
There has been with many a mistaken apprehen
sion that, if the constitution, of its own force, ex
tends to Porto Rico and the Philippines, and gives
American citizenship to their free civilized people,
they become endowed with full political rights; that
their consent is necessary to the validity and right-
fulness of all civil administration. But no such de
duction follows. The power of congress to legislate
for the territories is full. That is, there is no leg
islative power elsewhere than in congress, but it is
not absolute. The contention is that all the powers
of congress are derived from the constitution in
cluding the power to legislate for the territories
and that such legislation must necessarily, always
STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITORY 217
and everywhere, be subject to the limitations of the
constitution.
When this rule is observed, the consent of the peo
ple of the territories is not necessary to the validity
of the legislation. The new territory having be
come a part of the national domain, the people dwell
ing therein have no reserved legal right to sever that
relation, or to set up therein a hostile government.
The question whether the United States can take over
or continue to hold and govern a territory whose
people are hostile, is not a question of constitutional
or international law, but of conscience and histori
cal consistency.
Some one must determine when and how far the
people of a territory, part of our national domain,
can be entrusted with governing powers of a local
nature, and when the broader powers of statehood
shall be conferred. We have no right to judge the
capacity for self-government of the people of another
nation, or to make an alleged lack of that faculty
an excuse for aggression; but we must judge of this
matter for our territories. The interests to be affected
by the decision are not all local; many of them are
national.
These questions are to be judged liberally and
with strong leanings to the side of popular liberty,
but we can not give over the decision to the peo
ple who may at any particular time be settled in a
2l8 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
territory. We have, for the most part, in our his
tory given promptly to the people of the territories
a large measure of local government, and have, when
the admission of a state was proposed, thought only
of boundaries and population. But this was because
our territories have been contiguous and. chiefly pop
ulated from the states.
We are -however, not only at liberty, but under a
duty, to take account also of the quality and dispo
sition of the people, and we have in one or two in
stances done so. The written constitution prescribes
no rule for these cases. The question whether the
United States shall hold conquered territory, or ter
ritory acquired by 'cession, without the consent of
the people to be affected, is quite apart from the
question whether, having acquired and incorporated
such territory, we can govern it otherwise than un
der the limitations of the constitution.
The constitution may be aided in things doubtful
by the declaration of independence. It may be as
sumed that the frame of civil government adopted
was intended to harmonize with the declaration. It
is the preamble of the constitution. It goes before
the enacting clause and declares the purpose of the
law; but the purpose so expressed is not the law
unless it finds renewed expression after the enacting
clause. We shall be plainly recreant to the spirit and
purpose of the constitution, if we arbitrarily deny to
the people of a territory as large a measure of popu-
STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITORY
lar government as their good disposition and intel
ligence will warrant. Necessarily, the judgment of
this question, however, is with congress. The con
stitution prescribes no rule could not do so and
the courts can not review the discretion of congress.
But we are now having it dinned into our ears that
expansion is the law of life, and that expansion is
not practicable if the constitution is to go with the
flag. Lord Salisbury, some years ago, stated this
supposed law of national life. In a recent address,
Mr. James Bryce says, by way of comment:
"He thinks it like a bicycle, which must fall when
it comes to a standstill It is an awkward result
of this doctrine that when there is no more room for
expansion, and a time must come, perhaps soon,
when there will be no more room, the empire will
begin to decline."
If Great Britain, with her accepted methods of ter
ritorial growth, finds the problem of growth by ex
pansion increasingly hard, it will be harder for us,
for we are fettered by our traditions as to popular
rights, at least if not by our constitution.
But expansion is not necessarily of a healthy sort;
it may be dropsical. If judgment is passed now,
the attempted conquest of the Boer republics has not
strengthened Great Britain. She has not gained es
teem. She has not increased her loyal population.
She has created a need for more outlying garri
sons already too numerous. She has strained her
22O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
military and financial resources, and has had a rev
elation of the need of larger armies and stronger
coast-defenses at home. The recent appeal of Lord
Salisbury at the lord mayor's banquet for more com
plete island defenses is more significant. Did the
South African war furnish a truer measure of the
empire's land strength than the familiar campaign
ing against half-savage peoples had done? The old
coach, with its power to stand as well as to move,
may after all be a safer carriage, for the hopes and
interests of a great people, than the bicycle.
Some one will say, increasing years and retire
ment and introspection have broken your touch with
practical affairs and left you out of sympathy with
the glowing prospects of territorial expansion that
now opens before us; that it has always been so;
the Louisiana and the Alaskan purchases were op
posed by some fearful souls. But I have been mak
ing no argument against expansion. The recent ac
quisitions from Spain must present widely different
conditions from all previous acquisitions of territory,
since it seems to be admitted that they can not be
allowed to become a part of the United States with
out a loss that overbalances the gain; that we can
only safely acquire them upon the condition that we
can govern them without any constitutional restraint.
One who has retired from the service, but not from
'the love of his country, must be pardoned if he finds
;himself unable to rejoice in the acquisition of lands
STATUS OF ANNEXED TERRITORY 221
and forests and mines and commerce, at the cost of
the abandonment of the old American idea that a gov
ernment of absolute powers is an intolerable thing,
and, under the constitution of the United States, an im
possible thing. The view of the constitution I have
suggested will not limit the power of territorial ex
pansion; but it will lead us to limit the use of that
power to regions that may safely become a part of
the United States, and to peoples whose American
citizenship may be allowed. It has been said that
the flash of Dewey's guns in Manila bay revealed to
the American people a new mission. I like rather to
think of them as revealing the same old mission that
we read in the flash of Washington's guns at York-
town.
God forbid that the day should ever come when,
in the American mind, the thought of man as a
"consumer" shall submerge the old American
thought of man as a creature of God, endowed with
"unalienable rights."
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS
First Paper
North American Review, February, 1901
It is a rare pleasure to make a good end of a long
and strenuous effort; to put wholly out of the mind
a subject that has filled every chamber of it for two
years. Minds are lodging-houses. The lodgers are
of all sorts casuals and regulars, modest attic-dwell
ers who have no call bells, and first-floor boarders
who rent a large space and fill a larger one. Now
and then some pretentious and exacting fellow crowds
out every other lodger and takes the house. There
is not wanting a sense of the dignity the house bor
rows from this august guest; but emancipation abides
his going. When the last truckload of his baggage
has departed, and the door is barred against the
spirits that have a penchant for garnished houses,
what a glad sense of freedom the overworked mis
tress feels ! Every room vacant, but nothing "to let."
This will not do for a permanent state, but as a short
experience it is ecstatic. I have known what it is
to have an imperial tenant of the whole mind, and
have experienced the joys of an ouster. The case
of Venezuela, in the Anglo- Venezuelan arbitration,
222
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 223
demanded the unremitting labor of two years. What
a sense of freedom came, .when every book and paper
connected with the case was put out of sight! I
was again in fellowship with the undergraduates
dancing over the grave of the calculus. The trouble,
with the calculus is that you must work out the
problems, you must bring the answers. If you could
stop when one problem gets hard and try another,
as the squirrel does with his nuts, the undergraduate
would regard the book differently. A non sequitur
is a hateful thing. Answers must be right. But it
is not, I hope, a sin against a sound mind to stop
short of an answer; you do not need to climb to
the top of every hill you see. To raise questions,
to speculate, to balance such pros and cons as come
easy, and to stop short of conclusions, is admissible
in vacation.
The notes that follow are largely exercises of that
sort, made chiefly during the winter days when
there were no tenants, and the sign "to let" was not
in the window.
The electric, self-binding newspaper drops its
sheaves at our feet with bewildering rapidity. The
stackers must keep up; but a vagrant may take a
sheaf for a pillow and lie down in the shade.
THE ANTI-WAR PARTY
There is an anti-war party in Great Britain and
another in the United States. A war seems to imply
224 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
an anti-war party. Indeed, the Gospels carry suck
an implication in a general sense. Both here and
in Great Britain the anti-war party has been brought
under fire of bitter invective. We, for the most part,
decline to discuss with the anti-war man the justice
of the war. That issue has been voted upon and
carried, we say, and every one is bound, not only as
to his actions, but as to his speech.
But is the morality of the motto, "My country,
right or wrong," susceptible of defense? Is it not
to say: "It is right to do wrong?" for the senti
ment implies action. But may it not be quite the
right, and even the necessary, thing to say nothing
"just now"? If my father is engaged in a wanton
assault upon another man, and blows are being ex
changed,. I must in my heart condemn my father;
but am I called upon to trip him, or to encourage
his adversary by telling him his adversary is in the
right? That would clearly be the duty of a by
stander not of the blood of either combatant. But
do I very much offend, or become particeps, if I with
hold for the moment an expression of my disappro
bation of my father's conduct? Or, on the other
hand, can it be demanded as a filial duty that I cheer
him on, and when his weapon fails give him an
other? Is it unfilial to say, "Father, you are in the
wrong stop"? I can not get him into a closet
that I may say this in his ear. His antagonist will
hear it. And, if I speak in the necessary hearing
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 225
of both, can my father retort, "If I am killed, you
are my murderer; you have encouraged my adver
sary"? But, if the battle goes too hardly against
him, must I not intervene and save his life? I can
flagellate his spirit while I am binding his wounds.
But if he is the victor, must I not bind the wounds
of his adversary, and support his adversary's de
mand for compensation?
A country at war is very intolerant the home
guards more than the veterans, and the politicians
most of all. When war is once flagrant, public sen
timent at least that part of it that finds expression
demands that every citizen shall be active in sup
port of it. To speak against the war, to impugn its
justice, is to encourage the enemy, is to be guilty of
the death of such of your countrymen as afterward
fall in action. The mob may not seek you, but you
are a "suspect" to your neighbors. You will not
be heard to offer such specious suggestions as that
not you who opposed but those who brought on an
unjust war are guilty of the blood of the brave fel
lows who are sent into action.
Indeed, you will not be heard at all, by this gen
eration of your countrymen, unless disasters in war
and money burdens open the way. Your magna
nimity and sense of justice will be praised by the
alien people in whose behalf your voice was raised.
They may even build monuments in your honor, as
we did to Pitt; but the home newspapers will, while
226 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT,
you live, make you wish you had never been born;
and, when you are dead, they will now and then
exhume your skeleton to frighten those who live
after you. You must give your soul to torments
and expatriate your fame. A sea will roll between
your monument and your bones. But a monument
is a community rather than a personal necessity.
The free spirit of a just man does not need a perch.
"The gentleman tells us America is obstinate,
America is almost in open rebellion. Sir, I rejoice
that America has resisted! Three millions of people
so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to
be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make
slaves of all the rest."
For more than a century, American school-boys
declaimed these words of Pitt. Virginia voted him
a statue and New York set one up at Wall and Wil
liam streets.
"Congress passed," says Frothingham, "a warm
and grateful vote of thanks to the noble advocates
of civil and religious liberty, in and out of Parlia
ment, who had generously defended the cause of
America."
In his proposed address to the king, in 1777, Burke
said many like things, the nobility of which we have
greatly applauded.
The utterances of these great Englishmen are
very like in spirit to what Senator Hoar has recently
said about the war in the Philippines. We do not
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 227
agree that the cases are parallel. We are persuaded
that the Filipino and the American are unlike, and
that Aguinaldo and George Washington have no
points of resemblance. We have the capacity of self-
government; we deny that capacity to the Filipinos.
Mr. Hoar has failed, apparently, to see that the prin
ciple that government derives its just powers from
the consent of the governed can not be invoked by
a people incapable of self-government. In the in
terests of humanity, all people must be governed;
and if they are incapable of governing themselves,
does it not follow that some other nation must gov
ern them? But it was not our purpose to bring into
question Senator Hoar's conclusions, but to consider
the measure of his guilt in giving expression to them
as his honest convictions.
Pitt and Burke had not only great praise with us,
but their repute in Great Britain is now the greater
by reason of these utterances. The Mother Coun
try has "come around."
Does it depend upon the outcome? If the war
fails, do such utterances become noble and wise, and
do they remain ignoble if the alleged aggressor is
victorious? Is there no way to stop any war but to
fight it out; or must the stopping of it always be left
to the war party? In the popular judgment, gen
erally yes; but in law and morals, how is it? The
constitution of the United States very clearly saves
the liberty of the citizen to say that a war is wrong.
228 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
The statue at William and Wall streets had not
been forgotten.
It is not treason to say that a war is unjust. But
if not noticeable by the law, such things may still
be contrary to duty. Was there a duty upon Sen
ator Hoar to keep silence? His motives were un-
impeachably pure. All agree that he was not seek
ing the applause of his countrymen of this genera
tion. All agree that he has the old New England
conscience and the old American fervor for liberty
and human rights. Possibly, he lacks the mercantile
spirit. He may not give sufficient consideration to
the metals and coal and forests of the Philippines.
But the question we are pondering is not were
his views right, but did he offend against his coun
try by giving expression to them? Now, it can not
be wrong to proclaim the truth when a matter is in
debate. Are we not compelled, therefore, to prove
his views to be wrong, before passing final sentence
upon him? The popular condemnation sure to be
meted out to the men who oppose when war is fla
grant is a mighty, repressive force. But if some
one, for conscience' sake, assails the war as cruel
and unjustifiable, must we not justify it ? Is it enough
to say, "You are prolonging it; you are sacrificing
the brave fellows whom we have sent to the front"?
There is a semblance of unreason in charging the
man who is trying to stop a fight with the bruises
and wounds that ensue upon the failure of his ef-
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 229
forts. To perfect the argument and fix his responsi
bility, must we not introduce this major premise?
The war is just and can not be stopped until the
enemy has yielded.
Is there any other conclusion of the whole matter
than this? A patriot may, if his conscience can not
otherwise be quieted, oppose a war upon which his
country has entered; but if he does so, he puts his
fame in the keeping of a distant generation of his
countrymen, or possibly of an alien people. What
some other people have said makes it proper to say
here, that we must not forget that the soldier who
rights the war does not declare it. He must not
denounce it, nor must any patriot denounce him.
The appeal, silent or spoken, that comes from him to
his fellow-countrymen, not to make the war longer
or harder, reaches the heart. He is our country
man; he carries and keeps the flag. We must be
tender, and careful that we do not spoil his esprit de
corps by ingratitude, or dash his courage by a failure
to applaud it, or wound him by imputing designs
against his country's liberties.
An armed rebellion against the state must usually
justify itself by something more than a schedule of
wrongs a chance, at least, of righting the wrongs.
And is it not possible that this principle sometimes
applies to rebellious consciences, and requires them
to take the balance of good and evil?
Of course, there must be a time for denouncing
23O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
an unjust war; but does a troubled conscience have
all seasons for its own, or only a time before the
war begins and a time after it is over? The latter
view is held by so many that it is not safe to assume
that all who do not denounce a war approve it.
The almost unbroken record of disaster that has
attended the anti-war parties should have the whole
some effect of discouraging a factious party opposi
tion. We can get along with consciences; indeed,
we can not get along without them, if the reign of
the Prince of Peace is ever to be brought in. The
emphasis should be put upon the facts that justify
the war, rather than upon epithets.
A "WORLD POWER"
The newspapers gave another turn to the vagrant
questionings in which I was indulging myself, by
their frequent references to the assumed fact that
the United States has become a "World Power."
We have been a power, as that term is used by the
law writers and in conventions, for more than a cen
tury. We have been a power in a military sense
on the land for many years, and by spells a naval
power of renown. In a moral sense, we have long
been familiar with the idea that we were the greatest
of world powers. We have believed that we had
found and illustrated a scheme of free, popular gov
ernment that would in time stir the sympathy and
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 231
emulation of all nations and bring in everywhere
republican governments.
Mr. Webster said: "We are placed at the head
of the system of representative and popular govern
ments." It is not in this familiar and sentimental
sense, however, that we are now said to have be
come a world power. Indeed, those who most af
fect the term seem to be quite shy of that sense.
What is it, how did it come about, and what ad
vantages and responsibilities accompany the new
status ? Great Britain and the great continental pow
ers, with more or less cordiality, have admitted the
fact. Did it not indeed have a European announce
ment? Did our war with Spain make us a world
power, or reveal to us and to the world a pre-exist
ing fact? As a revelation, it apparently came largely
out of the naval fights at Manila and Santiago. It
was not the charge at San Juan hill; for, in the
way of land fighting, we had many times done
greater things than that. Indeed, in the way of naval
tactics and desperate courage, Paul Jones and De-
catur and Perry and Farragut may be taken to have
suggested long ago to observing naval critics that
the United States had the capacity to be a sea power.
Nothing has happened to make us forget these and
other great naval captains. Their ships were chiefly
wooden, and their guns smooth-bore muzzle-loaders;
but they came close, their holds were often flooded
and their decks slippery with blood. Our ships went
232 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
into a period of decay, but our navy personnel did
not. We added some hasty scouting and cruising
strength to our navy in the Spanish war, but only
a little increased its fighting strength. It was not
these additions to our naval strength that made us
a world power. The naval fights of the Spanish war
did not originate a naval prestige, but revived it
caused other powers to remember that, if we set
about it, we could build unsurpassed warships and
fight them unsurpassingly.
Relatively, we have been stronger as to war ves
sels than we are now notably, at the close of the
civil war. But there was no talk then of being a
world power. We did not aspire to more than to
be the American power a half world power. So,
after all, it could not have been our ships or our
naval victories that made us a world power. Some
thing must be added, and it would seem that the
addition must have relation to some new use of our
military strength. The old use was wholly defensive,
though the campaign might be what military men
call "offensive-defensive." Paul Jones had entered
the British channels. Our guns had been heard in
the Mediterranean. The "Alabama" was sunk off
Cherbourg. But all these visits were casual, and all
had relation solely to American rights and liberty
and the freedom of the seas. So, too, the Spanish
war had its origin in an American question. We
assumed a police duty in Cuba, because it is an Amer-
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 233
lean island because the cry of "murder" was on
our beat. Succor was an American, not a world
question. We did not assume a duty to police the
world. We expressly disclaimed any hope of re
ward for our intervention. All this was quite out
of the role of a world power. Indeed, it seemed
too sentimentally fantastic to obtain the credence of
the world powers. Some were incredulously sarcastic.
Great Britain alone kindly made us think that she
accepted our altruistic conceptions.
The world powers have been those who allowed no
geographical limitations that is, none appertaining
to terrestrial geography. The appropriation of the
stars must, of course, await the air-ship. We only,
among the strong nations, have lived under self-im
posed limitations, of two sorts one that had to do
with geography and another that had to do with
public morality. We have said: "We do not want,
in any event, territorial possessions that have no
direct relation to the body of our national domain,
and we do not want any territory anywhere that is
acquired by criminal aggression." And as t the
doctrine of "spheres of influence" the modern eu
phemistic rendering of territorial pocket-picking
we have denied its application to this hemisphere and
denied to ourselves the use of it anywhere. "We
will not and the European governments had, on the
whole, better not interfere with the autonomy and
independence of any American state," is our rendering.
234 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT.
We claimed no commercial advantages, save such
as fair reciprocal trade treaties might give to MS.
In all European cabinet entanglements, we were qui
escent. The apportionment of Africa, and the "rec
tification" of Asiatic boundaries by the division of
lands that belonged to neither disputant excited
American notice of an unofficial sort only. Our
touch with the other great powers was at two points
only: first, in the pleasant exchanges of good will,
and, second, in the watchful care that neither our
commerce nor our people were unjustly discriminated
against. The great value of our markets and our
great food surplus strongly supported our demands
for equal trade advantages, and our increasing mili
tary strength emphasized the value of a friendship
unaffected by inherited animosities and free from en
tangling alliances. Our position was, of all the na
tions, the safest and most hopeful. Does the sup
posed new status imply a change of position or
policy ?
If the world powers have any recognized creed, it
is that k is their duty as "trustees for humanity" to
take over the territories of all the weak and decay
ing nations, having regard among themselves to the
doctrine of "equivalents." Have we become a world
power by an initiation into this bund? The only
reason for the continued independent existence of a
weak nation, in the judgment of the world powers,
is found in the difficulty sometimes experienced in
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 235
applying or disregarding, in its case, this doctrine
of "equivalents." A world power seems, therefore,
to be a power having the purpose to take over so
much of the world as it can by any means possess,
and having with this appetite for dominion mili
tary strength enough to compel other nations hav
ing the same appetite to allow or divide the spoils.
A veiled expression of the same definition is found
in the terms "colonizing nations." There has been
an attempt to associate the United States with this
program of civilization, upon the theory that the
"Anglo-Saxon" has a divine concession that covers
the earth. This appeal to a divine decree is itself
a concession to the Anglo-Saxon common-law rule,
that the plaintiff in ejectment must show title.
The argument runs thus : "The earth is the Lord's
and the fullness thereof." So much is of record.
The next step is more difficult, for there is no prophet,
no sealed transfer, no mention by name of the Anglo-
Saxon. "The meek shall inherit the earth" but the
boldest advocate of expansion dare not suggest, as
the minor premise, that John Bull and Uncle Sam
are of that class. That Scripture seems to lead away
from them. We must get away from all texts, I fear.
Perhaps this is the best that can be done certainly
it is the best that has been done Major premise:
God's purpose is that men shall make a full and the
best use of all His gifts. Minor premise : Dominion
is one of His gifts, and the Anglo-Saxon makes a
'236 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
better use of dominion than the Latin, or the Boers,
or the Chinese. Conclusion: The Anglo-Saxon,
therefore, executes a divine purpose when he sub
dues these peoples and takes over their lands.
Is not this program logically perfect and commer
cially profitable? The man who buries his talent
must go into darkness. We are a little hampered
in the proposed association with Great Britain in
this program of regeneration, by reason of the fact
that our declaration of independence was writ too
broad. The Briton has very carefully limited his
charters of liberty to a declaration of his own rights,
while we have unfortunately written into ours "all
men." There is also a practical difficulty that must
be thought of. We are late in getting into the busi
ness. The vacant lands the lands occupied only by
savages have been taken up. The business seems
now to promise responsibility and outlay rather than
profits. The melon-patch has been spoliated, and the
melon cut and divided. A new boy comes upon the
company in the wooded hollow and is invited to
take one of the ends of the melon. There is a very
small show of red meat, and even that is very diffi
cult of appropriation. If he is a wise boy, he will
go his way even though he has no scruples about
robbing melon patches. The effusive cordiality of
the invitation to make himself one of the party, will
not make him forget the disproportion between the
risks and the red meat.
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 237
If the United States now enters upon a scheme
r of colonization, it must plunge in put away all
scruples; there is no time to linger shivering on the
brink. The frame of our government is excellent;
there are some weak states that would be bettered
by accepting our domination; and seeing that they
are so ignorant as not to see the advantages of ac
cepting it, is it not our duty to compel them? Can
we innocently stand by and see nations distracted
property insecure, resources unused? Very many
good people some ministers of the gospel of peace
have been saying that they hoped Great Britain
would succeed in taking over the Transvaal and the
Orange Free State, because "Christian civilization"
would be advanced by "British paramountcy" in South
Africa. Old-fashioned moralists were in the habit
,of scouting the maxim, "The end justifies the means."
The imputation of this maxim to a noted religious
order, as a rule of action, had much to do with the
general odium in which that order was once held.
The peace of the world has been thought hereto
fore to depend upon the allowance of the doctrine
that men and civilized nations have, as to other men
'and nations, the right to do something less than the
best with their possessions, and to judge in large
part for themselves what is best.
This view does not, of course, exclude the right,
in the last resort, of other nations to intervene for the
saving of a population from destruction by the bar-
238 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENZ-
barous use of the civil authority. There are excep
tional cases when remonstrance, and even armed
force, may be justified; but, in such cases, the deliv
ering nation must follow the role taken to the end.
Individual and national independence implies the
exclusive right to determine some things. Persua
sion and remonstrance, even, have their limits, pass
ing which they become impertinence. "It is none
of your business," may lack some of the elements
of polite discourse, but there are- times when it ought
to be said. The "up-stream" wolf, as Mr. Hoar calls
him, in the old fable, has suffered great obloquy be
cause he felt compelled to put his intervention upon
the untenable ground that he was injured by the
soiling of the waters. He lived, unfortunately, in a
day when men and beasts felt compelled to show
that what they meddled in was proper concern of
theirs. It was a narrow view. He should have said :
"True, the muddy water does not come to my lips,
but your habit of drinking it is bad; you are not
neat; and besides you hold yourself aloof, and re
fuse to admit my children to the sheepfold."
What has hitherto saved the United States in great
measure from the land lust and made her respect the
independence and territorial autonomy of her weak
neighbors? Was it that we did not until now feel
the need of more territory; or was it a conservative
timidity; or is there an American conscience that
reprobates aggression and rejects the new doctrine.
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 239
that the right of weak states to govern themselves
rests not upon the consent of their own people, but
upon the consent of the nearest world power?
The Monroe doctrine has been understood to dis
claim for ourselves what it denies to the powers of
Europe. The declaration of Mr. Monroe was, Mr.
Jefferson said, "our protest against the atrocious vio
lations of the rights of nations by the interference
of any one in the internal affairs of another." It
seems to have been always the way of this states
man to generalize. This accounts for the presence,
in the declaration of independence, of philosophical
maxims that now threaten embarrassment to our
progress as a world power. We must differentiate
ourselves. We must proceed upon the theory that
our standards are right, and our civil organization
and social customs most promotive of the glory of
God and the happiness of man. The "pursuit of
happiness" may be an "unalienable" human right,
but does it follow that another nation is free to be
happy in its own way if we know a better way?
This propaganda of Anglo-Saxon supremacy does
not seem to fall in with the program of The Hague
Peace Conference; and we can hardly hope to or
ganize an international court that will allow the doc
trine. On the whole, then, might it not be better
to withdraw this program of Anglo-Saxon para-
mountcy? The nation that goes out to slay and to
possess in God's name must give some other attesta-
24O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
tion of its mission than the facts that it is the might
iest of the nations and has an adaptable language.
The men upon whom the tower in Siloam fell
were not sinners above all men in Jerusalem; and
the philosophy of the islanders among whom Paul
fell that serpents always bite the worst man in the
company was very quickly upset. Is it not possi
ble that the philosophy of those who assign God's
special approbation to the prosperous and the power
ful may be quite as faulty?
His intervention is more apparent when weak
things confound the mighty. It is not safe to con
clude that righteousness and the heaviest battalions
are necessarily disassociated, but the tendency is that
way.
Now, it happens that all of the Central and South
American states are weak states. There is not a
harbor so defended as to bar the entrance of a squad
ron of modern battle ships. No one of them has a
navy that could offer the briefest resistance on the
sea to any one of the great European powers.
Practically, if each stood alone, its subjection by
any one of the great powers would be quite within
the possibilities of a great military effort. If the
cabinets of the four great powers of Europe were
to combine in a propaganda of colonization in this
hemisphere, as they did in Africa using the new
doctrine of "equivalents" the Spanish American
.states, south of Mexico, would, unless the United
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 241!
States gave its powerful aid, inevitably pass under
European control. The Central and South Amer
ican states have retained their autonomy only be
cause the United States would neither herself in
fringe that autonomy nor allow other nations to do
so. But for this, British Honduras might ere this
have embraced the whole isthmus, British Guiana
have included the Orinoco and Mexico have been
subjected to the rule of a foreign king.
What hinders that the small states of Europe are
not taken over by one of the great powers? Is it
any sense of the inherent right of these lands to a
separate national existence or of their princes to
their crowns ? Such sentimental considerations would
offer no more serious obstacles than the glistening
spider webs in the grass offer to the feet of their
marching legions.
These small states stand, out of deference to the
European equilibrium. They can not be shifted on
the lever as units without destroying the balance,
and Great Britain is not so situated as to make use
of continental territorial fractions. Her "walls of
oak" would not be available for their defense.
What a grim commentary all this is upon our
boasted Christian civilization, upon that plaything of
the diplomatists and the tribunals, international law,
and upon peace conferences! The sheep have their
security, not in the shepherd or in the fold, but in
the watchful jealousy of the wolves.
242 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
The fundamental principle of international law is
the parity of nations. Arbitration is the special re
source of the weak; but it was not available to the
Dutch South African republics and was only avail
able to Venezuela because of the intervention of the
United States.
It is of the highest consequence to us, and to all
of the Central and South American nations, that it
should be known to them and to the world that the
United States will continue faithfully and unswerv
ingly to respect the autonomy of those states; that
we will neither ourselves dismember them nor suffer
them to be dismembered by any European power.
If the Spanish war, or this talk of ruling the tropics
from the temperate zones, or of Anglo-Saxon alli
ance and paramountcy, has bred any distrust of our
purposes toward them, it should be speedily dispelled.
The supposed transformation, from an American
power to a world power, in the sense I have de
scribed, is not to be imputed to us. Whatever may
be in the minds of gaudy rhetoricians, we have not
as a nation entered upon a program of colonization,
or of subjugation, or spoliation. We have not joined
the wolves. We have still some of the care-taking
instinct of the shepherd; still, at least, a latent ca
pacity for sorrow when the word "free" is eliminated
from the name of a state.
A merchant of my acquaintance said to a senti
mental friend, who was troubled over the proposi-
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 243
tion that the declaration of independence and the bill
of rights sections of the constitution had no relation
to Porto Ricans, but applied only to those who dwelt
upon the mainland : "The people care nothing about
those things; it is money, commerce, that interests
them." That is a low view of the popular thought.
We had in 1776 a generation of Americans that
placed a higher value upon these sentimental things,
and pledged to them their "lives, their fortunes and
their sacred honor." The integrity of the Union was
of more value to the men of 1861 than all lands
and all lives.
If to be a world power is to do as the world pow
ers do, then we must disclaim this new degree which
the European College of Applied Force has conferred
upon us. The taking over of the Philippines has
been declared, by those who should know, to have
been casual of necessity the acceptance of a divinely
imposed duty. The question of the disposition of
them, when their people shall have submitted to
legal authority, is said to be still open. All of which
is to say that the acquisition of these distant islands
does not commit the nation to a scheme of coloniza
tion. The United States seems thus far in China
to have stood firmly against dismemberment; not
because of the practical difficulties of allotting^ the
parts, but out of regard to the rights of the Chinese
to preserve their national autonomy. But we are
hearing now a great deal of the riches and the stra-
244 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
tegical advantages which have come to us with the
docile acceptance of the divine will in the Philip
pines, and a great deal of irresponsible nonsense
about our being a world power. If we allow our
selves to drift into bad ways, it is quite the same as
if we had sought them.
The barbarous conduct of some of the allied forces
in China, the shameless looting of private houses and
public institutions, and the contemptuous and cruel
disregard of all the sensibilities and rights of alien
races which characterize the world powers, shock our
sensibilities. We have almost more pride in General
Chaffee's blunt letter of protest against looting and
cruelty than in his splendid fighting. Let us not be
a world power, in any save the good old sense
that of a nation capable of protecting in all seas the
just rights of its citizens, and incapable everywhere
of a wanton infringement of the autonomy of other
nations.
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS
Second Paper
North American Review, March, 1901
THE BRITISH ALLIANCE
The newspapers, British and American, were much
occupied during last winter with a supposed, or
proposed, Anglo-American alliance, more or less
formal in character. We know that no such con
vention was signed, and no evidence has been pro
duced to show that the subject was even informally
discussed by the representatives of the respective na
tions. Mr. Chamberlain was premature and incau
tious in giving out what seemed to be an announce
ment.
Every one must admit that a close friendship be
tween the United States and Great Britain is quite
desirable, and quite in the course of nature. How
ever complex our population may be in the matter
of origin, if we have any derived national type it
is English. This predisposition to friendship, how
ever, is not because of birth-ties felt by our genera-
245
246 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
tion. These tend, perhaps, more strongly in other
directions. English nativity, as a direct influence in
American life, is now comparatively small. But, as
a remote and indirect influence, it has been the pre
ponderating element in the evolution of the Amer
ican. The thirteen colonies were English colonies,
not only in their governmental relations, but in fact.
The Scot and the Irishman and the Welshman, for
the most part, made their salutations to the new
world in the English tongue. They came as English-
speaking people. Their accent was, at home, only
an unavailing protest against absorption. The accent
fell away here; it was not needed. A more effective
protest against English political domination was
found. As free Americans, they had no quarrel with
the English tongue. Whatever has come since to
the United States has been grafted upon the old
English root. The fruit has, we think, been im
proved, but the genus is still that of the old root.
The Scot, the Irishman, the Welshman, the Ger
man, the Frenchman, the Hollander, the Dane, the
Swede, the Norwegian, has each brought a contri
bution, and the Italian is now offering one. The
American is a give-and-take product. But "thy
speech bewrayeth thee" and our speech is wholly,
and our derived institutions are chiefly, English. We
have pride in the great poets, philosophers, jurists,
historians and story-writers who have used the tongue
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 247
we use, and we are grateful to them. It is a personal
<lebt.
We have fellowship with the stout Britons who
sheared the prerogatives of the king, and with the
martyrs who died for freedom of worship. We are
grateful to them, not to the government that perse
cuted them. But is it logical to derive from such
considerations the deduction that our sympathies must
be given to every British ministry that inaugurates
a war, without reference to its origin or its justice?
We did not take English literature or English law
by voluntary conveyance, upon a consideration of
love and affection. Will not the argument for a
friendly spirit toward Great Britain be stronger, if
the plea of gratitude is made less of? For grati
tude takes account, not of one incident, but of all;
and the average between 1774 and 1898 had better
not be struck. There may be found more things
that it would be pleasant to forget than to remember !
Prior to the Spanish-American war, can the his
torian find, in British-American diplomatic inter
course, an instance where friendship for the United
States led to any substantial abatement of British
pretensions, or to a sympathetic attitude toward us
in the times of our stress and agony, or even to the
use of any special consideration in presenting a de
mand for redress? The demand for the release of
Mason and Slidell was couched in very harsh and
peremptory terms. And it is understood that, but
248 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
for the kindly intervention of the queen, an abase-,
ment would have been put upon us that we could
only have accepted with a time reservation until
our fleets and armies had finished the work in hand.
The attitude of the British government toward us
during our civil war was hostile and hurtful. Its
unfriendliness only stopped short of an open alli
ance with the Southern Confederacy. Neither kin
ship nor a history of ostentatious reprobation of slav
ery was enough to overbalance the commercial ad
vantage to be derived from trade with a non-manu
facturing, cotton-raising nation. The threatening at
titude of Great Britain was no small part of the
breaking burden that weighted the shoulders of Abra
ham Lincoln. Only the Lancashire spinners God
bless them to the latest generation! showed an em
bodied friendship; though there were notable spo
radic cases.
Is it quite logical to use the recent display of
friendliness by Great Britain as a sponge with which
to wipe from the tablets of memory the decisive in
tervention of France during the revolution, and the
helpful friendliness of Russia during the civil war?
Or should the sponge only be used to efface any
rancorous memory of old manifestations of unfriend
liness by Great Britain toward us, or by us toward
her, and to give us a clean slate upon which may
be recorded an unbroken future of kindliness and
good will?
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 249
Washington did not allow gratitude to France, for
an armed and saving intervention in our behalf, to
be used as the basis of an alliance that would bring
us into European entanglements; and can we now
allow the friendly non-intervention of Great Britain
during the Spanish war which involved no cost to
her to be so used? The French demands upon our
gratitude were thought to be excessive, though they
did not insist upon a permanent naval base in New
York harbor!
Are not the continuous good and close relations
of the two great English-speaking nations for which
I pray rather imperilled than promoted by this fool
ish talk of gratitude and of an alliance, which is often
made to take on the appearance of a threat, or at
least a prophecy, of an Anglo-Saxon "paramount cy?"
The prophetic role, also, is being overworked.
There is no emotion so susceptible to overwork as
gratitude, and no role so silly as that of a prophet
without an attestation. Is it not wholly illogical to
argue that, because the British ministry, and, to a
considerable degree, the British people, gave their
sympathy to us during the Spanish war, an Amer
ican administration and the American people must
give their sympathy to the British in the Boer war?
The major premise is wanting namely, that the two
wars are of the same quality. The argument we
hear so much takes no account of this element; yet
it is necessary, to save the deduction, that both wars
25O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
should be just or that both should be unjust. There
are evidences, however, that this reasoning is accepted
by many intelligent persons. I say "reasoning."
Perhaps that is not a good word. It certainly is
not unless we start with this major premise "Both
wars were righteous wars;" or this "Both wars
were aggressive, for dominion." If our Spanish
war was waged to liberate an oppressed people, and
the British-Boer war is waged to subjugate a free
people, does not the "reasoning" fail? For, to say
that we must stand by Great Britain in the wrong
because she stood by us in the right is not reason
ing it is the camaraderie of brigands. It must be
admitted, however, that, should we present a claim
of "suzerainty" or "paramountcy" over Cuba, a sim
ilitude to the South African situation might be found.
Is not the sympathy of Great Britain robbed of all
moral quality, if we allow that it had its origin in
any other consideration than a belief in the justice
of our cause? It is to disparage the nation whose
virtues and civilization we affect to honor, to say
that Great Britain stood by us in a war that her
conscience did not approve; that she kept off the
police, while we effected a robbery. And the depths
of moral darkness are sounded when it is suggested
that we are to make return in kind.
Does not a flood of gush and unreason rather
thwart than promote a good understanding? There
will be an ebb. Neither the British people nor the
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 251
American people will surrender their right of free
judgment and criticism of the acts of their own gov
ernment, much less of the acts and policies of the
other. Surely, every American speaker and writer
is not now perforce either a supporter of Mr. Cham
berlain's aggressive colonial policies, or an ingrate.
Our freedom of judgment and criticism is surely not
smaller than that of a Liberal member of Parlia
ment. Government in Great Britain, even more than
in the United States, is by party, and the control
shifts. Is it not too hard a test of friendliness to
say that each must shift its sympathies when the
majority in the other shifts?
A quid pro quo friendship between nations had
some promise of permanency, and some value, in
the days when kings were rulers and there was an
anointed line. But, in these days, must not an in
ternational friendship, to have value, unite two peo
ples? Ministries and presidents are shifting quan
tities. A friendship that comes in with a ministry
or a president may go out with it or him. Only a
union of the two peoples is worthy of a statesman's
thought; and not incidents of friendliness, but an
agreement in matters of principle, in general gov*
ernmental purposes, is needed for that.
We take our friends on the average, as they must
take us. If the liberty to differ is not reserved, I
am not a friend, but a toady. A man who is capable
of a high friendship will not mention the favor he
252 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
did you last week, when he solicits your help. Lend
ing to those from whom you expect to receive as
much again, is not friendship, but commerce. If
friendship is put upon that basis, it becomes open to
bids; and account must be taken of the extremity
when aid was given or withheld.
I think the great weight of opinion among the
English Liberals was that the war with the Dutch
republics could have been, and ought to have been,
avoided. Many of them believe that this war is
only a supplement of the Jameson raid. Surely an
American may hold these opinions without subject
ing himself to the charge that he is a hater of Great
Britain. Nor can the repression which the British
Liberals have imposed upon themselves, pending the
war, be exacted of Americans. Nations can only be
reached by process from two tribunals war and pub
lic opinion. The arbitral tribunal has no process;
it assembles upon a stipulation. The tribunal of
public opinion, on the other hand, is always in ses
sion, and must give a judgment upon all acts of
men and nations that affect the public welfare. It
would aid the tribunal greatly if each of the com
batants could be compelled to plead, to declare the
cause of the war and its objects.
The continental congress of 1776 allowed the juris
diction of this great court. "A decent respect/' it
said, "for the opinions of mankind requires that they
should declare the causes which impel them to the
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 253
separation." The object of the war was stated with
equal explicitness : "That these United Colonies are
and of right ought to be free and independent states."
In our second war with Great Britain, the mes
sages of President Madison and the resolutions of
congress distinctly catalogue the causes of the war
and disclose its objects, and in our civil war the
issue was so clear that neither malice nor sophistry
has been able to confuse it. Mr. Lincoln consciously
and willingly submitted the cause to "the considerate
judgment of mankind."
In the recent Spanish war, congress declared not
only the cause of the war, but put the United States
under bond to conduct and conclude it as a war for
the liberation of Cuba.
There is no influence for peace so strong (would
it were freer and stronger!) as the fear of the en
lightened judgment of mankind. And this must
put those who influence that judgment upon the ex
ercise of a judicial independence and impartiality.
These judgments must not be made matters of ex
change. Is it not bad morals, as well as illogical,
to say: "We were recently at the bar of public
opinion, and Great Britain, as one of the judges,
stood by us; now she is at the bar, and we must
stand by her"?
There are no two countries in the world where
thought and conscience and speech, the elements and
the organ of a sound public opinion, are so free or
254 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
so powerful as in Great Britain and the United
States. And no friendship between the nations, that
does not take account of and allow these, is a worthy
one, or can have endurance. In the case of one's
own country, there has been opportunity to influ
ence public policies, and if they have gone wrong
there will be an opportunity to set them right; while,
in the case of another nation, we are without oppor
tunity.
Is not the inevitable tendency of any attempt to
put Great Britain and the United States in the re
lation of allies, to raise up and to strengthen an
anti-British party in the United States and an anti-
American party in Great Britain? Buried injuries
and grudges are dug up and exploited for a domes
tic party advantage. There are forces that become
destructive if they are pent; and, in this regard,
opinions and gunpowder are in the same class. If
a friendship between Great Britain and the United
States, that will make their immediate relations cor
dial and unite their influence for peace and human
progress, is to be maintained to become a status
must it not be laid down on a moral instead of a
commercial basis? Morals abide; commercial inter
ests shift. It must not involve enmity to the world,
or exact an approval by the one of every public act
of the other. It must not be put upon grounds too
tenuously sentimental, nor must the quid pro quo
argument be too much pressed. It must be of a sort
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 25$
that tolerates differences of opinions and endures the
smart of criticism. The newspapers must not be
taken too seriously. The friendship must not be of
a party here with a party there. Upon that basis we
shall have racking alternations of gush and coldness.
If the nations are to be friends, if they are to live
together in amity and work together in their for
eign policies, must it not be upon a basis that does
not repel but invites the participation of all other
nations in every project for the development and
peace of the world and not upon the pernicious
and futile project of an Anglo-Saxon world? The
moral quality of public acts must be taken account
of; greed of territory and thoughts of political para-
mountcies enforced by the sword must be eliminated.
Great Britain has pursued aggressively a policy of
territorial expansion, in which the consent of the
peoples taken over has not been taken account of,
as having any application, until after British sover
eignty was established. If the Dutch will forego all
thoughts of a lost republic and become loyal sub
jects of Great Britain, she will give back to them a
pretty large liberty in local affairs, and take a very
large credit for her generosity. She has not re
garded the forcible annexation of territory as at all
culpable.
Is the friendly co-operation of the two nations to
be rested upon the abandonment or modification of
her traditional policy, or upon the abandonment of
256 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
ours? In the prosecution of the "open door" policy
that is, equal commercial privileges to all nations
we have, perhaps, found a common basis of diplo
matic action. To us this means, I still think, the
recognition of the autonomy of weak nations and
their right to regulate their own internal affairs, as
opposed to dismemberment or the paramountcy of
one of the great powers. Does Great Britain accept
the "open door" policy in that sense? And is it with
her a world or only a Chinese policy ? Are we agreed
that the seizure or dismemberment of a weak state
by a stronger is wrong, or only that, in the case of
China, an agreed partition would be difficult, or
that it might be less advantageous?
Is it not possible that, if suitably urged, Great
Britain might come to stand with us against the
forcible absorption of weak states and for open doors
everywhere? She has lost her monopoly of expan
sion. She has found that her most loyal colonies
buy in the best market. The people of the Trans
vaal and of the Orange Free State will not show
favor to a British trade-mark. The increased cost
and competition in the business of expansion are sug
gestive.
The American people gave generously of their love
to Queen Victoria. Her death was felt here to be
a family sorrow. She was not associated in the
American mind with those aggressive features of
the British character and foreign policy that other
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 257
nations have so much resented. The American love
for her as a queen was largely based upon the be
lief that her influence was used, as far as it might
be, to ameliorate aggression and to promote peace.
The qualities we most admired in her were those
in which she was most unlike some British states
men, whose names my readers are left to catalogue.
The universal sorrow and sympathy which the death
of the queen evoked in this country have largely con
founded and silenced those who have been saying
that America hated Great Britain. It is not so. But
will it not be wise to allow the friendship between
the nations to rest upon deep and permanent things,
and to allow dissent and criticism as to transient
things? Irritations of the cuticle must not be con
founded with heart failure.
THE BOER WAR
It is quite possible that the government of a state
may so flagrantly abuse its internal powers, may so
cruelly treat its subjects, or a class of them, that the
intervention of other states will be justified. It is
an extreme case that will justify an armed interven
tion, and the intervention must always be benevolent,
both in spirit and purpose. The police must not ap
propriate the property they recover from the high
wayman. The judgment whether the case is one
that justifies intervention must not be influenced, or
seem to be influenced, by motives of advantage. If
258 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
the land delivered is taken over, those who reject
altogether the idea of an international benevolence
or altruism will have another citation.
The insistence of many individuals and of a very
large section of the newspaper press that, as matter
of "reciprocity," we must give our sympathy to Great
Britain in the Boer war, and the frequent refer
ences to certain crude and illiberal things in the
Dutch administration of the Transvaal as matters
justifying an armed intervention by Great Britain,
have very naturally turned my vagrant thoughts to
the consideration of the question, whether these al
leged faults in the internal administration of the Boers
furnished a justification for the war made by Great
Britain upon the Boers. I put it that way, though I
am not ignorant of the fact that the official view in
Great Britain is that the Boers began the war, and
that this view is adopted by the "reciprocity" school
of Americans. Is it not possible, however, that the
Texas view of the matter is more nearly the right
one? In Texas, when one of the parties to an acri
monious, oral discussion announces that the discus
sion is ended and that he will now take such meas
ures as seem to him to be more effective, and accom
panies this declaration by a movement of his right
hand in the direction of his hip pocket, he is accounted
to have begun the war. If the other gets out his
weapon first and kills the gentleman whose hand is
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 259
moving toward his hip pocket, it is, not only in the
popular judgment, but in law, self-defense.
The Boers did not seek war with Great Britain.
They retreated to the wall. Like the Pilgrims of
Plymouth Rock, they did not seek, in the great trek
of 1835, an Eldorado, but barrenness and remote
ness a region which, as Mr. Prentiss said, "would
hold out no temptation to cupidity, no inducement
to persecution."
The Pilgrims found, but the Boers missed, their
quest. What seemed a barren veldt, on which free
men might live unmolested, was but the lid of a vast
treasure-box. Riches are the destruction of the weak.
"When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his
goods are in peace." But strong is in the positive;
and this scripture tells us what happens when a
stronger shall "come upon him."
Taking the case there, however, as one of British
armed intervention for the correction of certain al
leged evils and oppressions of Transvaal internal ad
ministration, what has international law to say about
it? But is there an international law? The nations
have never subscribed any codification. There are com
mentators, but there is no statute book. There are con
ventions between two or more states, which, in a few
specified particulars, regulate rights and conduct.
There are the moral law, the decalogue, the law of
nature; but does the "thou" of these address itself
260 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
to states? There are precedents, but is the nation
that made them bound by them, if her interest has
shifted ? Does the admiral of the strongest fleet write
the law of the sea, not only for his antagonist, but
for all neutrals? Is there a standard of personal
cleanliness and domestic sanitation that is determin
ative of the right of self-government? Has a strong
power the right to appoint itself a "trustee for hu
manity," and in that character to take over the lands
of such weak nations as fail to make the best use
of them? Is the rule that the trustee can not take
a profit inapplicable to "trustees for humanity"?
Does a well-grounded fear that another nation is
about to appropriate territory to which neither it nor
we have any rightful claim, justify us in grabbing
it first, or in making an equivalent seizure in some
other part of the world? Have we come, in prac
tice, to the view which Phillimore puts into the mouth
of those who say there is no international law:
"The proposition that in their mutual intercourse
states are bound to recognize the eternal obligations
of justice, apart from considerations of immediate
expediency, they deem stupid and ridiculous pedantry.
They point triumphantly to the instances in which
the law has been broken, in which might has been
substituted for right, and ask if providence is not
always on the side of the strongest battalions. Let
our strength, they say, be the law of justice, for that
which is feeble is found to be nothing worth."
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 26 1
That choleric Virginia statesman, John Randolph,
in 1800, when the subject of Great Britain's infrac
tions of our neutral rights upon the sea was under
discussion, gave voice to the same thought. "What
is national law," he said, "but national power guided
by national interest?" And a recent Chinese writer
says : "International law is a set of precepts laid
down by strong powers to be enforced on weak ones."
Many questions relating to natural rights are now
regarded as outside the domain of practical states
manship. Has the American view changed? When
we were feeble, questions that are now rather sneer-
ingly called "academic" were very practical, and the
aspirations and sympathies that are now called "sen
timental" were the breath of American life. Our
diplomacy was sentimental ; it had a regard for weak
ness, for we had not forgotten our own. Never
did we fail to let it be known that our people sym
pathized with every effort, every aspiration, of any
civilized people to set up or to defend republican in
stitutions.
The British intervention in South Africa was not
a response to any appeal from so much as a frag
ment of the Boer people. They were not only con
tent with the government they had instituted, but
passionately devoted to it with a readiness to die
in its defense that took no account of age or sex.
No Boer in the Transvaal desired to become a British
subject; but very many British subjects in the Cape
262 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
Colony were so unappreciative of the advantages of
their condition as such that they passionately desired
to throw it off for a citizenship in a Dutch republic.
In other words, the men who were discontented and
rebellious were not the citizens of the Transvaal or
of the Orange Free State, but those men of Dutch
descent whose grandfathers had by conquest become
British subjects.
The political conditions in Cuba, when we inter
vened, were the very opposite of those in the Trans
vaal. Our intervention was in behalf of the Cubans.
We co-operated to free them from the power of a
government whose oppressions and cruelties had many
times before driven them into rebellion.
Great Britain's intervention in South Africa was
against a united people, living in content an ignorant
content, if you please under a government of their
own construction; and the ground of the interven
tion was ostensibly the interests of British subjects
sojourning there.
Many defects, incongruities and crudities in the
Boer government and administration have been point
ed out by the newspapers and other writers of Great
Britain, and these have been faithfully echoed by
not a few Americans, and by not a few American
newspapers. Now, these faults in Boer administra
tion, in the main, were such as affected only the
Boers themselves, and were not infractions of the in
ternational rights of aliens. The use made of them
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 263
was not, openly, as a justification of the war, but
rather as a check upon the sympathy of the Amer
ican people, which, it was feared, might, as it has
been in the habit of doing, go over-strongly to the
side of a republic fighting for its existence. It was
to say: "Don't make too much fuss over the death
of the man, or too strict an inquiry into the cause of
the quarrel; he was not in all respects an exemplary
citizen." The Boers were said to have been favor
able to slavery as an institution, and to bear a grudge
against the British because they abolished it. Now,
the American, whose country, until very recently, was
the great slave-holding nation of the world, and the
Briton, who gave his sympathy, and much material
help besides, to the states that sought by the de
struction of the American Union to make slavery
perpetual surely these can not be expected to respect
the autonomy or mourn the demise of a republic that
is suspected of having had in the past a desire to
hold slaves!
These Boers are not our kind of people; they are
not polished; they neglect the bath; they are rude
and primitive; their government is patriarchal and,
in some things, arbitrary. To be sure, they like these
habits and these institutions; they abandoned old
homes, and made new homes in the wilderness, that
they might enjoy them; but the homes are not such
as we should have made ; the Anglo-Saxon model has
not been nicely followed. You have the "consent of
264 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT.
the governed" yes; but Great Britain does not ap
prove of you, and she stood by us in the Spanish
war.
That any self-respecting government, which was
strong enough to make its diplomatic notes express
its true emotions, would have answered Great Britain's
complaints by a flat refusal to discuss them, on the
ground that they related to matters of internal ad
ministration; that such would have been the answer
of the United States, if we had stood in the place
of the Transvaal republic, can not be doubted and
there is no more room for doubt that the answer
would have terminated the discussion.
If the subject of naturalization is not a matter
to be determined by a nation for itself, and solely
upon a consideration of its own interests and safety,
there is no subject that is free from the meddlesome
intervention of other states.
And as to the government monopoly of the dyna
mite trade, the practice of European governments
has certainly placed that question in the schedule of
internal affairs, resting, in the judgment of each
nation, upon a view of its own interests, unless it has
by treaty limited its control of the matter.
The idea of a war waged to enforce, as an inter
national right, the privilege of British subjects to re
nounce their allegiance to the queen, and to assume
a condition in which they might be obliged to take
up arms against her, would be a taking theme for a
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 265
comic opera. And the interest and amusement would
be greatly promoted if the composer should, in the
opening act, introduce the "Ruler of the Queen's
Navy" overhauling an American merchantman in
1812, and dragging from her decks men who had re
nounced their allegiance to Great Britain to become
American citizens, to man the guns of British war
ships !
"If he produced naturalization papers," says Mc-
Master, "from the country under whose flag he sailed,
he was told that England did not admit the right
of expatriation."
But, in those days, the "renunciation" was sincere
and final. The men who made it meant it meant
to fight the king of Great Britain, if war came. Did
these Transvaal Britons, who were seeking Boer nat
uralization, mean that? Did Mr. Chamberlain sup
pose that he was turning over to Mr. Kruger a body
of Englishmen skilled in engineering and the use
of explosives, upon whose loyalty to the Boer cause
Mr. Kruger could rely? The climax of the fun will
be reached when the opera composer offers this situ
ation. Most of these men whose naturalization was
to be forced upon the Boers were actively and ag
gressively hostile to the Boer government. No safe
occasion to show this hostility was missed.
In a recent book, Mrs. Lionel Phillips, the wife
of one of the Englishmen condemned to death for
their connection with the Jameson raid, tells of an
266 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
incident that occurred at Pretoria before the raid.
A British Commissioner, Sir Henry Loch, came to
Pretoria to discuss with President Kriiger some Brit
ish grievances. Mr. Kriiger drove in his carriage to
receive the Commissioner and take him to his hotel.
Mrs. Phillips says:
"There was a scene of the wildest enthusiasm, thou
sands being there to welcome the queen's representa
tive, and when he and Kriiger got into the carriage
(which also contained Dr. Leyds) to proceed to the
hotel, some Englishmen took out the horses and
dragged it, one irresponsible person jumping on the
box-seat and waving a Union Jack over Kriiger 's
head! When the carriage arrived at its destination,
Sir Henry, accompanied by Dr. Leyds, entered the
hotel, and the president was left sitting in the horse
less carriage. The yelling crowd refused to drag the
vehicle, and, after some difficulty, a few of his faith
ful burghers were got together to drag the irate
president to his home."
Now, it was for these thousands of Englishmen,
who practiced this dastardly indignity upon Presi
dent Kriiger, and who, with others, a little later made
or promoted the Jameson raid, that Boer naturaliza
tion was demanded.
But it has been stated, upon apparently excellent
authority, that the British Commission expressly re
jected a form of naturalization oath that contained,
as our form does, a renunciation of allegiance to all
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 267
other governments. If, upon the basis of a retained
British allegiance, suffrage, whether in local or gen
eral affairs, was demanded for the Outlanders, the
comic aspect of the situation disappears ; the unreason
is too great for comedy.
Great Britain can not, we are told, safely give local
government to the Boers when she shall have sub
jugated them, because she can not trust their loyalty
to the crown; but she is seeking to destroy the re
publics, because the Transvaal refused suffrage and
local control to Englishmen who had attempted by
arms to overthrow the Boer government, and who
sought suffrage for the same end. Suffrage was only
another form of assault in the interest of British
domination.
Not long ago, a distinguished Briton (Goldwin
Smith) is reported to have said:
"Can history show a more memorable fight for
independence than that which is being made by the
Boer? Does it yield to that made by Switzerland
against Austria and Burgundy; or to that made by
the Tyrolese under Hofer? The Boer gets no pay;
no comforts and luxuries are provided for him by
fashionable society; he can look forward to no med
als or pensions; he voluntarily endures the utmost
hardships of war; his discipline, though unforced,
seems never to fail. Boys of sixteen, a correspond
ent at the Cape tells me even of fourteen take the
rifle from the hand of the mother who remains to
268 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
pray for them in her lonely home, and stand by their
grandsires to face the murderous artillery of mod
ern war. * * * Rude, narrow-minded, fanatical
in their religion, these men may be. So were the
old Scotch Calvinists ; so have been some of the noblest
wildstocks of humanity but surely they are not un
worthy to guard a nation. * * * If a gold mine
was found in the Boer's territory, was it not his?
The Transvaal franchise needed reform; so did that
of England within living memory and in a still greater
degree. But reform was not the object of Mr. Cecil
Rhodes and his political allies. What they wanted
was to give the ballot to people who, they knew,
would use it to vote away the independence of the
state."
He went on to say that even in monarchical Italy,
where he had recently been, the "heart of the people
is with the little republic which is fighting for its in
dependence."
There has been, I think, no suggestion that this
great Englishman spoke under the stimulus of Trans
vaal gold. Have we come to a time when a citizen
of the Great Republic may not express like views
without becoming a "suspect"? Must we turn our
pockets inside out to verify our disinterestedness,
when we speak for a "little republic which is fight
ing for its independence"?
We have not long passed the time when the man
who spoke against the "little republic" would have
MUSINGS ON CURRENT TOPICS 269
been the "suspect." A paper that I read recently
head-lined a news dispatch, announcing the return
of a young American who went to South Africa to
fight for Boer independence, thus: "The Return of
a Mercenary." Yet the act and the motive of this
adventurous young American would, a little while
ago, have reminded us of LaFayette or Steuben.
Mr. James Bryce recently said:
"Indeed, the struggles for liberty and nationality
are almost beginning to be forgotten by the new
generation, which has no such enthusiasm for these
principles as men had forty years ago."
And, at the moment when two republics are in
articulo mortis, some of our journals congratulate us
over the prospect of an increased trade with the
"Crown Colonies" that are to be set up in their
stead, and over the increased output of the Johannes
burg mines. The emperor of Germany is reported
to have forestalled President Kruger's personal ap
peal by the statement that Germany's interest would
be promoted by the British conquest of the republics.
And Bishop Thoburn asks: "Why should people la
ment the absorption of the small powers by the large
ones?"
Never before has American sympathy failed, or
been divided, or failed to find its voice, when a peo
ple were fighting for independence. Can we now
calculate commercial gains before the breath of a dying
republic has quite failed, or the body has quite taken
27O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
on the rigor mortis? If international justice, gov
ernment by the people, the parity of the nations, have
ceased to be workable things, and have become im
practicable, shall we part with them with a sneer,
or simulate regret, even if we have lost the power to
feel it? May not one be allowed to contemplate the
heavens with suppressed aspirations, though there
are no "consumers" there? Do we need to make a
mock of the stars, because we can not appropriate
them because they do not take our produce? Have
we disabled ourselves?
Mr. Hoar says that "by last winter's terrible blun-
^ er * # * we have lost the right to offer our
sympathy to the Boer in his wonderful and gallant
struggle against terrible odds for the republic in
Africa." It is a terrible charge.
There was plainly no call for an armed interven
tion by the United States in South Africa, and per
haps our diplomatic suggestions went as far as usage
would justify. But has not public opinion here been
somehow strongly perverted, or put under some un
wonted repression? If we have lost either the right
to denounce aggression, or the capacity to weep when
a republic dies, it is a grievous loss.
PART TWO
SOME HINDRANCES TO LAW REFORMS
At University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, March 23, 1897
When one speaks to young men, and especially to
college young men, he is not at full liberty, either
as to his theme or the treatment of it. His words
may carry further than he thinks. They may give
a turn to a life. Soberness of thought and a fin
ger board are 'among the needs of educated young
men. There is a tendency to sprint and kick and
tackle and to high jumping that, in the intellect
ual field at least, needs to be restrained. There
are many things in the social and business and po
litical fields that ought to be kicked and tackled,
and many barriers that ought to be jumped but
not everything. The rush line and the flying wedge
must be used with discrimination in moral and in
tellectual strifes, for in them the aim should not
be to run down an adversary, but to lift him up.
Victories in the moral, social, intellectual and polit
ical fields are won by bringing a majority over
and by organizing that majority. The leader of any
273
274 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
great reform should combine the zeal of a crusader
with the wisdom of Solon.
My purpose in this address is not so much to in
dicate the reforms to which these young men should
give their powers and their influence when they en
ter a professional or a business life, as to point out
some of the reasons why selfish interests so often
succeed in defeating legal reforms that would, if
they were rightly presented and pursued, command
the support of a very large majority of the electors.
This support is either scattered by a commingling of
issues, by making politics of pure business; or ren
dered futile by the inability, from one cause or an
other, of our legislators to frame constitutional and
suitable laws. I think it safe to say that five-sixths
of the voters of the country favor a revision of the
corporation laws, which shall limit the purposes for
which corporations may be organized; supervise the
issuing of their stocks and bonds, so that fictitious
and watered securities may not be issued, and every
security represent investment or actual value; re
strain them from organizing trusts for the exac
tion of illegitimate gains or the destruction of fair
competition, and require such of them as serve the
public to render that service seasonably and well.
Small stockholders should have better protection.
The responsibilities of the directorate should be
greater. Corporations should not be allowed, as now,
to avail themselves of the loose corporation laws of
SOME HINDRANCES TO LAW REFORMS 275
one state for incorporation, when their business is to
be wholly transacted in another. That is to permit
one state to legislate for another. So an even larger
proportion of our people would give their emphatic
support to the proposition that tax burdens should
fall equally upon all property. But they do not, as
every one knows. The farmer and the man whose
wealth consists of lands, houses, live-stock, imple
ments of trade and such like property, is taxed
upon everything he has, though usually at less than
its real value. It can not be hidden. But the owner
of stocks and bonds and such like property makes
his own inventory and the assessor has no way of
checking the list. A "tax ferret" sometimes un
earths the skulking securities of an individual, but
that result only suggests that much more is in hid
ing. Very much of the unrest and discontent that
pervade the minds of the people would be quieted if
every man could be convinced that every other man
was bearing his fair proportion of the public bur
dens. I take these two great subjects, corporation
and tax law reforms, which have been under public
discussion for very many years, as illustrations of the
inefficiency of our legislative methods.
For some reason or reasons the honest desire of
a great majority of the people that corporate powers
shall be limited and regulated, and that tax burdens
shall be equalized, does not find expression in the
statutes. My purpose is to search out some of the
276 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
obstructive influences. First, we note that under our
loose laws corporations have greatly multiplied. The
railroads have penetrated to every neighborhood; and
every county, city and town has its banking, manu
facturing and other corporations. During the period
of the active development of the western states ev
ery possible encouragement was given to the build
ing of railroads. Large subsidies were voted by the
counties, cities and townships to secure railroad com
munications these aids taking the form of stock
subscriptions or of outright donations. The same
form of aid, with large donations from private
sources, has often been given to secure the location
of manufacturing corporations. The old idea of the
corporate organization was that a work requiring a
combination of the wealth of many persons was to
be done, such a work as an individual or a part
nership could not accomplish, or that a public use
was to be served, and that a corporate agency could
be better regulated. But these ideas have be
come obsolete, and we now have corporations en
gaged in conducting dry-goods stores, book-stores,
drug stores and almost every form of manufactur
ing or mercantile adventure. These enterprises take
the corporate form either to secure a limited liabil
ity of the investors, or to avoid the complications
that often arise from disagreements between partners
as to management, or from the death of a partner. It
follows that the persons now interested in maintain-
SOME HINDRANCES TO LAW REFORMS
ing the present loose corporation laws are very numer
ous and are found in every locality. The employes of
the railroads will, spite of frequent labor troubles,
be found supporting the management and the stock
holders when any legislation that seriously curtails
earnings is threatened, because of a fear that such
curtailment will require a cut in wages. This large
body of managers, investors and employes is com
posed of individuals of more than the average in
fluence, especially when stirred into activity by a large
personal interest. The sum of the investments in
corporate enterprises of all sorts is enormous and
its distribution very wide. Individual capitalists
have their millions so invested, and widows, guar
dians of orphan children, trustees, retired and super
annuated men and women, and educational and
charitable organizations are the holders of a vast
amount in the aggregate of the stock and bonds
of corporations. All the influence of this vast army
of investors will clearly be thrown against any un
just or destructive legislation, and very much of it
against any restrictive legislation. In a fight against
unjust or destructive legislation they will find many
allies among those who have no selfish interest to
serve and no investments to defend. There must be
fairness in the application of the proposed legisla
tion if the support of just and intelligent men is
invoked.
There are some things that must be taken account
278 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
of: First, it must be kept in mind that the people
have not only authorized but invited the organiza
tion of all these corporations and the investment of
capital in their stocks and other securities. To many
of them public aid has been given, and the inaugu
ration of the work has been attended by popular
demonstrations of joy. Second, it must also be kept
in mind that the bankruptcy of any legitimate busi
ness, of a railroad company, of a manufacturing, or
a mercantile concern, is a public injury, that is not
compensated by destructive cut rates, temporary in
their nature, nor by the small savings of the bar
gain counter. Auctions and sheriffs' and receivers'
sales ought not to be promoted. There may be no
other way in particular cases, but they ought not
to be the desired or necessary result of general
legislation. Third, we can not go back to the be
ginning, wipe everything out and construct our cor
poration laws in the light of our present experience.
The ideal is not possible. We must take things as
our unwisdom, or that of our fathers, has made
them. As to the past, we can do little more than
mend; but the law regulating new corporate organi
zations is wholly within our power. I do not speak
of legal restrictions upon the power of the state to
amend or repeal the laws regulating corporations,
that is generally ample but of the limitations that
equity imposes. Innocent investors in securities must
have fair treatment. But much mending may be
SOME HINDRANCES TO LAW REFORMS 279
done, and ought to be. Fourth, the work of re
forming our corporation laws is not work for ap
prentices. The corporate system of the country is
not only vast, but extremely intricate. The work is
more akin to watch-repairing than to log-raising
and yet the log-raisers have not hesitated to assume
it. Fifth, special cases often suggest the necessity
of curative legislation; but as most of our state con
stitutions require that legislation relating to corpo
rations shall be general, it is neither wise nor safe
to assume that a particular case is a representative
one, and to administer the remedy promiscuously.
Sixth, in public affairs, the best attainable good is
the thing to be sought. The professor can and
ought to deal with ideals, but the true statesman will
not forego a gain for good government because it
is less than his ideal. He will not force into the
opposition those who are willing to join him in an
assault upon an outpost of intrenched wrong, be
cause they will not enlist for the war. Every out
post taken and garrisoned for the right, strengthens
the right. A house is to be builded, and the man
who is willing to work on the foundation should
not be driven off because he will not hire for work
on the dome. Seventh, the legislation must be just.
Unjust, destructive legislation brings a reaction a
back-set. It is either over-turned by the courts, or
loses the support of the conservatives, who are re
formers but not incendiaries.
28O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
Let us see now if we can find some of the rea
sons why things that on a popular vote would be
overwhelmingly supported as abstract propositions,,
by conservatives and radicals alike, fail year after
year to secure legislative action. In about three-
fourths of the states the legislatures meet biennially.
The sessions, in a majority of the states, are limited
to an average of about sixty days. If we admit,
for the present, that in each state legislature that
assembles there are to be found public-spirited, dis
interested and honest men, capable of comprehend
ing the broad subjects of the corporation and tax
laws, and of framing laws with exactness and clear
ness of expression, and with a due consideration of
constitutional restrictions, still these difficulties re
main: First, to bring these men together in a com
mittee charged with that duty; second, to find for
them time, during the stress of a session's work, to
give the subject adequate study and to frame the
laws that shall suitably and surely secure the results
they have reached. And how are the two houses to
find time to consider a report necessarily late in its
presentation, within the short limits of the legisla
tive session? The theory of these limitations of the
legislative sessions seems to be that, aside from rev
enue and appropriation bills, and bills of a local na
ture, only patching and tinkering is to be done. A
general code of laws has already been adopted, re
ported in many cases by a commission of revision
SOME HINDRANCES TO LAW REFORMS 281
a quarter of a century ago, upon the body of which
patches, large and small, have from time to time
been placed very often with the result that "the
rent is made worse." Now and then a member may
be found who has given some preliminary study to
these great questions, but as a rule the bills that are
found in the pockets of members are of a local na
ture, directed to the pleasing of a particular constit
uency, or of some influential member or members of
it. The disadvantages under which a revision of
the laws upon any great general subject must be
pursued by a sixty-day legislature are such that it
is rather a subject of congratulation than complaint
that it is so rarely attempted.
The framing of a statute is nice work, and every
important statute should, as to its frame and its
phraseology, be examined by a law committee or
at least by good lawyers. Many laws are framed
by men who are wholly ignorant of the constitu
tional restrictions upon the legislative power and as
a consequence the courts are constantly and neces
sarily annulling statutes because they are, in form
or substance, contrary to the fundamental law.
The inadequacies of our legislatures to deal with
a systematic and congruous revision of the laws
upon some of the great themes of legislation have
many illustrations, even where they sit in unlimited
sessions. The first disqualification for such work
that I observe in legislative bodies is that the houses,
!282 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
as well as their committees, sit amid political and
social distractions that are not favorable to that pa
tient, continuous study of a single subject that is
essential, if good, enduring work is to be done. No
member can or ought to give his whole attention
on any single day to one subject. He is responsi
ble in his measure for everything that is done in the
body of which he is a member. He must be in his
seat every day of the session; must be recorded when
the ayes and noes are taken; must take part in de
bates upon other subjects, attend party caucuses, get
door-keepers' places for his friends, welcome and en
tertain his visiting constituents, and do innumerable
chores for others of them. He has no uninter
rupted hours, unless he snatches them from sleep.
He has, in a word, neither the time nor the mental
frame for great constructive work in legislation. It
may be said, however, that our senators and repre
sentatives, national and state, should devote their
time when congress or the legislature is not in ses
sion to the study of the great questions of legisla
tive reform and to the preparation of bills to carry
them into effect; and so they should. But in fact
they do not as a rule. They are in many cases
paid only a per diem during the actual sittings of
the bodies of which they are members, and if paid
an annual salary, the necessity of supplementing
that salary by professional or other labor, or, as to
the wealthy, of caring for their investments and'
SOME HINDRANCES TO LAW REFORMS 283
business, fills the vacation months with exacting la
bors. A member of the Indiana legislature gives
three months of his time, and perhaps a contribu
tion in money, to the campaign for his election, and
two months more to the legislative session, and re
ceives from the state a total of $360, excluding
mileage. Most of these members are men of small
means, and it is quite unreasonable to demand that
they shall give even the sixty days that elapse be
tween their election and the meeting of the legis
lature wholly and studiously to the consideration of
the great questions that are pending for a solution.
And again, such questions as tax and corporation
reforms are not to be solved by individual investi
gators in the study. There must be a comparison of
views, debate, and the hearing of all interests to be
affected, if crudity and confusion are to be escaped.
The legislation will be subjected to the fire of the
ablest legal minds in the country, as to its constitu
tionality and as to the interpretation of its provisions.
These gentlemen will not be required to turn aside
from their critical study of the law, in order to
earn a living, as the framers of the law were. The
framer of an important law must be more than a
master of constitutional law and of clear expression.
He must have a practical business knowledge of the
matters he is dealing with. There must be not only
pathological skill, but a competent acquaintance with
the materia medica. Corporation reform has been
284 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
very much retarded by the flood of destructive and
impossible bills that pours into every legislative
body. They are the product of ill-informed minds,
often made more than naturally incapable by malice
or undue heat. Hysteria and spite are not the pro
genitors of good legislation. Such bills carry the
conservatives over to the opposition. It has been
said and I fear with too much truth in some cases
that these bills are often presented with no other
purpose than to excite the alarm of the corporations
affected, and that the mover is quite amenable to the
influence of reason, if it is urged privately, and is
of the right denomination. Bills to regulate the
freight and passenger rates of the railroads of a
state are proposed by men as ignorant of the com
plications and difficulties of railroad management as
a horse is of astronomy. It is usually easy for the
corporations to defeat such legislation; for it is usu
ally easily shown to be unjust and destructive. And
so things move along and nothing is done.
There were for many years pending in congress,
renewed each session, and advocated by fiery cham
pions, bills to forfeit the land grants of the rail
roads. A bill to forfeit unearned lands lands
abutting on such parts of the lines as had not yet
been completed could have been passed at almost
any time; but these fiery champions of the people
would have nothing less than a forfeiture carried
back to the date when the railroads should have been
SOME HINDRANCES TO LAW REFORMS 285
completed. And so the congressional battle went on,
but made no progress, while the railroads went on,
completed their lines and got the lands. Texas re
cently passed an anti-trust law, so framed as the
courts interpreted it as to make it penal for two
merchants conducting rival stores in a cross-roads
village, at a loss by reason of the limited patronage,
to form a copartnership and combine their stocks
and capital. It exempted, I think, combinations
among farmers, for the purpose of keeping up the
prices of farm products, from the penalties denounced
against other combines; and the labor organizations
always reserve the right to combine for the purpose
of raising wages, while insisting that their employ
ers shall not combine for the purpose of keeping
up the prices of the products of labor. We may
mourn the departure of the good old times when the
blacksmith hammered out his own horseshoes; when
the hatter made hats, and the shoemaker shoes;
when mutton chops and ribbons were not sold in the
same store; but we must not too hastily assume that
statutes can re-establish the old order. The Texas
law was too broad. There must be more consid
eration, more moderation, more legal acumen, when
anti-trust laws are written. A convention resolu
tion and a statute are quite different things. In the
next place our legislators are chosen from districts,
not from the state at large, and are almost sure to
be charged with some local legislation to which they
286 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
give the first place in the apportionment of their
'time and efforts. The favorable judgment of his
immediate constituents is the reward he craves.
Hence his labors are given to those things that will
attract their notice, or the notice of some active and
controlling element in his district. At the worst he
becomes the attorney in fact of a boss, of a corpora
tion, or of a syndicate. In his better state he gets
everything he can for his district a new judge, a
public building, the payment of a private claim, or
a high duty on plate glass or castor beans. Upon
questions that do not particularly affect his district,
or that of some brother member, he will take na
tional or state interests into consideration and give
them weight; but he takes little account of the state
of the treasury, or of the bad precedent to be made,
when an appropriation for his district is pending.
He is "agin the government" when the demands of
his district and the demands for national economy
conflict. There is great human nature in all this,
and most men who have had legislative service will
be ready to say mea culpa. He knows, or thinks he
does, what his district wants, and feels a sense of
injury if any brother member obstructs or opposes
.his local bill, and so it comes about that a brotherly
reciprocity is established, and much log-rolling legis
lation is enacted. The idea the true constitutional
one that every senator and representative repre
sents, in state legislatures the state, and in congress
SOME HINDRANCES TO LAW REFORMS ^7
the nation, precisely as if he had been voted for at
large, instead of in a state or a district, seems to
be losing its power, not only over our legislators,
but in the public mind. The assumption that other
members of a legislative body must yield their views
as to the wisdom or constitutionality of a local meas
ure to those of the members chosen from that local
ity is not only impudent, but absolutely destructive
of our civil system. This suggestion has been the
prolific parent of bad legislation. It is not only
quite natural, but quite proper, that much consid
eration should be given to the information which a
member may have as to the local status, with which
he has a special acquaintance; but when all infor
mation bearing upon the subject has been presented,
every conscientious member of the body must under
his oath vote his own convictions of the justice or
injustice, constitutionality or unconstitutionality of
the proposed measure. Mr. Bryce, in his American
Commonwealth, says of this tendency to localism in
our legislation:
"The spirit of localism, surprisingly strong every
where in America, completely rules them. A mem
ber is not a member for his state, chosen by a dis
trict but bound to think first of the general welfare
of the commonwealth. He is a member for Browns
ville, or Pompey, or the Seventh district, and so
forth, as the case may be. His first and main duty
is to get the most he can for his constituency out
288 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
of the state treasury, or by means of state legisla
tion. No appeal to the general interest would have
weight with him against the interests of that spot.
What is more, he is deemed by his colleagues of the
same party to be the sole exponent of the wishes
of the spot, and solely entitled to handle its affairs.
If he approves a bill which affects the place and
nothing but the place, that is conclusive. Nobody
else has any business to interfere. This rule is the
more readily accepted, because its application all
around serves the private interest of every member
alike, while members of more enlarged views, who
ought to champion the interests of the state and sound
general principles of legislation, are rare. When
such is the accepted doctrine as well as invariable
practice, log-rolling becomes natural and almost le
gitimate. Each member being the judge of the
measure which touches his own constituency, every
other member supports that member in passing the
measure, expecting in return the like support in a
like cause. He who in the public interest opposes
the bad bill of another, is certain to find that other
opposing, and probably with success, his own bill,
however good."
This prevalence of the local idea affects general
law reforms injuriously in another particular. Only
a particular and local abuse has been observed, and
the bill proposed takes that special direction. It
may be right, but it is partial; it does not cover the
SOME HINDRANCES TO LAW REFORMS 289
whole field; and there is a certain amount of pop
ular sympathy with the appeal that one guilty man
ought not to be punished while scores of others
equally guilty go free. The legislation is framed to
meet an isolated case that has come under the ob
servation of the member, and is not laid down on
broad lines.
No facts of current history are more apparent
than these: that the senate of the United States has
largely ceased to be what the framers of the con
stitution intended it to be and what, for near a hun
dred years, it was the sedate and conservative
branch of our national legislature; and that the
larger body, the house of representatives, has in very
many matters involving popular feeling and excite
ment, been less quickly responsive to these waves of
public feeling than the senate. The house acts
quickly; the senate talks and does not act at all, if
there is an obstinate minority. Waiving some other
considerations that have tended to produce these re
sults, I think the controlling fact is this: that in
the senate there is an entire absence of leadership,
of any power in the presiding officer to discriminate
between those seeking the floor, and no rule for
'closing debate. The combined result is that any
'senator may at almost any time introduce any sub-
'ject and speak upon it and force a vote of the senate
! upon it in some form. The first senator who ad-
'dresses the chair must be recognized. In the house
VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
there is a strong leadership and a most effective con
trol of the business to come before the house. Mem
bers arrange beforehand with the speaker for recogni
tion, and it is not thought to be impertinent for the
speaker to ask the member what he desires to call up.
There may be some fuming if the speaker refuses to
recognize a member because he does not think the mat
ter should be called up at all, or at that time, but every
body sees that it will not do to let everybody call up
everything in a house of three hundred and fifty-
nine members. The speaker is chosen by the votes
of the majority party to the leadership he exercises,
and is always open to the advice of the members
and to the suggestions or directions of a caucus. He
is not administering spites or favoritism^, but is con
ducting the policies of the majority, and holds his
leadership only so long as he holds the confidence
of a majority of the house. When a subject is once
properly before the house the time allotted to debate
is divided fairly to those indicated by the respective
leaders on the floor, and the vote is absolutely free.
The restraints are upon talk and upon the order of
business, and these are self-imposed restraints in
the public interest. In the English house of com
mons the ministry directs the order of business.
There is a parliamentary leader. The house may
break away, for here too the restraint is self-im
posed, but the break does not discard leadership
only changes leaders. A large legislative body in
SOME HINDRANCES TO LAW REFORMS
which any member may at any time bring up any
subject and speak upon it at any length is certain to,
be impulsive, erratic and unsafe.
A remark upon this topic that was wrung from
me while in public life has been incorrectly given
in the newspapers; but I did say that there was a
crying need of more United States senators, and
perhaps in that connection I did mention, by way
of illustration, the name of one senator who never
had any "little bills" of his own, and was in conse
quence not afraid to oppose the "little bills" of his
colleagues, if the national interests seemed to re
quire it.
The conclusion to which my observation and ex
perience has brought me is that the legislative de
partments, especially the legislatures of the states,
are not capable of dealing in their sessions with the
great law reforms that are now imperatively press
ing for attention. The present difficulties are
largely the result of legislation that was enacted in
the rush and excitement of a material develop
ment that especially as to railroads has now
passed its climax. "Anything to get railroads" was
then the cry. Now we have come to a time
when they are denounced as the oppressors of
the people, and the investors are constantly threat
ened by destructive legislation. The fight has in
many cases been so blind and so bitter as to
affect all classes of business, The investment in
VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
railroad securities is so enormous and so wide
ly distributed that it could not be otherwise.
We are all involved. We can not stand apart.
If our plan of taxation includes, notes, bonds
and stocks they must all be listed. It is
not essential that all property should be taxed at its
full value. It is enough that the taxable value is
relatively equal; but it is essential that all property
that the law subjects to taxation should be returned
and assessed. In a recent interview the Reverend
Dr. Rainsford said :
"Let me mention two instances which I person
ally know to be true. One gentleman worth sev
eral millions told me himself that he was assessed
on only $30,000. He added that a friend of his,
worth ten times as much as he, was assessed on
$100,000. Assessments on these estates (and they
are not estates in which there is much realty), may
have been slightly raised since then, for this con
versation occurred two or three years ago. But
the evil principle remains."
The Hon. James A. Roberts, comptroller of the
state of New York, in his last annual report fur
nishes some very interesting statistics and makes
some advanced suggestions. He notes the fact
that the addition of three and one-half millions
to the state revenues from new excise taxes had not
secured the expected reduction in the general tax
rate, and says: "There is danger therefore that
SOME HINDRANCES TO LAW REFORMS 293
unless a determined effort is made to keep down
unusual and extraordinary expenditures, the in
creased income from the excise law may incite a
desire for appropriations and thus raise the tax rate
instead of lowering it."
He is right. Easy come, easy go. When
everybody feels that his money is being spent
everybody is an economist. When one is din
ing at the cost of another he takes no account
of the reckoning. If a scheme of taxation could be
devised by which the whole burden of supporting
the state its schools, its benevolent institutions,
its police and municipal systems would be placed
upon the corporations and the very rich alone, its
adoption would inaugurate an era of the decadence
of public virtue and public spirit, and bring in one
of public wastefulness and profligacy. It would
pauperize in the things that are of more value than
shekels. The contributing citizen is the watchful
citizen; and we have none too many watchers when
all are such. Equality and not spoliation should be
the watchword of the tax reformer.
In discussing the question of an inheritance tax
Mr. Roberts gives some figures that would be start
ling, if our own observation had not prepared our
minds for them. The taxable value of real estate
in the state of New York increased one hundred
and fifty-five per cent, between the years 1870 and
1895, while during the same period taxable personal
294 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
property only increased six per cent. The equalized
taxable value of real estate in 1895 was nearly four
billion dollars ($3,908,853,377), while the taxable
value of personal property was a little less than half
a billion ($459,859,526). Mr. Roberts says: "Now
it is a well known fact that the increase in value
of personal property in this state of late years has
been much more rapid than that of real estate, and
that the amount of personal property owned here is
equal to, if not more, than the amount of real
estate; * * * The total amount of personal
property now on the tax rolls is a trifle over one-
ninth as much as the real estate and only a frac
tion more than it was twenty-six years ago." He
then states that since 1886, as shown by official re
turns, there had been invested in corporations
alone "nearly five times as much as the total
amount of personal property now upon the tax
rolls of the state."
The New York financial press report very re
cently noticed large shipments of gold from San
Francisco to New York, and stated they were made
to avoid taxation. A way must be devised that will
bring to the tax roll this vast aggregate of untaxed
personal property; but it will never be accomplished
by the impulsive hodge-podge methods of sixty-
day legislatures.
The suggestion has been made that only such
property as has been scheduled for taxation shall
SOME HINDRANCES TO LAW REFORMS 295
pass by descent or by will,' and that any prop
erty, the ownership of which has in his life been
annually denied by the decedent in his tax re
turn, shall escheat to the state. There would
seem to be a measure of justice in taking the
tax dodger at his word and not allowing him
to dispose of property that he has solemnly de
clared did not belong to him.
Taxation is not equal. Why is it not made
approximately so, since the governing majority is
in favor of it? Why does not this great middle
body of the people, standing between the "pluto
crats" and the "anarchists," and many times out
numbering them both, make itself as effectually felt
in correcting legal and social abuses as it does in
stamping out fires and suppressing riots? The
only answer is that the executive and judicial forces
of the government act quickly and directly, while
the legislative forces, hampered by the considera
tions I have mentioned, and by the greater compli
cations of the questions, seem to be inadequate to
the work of legal reform. The making of wise laws
is a higher and more difficult work than that of in
terpreting or executing them. How are these and
other great reform bills to be framed, and how are
our legislative bodies to be roused to the exigency
of enacting them? It seems to me that the laws
must be framed by commissions composed of the
ablest men in the states. The commissions must
296 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
be given time to make a thorough study of the
subject. When they have laid down tentatively
the general lines upon which the laws shall be
drawn, an opportunity should be given to the
representatives of the interests to be affected, and
to the public to present suggestions and objec
tions. There should be no attempt to bring in
the millennium on the morrow. It would be too
sudden. The ideal can not be reached at a step.
But we should face that way, and move.
In my judgment, nothing has so much retarded
the progress of these reforms as the excesses in
speech and action of the men who have stood as
their exponents. A brutal policeman may compel
us to defend a thief. When a judge gives out the
cry of the mob from the seat of the law, he does
not promote the solution of any of the troubles we
have, but only discloses another, and a very seri
ous one.
It not infrequently happens that those who un
seat the public reason by clamorous denunciations
of corporations are coining this inflamed and often
uninformed public sentiment into dollars that by a
secret slot are falling into their own coffers. Re
form is not promoted it is only a squeeze. A
recent newspaper paragraph puts it thus: "In Al
bany they call them 'strike' bills; in Sacramento
'cinch' bills; in Missouri, 'squeezers;' and there
you are."
SOME HINDRANCES TO LAW REFORMS
When the udder has been emptied into their pail,
the devastations of the cow in the public corn may
be resumed and they will not see her though she
be as big as an elephant. A tempest lifts things
up, but they come down. It has neither sustaining
force nor discrimination. It draws no line between
things that ought to be reconstructed and things
that should be utterly destroyed.
But before the commission we must have a
zealous, sedate, educated, organized, non-partisan,
public sentiment. That great patriotic middle body
of our people not a remnant but the mass must
become something more than a fire brigade. It is
not enough to say that there must be no violence
the law must not only be obeyed, but it must be
right. These and kindred reforms lag only be
cause their supporters are not organized. There
is no plan no effective co-operation. The first step,
in my judgment, is the organization of commissions,
composed of able, wise and patriotic men, to take
up these problems and to give their undivided time
and their most solicitous thought to their solution.
If there could be co-operation between the states it
would be very helpful and would tend to promote
another much desired end harmonious legislation.
ILLINOIS INHERITANCE TAX CASES
Josephine C. Drake et al. t Executors, &c., Plaintiffs in Error, v. Daniel H.
Kochersperger, County Treasurer, &c., of Cook County, Illinois. No. ^5.
Elizabeth Emerson Sawyer et al+, Executors, dec., Plaintiffs in Error, v. The
Same. No. 463.
Jessie Norton Torrence Magoun, Appellant, v. Illinois Trust and Savings
Sank, as Executor, <&c., of Joseph T. Torrence, deceased, and Daniel H.
Kochersperger, County Ti'easurer, &c. No. 464.
GENERAL HARRISON'S LAST ARGUMENT BEFORE THE
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES MADE
ON BEHALF OF PLAINTIFFS IN ERROR AND APPEL
LANT IN SUPPORT OF THE CONTENTION THAT THE
ILLINOIS INHERITANCE TAX LAW is UNCONSTITU
TIONAL BECAUSE IN CONFLICT WITH THE PROVISIONS
OF THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT.
Washington, 1898.
May It Please Your Honors:
Before addressing myself to the line of argu
ment which I have marked out, it may not be in
appropriate to make reference to the suggestion of
the attorney-general of Illinois that this law
might be held by this court to be unconstitutional
298
INHERITANCE TAX CASES
as to the third class, and sustained as to the other
classes. We have in this law what was evidently
intended to be a system of succession or inheritance
taxation. This is one of several classes that the
law defines and upon which it levies taxes. It is
the class, if your honors please, least favored; the
unfavored class in this legislation; a class described
as "all others," after the two classifications that em
brace kinship to very remote limits. It is mostly
the stranger who is taxed by this clause. Surely
the learned attorney-general would not ask this hon
orable court to conclude that the legislature of his
state would desire that the residue of the statute
should be maintained if this part were to be de
clared unconstitutional. Surely he would not be
willing or have us believe that the legislature
would have been willing that the unfavored class
the class the legislature was most anxious to tax
and to tax most heavily should escape, while the
children and nearer relatives of the decedent are
held to be subject to the operation of this law.
There is another feature of the law which, I
think I would be justified in saying, after listening
to these arguments and reading these briefs, is con
fessed by counsel to be unconstitutional. There is
a feature of it that is not supported by any argu
ment or by any citation which these gentlemen have
presented to the court. They have entirely failed to
'3OO VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
inform the court, either in the brief or in the oral ar
gument, of the fact that this tax is levied upon gifts
and conveyances inter vivos, if they are made in
contemplation of death or to take effect after death.
MR. MORAN: They are testamentary in char
acter
MR. HARRISON : Testamentary in character ! Does
this honorable gentleman contend that, when one is
in life and in the full possession of his faculties, he
has no natural right to endow a child by an exe
cuted gift or conveyance, taking effect immediately,
in contemplation of his own approaching death,
but that that act is to be rated and put upon the
same plane with the gifts by will of which he has
spoken? I know it has been a part of almost every
law taxing successions that gifts made in contem
plation of death are included. Because otherwise
such a law could not be executed. But, does Mr.
Moran contend that, being in life and in the full
possession of one's mental powers and in the full con
trol of one's property, one may not in contempla
tion of death take from one's safe a package of
bonds and hand them to a friend in trust for the
maintenance of a minor child, for whose support
one's estate has been chargeable, upon the ground that
the child has no natural right to such support? I
understood that counsel, in response to a question
of the court, admitted that the power of the owner
INHERITANCE TAX CASES 30 1
over property during life was absolute. If this Be
true and it is plainly true where is there any au
thority, where is there any suggestion to be drawn
from history or from legal principles, that would
put any limitation upon the power of one who is
nearing the limit of human life to make provision,
by a division of his property, for those whom na
ture has made dependent upon him? How does
the doctrine of a "bonus" for a privilege, as my
friend puts it, apply in such a case as that? No
right is exercised under the statute of wills or of
descents of the state of Illinois or from any other
statute. If both those statutes were repealed, the
right to dispose of property during life would re
main. I take it for granted that there is no an
swer to this suggestion, or it would have been
made.
MR. MORAN: If it had been made earlier it
would have been answered.
MR. HARRISON : This provision is written on
the face of the statute, and no argument by which
you have supported an inheritance or succession
tax includes these transactions inter vivos. How
could the state escheat such property? When the
black-robed usher is seen on the distant hill, does a
state of incapacity to dispose of property begin at
once? Are men to be restrained from giving ex
ercise to those natural affections with which God
3<D2 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
has endowed them, and from the discharge of those
duties which the domestic relations lay upon them?
A succession or transfer tax may be supported
upon principles that may well include gifts and
conveyances inter vivos, if there be nothing in the
constitution of the state to prohibit it if it be not
a tax on property, or be not unequally laid. We
are not here to deny that the state may, as the
United States did during the war, lay a tax upon
conveyances and transfers inter vivos and upon tes
tamentary conveyances or dispositions and upon in
heritances.
I have answered sufficiently, I think, the sugges
tion that a part of this law may be stricken out as
unconstitutional the tax on strangers and the tax
on the near relatives be preserved. Your honors
know that that was not within the contemplation of
the legislature of Illinois; and that this law as to
ante-mortem gifts can not be supported upon the
propositions the gentlemen have contended for.
It may be true, as the opposing counsel have
suggested, that we should apologize to the court for
occupying its time in discussing the questions
whether there is a natural right of inheritance, or a
natural right of testamentary disposition. But if
your honors please, I think if we will pause for a
moment to contemplate the condition in which so
ciety would find itself if this monstrous power for
which my friend contends were exercised by the leg-
INHERITANCE TAX CASES 303
islature of any of our states, we should find a justi
fication for this discussion. In forming their insti
tutions, their national government and their state
governments and constitutions, our people were
careful to insert in bills of rights or in the bodies
of their constitutions many limitations upon each of
the departments of government. And, if your hon
ors please, these bills of rights are not subject to
the rule "expressio unius." That rule may apply
to grants that are made and to powers that are con
ferred, but surely this court will not say it has
often said the contrary that there are not rights
reserved to the people beyond and above the special
reservations of the constitutions and the special dec
larations of the bills of rights. There are things
that are inherent in our system of government; that
were born with our very institutions : rights of prop
erty; rights of persons; rights that do not find such
expression do not need to find such expression.
As to tax laws and as to all laws affecting individual
rights and liberties, the laws that are made by our
states are to be read in the light of the fact that our
government was builded and established for the pro
tection of the individual, and upon the principle run
ning through every part of its structure that men
shall be equal before the law an equality of rights
and burdens.
Now let us suppose for one moment that the state
of Illinois should repeal its law of wills and its law
304 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
of descents. My learned friend thinks it may do
so without violating any right. He thinks that it
would not be an immoral thing; that it would not
infringe any natural right; that it would not be a
thing that could be condemned upon any principle
of human justice or right, if they were to repeal
those laws and, by eliminating all heirs, bring into
force the doctrine of escheat and so take to the state
all the property within its borders owned by its own
citizens, and all the property within its borders
owned by citizens of other states. No immorality, no
natural right transgressed, nothing that should be
shocking to our natural instincts, nothing inconsistent
with the principles of free government! That is the
doctrine proclaimed here. After all the care we
have taken in forming our governments; after all
the limitations which we find in the constitution
of Illinois to which I shall presently refer
requiring that all tax burdens upon property
shall be equal; after all those limitations for the pro
tection of the individual, that no man's services
and no man's property, however insignificant the
amount may be, shall be taken without due process
of law and without compensation after all those
precautions intended to secure men in their prop
erty rights have things been left by the careless
ness of our statesmen in such a position that a cas
ual and communistic legislature of Illinois may take
the entire body of individual property, which has
INHERITANCE TAX CASES 305
been guarded so carefully in other particulars, at
the death of each owner? Have we constructed
our system of government upon a principle that
leaves it in the power of each legislature to estab
lish state ownership of all property? Have we been
careful about small fractions and yet left the body
of our property rights, and our most cherished so
cial and family rights, in such a condition that the
legislature of a state has the power to destroy them
all without guilt or moral dereliction or the trans
gression of any natural right or political principle?
Is that the situation we are found in?
MR. JUSTICE BROWN: Suppose the legislature of
Illinois should do that, and a man should die leav
ing a wife and father and mother and brothers and
sisters
MR. HARRISON : Will your honor allow me to in
terpolate child?
MR. JUSTICE BROWN: No; I would like to have
an answer to the question as put. In what propor
tion would you divide the property?
MR. HARRISON: I shall come to that after a
while, if you honor will allow me. I do not say
that these natural laws have all been written out;
that the details of them are expressed. That is for
the legislature to do. The federal constitution, in
recognition of these natural laws, established be
yond cavil the natural right of property. By so do
ing it established, as essential attributes of property,
306 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
the natural rights of inheritance and testamentary
disposition; and to the states was wisely left the dis
cretion of choosing between them according to
state policy. But it is not an arbitrary discretion;
it is one that is to be exercised on the lines of nature
and those family obligations and relations which
have characterized its exercise from the beginning.
It is not necessary to inquire within what degrees
of relationship natural rights of inheritance may be
confined, nor is it necessary to declare that such
rights may not extend to the remotest relations.
That there may exist amongst near rela
tions various degrees of natural rights, and that
different rights to acquire by inheritance may be ac
corded to different degrees of distant relations, are
self-evident facts. These instances present essential
differences furnishing a just basis for classification.
But, if the statutes of wills and descents should be
repealed, this court would find some sound basis of
protection in the revival of the doctrine of post obit
gifts and conveyances or in the doctrine of family
ownership. These statutes of descents and wills
are but the evidence of presumed and effectuated in
tention.
Let us look a little further. May I ask my
learned friend, if the matter of heirship is so purely
arbitrary, whether the last legislature of Illinois
might declare that the members elected to that leg
islature should be the heirs to the property of all
INHERITANCE TAX CASES 307
persons dying within the state of Illinois? If the
designation of heirs is purely an arbitrary thing; if
the child has no natural right, nor the wife, nor the
brother, and the legislature has absolute power and
arbitrary discretion, as he has told us, why may not
the legislature name its own members as the heirs?
If the sessions of the legislature are biennial, they
might take unto themselves a good deal of prop
erty before the statute could be repealed. The doc
trine is stated just as broadly as that. The legis
lature may do what it pleases; may take it all.
There is no natural or fundamental right: They
may name anybody to be heir, or they may name
no one. And yet, if your honors please, I think
the courts would find some way to dispose of legis
lation that names strangers as heirs, and cuts out
those nearest of kin. Does my honorable friend be
lieve that the courts of Illinois would sustain a
statute of descent that shut out child and wife and
substituted strangers to be heirs to the estate? I
can not believe that he does or that he would affirm
such a power in terms. And yet his whole argu
ment imports that the power is just as despotic and
arbitrary as that. What has become what will be
come upon this theory, of all our classification of
real estate titles? What kind of a fee-simple did
the gentleman have in mind when he said that the
owner could only hold for life; that no heir could
take it; but that he might during his life give it to
308 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
some other man who might hold it during his life?
What did those old patents of the United States,
under which all the land of Illinois is held, mean,
when they granted a section or a quarter section
of land to those hardy settlers and to their "heirs
and assigns forever"?
MR. MORAN: Could not he alienate it?
MR. HARRISON: Alienate it? Of course. So
could any grantee alienate it. But the fact that it
was inheritable that if he died without disposing
of it and without making any testamentary disposi
tion of it, it should go to his heirs was a part of the
grant. But it is said those heirs were not defined in
the patent. It did not say his children; it did not
say his wife; it did not say his brother. That was
left to those modifications and regulations which
the conscience of the states and the character of
their political and social and property organizations
might justify the legislature in making. It did cer
tainly involve something more than a life estate
which might be transmuted into the life estate of
somebody else at the pleasure of the state and taken
at last absolutely by the state. Can the title given
by the United States be cut off by the state of Illi
nois by its refusing to define who the heirs shall be,
and so taking the property itself? Such a doctrine
as that would paralyze all thrift and industry. Why
should men work and wear out their strength in ac
cumulating property if it has no family perpetua-
INHERITANCE TAX CASES 309
tion? Suppose such a law to be enacted in Illinois
as the gentleman defends; would not the universal
rule of the state be "Let us eat and drink, for to
morrow we die"? All of the stimulus of thrift
would be destroyed by the admission of such a doc
trine as that. What is it that makes a father care
ful? He has married a wife; he has brought a
child into life, and his care of them is not limited
by his own life. The care and the duty project
themselves beyond his grave; and he feels that he
must not that it is a privilege, but a duty growing
out of a family relation that he must make pro
vision for them. Does the gentleman believe that
a man may not provide for his infant child when
he dies; that every child is to become a foundling
dependent upon the charity of the state?
MR. MORAN: This is not the sort of law you
are attacking.
MR. HARRISON: I am attacking a principle that
you have set up to support this law; the ground
upon which you defend this arbitrary and unequal
legislation, that a state may, without any breach of
natural law or denial of fundamental rights, take to
itself all property. I will speak of this particular
law presently. You can only defend and uphold
this law by this principle which you have proclaimed
with such assured confidence. I am trying now to
show the court what effects the application of this
principle would have upon the communities in
3IO VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
which we live. The family relation would be brok
en; whatever obligation, whatever bond of duty, the
expectancy of property places upon the child would
be broken. The parent would have no motive to ac
cumulate. The wife would be without provision.
American society, American institutions are found
ed on the American home in which the father and
protector of the family is also its provider; and not
its provider only while he lives, but is to make for
the helpless and dependent a provision which they
shall enjoy when he dies. Are all the benefits that
come to the state from family association, traditions
and descents to be destroyed? Here stands a ven
erable man who has accumulated property through
years of toil. Death draws near. The pulses of
life beat slowly and with the courage of a Christian
faith he looks into the grave. But he may not call
his son and bestow upon him the heirlooms of the
family. He may not take from above the mantel
shelf the sword he wielded in his country's defense
and put it into the hands of his stalwart son that
he may, in his generation, wield it also for his coun
try. The state is to take it all. There is no natural
right. The heirlooms, the old homestead, hallowed
by family associations, the place of birth that has
in it not only so much of sweetness, but so much
wholesomeness and restraint these go to the state.
Its agent, the moment the spirit of that faithful man
has taken its flight, steps into that abode and lays
INHERITANCE TAX CASES 311
his hand upon all these things and carries them off
to be at the disposal of the legislature of Illinois.
Our social state, the property relation as we esteem
it, all our business is builded upon the idea that a
man's children and kin shall take that which he
has accumulated. Can it be possible, I repeat again,
after all the care we have shown, in protecting our
property and our civilization, that the only thing
that stands between us and an absolute state of so
cialism is the passage of a law that any casual
legislature of Illinois may enact?
I have, as doubtless all the justices have, tried
some will cases. I have no doubt that some of your
honors, upon the benches of the state courts, have
instructed juries in will cases where testamentary
incapacity was alleged; and what is the test? First,
did the man have sufficient memory and intelligence
to recall his property, to know his possessions; and
secondly, did he have sufficient intelligence and
memory to recall those who had natural claims
upon him and to measure their just deserts? What
has been meant by the courts in these instructions?
So thoroughly has this doctrine of the right of a
child ordinarily to inherit, subject to testamentary
dispositions and to apportionment in particular cases,
where the love or the duty or the service rendered
by one child may authorize distinctions so thor
oughly has this idea been instilled into the minds of
what Mr. Lincoln called "the plain people," that
312 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
if you go into your own state, sir (turning to Mr.
Moran), and empanel a jury to try such an issue
and it is proved that the testator had declared his
views of the family relation and of his obligations
to be such as have been proclaimed here, the jury
will find the testator to be non compos incapable
of making a will. The man who would say in con
nection with the making of a testament, that he did
not think anybody's children had any natural right
to share in a father's estate; that they stood in the
same relation as strangers
MR. MORAN: Would he not have a right to
give all his property to strangers?
MR. HARRISON : Undoubtedly, if he was of sound
mind. But in all such cases these tests would be
applied; and in that case it would be asked how he
came to give it all to strangers. If it could be proved
that he had said, in connection with the making
T
of his will, what has been said in this court, there
is not a jury in any of our states that would not
return a verdict that he was of unsound mind.
Such a verdict would be inevitable under such in
structions as the courts give in all these cases, viz.:
that the testator must appreciate the natural claims
upon him. Does the gentleman say there are no
natural claims? Has the wife no natural claims?
How does it come, then, that in your state, sir, as
in mine and in all of the states, I think, the provis
ion made by law for the wife takes precedence of
INHERITANCE TAX CASES 313
creditors? There is a share of the estate set apart
to her that can not be touched by creditors. Will
the distinguished gentleman tell me upon what basis
that allowance can be sustained if she has no natural
claim? The creditor has, he will allow, a claim that
justice must recognize; but I do not know how a
creditor would realize his debt if administration
was not regulated by the states; I do not know how
a man could recover property that was taken from
him in life if the law did not provide writs of re
plevin and sheriffs. Because these things are pro
vided by legislation it does not follow that the leg
islation may be arbitrary, or the rights given or
regulated be taxed as privileges. It is an old maxim
of the law that no one is heir to the living; but we
have had an extension of the maxim.
The conclusion would not follow, however, even
if this monstrous doctrine were admitted, that this
law is valid, because the state must deal with all
its citizens, not only in tax matters, but in all mat
ters of grace and privilege, upon principles of equal
ity. The grace of a republican state is not a whim.
An eastern despot may take property from one and
give it to another upon a whim, but the legislature
of Illinois may not take or give in that way. When
it attempts to show its grace in the matter of testa
mentary disposition it can not create arbitrary
classes and consequent inequality; its grace must pro-
314 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
ceed upon that principle of equality which must
pervade all legislation.
The basis of citizenship the political relation on
which our government is founded is that of equal
ity of burden and of right. All men may 15e re
quired to contribute of their property to the state;
if it is necessary for the public service, they may be
called upon to give their lives for the state; but it
must be proportionately and upon some principle of
selection by lot for the draft, by rate and appor
tionment, if property is to be taxed. You may not
take at one rate from one and at another rate from
another of the same class; you may not exact a
higher rate from one than from another. You may
make taxes ratably upon some principle of propor
tion and equality. The intent to reach that end
must be found in every valid tax law. I do not say
that the law must or can be perfectly equal in ad
ministration. I do not say that inequalities may
not arise, of a minor sort, under every tax law; but
I do say that the aim and the purpose of such legisla
tion must be to put an equal burden upon every cit
izen who is called upon to contribute. This prin
ciple is the very breath of our free institutions.
What other defense has the minority, if, as is
claimed in this case, a tax upon successions may be
fixed at any amount and be limited to particular
classes, based on value or wealth? The whole rev
enue of the state might be levied in Illinois upon a
INHERITANCE TAX CASES 315
score or two of people, and all the rest of the pop
ulation exempted from any burden of taxation.
I do not contemplate with satisfaction the accu
mulation of great wealth in the hands of a few in
dividuals; but to prevent it I would not destroy the
very foundations upon which our institutions rest.
Least of all can those who have not wealth consent
that there shall be introduced into our tax legisla
tion an arbitrary principle that may assess burdens
now for the purpose I think disclosed in the brief
and confessed in the argument of the honorable
counsel, to be one of the objects of the law of dis
persing property, for this arbitrary power will at an
other time turn and rend those who install it. As
we have said in our brief, during the French revo
lution they classified one degree of wealth as "super
fluous" and took it all. I submit to my friend and
to every right-thinking man whether we should not
pay a fearful cost for the small relief we might get
from tax burdens if we should introduce into our leg
islation a principle like that for which he contends.
This equality of burden, making every man, according
to his means, a contributor to the expenses of the
state, is one of the most wholesome things in our
civil institutions. It is the paying citizen who is
the watchful citizen. What would the people of
Illinois care what expenditures were made by the
legislature if the entire amount were levied upon
twenty wealthy men in that state? The best assur-
3l6 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
ance of honesty and integrity and economy in pub
lic expenditure, is in a wide distribution of the bur
dens of taxation because the man who pays
watches.
The provisions of the constitution of Illinois upon
the subject of equality are very explicit and very
full. I do not think the constitution of any of our
states contains any more careful provision for se
curing an equality in taxation. As to property
taxes, it requires that every person and corporation
shall pay a tax in proportion to the value of his,
her or its property. As to some specific callings
which are named, and among which we find the
words "franchises" and "privileges," it is required
that the tax shall be uniform as to the class upon
which it operates: The legislature is then given
power to tax other subjects, but only in such man
ner as is consistent with the principles of equality
fixed by the preceding section.
The supreme court of Illinois has said that it is
a privilege that is taxed by the law under consid
eration. Your honors will not think so when you
read the law. The law, I think, clearly levies a tax
on property. I know there have been decisions in
these succession tax cases wherein it was said that
because a lien for the tax is created on property
that does not make it a property tax; but here every
expression in the law shows that it is a property
tax. The word "privilege" is not found in the law.
INHERITANCE TAX CASES 317
What does it say? "All property, real, personal and
mixed, which shall pass by will * * * shall be
and is subject to a tax at the rate of one dollar on
on every hundred dollars." That is what the law
says; and not only that, but at another place it says
the tax is to be on the value of this property. Run
ning through every section of the law, the taxing
section as well as the sections relating to adminis
tration, is the declaration that it is a tax on property.
In the case of Maine v. Grand Trunk and I think
in the Home Insurance Case and others, this court
has held taxes not to be a tax on interstate com
merce, because the law said it was a tax on the
franchise; and if it had not been for that declara
tion your honors must have held in the one case
that it was a tax on earnings, and in the other on
property. Here we have a law that declares the tax
levied to be a tax on property, not once, but many
times; and as such it is subject to the rule of uni
formity to which I have referred in the constitu
tion of Illinois. All these provisions for equality
are now guaranteed by the United States in the
fourteenth amendment. As Professor Burgess
says, the United States, by the passage of that
amendment, ceased to occupy the position of a mere
"passive, non-infringer of individual liberty," and
assumed the position of "an active defender of the
same against the tyranny of the commonwealths
themselves."
318 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
I shall not attempt to discuss the breadth and
reach of that great amendment. It is enough to
say that for protection against the passion of the
state, against any temporary movement that may
wrest the people or the legislature of a state away
from this great rule of equality and fairness to
which I have referred, we no longer rest solely on
the guarantees of the state constitution, but on the
federal constitution as well.
The ordinary tax which our states have used is
the property tax, and my friend defends in part the
method of taxation introduced by this law upon the
ground that at death the state can lay its hands upon
property which during the life of the owner has
avoided taxation by false returns. I recognize and
condemn quite as strongly as my friend this secre
ting of property from the public assessor. It is a
crime against the state; and the man who hides his
property in order that it may escape its fair share
of the public burdens is a malefactor. He is of kin
to the man who skulks when the call comes to fight
for his country; and the man who dodges about
from one state to another to escape taxation is of
kin to the man who sought Canada during the civil
war in order to avoid a patriotic duty. There is
such an evil a very great one but it is not to be
cured in this way. Are we to admit that our leg
islatures and our administrative officers are inade
quate to the duty of preventing the secreting of
INHERITANCE TAX CASES 319
stocks and securities from the tax list? I do not
think any legislation can be too severe that will bring
the recreant citizen to his duty. I have no patience
whatever with this too much talk about the privacy
of one's own affairs that the state must not inquire
into private business. Under our association as citi
zens we are partners. We have come under obliga
tions to share equally the burdens of government;
and you have a right to know whether I am paying
my share or not. You have a right to demand that
I shall make a disclosure of what I have. I should
not think it too severe a penalty for this prevalent
offense if, in the exercise of their rightful power,
the legislatures were to enact that a legatee should
not take any property that the testator had fraud
ulently concealed from the assessor. If one repu
diates the ownership of property for a series of
years in his tax returns it might very well be re
garded as an estoppel when the legatee claims it.
But the law now under consideration is not a rem
edy for the evil.
The Massachusetts tax commission have recently
submitted a report to the governor of that state
recommending that the property tax, by reason of
the difficulty of collecting it, should be abolished,
and an inheritance tax and some other taxes sub
stituted. My friend would not agree to the aboli
tion of the property tax, and he would be right. A
succession tax ought not to be made a substitute for
32O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
the personal property tax. The faults and defects
in the administration of one law ought not to be
the reason for enacting another founded on inequal
ity. The proposition for which we contend does
not shut out the state of Illinois from levying an
equal and fair tax upon inheritances and succes
sions unless it is a property tax, and so double tax
ation under the constitution of the state. The gen
tleman does not speak to the record when he inti
mates that we represent people who desire to be ex
empt from any tax. Those we represent, and in that
they represent the common interests, are only anx
ious that this tax shall be put upon a basis of equal
ity and predicated upon a principle that is not de
structive of all our social relations and all our prop
erty interests.
As to exemptions, the gentleman says, with great
emphasis, What is reasonable? Who is going to
say? Well, how does the legislature say? It is
bound to make them reasonable. It is under pre
cisely the same difficulty that the court is. There
is no fixed rule. We can not say that only so much
may be exempt in any case; we must look at the
amount of an exemption and see whether it is one
that is established for a public purpose ; whether there
is a public reason to support it. In other words,
everybody should be interested that the exemption
be made. It should not be a favor to the class or
individual exempted. The exemption should rest
INHERITANCE TAX CASES 321
upon some public consideration that would author
ize it as in the interest of all. For instance, upon
the theory that it may cost more than it is worth to
collect it; or upon the theory that by taking from
those of very small means we are liable to take from
them the power to make a living and thus throw
the burden of their support on the community. But
when exemptions are plainly resorted to for favorit
ism; when they are based upon individual favor
and a bonus to the majority, and not upon any pub
lic consideration; when it appears that they are
used as a means of classifying by values, then this
court will say, that while there is a legislative dis
cretion to do what is reasonable, that is not reason
able and we will not sustain it.
As to this exemption of $20,000 to each legatee
of the first class. It might result in exempting an
estate of $250,000 wholly from taxation if there
were heirs enough to take it in portions of $20,000.
That is the method of classification here; it is noth
ing more than a class favor. It does not rest upon
and can not be supported by any public considera
tion whatever. It is a system of classification upon
values. Now it is interesting to note, as we pass,
that the constitution of Illinois, as to the tax upon
property, does not allow the exemption of a dollar
not even the dray and the old horse that draws
it. So exacting is the law that every man must pay
according to the value of what he has. The tax-
322 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
gatherer gets his return if it is only ten dollars.
The constitution allows the property of churches
and schools and property used for charitable and
such like purposes to be exempted; and the supreme
court of Illinois has held that this provision ex
cludes the power of the legislature to exempt any
thing else or any other person from taxation; that
the legislature of Illinois can not exempt so much
as ten dollars, under the constitution of that state,
from the property tax. When we look at the ex
emptions in this law we see that they were mani
festly conferred as favors; that they were resorted
to as means of classification; that they can not be
rested upon any public consideration; that they
were intended to free the great bulk of individual
property and of individuals from any tax.
As to these exemptions and their character, a word
or two more. There is a curious sort of classifi
cation here. The first class consists not only of lin-
eals ascending and descending, but of collaterals.
It embraces brothers and sisters. To that class
there is allowed, to each person taking a legacy or
an inheritance, an exemption of $20,000. The first
class includes father, mother, husband, wife, child,
brother, sister, wife or widow of a son, or husband
of a daughter, or any child or children adopted, or
any lineal descendant born in lawful wedlock. So
that if there were twenty legatees an estate of
twenty times $20,000 or $400,000 would be
INHERITANCE TAX CASES 323
wholly exempted. Upon what principle can this be
justified? The answer in the appellee's brief and in
the oral argument is that the legislature may do
that in order to disperse estates. It is a curious
fact that in the second section of this act, in attempt
ing, as it seems to me, to repeat the description of
the first class, certain members of that class are left
out. I refer to the provision in reference to life es
tates in the second section. Some have been left
out, I think inadvertently. I wish your honors
would look at that second section. All life estates
devised to father, mother, husband, wife, brother,
sister, widow of a son or a lineal descendant of
the testator, with a remainder to a collateral heir,
are exempt. In the first place, I want to call your
honors' attention to the amount of that exemption.
An estate for ninety-nine years or longer, as Mr.
Guthrie has said, given to one of the persons
named, though it might be worth $50,000 a year
in rentals, and in its aggregate value millions of
dollars, goes wholly without taxation. This is the
most senseless and incongruous provision that I ever
saw in a public statute. The remainder must go to
a collateral or to a stranger in order to free the life
estate or estate for years from the tax. If then a
man left a life estate to his child and the remainder
to his grandchild, the life estate would not be ex
empt, but if the remainder were given to a nephew
it would be.
324 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
MR. MORAN: I think you misinterpret the law.
MR. HARRISON: I am sure I do not. Let us
read it. "When any person shall bequeath or de
vise any property or interest therein or income
therefrom to mother, father, husband, wife, broth
er and sister, the widow of the son ('the wife of
the son' is left out) or a lineal descendant during
the life or for a term of years or remainder to the
collateral heir of the decedent, or to the stranger
in blood or to the body politic or corporate at their
decease, or on the expiration of such term, the said
life estate or estates for a term of years shall not
be subject to any tax." What is the condition?
The life estate to one of the persons named, the re
mainder to a collateral. Does it not say so? Will
the gentleman tell me what other possible interpre
tation there can be? I am sure you will see, when
you read it, that the life estate is only exempt
when the remainder goes to a collateral, but that is
only one instance of the incongruity of the law. In
addition to the $20,000 there is given to this class
an exemption of property that may run up into the
millions in value. How can that be defended? Only
upon the principle announced by appellee's counsel
that it is not a tax at all that it is a "bonus," and
that a bonus is not subject to the law of equality.
They say to people of this class: We will let you
devise life estates of any value free of tax, but if
INHERITANCE TAX CASES 325
you want to devise anything else any other form of
title of less value, you must pay a tax. We have
here exemptions that constitute classifications of
property that are based upon favoritism, and upon
no possible public consideration.
I now come to the progressive features of this
tax. I do not suppose that any lawyer would de
fend a progressive tax on property in Illinois. It
is defended only on the ground that succession is
a privilege, like a franchise to a corporation, as if
each of these persons were coming to the legisla
ture and asking the privilege to take as heir or leg
atee. If it can not be supported upon that ground,
and is not also free from the further limitation I
have suggested, that even acts of grace must be
uniform, then progressive taxation will find no de
fense. I have shown that in the constitution of Illi
nois the idea of uniformity, of an equal rate, is the
dominant thought in the tax provisions. Upon
what principle can it be said that a man shall be dis
criminated against in this succession tax to the
amount of $100 because he gets one dollar, or even
fifty cents, more than somebody else? If there is
an increase of rates it should only be on the in
creased amounts, the same sum paying always the
same rate. There should be so much on the first
ten thousand and so much on the second, if any pro
gression is allowed, and that is an extremely dan-
326 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
gerous policy. But when you carry the increased
rate back so that the six per cent., payable on es
tates of over $50,000, is assessed not only on all
above that amount, but on the first $10,000 that is
taxed at three per cent, and the $20,000 that is
taxed at four, we have a gross abuse of the power
of classification.
I want to say a word about classification, and
then I will close. The supreme court of Illinois
says this law makes six classes; two are classifica
tions of persons upon the basis of kinship, and four
are said to be classifications of property on the basis of
value. We admit the principle that the legislature may
classify relationship for succession taxes, and that
only uniformity in the class is required. But if the
basis of classification may be value or wealth, you
have opened the way to absolutely arbitrary and un
restrained taxation. You have broken down every
requirement looking to equality in the constitution
of Illinois and in the fourteenth amendment. You
have made nugatory this great charter, the protec
tion of which we are asking. This doctrine of
classification appears in other matters than tax cases.
In many of the states we have laws requiring legis
lation to be general, and the courts have said that
it is general if it applies to a class as to cities of a
certain population. Upon that basis we have had
legislation with reference to cities of the first, sec-
INHERITANCE TAX CASES 327
ond and third class according to population, but
always so that a city of the second class may come
into the first class as its population increases. In
the Gulf and Colorado case, where a special attor
ney's fee of only ten dollars was levied in certain
suits against railroad companies, the court said:
"You have not adopted an admissible classification;
it does not appear that there is any reason why rail
road companies should pay a docket fee in certain
cases and nobody else," and the court declined to
assume that the legislature might have some reason
for such a classification. It was not classification,
and the law was declared to be in contravention of
the fourteenth amendment. The doctrine declared
over and over again, under the fourteenth amend
ment, is that the legislature is to find classes, not
make them. They are like the poets, born and not
made. There must be some natural distinction and
division; something that actually exists before the
legislature acts. In this case the supreme court of
Illinois has justified a classification based only on
wealth; and if you admit that as applicable to gen
eral taxes, then I repeat that every provision in
tended to secure equality is destroyed, because of
the evasive and illusive answer that it is equal
within the classes, and upon a division that the leg
islature has chosen to establish.
It seems, then, to me and I have not had op-
328 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRSIDENT
portunity or time to read to your honors the num
erous citations which appear in our briefs that
this right of inheritance and of testamentary dispo
sition is natural and fundamental, in the sense we
contend for. Blackstone and that expression of
his has been at the root of all the foolish talk that
has been indulged in speaks of an utterly unor
ganized state, when there was no society at all, no-
civil government, no control, each man for himself.
He said that in a state like that it did not seem to
him that the child had a natural right to take the
property of the parent; that when a man died his
property was res nullius, and whoever got it had it.
Possession and the power to hold it was ownership.
It is because there is no law that he keeps who can;
he gets who can. But the authorities we have cited
show that from the dawn of history in the earliest
records, both these rights existed the testamen
tary right and the right of inheritance. The right
of disposition is an incident of property. Property
is the right to possess, enjoy and dispose of a thing.
The testamentary right seems to me to originate
in the very nature of property and to be an incident
of it. The right of inheritance goes back to the
beginning, and these two great natural rights have
come down to us sometimes this one restrained
and the other given greater scope; now the testamen
tary right extending only to a third of one's estate;
INHERITANCE TAX CASES 329
now to all; and now the testamentary right limited
in favor of the widow, so that her portion might
be secure. These great natural and fundamental
rights are both recognized; and though neither of
them is written out on tables of stone, they are both
engraved on the fleshy tablets of every man's heart.
They have both come down to us from the earliest
dawn of history. It does not militate against our
proposition that these are natural rights because
there seems to be a conflict between them. The
one can not wholly prevail without destroying the
other. The statute of descents, as the courts have
said again and again, is the expression of the legis
lature upon its conscience and duty as to what is
the natural law as to what should be the natural
intention and desire of a testator. The legislature,
taking no account of the particular family relations
in which service and duty, or insubordination and
rebellion may swerve the application of this right
one way or the other, defines it as applied to gen
eral cases. The family relation and property rights
have been built up and stand upon these two great
natural rights. The legislature does not give them;
it defines them. Perhaps primogeniture was quite
natural in feudal times. There must be one head
of the castle, that the duty to the king might be
discharged and the defense of the castle made good.
In every state of society there is this reason or that,
330 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
why some preference shall be given to one or to the
other; but both have survived and will survive as
natural rights. When they cease to be recognized
as natural and fundamental rights, we shall have
dissolved the basis on which society rests.
THE OBLIGATIONS OF WEALTH
Delivered before the Union League Club, Chicago, February 22, 1898
Monuments and birthday anniversaries should be
commemorative of virtues that are still imitable.
Scientists have reproduced some of the gigantic
animals and reptiles of the world's early history.
We look at them with wonder and fear, and con
gratulate ourselves that they are extinct types. We
have no needs that they can supply, and they no
shapes or habits that we would reproduce. They
could not live in our environments, nor we in theirs.
So there have been among men monsters of power
and violence. We can not forget them; but we are
glad that they lived in another epoch. The almanac
maker notes their birthdays, but there are no as
semblages of the people. If monuments have been
builded to them, they are likely to be overturned
when the dynasty changes, or the commune sup
plants the state.
But there are men who have so won our hearts
that we would recall them if we could. We feel the
need of them. No change of dynasties, no outbreak
331
33^ VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
of the mob, threatens their monuments. One can
hardly conceive of any civil revolution, or any riot
ous outbreak in our country that would not respect
the monuments of Washington, and of Lincoln.
While they lived they were at times hated by men
and by communities; but, when the full stories of
their lives were unfolded, when motives and pur
poses were explored, when the unselfish natures of
the men were understood, when the universal benef
icence of their public services was seen, all their
countrymen rendered them homage.
We assemble on this anniversary of the birth of
Washington, not so much, if at all, to bring tribute
to him as to learn at his feet the lessons of a con
scientious citizenship.
The imitable qualities of Washington's character
and life; those that did not exhaust themselves on a
locality or a period; that are instructive not only to
military commanders and chief magistrates, but to
the unofficial citizen; the lessons that he taught for
quiet days, when no drum beat calls to duty these
are the qualities and lessons that should engage our
thoughts.
Washington was a man who acknowledged his
debt to his country, and overpaid it. His thought
was how much, not how little, he could give and do.
If we are not hypocrites we will endeavor to imi
tate the qualities that we profess to admire. Wash
ington took thought of other generations than his
THE OBLIGATIONS OF WEALTH 333
own. His sagacious vision and his anxious thought
searched the long vistas of the future. He realized
that unless a strong and enduring union of the
states was established, based upon principles of jus
tice and an equality of right, his arduous campaigns
and his solicitous and laborious civil administrations
would have no adequate results. He realized that
love of country might grow cold, and selfishness
supplant sacrifice, when commerce and wealth and
personal and local interests should, in the unheroic
days of peace and affluence, become dominant influ
ences in our national life.
In choosing for my theme, "The Obligations
of Wealth," I am not wresting this anniversary
from its legitimate use. We do not need to forget
indeed, we can not forget Washington, when we
reflect upon our obligations to the state. His life
teaches no lesson more strongly than that the citi
zen is under obligation to serve the state; never to
shirk his full share of burden and sacrifice, but rath
er to do more.
Wealth is a comparative term; and my address
is not for that very limited body of multi-million
aires called by the Populist orators, "plutocrats/' A
smaller audience chamber would have sufficed for
them; and perhaps the orator should have been of
the guild. I want to speak of the obligations of
the "well-to-do" people, the forehanded, prosperous
'334 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
men and women of our communities, whether their
estates are reckoned by thousands or by millions.
We live in a time of great agitation, of a war of
clashing thoughts and interests. There is a feeling
that some men are handicapped; that the race is
sold; that the old and much vaunted equality of
opportunity and of right has been submerged. More
bitter and threatening things are being said and
written against accumulated property and corporate
power than ever before. It is said that, more and
more, small men, small stores and small factories
are being thrown upon the shore as financial drift;
that the pursuit of cheapness has reached a stage
where only enormous combinations of capital, doing
an enormous business, are sure of returns.
The demand for cheapness has compacted capital
and consolidated small enterprises. It has been
found that many items of expense do not increase
proportionately with an increased output; that the
economies of a vast business are themselves a basis
for a dividend; that the fugitive lint reclaimed
from the air, the by-products the waste of the
olden time make a showing on the ledger. The
pay-roll is so long that the manager and the mill-
worker are further apart than ever before. There
is no personal touch. The workmen pour through
the mill gate in the morning much as the water
pours through the lifted head-gates. Contact is lost
between the owner, the president, the board of di-
THE OBLIGATIONS OF WEALTH 335
rectors and the men who work. Questions of econo
mies and of dividends are discussed in the board of
directors' meeting; the question of wages in the
labor assembly. There is little comparison. The
men do not come together. The one side does not
hear the other.
The competition between well paid labor and
cheap labor, that so long raged between this coun
try and Europe, has taken on a new phase. Massa
chusetts is complaining of the long hours and cheap
labor of North Carolina and Georgia. The legis
lation of Massachusetts solicitous for the health
and welfare of her laboring population, manifest
ing itself in limited hours of labor, in the prohibi
tion of child labor and such things, seems to have
put the Massachusetts mill-owner at a disadvantage
in the competition with mills in states that do not
impose such restrictions. The great steel mill, with
its own railroad to the lakes, its great steamers and
barges, its mines of ore and of coal, with the most
improved and costly labor-saving machinery, is
rendering the survival of the smaller and less
perfectly equipped mills doubtful, if not impossi
ble. The profits of the mine owner, of the transpor
tation company, and of the mill have been consoli
dated.
The seams which mar the face of the social land
scape seem to be widening into chasms, and if these
gulfs are to be filled we must establish dumps on both
336 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
sides of them. It will aid the work if those on eith
er side use the bridges to get a view of it from the
other side. Wealth should neither be the object of
our enmity nor the basis of our consideration.
The indiscriminate denunciation of the rich is mis
chievous. It perverts the mind, poisons the heart
and furnishes an excuse to crime. No poor man
was ever made richer or happier by it! It is quite
as illogical to despise a man because he is rich as
because he is poor. Not what a man has, but what
he is, settles his class. We can not right matters
by taking from one what he has honestly acquired,
to bestow upon another what he has not earned.
You do not injure any man if in the competition
of life, by fair methods, by greater skill or thrift,
you go to the front. There is nothing more whole
some, more helpful to the striving, than the illus
trations which every community affords of the
triumph of pluck and thrift over hard and discour
aging conditions. The presence of a man on the
cliff who was but lately in the gorge is conclusive
evidence of a path, and it is much wiser to give our
strength to climbing than to stone-throwing. He
should send his "hail brother" down, and we
should send ours up.
In the discussion of all of these social questions
good temper is essential. Men must get together
and use facts, not rhetoric. We do not want
crusaders or a crusade. The crusader was an
ignorant fellow who counted the empty sepulcher
THE OBLIGATIONS OF WEALTH 337
of our Lord of more value than His precepts. In
social and political movements he is a destruction-
ist, not a builder. When the house is so rotten that
it is beyond repair, there is a call for him to clear
the ground. But if the foundation and walls are
strong and plumb, and it is only a question of a
new roof or of improved interior arrangements,
the man of destructive tendencies should be clubbed
off the premises. But the leaky roof and unsani
tary interior must have attention, and the architect
and his workmen must get to work with zeal, and
a plan. The tenants will stand together against
the destructionists and the fire-bugs; but have a
care, for if repairs are not promptly and wisely
made; if the dwellers on the first floor cut off the
heat and water from the dwellers in the attic,
things may become so intolerable that the tenants
of the attic will open the doors to the fire-bugs.
Those who occupy the first floor and the commo
dious and elegant middle stories must pay their
share of the gas and water bills. The great mid
dle class of our people has never failed to respond
to the fire alarm, though they have only small prop
erties at risk, and these not immediately threatened.
But there i c danger that they will lose their zeal as
firemen, if those in whose apartments the fire has
been kindled do not pay their proportionate share
of the cost of the fire department.
There must be a searching inquiry into the dis-
338 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
tribution of the heat and water supplies, conducted,
not by a tip-taking janitor, but by a committee of
the whole house. If there has been any monopoliz
ing of these things, or any failure to pay for them
proportionately, we must be as active to stamp out
the monopoly and the injustice as we are to extin
guish a fire. To stamp out a fire is a much simpler
process than to correct unjust social or legal rela
tions. The cry of "fire" arouses everybody, and
stirs the most sluggish to instant action; but to
ferret out a wrong is tedious, and the work neither
attracts nor arouses us very much, unless the sting
is under our own skin.
The great bulk of our people are lovers of jus
tice. They do not believe that poverty is a virtue
or property a crime. They believe in an equality
of opportunity and not of dollars. But there must
be no handicapping of the dull brother and no
chicanery or fraud or shirking. If our plan of
taxation includes notes and bonds and stocks they
must be listed. The plea of business privacy has
been driven too hard. If for mere statistical pur
poses we may ask the head of the family whether
there are any idiots in his household and enforce
an answer by court process, we may surely, for
revenue purposes, require a detailed list of his se
curities. The men who have wealth must not hide
it from the tax gatherer, and flaunt it on the street.
Such things breed a great discontent. All other
THE OBLIGATIONS OF WEALTH '339
men are hurt. They bear a disproportionate bur
den. A strong soldier will carry the knapsack of
a crippled comrade, but he will not permit a robust
shirk to add so much as his tin cup to the burden.
The special purpose of my address to-day is to
press home this thought upon the prosperous well-
to-do people of our communities, and especially of
our great cities; that one of the conditions of the
security of wealth, is a proportionate and full con
tribution to the expenses of the state and local gov
ernments. It is not only wrong, but it is unsafe,
to make a show in our homes and on the street that
is not made in the tax returns.
I only allude casually to the sentimental side of
this question, to the unpatriotic character of those
American citizens who are niching the great privi
leges of American citizenship.
Equality is the golden thread that runs all
through the fabric of our civil institutions the
dominating note in the swelling symphony of liberty.
The favoritisms and class distinctions which char
acterized the governments and administrations of
Europe were destroyed with the establishment of
government under the American constitution. At
the polls, before the courts, in all assemblies of the
people, in all legislation, there was to be, not a class
peerage, but a universal peerage. And as a corol
lary, necessary and imperative, to this doctrine of
an equality of right, is the doctrine of a proportion-
34O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
ate and ratable contribution to the cost of admin
istering the government. Indeed this principle of a
proportionate burden might be more properly called
an inherent part of the doctrine of equal rights. For
one whose right to acquire and accumulate is dis
proportionately burdened, is denied equal rights. If
favored classes may not be created, neither may
any class be discriminated against. In all of the
early constitutions of the states careful provision
was made that the burdens of taxation should be
proportional, each man paying ratably upon what
he possessed. The state was to gather from all and
to dispense for the benefit of all. Whims and favor
itism were excluded. Imposition and grace, in a
free republican state, must be without discrimina
tion.
It is a part of our individual covenant as citizens
with the state that we will, honestly and fully, in
the rate or proportion fixed from time to time by
law, contribute our just share to all public expenses.
A full and conscientious discharge of that duty by
the citizen is one of the tests of good citizenship.
To evade that duty is a moral delinquency, an un
patriotic act.
The tax-paying conscience is dulled in times of
peace. When a ravaging foe threatens a popula
tion with fire and sword men appreciate the de
fense which the government interposes between them
and danger.
THE OBLIGATIONS OF WEALTH '34!
I want to emphasize, if I can, the thought that
the preservation of this principle of a proportionate
contribution, according to the true value of what
each man has, to the public expenditures, is essen
tial to the maintenance of our free institutions, and
of peace and good order in our communities. I do
not say that every tax must be universal and touch
all property of every kind. The general property
tax must do so, but I recognize the fact that excise
taxes and franchise taxes, and such like, may be
levied in addition to the general property tax, and
that the requirement as to such taxes is only that
they shall be uniform in the class which is sub
jected to them, and that the classification shall be
natural and not arbitrary.
If we do not hold to this rule of proportion and
uniformity, everything becomes subject to the
whim of the legislature. The whole revenue of a
state may be derived from contributions exacted
from a very small minority of its population, the
majority going free. To allow such a system is
not only to rob the minority thus unduly burdened,
but is to rob the state of that which is essential to
its healthy existence, and indeed to the life of re
publican institutions. Honesty and carefulness in
public expenditure will them have no effective watch
ers. The watch of the minority will be ineffectual,
and the majority will be careless as to the use of
342 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
funds, to the accumulation of which it has not con
tributed.
In his second annual address to congress, deliv
ered in December, 1790, President Washington
spoke with gratification of the state of the public
revenues, and said that the prompt payment of the
public dues was (I quote) "an honorable testi
mony to the patriotism and integrity of the mer
cantile and marine part of our citizens."
The house of representatives, in responding to
this address, said: "Nor can we learn without an
additional gratification that the energy of the laws
for providing adequate revenues have been so hon
orably seconded by those classes of citizens whose
patriotism and probity were more immediately
concerned."
Probity, integrity and patriotism seem to have
been thought, in those early days of the republic,
to have a very direct relation to tax-paying.
For very many years an opinion has been preva
lent that the great bulk of the personal property of
the states, especially of the class denominated "se
curities," including stocks, bonds, notes, mortgages
and such like, has escaped taxation. With a very
few exceptions the great fortunes in this country
are invested in such securities. There is, of course,
in the aggregate, a somewhat wide distribution of
the stocks and bonds of some of our great corpora
tions, but it seems probable that these smaller
THE OBLIGATIONS OF WEALTH 343
holdings are in a fairer degree represented in the
tax returns. The delinquency appears to be largely
located in our great cities.
Recent investigations by students of political
science, and recent tables prepared by state tax
officials, have disclosed an appalling condition of
things. The evil seems to have been progressive
until, in some of our great centers of population
and wealth, these forms of personal property seem
to have been almost eliminated from the tax list.
In 1870, in the state of New York, the personal
property assessed amounted to twenty-two per cent, of
the total property assessed. In 1896 the proportion
of personal property assessed had fallen to twelve and
four-tenths per cent.
Comptroller Roberts, of that state, declares that
as a rule this class of property escapes taxation.
The taxable value of real estate in the state of New
York increased between 1870 and 1895, T 55 P er
cent., while the value of taxable personal property,
as shown by the assessment, within the same time,
increased less than six per cent.
Mr. Roberts expresses the opinion that the in
crease in the value of personal property has in fact
been much more rapid than that of real estate, and
that the value of the personal property owned in
the state is at least equal to, if not more than, the
value of the real estate. He states that from two
and one-half to three billion dollars of personal
344, VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
property, taxable by law in New York, escapes
taxation every year.
In an article published in the Forum in 1897, in
advocacy of a progressive inheritance tax, he takes
107 estates, which he says were selected at random
in the comptroller's office, and contrasts the amount
of appraised personal property found after death,
with the amount returned for taxation the year be
fore death. He says that of this number of estates,
thirty- four, ranging in value from $54,000 to over -$3,-
000,000, were assessed the year before the decedents'
death absolutely nothing. These 107 estates dis
closed personalty at death to the aggregate amount
of $215,132,366; and this enormous aggregate had
the year before the respective deaths of the owners
been assessed at the amount of $3,819,412, or one and
seventy-seven one-hundredths per cent, of the actual
value of the property.
In 1874 the board of state assessors of New
York reported to the legislature as follows:
"From our examinations we are satisfied that
less than fifteen per cent, of the personal property of
the state liable to taxation finds a place on the rolls
of the assessor. * * * The amount of personal
property assessed in some of the counties is less
than the banking capital, and the same is true of
thirty towns and cities, among which are some of
the most prosperous in the state."
In 1892, the tax board said: "Laws for the
assessment of personal property have failed to do
THE OBLIGATIONS OF .WEALTH 345
their work, and the failure becomes more complete
and more unjust with every successive year."
The tax commission of Massachusetts, which
reported to the governor a few months ago, shows
that the total valuation of real estate in that state
for taxation was, in 1896, $2,040,200,644, and the
total valuation of personal property, assessed in
the same year, was $582,319,634 about one-
fourth.
As to the tax upon securities, or intangible prop
erty, as it is called, the commission says:
"In each of the cities a few persons of unusual
conscientiousness make returns. Such persons
are accordingly taxed fully, and, as a rule, much
more heavily than their less conscientious neigh
bors. * * * From the testimony which assessors
have given before us, there is a grave suspicion that
sometimes sworn statements are falsely made, and
that perjury is added for the sake of evading or re
ducing taxation."
Concluding the discussion upon this subject, the
majority of the commissioners say: "That the
great bulk of intangible property taxable by law is
not reached, is admitted on all hands. It is proved
beyond doubt by the sensitive records of the stock
and bond market. Securities of all sorts, taxable
in Massachusetts, but not taxable in New York
and in other states, are publicly bought and sold
every day at the same prices in the different markets.
346 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
If taxed according to law in Massachusetts, at a
rate of from one to one and a half per cent, of
their selling value, they could not possibly com
mand the price in Massachusetts which they com
mand in other states; nor could they be sold side
by side with shares in Massachusetts corporations,
or with mortgage loans, at such prices as to yield
about the same interest on the same investment. As
a matter of fact, securities of the same solidity and
yielding the same income are sold side by side,
with no material difference in quotations, whether
they are taxable or not taxable. Taxable securities
are bought and sold every day, not on the basis of
being taxed in fact, but only on the basis of some
incalculable and disregarded possibility of their
being reached by taxation."
A gentleman of prominence, residing in one of
the smaller towns of New England, recently told me
that there had resided in his town for many years
a gentleman who was reputed to be wealthy, whom
he supposed to be worth, perhaps, a million dollars,
and who was assessed for $100,000. He died, and
when his personal property was scheduled by his
executor it was found to amount to about six mil
lion dollars if I recall the figures accurately
and when this property went upon the assessment
roll of the town the tax rate was reduced one-
half. In other words, this gentleman, living in
neighborly relations to his fellow-citizens and dis-
THE OBLIGATIONS OF WEALTH 347
charging apparently with kindliness all of the obli
gations of citizenship, had been every year of his
residence in the town defrauding his neighbors by
compelling them to contribute to the public expense
a share that he should in honesty and good con
science have discharged. He was filching from
every hand that was extended to him in neighborly
confidence. His alms were of other men's goods.
A newspaper report of addresses by the advo
cates of the single land tax to some Massachusetts
tax assessors, contains some extreme but interesting
statements. A prominent New York lawyer is re
ported to have spoken with an amazing frankness
as to his personal and professional participation in
"tax evasion, thus:
"They maintain a system which is worth a great
deal of money to me, and in these hard times every
little counts, and when I think how much they save
me in taxes and how much they put into my pocket
by the maintenance of their system of taxes I feel
grateful to them. I feel grateful to the western
farmers, because they pay my taxes. It is not
necessary for me to tell lies in New York to get rid
of this taxation; it needs nothing but a little clever
management. I manage it for many of my clients.
One of them is a clergyman's widow, who would
no more tell a lie than anything in the world, but
I have so managed her property as gradually to re-
34-8 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
duce it, until this year I got her off the list en
tirely."
The appeal tax court of Maryland, responding
to an inquiry from the tax commission of that
state, in 1881, said:
"We utterly fail in reaching private securities of
any description. Here and there only have they
been returned by some conscientious holders."
The report of the revenue commission of Illinois
of 1886 discloses that practically the same state of
things exists in your state. Indeed, so glaring and
outrageous is this withholding of personal property
from the tax list, and so great are the inequalities be
tween the counties of your state resulting from this
practice, that I notice the labor commission of Illinois
recommends the abandonment of the attempt to col
lect taxes upon personal property.
The statements which are attributed by the
bureau of labor, in their report, to eminent citi
zens of Chicago, as to tax conditions here, are
appalling.
Professor Bemis, in a recent letter in the Inde
pendent, speaking of affairs here in Illinois, and of
some revelations made by your Tax-Payers De
fense League, makes a comparison between the
commercial agency ratings and the tax list, and
gives this instance: "A certain banker, rated by
Bradstreet's among the millionaires, is assessed at
$1,200, or less than one per cent, of his personal
THE OBLIGATIONS OF WEALTH 349
property; while a poor woman, Mrs. McGuire, is
assessed on her real estate at twenty-three per cent, of
its value. The question naturally arises, How long
will there be any respect for government or law if
these things are allowed to continue?"
In conclusion he says: "A great awakening all
over the country is needed and that speedily, in
order that the people may appreciate the enormity
and injustice of existing methods of state and local
taxation, and may be impelled to effect changes
that shall make of the state an instrument of right
eousness rather than what it is now in this matter
of taxation a conniver at fraud and creator of in
equality."
It is easy to see how this offense against moral
ity and patriotism has grown to such proportions.
The very sense that inequality is injustice has pro
moted it. One man sees that his neighbor is not
making a conscientious tax return, and that if he re
turns his property honestly he will pay dispropor
tionately. The result is that his conscience finds a
salve in the saying, "Everybody does it."
It is probably also true that under the tax laws
of many of our states double taxation results and
tax-payers take it upon themselves to remedy this
defect in the law, not by the methods prescribed
by the constitution, but by leaving off from their
tax returns such stocks and securities as they sup
pose to be taxed in other states.
35O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
Our system of state governments and the lack
of uniformity in our state laws undoubtedly result
in some injustice and inequality, but the conscienti
ous tax-payer must abide by the law. The military
power of the state responds to his call to protect
his property from lawlessness; but the appeal of
the law breaker to be delivered from the law break
er is not so strong as that of the law abiding citi
zen.
Wealth evokes jealousy, and the strong arm of
the law is often invoked to protect it from the so
cialist and the anarchist. It must pay its fair pro
portion of the cost of making this defense or the
vigor of the defense may fail.
Our oath of fealty includes all the laws, the
small as well as the great, the inconvenient as well
as the convenient. The compact to obey the laws is
the basis of our civil system, the only guaranty of
social order, and the test of good citizenship.
Taxes are a debt of the highest obligation, and
no casuist can draw a sound moral distinction be
tween the man who hides his property or makes a
false return in order to escape the payment of his
debt to the state, and the man who conceals his
property from his private creditors. Nor should
it be more difficult to follow the defaulter in the one
case than in the other. If our taxes were farmed
out to an individual or to a corporation they would
be collected. There would be a vigilant and unre-
THE OBLIGATIONS OF WEALTH 351
lenting pursuit. The civil and criminal processes
of the law would be invoked with effect, just as
they were against* fraudulent debtors under the
bankrupt law. Is it not possible to secure public
officers who will show the same activity?
When to this enormous and crying evil is added
the corruption which it is alleged characterizes the
appraisements of real estate in some of our great
cities, we have a condition of things with which
we dare not palter. We must establish, and at
once, a system that shall equalize tax burdens. The
men of wealth in our great communities should
lead the movement. This great club, organized as
a rallying center for loyalty and patriotic citizen
ship, should hear a call as loud and imperative as
that which came to its members during the years of
the civil war.
Mr. Lincoln's startling declaration that this
country could not continue to exist half slave and
half free may be paraphrased to-day by saying that
this country can not continue to exist half taxed
and half free.
This sense of inequality breeds a fierce and un
reasoning anger creates classes, intensifies social
differences, and tends to make men willing to pay
their debts in half dollars. The just sacredness of
these money obligations, the right of the holders to
be paid in money of full value, will be clearer to
352 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
these angry men if they see that these securities
are paying their lawful taxes.
If there is not enough public virtue left in our
communities to make tax frauds discreditable; if
there is not virility enough left in our laws and in
the administration of justice in our courts to bring
to punishment those who defraud the state and their
neighbors, is there not danger that crimes of vio
lence will make insecure the fortunes that have re
fused to contribute ratably to the cost of maintain
ing social order?
If we are to admit that the obligations of public
duty and of personal veracity and integrity are so
little felt by our people, and that our administra
tive and judicial processes are so inadequate that
tax frauds can not be measurably restrained, hope
for the country is eclipsed.
The failures which have accompanied, in an in
creased ratio, the attempt to collect the personal
property tax, have led many tax reformers to favor
its total abolition, and the substitution of other
forms of taxation. The failure of the wealthy
holders of these intangible securities to pay their
just proportion of the cost of government has
stimulated a demand for special forms of taxation
and for progressive taxation, with a view in some
measure to recoup to the community the losses
which are inflicted by evasive or fraudulent tax
returns. The people will not consent that the
THE OBLIGATIONS OF WEALTH 353
present state of things shall be accepted as a per
manent condition.
The spirit of discontent is rife. The farmer, the
man of moderate circumstances, has unfailingly
and unfalteringly rallied to suppress mob violence
and to preserve the peace of our communities.
These men are not agrarians or socialists or anar
chists, or covetous of other men's goods, but they
will not, and should not permit the tax burdens
upon their smaller properties to be doubled by the
evasions and frauds of the holders of these intangi
ble securities.
Professor Seligman, of Columbia University, a very
eminent authority on political economy, says:
"The farmers here, like the landlords there,
(Florence, Italy), complain with justice that, ow
ing to the failure of the tax on intangible personalty,
they have to pay not only their share but the share
of others. * * * The townsman's personalty
practically escapes. Hence the unrest of the pres
ent day; hence the dissatisfaction of the rural dis
tricts; hence the continual efforts made to enforce
the taxation of personalty by the system of sworn
returns known as the listing system.' '
The personal property tax, he thinks, does not
secure equality, but incites to dishonesty, and does
not respond to the American sense of justice. He,
however, represents the farmer as responding to the
suggestion of the abolition of the personal property
354 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
tax thus: "If the state succeeds in collecting only
a part of the tax, is that any reason for our aban
doning the whole tax and saddling ourselves with
the remainder?"
A very great difficulty in the proper adjustment
of the state tax laws is forcing itself upon the pub
lic mind, growing out of our federal organization.
Before the adoption of the constitution, when each
state made its own tariff laws, the power to levy
imposts was practically nullified by the competitions
between the states. They underbid each other. The
solution was found in confiding the tax upon im
ports wholly to the national government, which could
establish and maintain equal rates in all parts of
the United States.
In a measure the same embarrassment is now be
ing felt in the framing and administration of the
tax laws of the several states. Real or simulated
changes of residence are made from one state to
another, with a view to finding the most favorable
tax conditions, or the most pliable assessors.
Professor Seligman suggests the necessity of the
"spirit of interstate comity," with a view to ar
ranging "for a substantially identical treatment of
these complicated tax questions," and adds:
"If the American attempts at voluntary co-opera
tion be not successful, the time may yet come when
these will be replaced by compulsory co-operation.
In a community where the pressure of economic
THE OBLIGATIONS OF WEALTH 355
forces has made us primarily citizens of the United
States, and only secondarily citizens of the separate
states, a system of taxation, based upon the idea
of separatism and mutual jealousy rather than of
unity can not permanently endure."
It is not easy, however, to see how a federal con
trol of these questions can be established. The
states are not likely to surrender such important
powers to the national government.
Yet I think it would be quite well to assemble a
convention of tax commissioners from all the states
to discuss this intricate and exigent problem. Pos
sibly some general principles might be agreed upon
that would remedy the just complaints of double
taxation, especially in the case of corporate proper
ties and securities.
I can not believe, however, that it is impossible
so to stir the consciences of our people, so to stimu
late the independence and courage of our assessors
and of our courts and prosecutors, as to secure a
fairly general enforcement of the personal property
tax. I know that men hesitate to call a neighbor
to judgment in this matter. We have too much
treated the matter of a man's tax return as a per
sonal matter. We have put his transactions with
the state on much the same level with his transac
tions with his banker, but that is not the true basis.
Each citizen has a personal interest, a pecuniary in
terest, in the tax return of his neighbor. We are
356 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
members of a great partnership, and it is the right
of each to know what every other member is con
tributing to the partnership and what he is taking
from it. It is not a private affair; it is a public con
cern of the first importance.
Perhaps there should be a general proclamation
of amnesty and a new start, for many men have
been enticed into these offenses by the belief that all
others were offending.
The pulpit, the press, every agency that deals with
public, social and moral questions should lend its
help. There should be committees of public safety;
for, my fellow-citizens, I do not exaggerate when I
say that the public safety is involved in a more equal
administration of our tax laws. Returns and assess
ments must be honest and equal. If there are ine
qualities in the law they must be remedied by legis
lation, and not by the usurpations of the individual.
I think we must assume that there are very few,
if any, of our states prepared to consent to the abo
lition of the personal property tax.
As a supplemental tax, levied within the require
ments of equality and uniformity, a succession or in
heritance tax may be well enough, if the state consti
tution permits it; but the principle of progression, a
higher rate for large estates, seems to me to be in
consistent with that rule of proportion and equality
which should characterize all taxation. The practical
question, the one our people must solve, and solve
THE OBLIGATIONS OF WEALTH 357
speedily, is the enforcement of the personal property
tax and the equalization of real estate assessments.
If no other remedy can be found, perhaps the
state might declare and maintain an estoppel against
the claim of any man or his heirs to property, the
ownership of which he had disclaimed in his tax re
turns.
If a succession tax is used to recoup the taxes
unpaid during life, it should be so framed as to
reach the guilty and save the innocent. Perhaps a
higher rate could be levied upon property as to
which paid tax bills are not produced.
What has already been accomplished in Chicago
gives a gratifying hope that a public sentiment can
be created that will relieve our states from the scan
dals and frauds which have characterized the admin
istration of the tax laws.
It is not within the purposes of this address to
propose in detail the needed reforms, but rather to
emphasize the need, and to suggest that our men
of wealth should themselves come forward and take
the lead in these reforms; that they should not only
show a willingness, but a zeal, to bear their full
proportionate share of all public burdens. If they
do not the sense of injury is so strong that ways
will be found, I fear, to exact more than is equal.
To do justice is the best safeguard against injus
tice.
ON RETURNING FROM WASHINGTON
State House, Indianapolis, March 6, 1893
I do not think, even if the circumstances were
more favorable than now surround us, I could say
more than the fewest words of thanks. Four years
ago, if the calendar is consulted, I left you to as
sume high responsibilities. If I should consult
heart and mind I should say it is ten years since I
bade good-bye to my Indianapolis friends. Not the
rising and the setting of the sun, but our experi
ences, give the true sense of duration. I came back
to Indianapolis for since I came to manhood, I
have had no other home. Suggestions of an attract
ive sort were made to me to make my home else
where, but it seemed to me that the only home for
me was Indianapolis. I am too old to make a new
home; not too old, I hope, to renew those old asso
ciations that make this so dear a home, and to take
within the circle of my affectionate regard this mul
titude of new faces that I see here to-night. This
city has made a wonderful growth since I left it.
358
ON RETURNING FROM WASHINGTON 359
I shall have to learn again the landmarks. Change >
improvement, expansion and increase are everywhere
apparent, and in all this I rejoice with you. The
State of Indiana has made corresponding increase.
Factories and homes have greatly multiplied, our
population has greatly increased. Wealth has been
developed, and I trust and believe that with this ad
vancement along material lines there have been a cor
responding increase and development of the heart
and of the home which alone can make a great peo
ple. The nation, too, has had its growth and de
velopment; some new lines of progress have been
indicated. Within the past few weeks I had the
pleasure of lifting over one of the greatest merchant
steamships that floats upon the sea that flag of
beauty that hangs before me. I regarded it as the
precursor and pioneer of the return of that time when
the American flag was seen in every sea and the
American navy was held in estimation by other na
tions. Only one week ago I had the pleasure of
seeing the greatest ship that has ever been built in
America a battleship, which, when completed, would
be able to cope with the greatest ship that England
has upon the sea float from her ways into the Del
aware with the name "Indiana" on her side. I will
not speak to you of those duties which these years
of absence have brought me, or of their perform
ance. I left you with but one certainty, and I re
turn with that the certainty that I had no other
360 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
motive in my heart than the honor of the flag, the
sacredness of the constitution and the prosperity of
all our people. I come to you again accompanied
by a great sorrow, but I trust and your presence
here gives me your witness unattended by any
shame growing out of the discharge of my public
duties. Add to your great kindness and to this
great welcome which you have extended to me to
day, the further kindness of excusing me from at
tempting to speak to you further. I shall be glad
to carry out the arrangement of the committee, and
to take as many of you as I may by the hand, and
in these days and weeks that are to come to meet
you in my home, in your homes, as opportunity may
offer. May God bless you all.
TO THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC
Tomlinson Hall, Indianapolis, September 4, 1893
COMMANDER WEISSERT, DELEGATES TO THE TWEN
TY-SEVENTH ANNUAL ENCAMPMENT OF THE GRAND
ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC, COMRADES AND FELLOW-
CITIZENS Has not Indianapolis already spoken to
you? Have not these gay streets, these waving flags,
these smiling faces, given you assurance of welcome
to the capital of Indiana? Can I add anything to
that magnificent demonstration that has already
greeted your eyes?
We welcome you to-night because we are in accord
with you. A distinguished senator of the United
States objected to the Chinese because they did not, as
he said, "homologate." I want to assure you that you
do, thoroughly, "homologate" with us. To make a
reception altogether pleasant to hosts and guests, there
are mutual qualities to be thought of. There must
be sympathy between the two; and I declare to you
that citizens of Indianapolis and of the state are in
thorough sympathy with the organization and the
361
362 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
aims of the Grand Army of the Republic.
We welcome you because you have the
"arduous greatness of things done" in behalf of the
flag and of the country. I see before
me men who stood with Thomas in the last shock
at Chickamauga who hurled back that advancing and,
for a time, irresistible wave of rebel bayonets that
threatened to sweep our army into the Tennessee.
I look into the faces of men to-night who stood in
the bloody angle at Gettysburg, and threw back that
desperate charge, that, had it won, would have
opened Washington to the rebel army. I look
into the faces of men to-night who, in their in
dividual service in the army, have performed deeds
of heroism and courage; who, riding with flashing
saber over rebel guns, have carried the stars and
stripes to victory. I look into the faces of
men who at the bayonet's point have pushed
back their country's enemies and have plant
ed its flag on rebel ramparts. I look into the faces
of men who have shed their blood and dropped their
limbs upon the battlefield, and who walk among us
to-night, maimed, dismembered, that the honor of
the flag might be untarnished and the union un
broken. Can Indiana fail to welcome such?
Our hearts and our homes are open to you.
If we bowed the knee to any, it would be to you.
Can it be possible that, while the survivors
of this great struggle are still with us, while
THE GRAND 'ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC 363
they walk our streets, a generation has come on for
getful of their great achievements? Has the moth
of avarice, the canker of greed, so eaten into the
hearts of this generation that they are unmindful of
these men? God forbid. When the great
struggle of the revolutionary war was over,
this country was bankrupt, the notes that it had
issued were valueless, it was without credit at home
or abroad, and too many turned away from the just
claims of the soldiers that had followed Washing
ton from Cambridge to Yorktown. The army pleaded
in vain for justice at the hands of the government
it had saved, but they had to deal then with a bank
rupt government, without the power to redeem its
pledges, an impoverished people who had spent their
all already in that eight years' struggle.
No such excuse can be offered now. This coun
try is rich in the great resources of these accumu
lated years. Our people can find no excuse for in
gratitude toward the soldiers of the land in their
inability .to meet their just demands. You are as
sembled to take thought for those things that con
cern the interests of your comrades comprising this
great organization, and of those who stand without
it. The American soldier of the civil war has not
been commercially greedy. He was not tempted to
service by his monthly stipend. If there had been
no other impulse than eleven or thirteen dollars a
month we should have had no army. The men that
364 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
went to the front were not impelled by sordid pur
poses of hope or gain. And when the war was over,
their thought was not of dependence upon the govern
ment, but upon their own right arms. I saw
that great parade, with the gallant and la
mented General Sherman at its head, sweep by the
treasury of the United States, and there was not a
greedy eye turned toward it. Every eye was
toward home, and the hurrying footsteps were
bent thither. Every boy who had been spared
in the great struggle was anxious to be again at the
plow, or in the shop, or in the office, to take up
again the work he had laid down that his country
might live. Their hearts went faster than the
quickstep of the march, on to the humble homes
from which they had gone out, to the loved ones
they had left there. And all these years, in every
community, in every trade, the soldier has been a
workman; his family have eaten of the fruits of his
own toil. As long as God gave him strength of
arm, he wrought and ate the bread of independence.
Only when he became the veteran of time, when as
I have said before the parallels of age drew close
about the citadel of life, and the arm that had
wrought so bravely for his country and so sturdily
for his family, lost its strength; only then did he
turn his hopeful eye toward the government for re
lief. The Grand Army of the Republic has
rightly claimed that the man who fell by the
THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC 365
way in the battle of life, from disease, or casualty,
or advancing years, and lost the capacity to main
tain himself, should be cared for by the nation he
helped to save, and not be dependent upon
the township poor- fund. I do not propose to discuss
the pension question. Many considerations limit me
in the discussion of it; but I may say this, that
when congress, in its generous recognition of the
rightful claims of the soldier, has passed a law for
his benefit, we may and we will demand that it shall
be beneficially construed. It is a familiar
maxim of the law that remedial legisla
tion is to have a favorable interpretation in the in
terest of the evil to be remedied. Secondly, we
may and we do insist that in the administration of
the law the soldier's integrity and honor shall not
be wantonly impeached. A presumption will
be indulged in his favor. We do not ask
that any who have fraudulently obtained a place
upon the pension roll shall be kept there, but we
do ask that that other familiar maxim of the law, that
fraud is to be proved and not presumed, shall be
applied to the soldier's claim. These general prin
ciples and I can not go into details I think must
be acceptable to every right-thinking, patriotic man.
We are impatient only with those who start with
a prejudice against the soldier.
Now, my comrades, I have to talk again to-night,
and you will excuse me from further speech. You
366 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
are welcome. Indiana and Indianapolis, since that
shot at Sumter reverberated through our streets,
have been loyal to the flag, the constitution and
their defenders. We said of those who went to the
front amid the blessings and tears of the commu
nity, "Brave boys are they, gone to their country's
call." There was no voice of detraction then. We
welcomed those who were spared to return, with
open arms; the great war governor of Indiana
spoke for its citizens earnest, enthusiastic words of
commendation and love. That your stay here among
us may be pleasant; that the meeting of this en
campment may be characterized with good temper
and with hearty agreement, is my sincere hope.
Your expressions should be characterized by tem
perance, soberness and conservatism, and at the
same time by such clearness and decision that no
one shall misunderstand what the Grand Army
means. I hope to see many of you personally dur
ing your stay; and, if we can send you from us
after your work is complete, with pleasant impres
sions of this city that we love so much, we shall be
glad that you have come, and will cherish long in
our remembrance this great event.
MILITARY INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS AND
COLLEGES
The Century Magazine, November 3,1893
You ask my opinion of the suggestion of Lafayette
Post, G. A. R., of New York city, that military in
struction and drill be used in all schools for boys. It
is good in every aspect of it good for the boys,
good for the schools, and good for the country. A
free, erect, graceful carriage of the body is an ac
quisition and a delight. It has a value in commerce
as well as in war. Arms and legs are distressing
appendages to a boy under observation, until he has
been taught the use of them in repose. The chin is
too neighborly with the chest, and the eyes find the
floor too soon; they need to have the fifteen paces
marked off. The sluggish need to be quickened,
the quick taught to stand, and the willful to have
no will. The disputatious need to learn that there
are conditions where debate is inadmissible; the
power and beauty there is in a company moved
by one man and as one man. Athletic sports
have their due, perhaps undue, attention in
367
368 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
most of the colleges and high schools ; but in the graded
schools, within my observation, exercise is casual and
undirected. None of these exercises or sports is,
however, a substitute for military drill; and some of
them create a new need for it. A good oarsman
need not be erect or graceful; a good arm and
plenty of wind meet his needs. The champion "cy
clist" is not apt to have square shoulders. The foot
ball captain is so padded that a safe judgment can
hardly be formed as to his natural "lines"; but a
good leg and momentum seem to me a non-expert
to be his distinctive marks. In baseball the pitcher
seems, to an occasional observer, to have parted with
all his natural grace to endow the curved ball.
A military drill develops the whole man, head,
chest, arms and legs, proportionately; and so pro
motes symmetry, and corrects the excesses of other
forms of exercise. It teaches quickness of eye and
ear, hand and foot; qualifies men to step and act in
unison; teaches subordination; and, best of all, qual
ifies a man to serve his country. The flag now gen
erally floats above the school-house; and what more
appropriate than that the boys should be instructed
in the defense of it? It will not lower their grade
marks in their book recitations, I am sure. If rightly
used, it will wake them up, make them more healthy,
develop their pride, and promote school order. In
the centennial parades in New York, in April, 1889,
the best marching I saw was that of some of your
MILITARY INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 369
school children. The alignment of the company front
was better than that of the regulars or of the Sev
enth regiment.
If all the school boys of the North had, from
1830 on, been instructed in the schools of the sol
dier and of the company, and in the manual of arms,
how much precious time would have been saved in
organizing the Union army in 1861. We were in
a very low state, as a people, in military knowledge
and training when the great civil war broke out
volunteers in plenty, but few soldiers. I very well
remember how hard it was for me to learn which
was the right of the company, and to understand
why it continued to be the right when the right
about had made it the left; and how we had, in 1862,
to send to a distant city to find a drill-master com
petent to instruct the company officers, not one of
whom could go through the manual of arms; and
how the regiment, after a few half-learned lessons in
the company drill, was sent to the seat of war with
guns which they had never loaded or fired. Fortu
nately, the men had the American adaptability and
quickness, and our adversary only a little better prep
aration. It will not be safe to allow war to come upon
us again in that state, for war's pace has greatly
quickened, and the arms of precision now in use call
for a trained soldier. Under our system we shall
never have a large standing army, and our strength
and safety are in a general dissemination of mili-
37O VIEWS OF 'AN EX-PRESIDENT
tary knowledge and training among the people.
What the man and citizen ought to know in order
to the full discharge of his duty to his country should
be imparted to the boy. Nothing will so much aid
to enlarge our state militia, and to give it efficiency
and character, as the plan proposed. The military
taste and training acquired in the school will carry
our best young men into the militia organizations
and make those organizations reliable conservators of
public order, and ready and competent defenders of
the national honor.
AT THE BANQUET OF THE NEW ENGLAND
SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Continental Hotel, Philadelphia, December 22, 1893
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW
ENGLAND SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA When my
good friend and your good neighbor and presi
dent, Mr. Charles Emory Smith, invited me to
be present to-night, I felt a special demand upon
me to yield to his request. I thought I owed him
some reparation for appointing him to an office,
the emoluments of which did not pay his expenses.
Your cordial welcome to-night crowns three days of
most pleasurable stay in this good city of Philadelphia.
The days have been a little crowded. I think there
have been what our friends of "the four hundred"
would probably call eight 'distinct functions, but your
cordiality and the kind words of your presiding officer
quite restore my fatigue and suggest to me that I shall
rightly repay your kindness by making a very short
speech.
It is my opinion that these members of the New
England Society are very creditable descendants of
372 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
the forefathers. I am not right sure that the fore
fathers would share this opinion if they were
here, but that would be because of the fact
that, notwithstanding the load of substantial vir
tues which they carried through life, their taste had
not been highly cultivated.
I dread this function which I am now attempting
to discharge more than any other that ever meets
me in life. The after-dinner speaker is unlike the
poet; he is not born, he is made. I am
frequently compelled to meet in disastrous com
petition about some dinner table gentlemen who
have already had their speeches set up in the news
paper offices. They are brought to you as if they
were fresh from the lip. You are served with what
they would have you believe to be "impromptu
boned turkey." And yet, if you could see
into the recesses of their intellectual kitchens,
.you would see the days of careful preparation which
have been given to those spontaneous utterances.
The after-dinner speaker needs to find some
where some one un worked joker's quarry,
where some jokes have been left without a label on
them. He needs to acquire the art of seeming to
pluck, as he goes along in the progress of his speech,
as by the wayside, some flower of rhetoric; he seems
to have passed it and to have plucked it casually,
but it is a boutonniere with tin-foil around it.
You can see upon close inspection the
NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA 373
mark of the planer on his well-turned sentences.
The competition with gentlemen who are so cul
tivated is severe upon one who must speak absolute
ly upon the impulse of the occasion. It is either in
capacity or downright laziness that has kept me
from competing in this field which I have described.
It occurred to me to-day to inquire why you had to
associate six states in order to get up a respectable
society. Now, .my friend Halstead and I have no
such trouble. We are Ohio born, and we do not
need to associate any other state in order to get up
a good society wherever there is a civil list of the
government. If you would adopt the liberal charter
measure of the Ohio society I have no doubt you
could subdivide yourselves into six good societies.
The Ohio society admits to membership everybody
who has lived voluntarily six months in Ohio. No
involuntary resident is permitted to come in.
But this association of these states and the name
New England is part of an old classification of the
states that we used to have in the geographies, and
all of that classification is gone except New En
gland and the South. The West has disappeared,
and the Middle West can not be identified. Where
is the West? Why, just now at the point of that
long chain of islands that put off from the Alaskan
coast, and, if I am to credit what I read, for I have
no sources of information now except the not abso
lutely reliable newspaper press, there are some who
374 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
believe that there are wicked men who want to
hitch the end of that chain on to another island far
ther out in the sea. If that should be done, the West
would become the East, for I think the Orient has
generally been counted to be the East.
I would not, however, suggest a division of the
New England Society. It is well enough to keep
up an association that is one, not only of neighbor
hood and historical associations, but of sentiment:
Let the New England Society live, and I fancy it
will not be long till you enjoy the distinction of be
ing the only great subdivision of the states. For,
my fellow-citizens, whatever barriers prejudice may
raise, whatever obstruction the interests of men may
interpose, whatever may be the outrages of cruelty
to stay the march of New England, that which made
the subdivision of the Southern states and all that
separated them from the states of the West and of
the North will be obliterated.
I am not sure, though the story runs so, that I
have a New England strain. The fact is that I have
recently come to the conclusion that my family was
a little overweighted with ancestry, and I have been
looking after posterity.
One serious word, gentlemen. The New England
character and the influence of New England men and
women have made their impress upon the whole coun
try; for even in the South, during times of slavery,
educated men and women from New England were
NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA 375
the tutors and instructors of the youth of the South
in the plantation home. The love of education, the
resolve that it should be general, the love of home
with all the pure and sacred influences that cluster
about it, are elements in the New England char
acter that have a saving force incalculable in this
great nation in which we live.
Your civil institutions have been free and high and
clean, from the old town-meeting days until now.
New England has believed in and practices the free
election and the fair count.
But gentlemen, I can not enumerate all of your
virtues; time is brief and the category long. Will
you permit me to thank you and your honored
president for your gracious reception to-night?
FOUNDERS' DAY AT STANFORD
UNIVERSITY
THE FIRST MEMORIAL EXERCISES HELD AT THE
UNIVERSITY
March 9, 1894
PRESIDENT JORDAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
What I shall say to-day will be the unstudied tribute of
a friend to the memory of a friend. My acquaint
ance with Governor Stanford was not long a half
score of years would cover it but I saw him dur
ing those years under many varying conditions,
and was now and then brought into such touch
with him that his mind and heart were very fully
revealed to me.
This visit to California, to Palo Alto, to the Le-
land Stanford Junior University, is one that I have
looked forward to for a year with great interest
and with great anticipations. Not a little of that
interest was centered in the fact that the arrange
ment involved a meeting with Governor Stanford
here at the scene of his greatest work. My com
ing is saddened by his absence. As I remarked the
376
FOUNDERS DAY AT STANFORD 377
other day to the students, I realize now first that
he is dead. When one dies at a distance from us we
hear of the event and our minds receive it as a truth,
but the heart does not realize it until we come to
some place where we might expect to meet our
friend. It is the vacant chair in the family; it is the
absence from accustomed places that brings to us
the realization of the loss of a friend. I had learned
to have a very high regard for Governor Stanford;
to see in him some of the noblest attributes that
adorn human nature, and chief among these was
the gentle, loving character of his nature. Too often
those who have been enabled by successful business
enterprise to gather about them all the luxuries of
wealth so that everything is tributary to them, come
to be unsympathetic and forgetful of their fellow-
men, to be narrow and selfish. Such was not the
influence of his great possessions upon him. His
wealth was a vehicle of charity. We have not a
few families in this country who, from generation
to generation, seem to concentrate all their ener
gies upon the accumulation of great fortunes and
the entailment of them upon their children. Such
as these may be stars of the first magnitude when
only four hundred are assembled, but the Lick tele
scope can not find them when the world is gathered.
Wealth has come to be condemned; to be under
suspicion, because of its selfishness; not because it
is in itself a thing that has not high and great uses
378 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
not because it is necessarily a barrier over which
human hearts may not pass.
The considerateness of Governor Stanford, dur
ing the four years that I spent last at Washington,
always touched me. He seemed to realize the bur
dens of the great office which I held, and always
approached me in a manner almost apologetic, that
he should intrude any further care or business upon
my attention. In all his relations to men in public
life he was modest, kindly and considerate, and
often added a suggestion of practical wisdom to the
consultation that roused our admiration and not in
frequently secured our adherence.
What a great thing it is when one may have a
Founders* Day to commemorate his birth! How
short human life is, and how inadequate! When
men die we say their earthly work is ended; and
for a majority, and to a majority, to our limited
observation, it is largely true. Of course, no good
life ends at death; but the threads of influence such
lives have started extend over limited spaces, touch a
few hearts, and are undiscovered to the common
eye. There is not time in a human life to complete
a great work. There must be succession. Perpe
tuity is essential to great works; and no one more
fully realized this than Governor Stanford. He
was an organizer. His thoughts were large, and he
understood the philosophy of bringing other men
into partnership with his designs, of enlarging the
FOUNDERS' DAY AT STANFORD 379
individual touch by co-operation. Take the two
great enterprises with which he was associated. The
transcontinental railway what a wide and strong
organization was necessary to its accomplishment!
Not one man! What could one pick or one shovel
or one engineer do in the construction of that great
enterprise? It was a scheme that needed to have
brought into it many men of diverse mental attain
ments, and the muscle of many laborers, and all
these into a system that worked like a perfected ma
chine all this he did. And this great highway of
commerce, which in the future years shall bear an
increasing traffic between the East and the West,
and shall carry, with increasing comfort, speed and
safety, generations yet to be born, is one of the
great works that will perpetually praise him. This
is one of his biographers, and it has written on the
rocky faces of the Sierra canons the story of his
participation in one of the great achievements of the
century.
This university is his other and better biographer
not a highway of commerce but a highway of
the soul, upon which the aspiring feet may perpet
ually be borne to the heights of truth and learning.
And here, how perfectly can we see this fine faculty
of design; of organization; of bringing in that
which is needful; of using the element of perpetu
ity. For, when these learned men who now instruct,
and this generation of students, have passed away,
380 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
there will be new instructors standing yet nearer to
the summits of truth, to instruct a generation of
students full of a nobler enthusiasm for learning
and for the elevation of the race. It is as men as
sociate themselves with such institutions that their
memory is perpetuated. Why is Washington freshly
and ever in our hearts? Why is his natal day per
petually kept in remembrance? Because he associ
ated himself with the deliverance of the colonies
from foreign domination and oppression, and with
the institution of a system of government that has
brought liberty, happiness and freedom to this great
continent, and will carry them on to generations to
come. Napoleon we read of; we analyze his char
acter and study his military genius much as one of
these professors and with little more reverence
might examine and explain to a class the articulated
skeleton of some unknown man. He did not asso
ciate himself with any great thing in the interest
of man, with any great state or institution that had
perpetuity.
But I will not detain you longer. Our sorrow
for the loss of a friend is greatly mitigated when
we can assemble as we do to-day, surrounded by
evidences that, not only in the family circle, but
throughout all this coast, throughout all these states,
and, indeed, throughout the world, he will be held in
perpetual veneration and respect.
One loved child was lost, but the promise the
FOUNDERS* DAY AT STANFORD 381
Abrahamic promise shall be fulfilled to him his
children shall be more than the sands of the sea, for
multitude.
IN PRESENTING MR. McKINLEY,
Tomlinson Hall, Indianapolis, September 25, 1894
MY FELLOW-CITIZENS The delightful duty has
been assigned me by the state central committee of
the Republican party of Indiana to preside over this
great meeting. I am to be its chairman, not its
speaker, and I congratulate you on that fact.
I brought the distinguished gentleman, to whom you
are to listen, to this hall this afternoon without send
ing any courier in advance to find whether there were
enough people for him to speak to.
I notice in the audience here to-day, with great
satisfaction, the presence of many of our older fel
low-citizens. The old men are fond of telling of
the "good old times," but the times to which they look
back with so much delight are glorified in the fact
that the processes of nature and of providence have
covered the things that were hard and brought out
in the memory those things that were sweet and
pleasant. But the good times which I have in mind
are not good old times, but very young good times,
382
IN PRESENTING MR. MCKINLEY '383
so young that only the unweaned babes have no
memory of them. Only two years ago this country
was not only the most prosperous country in the
world for that it had been before but it stood
upon the highest pinnacle of prosperity that it had
ever before attained. This is not the ver
dict of politicians; it is the verdict of the com
mercial reporter; it is the expressed opinion of those
men who make a profession of studying business
conditions. The last two years have been years of
distress and disaster.
The losses of them defy the skill of the calcu
lator. It has been said, I think not without reason,
that they exceed the cost of the great civil war.
These losses have not been class losses; they have
been distributed. The holder of stocks and bonds
has found his wealth shrinking, and so has the
farmer, and the workingman has found his wages
shrinking. There has been a general participation
in the calamities of the last two years as there was
a general participation in the prosperity of the pre
ceding years. The great national debts, like those of
the civil war, have sometimes their adequate compen
sation. Great as was the cost of the war for the
Union, we feel that it was adequately compensated
in the added glory that was given to the flag and in
the added security that was given to our civil insti
tutions and the unity of the nation.
But the losses of these last two years have no such
384 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
compensating thought. There is no good to be got
ten out of them, except for guidance. They seem to
be of retributive nature, like the swamps into which
the traveler has unwarily driven, that have no amel
iorating circumstances, except as they teach him to
keep on the foot-hill and to follow the road that is
on the hilltops. Our people seem to be inclined to
make the most that can be made out of these years
of disaster. We were told in the old times the rich
were getting richer and the poor poorer; and to cure
that imaginary ill our political opponents have
brought on a time when everybody is getting poorer.
I think that I remember to have heard of an inscrip
tion once upon a tombstone that ran something like
this: "I was well; I thought to be better; I took
medicine, and here I lie."
Our Democratic friends have passed a tariff bill
that is approved so far as I can learn by only six
Democratic senators and nobody else. We
hear of the little coterie of senators whose
names I could not mention, perhaps, for they have
not been well identified, but their numbers has gen
erally been fixed at a round half dozen who de
cided what the tariff bill should be, and they are
pleased with it, and nobody else. Mr. Cleve
land has repudiated it, and has declared that it
involves "perfidy and dishonor;" that it was shame
ful in its character and in the influences that pro
duced it; that he would not even put his name to it.
IN PRESENTING MR. MCKINLEY '385
All of the leading Democratic papers in trie country
have condemned it both of the old stalwart variety
and of the mugwump variety. The Democratic chair
man of the ways and means committee has con
demned it, and the entire Democratic majority in the
House of Representatives. Now that is a great mis
fortune. It is a misfortune that the Democratic party
was not able to evolve a tariff bill that that party
would accept as a settlement of the tariff question.
But it is not accepted as a settlement.
In the very nature of things, a bill thus passed,
and thus characterized, can not be a settlement; and
already we have the proclamation from Mr.- Cleve
land, and from Mr. Wilson, that this is only the
beginning of the crusade against American indus
tries; that the war is to go on. Now that is a great
misfortune. If we could only prove by our Demo
cratic friends that we were in the bottom of the
well, dark and damp and dismal as it was, we would
have begun to look up and see whether we could
not find some star of hope; we would have begun
to anoint our bruises, and try to build some scaf
fold by which we might try to climb out. But we
are told that there are greater depths yet in store
for us. And so this country is to be held in a state
of suspense upon this question.
It can be ended in just one way, and that is by
overwhelming Republican victories in November.
[When New York gives Levi P. Morton 75,000 ma-
386 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
jority and Indiana her state ticket 25,000, and Illi
nois and those states that have wavered fall again
into line, and the next congress is Republican, there
will be an assurance that we have found the end of
this disastrous condition.
I think the Ohio Democrats the other day declared
that all these disasters of which we speak came upon
the country under the McKinley bill. Well, to be sure,
the McKinley bill was a law until that twenty-ninth
day was it of August, when the Gofman bill was
passed, but it was a law in restraint. It had been
arrested. We were listening from day to day to the
prophecies that in two weeks, or three, or four, it
would be repealed. It was not a law in the sense
that any merchant or manufacturer could act upon
it. It was dead in a business sense, though alive in
the statute. Why, sir, it would be just about as
reasonable to complain of a man who had been seized,
handcuffed and locked up in a cell for not support
ing his family as to complain of the McKinley bill
during this period of suspense. And then we are
told that under the McKinley bill the price of wool
went down under protective duty and since it has
been made free it is going up; that sugar on the
free list was higher than sugar with a forty per cent.
duty. All this notwithstanding the old doctrine that
the duty was always added to the cost of the domes
tic article.
But, my friends, I do not want to detain you
IN PRESENTING MR. MCKINLEY 387
from that entertaining feast to which you are in
vited. I am glad that Indiana to-day gives so royal
a reception to Governor McKinley. He has en
deared himself to all by his record as a gallant young
soldier, battling for the flag. He has honored him
self, his state and the country by his conspicuous
service in high legislative and executive places. No
man more than he is familiar with these questions
that now engage the public thought. No man is
more able than he lucidly to set them before the peo
ple. I do not need to invoke your attention to what
he shall say. He will command it. I have now the
pleasure of presenting him to you.
THE GREAT MASS MEETING
Carnegie Hall, New York, October 81, 1894
MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-CITIZENS This is a
very great, but, I somewhat fear, a very impossible
audience to speak to. You seem to be quite
inclined to do your own talking, and you are
doing it very well. I thought I had made
an inflexible resolution that I would not speak
in this campaign outside the limits of Indiana. But
I have found, as has often happened before in my
experience, that inflexible resolutions have to bend.
I did not make this resolution because I saw
any impropriety in one, who had received at
the hands of his fellow-citizens the highest civic
honors, addressing his fellow-citizens of any of the
states upon public questions. I was not quite will
ing to accept the philosophy of some that the only
appropriate habiliment for an ex-president was
mummy-cloth.
At the same time I very fully realize that I am
under limitations in discussing public questions. I
388.
THE GREAT MASS MEETING 389
can not say very much about the last administra
tion, and it is somewhat delicate for me to speak about
the present.
But, my fellow-citizens, men are of very little
consequence in the administration of our public af
fairs. They do not turn events. The important
matter is the principles or policies that the respective
parties represent, and of these I feel very
free to speak. And if you will give me your atten
tion I will for a little while give you my views as
to the tendency of the policies of the Republican
party, which I believe to be beneficent and helpful
and patriotic, and of the tendencies of the policies of
the Democratic party, which I believe to be hurtful
and destructive.
In this great country of ours, this sisterhood of
states, this union under one flag and one constitu
tion, there is such a community of influences, such
an intermingling of influences, that no election can
in any proper sense be said to be local. It is of con
sequence, and ought to be of concern to all the peo
ple of the United States from the St. Johns to Puget
Sound, whether the governor of the state of New
York shall be a man of clean personal life, a man
who illustrates in his own life and history the vir
tues of high American citizenship, whether he shall
be a man who loves our free institutions, who ap
preciates the sanctity of the ballot-box and the equal
ity of men before the law, or whether he shall be a
39O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
man who companies with those who prostitute the
ballot-box, who companies with those who degrade
public office and public administration. It is
of consequence to the whole people whether
the great state of New York shall have at the head
of her executive department a typical, upright, pure
American citizen, or one who regards these things
from a low standpoint and looks only to party ad
vantage rather than to the public weal. I have de
parted from my resolution not to speak out of my
own state, because I could not seem to be indifferent
to the contest which is on in New York. Because,
being in your city upon personal concerns, I would
not have any one think that I could be indifferent to
the success of pne whom I esteem and love as my
friend. I believe the candidate of the Republican
party, Levi P. Morton, to be altogether worthy of
the support of his fellow-citizens, altogether qualified
for the highest exercise of the high duties of governor
of this great state.
He is not untried or unexercised in public af
fairs; he has represented this country at one of the
most important foreign courts with distinction and
honor; he has represented a constituency in this city
in the congress of the United States, and as vice-
president he presided with a grace and dignity and
power over the senate of the United States that was
unsurpassed. I am able to say that few men have ever
exercised the office of vice-president with more ac-
THE GREAT MASS MEETING '39!
ceptance, with more honor and more dignity than
Levi P. Morton.
Nor do I regard this great contest which is being
waged in the state of New York for pure, clean,
decent, municipal government as a local issue.
The whole country watches that great strug
gle. It has read with amazement and disgust
the revelations of municipal corruption and debauch
ery which have been laid before the public ; it watches
with anxious solicitude the decision of the question
whether there is power in the body politic of this
great city to cleanse itself from these impurities and
reassert decent government. It is coming to
be recognized by all students of public gov
ernment that the question of municipal control
and management brings these institutions and prin
ciples to their severest test, and we watch from all
our cities, great and small, throughout the country,
this great contest which is now being waged in the
city of New York. I hope, sincerely hope, that we
shall have another illustration to be added to those
which we have had in the past, that however patient
the people may be, however neglectful, however un-
watchful for a season, when things have become ut
terly bad, men without reference to party rally to
the defense of their institutions and their homes and
set things right once more.
There are national questions as well involved in
this contest in New York. A congress is to be
392 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
chosen, and these constituencies in the great city of
New York are to exercise an important influence in
deciding the question whether the control of the
house of representatives at Washington shall be
wrested from the Democratic party.
I want, with your permission, to call your atten
tion now to something looking to the situation and
the condition of the country, as viewed from a na
tional standpoint. Our government at Washington
has now a more important relation to the business
of the country than ever before. In the olden days,
when our money was furnished by state banking in
stitutions and when our interstate commerce was
left to regulate itself or without regulation, we did
not so much appreciate the important touch which
the national government has upon the business af
fairs of the country. Now all our money is issued
from Washington. Now the regulation of these in
terstate railroads has been assumed by congress,
and now we realize as we never have before that the
question of the tariff touches strongly every man's
interest, whether he be rich or poor, throughout
the whole country. Men have been debating
this tariff question from the platform until
it seemed to be threadbare. It seemed as if it was
an interminable discussion, but there has come into
the debate an orator of the most convincing and
persuasive power, and that is experience. Ever
since the time when the national government
THE GREAT MASS MEETING '393
assumed the function of providing currency for the
people, all through these years since the war, the
national government has either been in the control
of the Republican party or that party has been in
possession of one branch of the administration, so
that its policy could not be contravened. It has been
the constructive party; carrying this country through
a great civil war; it developed a financial system that
stands unassailed to this day; called also to provide
extraordinary revenue for extraordinary emergencies,
it introduced the protective tariff.
From that day to this our people have known no
other system than the protective system. The Demo
cratic party has now been called to a position of re
sponsibility. For these thirty years it has been an
irresponsible party, but in 1892 full control was given
to that party to execute its design. Prior to that time,
having a president or the house, the senate blocked the
way against radical legislation, but in that year it
was invested with complete control, and suddenly
these gentlemen who had been platform-makers for
thirty years, were called to the unaccustomed duty
of making law.
Now it is as we are to be governed by parties,
and as all these questions, tariff and finances in
their various forms, are to be settled by party elec
tions and party votes of the highest consequence
that the views and principles and purposes of the
respective parties should be defined and understood. t
394 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
The trouble with the Democratic party now is that
it is an incoherent party. Who could tell what
it was going to do, what its position upon
the tariff question was ? If I may speak of that posi
tion historically, it was that the revenues of the gov
ernment should be raised by customs duties and that
our manufacturers and our workingmen should at
least have the benefit of such measure of protection as
came from laying duties upon foreign imports ade
quate to the support of the general government.
This incidental protection was talked of by every
one as a thing conceded and desirable, but when they
came to frame their platform of 1892 this doctrine
was overthrown, and the party went into that cam
paign upon the proposition that protection, all pro
tection, protection incidental r of a purpose, were
unconstitutional. This declaration, in spite of the
court decisions, in spite of the opinions of the most
eminent jurists in our country, was adopted as the
principle upon which the Democratic party was
pledged to revise the tariff and administer the gov
ernment.
All business requires that there shall be some fore
cast, some foreknowledge, some estimate of what is
to come. But when the Democratic party took up
the work of revising the tariff, forecasts became im
possible; no busines man could tell upon what basis
the tariff was to be adjusted. If a party is to act
wisely for the common good, there must be some co-
THE GREAT MASS MEETING J395
herent principle adopted and accepted by the masses
of the party, which we may expect to find exempli
fied in the laws they make.
But how have we found it?
I think, perhaps, of all the insects the grasshopper
is the one most without an objective point. No
one can ever tell, nor does he know himself, when
he jumps, where he is going to alight; it
may be on the crown of a sunflower, or it may be
in a horse pond. And so this lack of pur
pose, this lack of harmony, of which I have
spoken, and which I shall presently illustrate, per
vaded the party, and was largely instrumental in
producing that disastrous depression under which
the country has been laboring for two years. I said
in a casual conversation with some newspaper peo
ple a year and a half ago, when I was here, that I
feared Mr. Cleveland had a wild team to drive.
It has turned out so. It did not require a prophet to
say that it would turn out so, for these Democratic
representatives, chosen from these widely scattered
districts over the whole country, had been pledging
themselves to any view of the tariff question or of
the financial question that seemed to them in their
respective districts likely to bring them a few votes.
When they came together they were embarrassed by
these pledges and promises, and the confusion of
tongues at the building of the tower of Babel was
scarcely greater than the confusion of voices that we
396 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
had at Washington when the tariff bill came to be
considered. He who would ride in a coach would do
well to look to the team as well as to the driver ; and it
is absolutely essential to the safety and comfort of the
passengers that the driver and the horses should have
the same objective point.
Now, my friends, with reference to this bill that
was referred to. It came into the house with apolo
gies from the chairman of the committee that had
drafted it. It was seized upon by the house and
transformed before its final passage, and if the
Democratic house of representatives, charged with
the administration of the business concerns of this
great country, had passed their bill and sent it to the
senate, they would have created a deficiency of
sixty odd millions the first year and a permanent de
ficiency of fifty millions in the revenues of the govern
ment. What would these business men think of a
directory, charged with these great concerns, drafting
a bill, the purpose of which was to provide a revenue
for the expenses of the government, that should pass a
bill creating this enormous deficiency; and a bill that,
if it had become a law, would have compelled the
secretary of the treasury to go into the bond market
to realize money to conduct the ordinary affairs of
the government? But this was not all. When
the bill came to the senate, what a babel of
voices was there! The finance committee of the sen
ate prepared and reported several hundred amend-
THE GREAT MASS MEETING 397
rnents, and thought they were conducting the bill
to its passage. The Republicans were debating the
measure as reported by the finance committee when
they waked up one day to the knowledge of the fact
that the bill was in fact under consideration in a
Democratic caucus, and that the bill which they
were to debate and upon which the senate was to
vote was to be a wholly different bill from that re
ported by the finance committee. Four hundred ad
ditional amendments were prepared in Democratic
caucus to submit with this bill. What a characteri
zation of this work that is ! A bill framed by the
house to create a deficiency that would have ruined
the government; a bill tinkered by the finance com
mittee in hundreds of points, and then finally passed
into the hands of the Democratic caucus committee
that reported four hundred more amendments to it.
Am I not right in saying that the party is an in
coherent party ?
How was this finally adjusted? You will remem
ber that when the repeal of the Sherman bill was
pending, Mr. Gorman, of Maryland, undertook to
engineer a compromise measure. He claimed to
have the approval of the secretary of the treasury,
and he thought he had of the president. He had a
disastrous experience with that attempt to engineer a
compromise. When it became apparent that neither
the house bill nor the senate finance committee bill
could pass the senate, it became necessary that some
398 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
other senator should take up the business of trying
to engineer a compromise tariff bill. Mr. Gorman
had had experience and declined. So Senator Jones,
of Arkansas, an estimable gentleman, undertook
the work; and in a speech in the senate he
has told us how he went about it. He took the bill
as it was with the finance committee amendments and
went about to each Democratic senator and asked
him what he found objectionable in the bill, and
what changes must be made to obtain his vote
and he tells us that he carefully noted with pencil on
the margin of the bill (those bills are printed with
large margins) the objections of each senator. Now
what was that process? It was simply equivalent to
going to each senator and saying: "What will you
take to vote for this bill ?" And without reference to
any principle, without reference to any thought that
was common or of a party nature, that bill was
adapted to the demands of the different senators.
A senator who had a collar and cuff interest in his
state looked eut for that interest. The Alabama sena
tors thwarted Mr. Cleveland's demand for free raw
material so far as coal and iron were concerned. They
insisted upon a reduction of the duty upon coal and
iron, and it was yielded. And so through the senate
that process went on, and this bill was made.
Now, my countrymen, I do not stand here to say
anything unkind of individuals. But I do stand
here to submit to the intelligent judgment of the
THE GREAT MASS MEETING 399
citizens of New York, without regard to politics,
whether that is the way to make a tariff bill.
Well, finally, forty-three votes which was the
number required were obtained for the bill. One
Democratic senator voted no, and, though he de
nounced the bill so bitterly, I believe he is now try
ing to point out to you some of its virtues. The bill
went to the president no, first it went back to the
house in congress. The house conferrees, after a long
session and you will remember that from these con
ferences the Republicans were altogether excluded; it
was a meeting, a conference, of the senators and mem
bers of the house who were of Democratic politics.
Weeks and weeks they discussed these differences be
tween the senate and the house, the house conferrees
declaring that they would never agree to the senate
bill; that it was violative of Democratic principles,
whatever they may be, and that they would never
agree to it. They waked up one morning to a
knowledge of the fact that the senate itself had re
pented of passing the bill, and that if the bill ever
got back on the table of the vice-president, it would
be killed in the senate. And so the dreadful alter
native was presented to the party of taking the sen
ate bill or adjourning without passing any tariff
bill at all.
And these managers on the part of the house,
who had said, and who have repeated over and
over again that the bill was in violation of all Dem-
4OO VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
ocratic thought upon the tariff who have even
hinted, yea, more than hinted; who have charged
that it was presided over in large part by the in
fluence of gigantic trusts these men finally accept
ed the bill rather than accept the alternative of go
ing to the country and confessing their incapacity
to legislate upon the subject. It would have been a
misfortune, I agree, for the Democratic party if it
had failed to pass a tariff bill, perhaps not greater than
that which awaits it now, but still a misfortune;
but what a godsend it would have been to the country !
There is not a Democrat who hears me to-night, and
I hope that there are some who do, who does not
know that if it had been announced that that tariff
bill was dead and that this congress would adjourn
without any legislation, there would have been an in
stant revival of business all over the country. There
is not one of these gentlemen who has any relations to
Wall street that would not have regarded a tip that
that thing was to have happened as an equivalent to a
fortune, and would have gone into the street on the
long side to the extent of his credit. And it has
happened before, I am sorry to say, that events that
have been disastrous to the Democratic party have
been good for the country.
Now let us trace this bill a little further. It went
to the president, it went to the president in a constitu
tional sense. I am not sure that he ever allowed it to
get near him actually. Some of the newspaper gentle-
THE GREAT MASS MEETING 4OI
men insisted that it remained in the next room until the
ten days had expired. Now, what did the president
say about it? He said, speaking from a party stand
point, that it was a bill characterized by party per
fidy and dishonor. And what did he say about it
from the standpoint of the structure of the bill itself?
He said that it was full of inconsistencies and cru
dities. I do not quote his exact terms, but the sub
stance of them. He said that it was unequal. He
said that he could not see why wool should be on
the free list as raw material and iron and coal taxed.
There never was a stronger appeal made to any
man in public office than was made to Mr. Cleve
land to give his approval of that bill. His office was
thronged by prominent Democrats, telling him that
his veto of the bill, or even his refusal to sanction
it, would be disastrous to the party. But, in spite
of all this pressure, so settled was his conviction
that the bill was a miscarriage that he refused to ap
pend his name to it, and wrote to Mr. Catchings a
letter defending his course in doing so.
Now, my countrymen, that is the result of thirty
years of Democrat platform-making and campaign
discussion a bill that nobody approved. I have not
read a newspaper, whether of the straightout Demo
cratic persuasion or what you call in New York the
mugwump character, that has approved this bill. It
is without any newspaper sponsor. It is without a
4O2 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
sponsor among the public men of the Democratic
party. It is nullius filius.
Now, what have we a right to expect from the
party? Is not this a low statement of the obligation
the Democrats were under to the country that they
would frame a bill which they would stand by them
selves? We could not expect that they would frame a
bill that would please Republicans, but we had a right
to expect that they would frame a tariff bill to
which, when they had completed it, they would
give their assent, upon which they would stand as
a settlement of this interminable, distracting ques
tion. Instead, they have given us a bill that
they have immediately set about to mend, for
it was part of the caucus resolution in the house
that, while it accepted this senate bill, it would
immediately at that session pass important bills
amending the bill and send those bills to the senate,
and would stay there until the senate acted upon
them. And forthwith several important measures
very important as regards revenue were passed by
the house of representatives and sent to the senate
for its action. It is quite possible, indeed probable,
that but for the intervention of Mr. Carlisle the free
sugar bill that came from the house might have been
passed by the senate. Although the house had passed
a bill creating an enormous deficiency we might have
hoped for a better knowledge of this question on the
part of the senators, but they were rushing on to
THE GREAT MASS MEETING 403
pass this free sugar bill when Mr. Carlisle, in alarm,
sent to Senator Harris, of Tennessee, a letter begging
him not to allow it to be done, and telling him if
it was done, it would create an enormous deficiency
in the revenues of the government. The Democratic
house passed a bill that would have sent the govern
ment into the bond market to pay its expenses, and
the Democratic senate would have repeated the error
but for the intervention of Mr. Carlisle, staying their
hands.
And now what has all this cost the country? Who
is statistician enough to calculate the enormous
losses that have fallen upon the country as a result
of this attempt of our Democratic friends to revise
the tariff, if I may call that a revision which was in
deed intended to be a demolition? There has been
some attempt to fix the responsibility of the evil times
which came upon the country on Republican legisla
tion. Let us consider that question now for a moment.
What was likely to be the effect of passing from the
McKinley bill to a law framed on the lines of the Chi
cago platform ? I can well understand how a man may
be a free-trader or a tariff-reformer without any im
peachment of his mental or moral standing. But I can
not understand how any man of sound mind could'have
supposed that we could pass from the McKinley bill
to a bill framed upon the lines of the Chicago plat
form without a business convulsion that would shake
the country to its center.
404 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
What was the first result? It was a pause. Mr.
Cleveland, himself, in his letter to Mr. Wilson, de
scribes the country as timidly awaiting this experi
ment of legislating upon the tariff. Is it not reasonable
that, when this matter is under consideration, and
an element of uncertainty as to price is introduced
into almost every product of our mills, they should
stop and pause? Was it to be thought of that our
mills would go on running to the full, storing up
their product in warehouses, when there was imme
diately before them the prospect of a severe cut in
the customs duties paid by competing articles that
come in from foreign countries? No, my country
men, it was inevitable; it was a thing that any sane
man must have contemplated, if he thought about it,
that a period of paralysis and rest would come into
all our business ventures. And what did come? I
will not attempt to picture the sad state in which our
country has been during the last two years. Call it a
panic it is hardly a proper name for it, for a panic
implies movement, and this was death. The character
of the condition was this : There was a shrinkage, a dry
ing up. Every man who had securities found them
shrinking. Every man who had real estate found
it shrinking in value and hard of sale. Every man
who worked for his living found his place imperiled
or his wages reduced. Whoever is responsible, what
ever policy is responsible for bringing this condition
upon the country, carries a very heavy burden for the
THE GREAT MASS MEETING 405
suffering that has come into the houses of our honest'
working people. Men who had never in their lives be
fore applied for charity came to the relief committees
with a blush upon their cheeks and with bowed
heads as for the first time they found that their own
arm, willing and strong, was unable to maintain
them and their families. They said at first:
"The Sherman bill," and our Republican friends
who had passed it promptly came forward to the
message of Mr. Cleveland and gave their votes for
the repeal of the bill. It was a measure which, judged
from the conditions which prevailed when it passed, I
believe was justified. But the expectations of those
who passed it were disappointed, and I believe its re
peal was justified.
But it became very apparent after the passage of
that bill that the crushing weight that rested upon
the industries and energies of this country had not
been lifted; it was there still, apparently with undi-
minished weight. The money that had been drawn
out of the banks flowed back, and from that day to
this the bank vaults in our great commercial cen
ters have been full of money, and there has been no use
for it. No new enterprises, no enlargement of the
lines of business in any direction, but contraction!
And from that day to this we have had a condition
in which money was abundant and cheap, but
abundant and cheap as it was, our people did not find
the condition such that they had the courage to use
406 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
it in business. What is it that our Demo
cratic friends want to accomplish, if they have
the purpose, in this tariff crusade? They tell us
that we are fenced in, hemmed in by our tariff pol
icy, and that if these fences, as Mr. Wilson called
them, when he was dined by his London friends, were
taken down, we should have great expansion in our
business; that what we need here is to open the mar
kets of the world. This is a very resonant expres
sion, and a very fond one with Democrats. I feel
sometimes that I should like to call upon some of
them to specify what they mean by it. I had a
friend once in Indiana who had been very popular
in a certain town, but by reason of some connection
with a railroad project there, had become very
unpopular and did not visit the place for several
years. Thinking, however, the clamor against him
had subsided, he went back to make a speech,
and began by saying: "I am very glad to meet my
friends again to-day," when some one in the audi
ence called out "Name them, please; name them."
I feel like asking those gentlemen to name those
markets ; they are too general ; they say they have set
about getting them, by getting free raw material
for our manufactories. My countrymen, of course,
what they have in view is to enable our manufact
urers to produce as cheaply as the manufacturers
of Great Britain and Germany and France, so that
they can sell as cheaply in the markets of the world.
THE GREAT MASS MEETING 4O/
We had already provided for our manufactories by
the rebate that was allowed in the tariff of 1890.
But does not every man of sense see that if this plan
is to be carried out, there is one thing more that
must be done. Our manufacturers, if they are to com
pete in the general markets of the world in the
sale of woolens and cottons and other like prod
ucts, must not only have free raw material, but they
must have men and women who will work at the
same wages that are paid abroad. The wool
that is in a coat is a very small part of its
cost. It is the carding, and spinning, and dyeing,
and weaving, the wages, the labor that goes into it,
that make its cost; and if we are to compete in the
markets of the world, selling our goods at the same
price with the nations of Europe, we must get our
labor as cheap as they get theirs. And yet our friends
are always shy of admitting that. Indeed, in the last
campaign, they seemed to promise that they would
bring in a time when every man would sell what he
had to sell, high, and buy what he wanted to buy, low,
forgetting that there was a buyer and seller in every
transaction and that it could not be high and low.
No, it had just as well be admitted that this chasing
after the markets of the world involves scaling down
the wages of our working people; for how
can one compete, who pays for his labor two dollars
a day, with another making the same product who
pays fifty cents a day? He must go out of the mar-
408 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
ket or cut down wages, so that the workingmen of
our country, and all men must suffer; for this is not
a question for workingmen only; it is a question that
goes to every right- feeling man and right-thinking
man, however independent his circumstances in life
may be. I can not help but feel that, in a country
like ours, where our social security and the good order
of our communities depend upon a well-conditioned
and well-disposed laboring people, and where the de
fenses of our flag and our institutions depend upon
the strong arm and patriotic hearts of our workingmen
I can not help but feel that it would be a disaster to
bring in a condition of wages in this country so low
that hope would go out of the heart of the man who
toils in the mill. Unless there is hope in the heart, some
promise of better things, some margin of comfort,
some ladder for the feet of his children to climb to
heights that he had not attained; unless these
things are in the heart, you may expect anarchy to
increase and social disorders.
I have stated before and have been called to ac
count for it here, I think, in New York, by one in
very high position, that I thought things might be
too cheap. Whenever anything that I wear on
my back or use in my house is produced at so
low a cost that the man or woman who makes
it does not get a decent, comfortable living out
of the making of it, I ought to be ashamed to
wear or to have it. I suppose there are not many
THE GREAT MASS MEETING 409
agriculturists here, but the agriculturist knows that
fences are to keep things out as well as to keep things
in. And these fences of ours have inclosed the brightest
landscapes, the most fertile fields, the richest meadows
and pastures, the sunniest hillsides and the stateliest
woods that are to be found in the world.
The story of our progress during these thirty
years of protection was marvelous, unequaled, with
the increase in population having been more than
equaled by the increase in wealth; and a commit
tee of the senate, constituted of Democrats and Re
publicans, to inquire into the effect of the tariff law
of 1890, reported that under it wages had appre
ciated and the cost of living to our workingmen had
diminished.
Out on the range beyond these fences of ours I
am sure the grass is not so good. The range
is already overcrowded, and the angry and horned
cattle that browse upon it are coming up to our
fences and putting their heads through the cracks
to get some of our grass. I think it is quite better
that, instead of tearing the fences down and
making everything common, we should have some
convenient gates that we can let in what we
want to and get out what we want to. We are
not under a few disadvantages in this strife with
the markets of the world. We are not a coloniz
ing nation. England, France, Germany, Italy are en
gaged now in a mad struggle to take up every part of the
4IO VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
earth that is not already in the possession of one of the
great powers. They have carved up Africa and Asia,
and are seizing the islands of the sea and establishing
their armed hosts and their governors and their steam
ship communications with such places, and it gives
them an advantage. We are not on equal terms. We
can not enter into this ruthless struggle to seize the
lands of other people. Thank God, American diplo
macy has always been a sentimental diplomacy, and
every one of the young South American republics has
found a cheer and a helping hand from this great
republic. We do not push our commerce upon unwill
ing people at the bayonet's point. We do not fire our
cotton and our wool and our opium from the mouths of
great guns. We are at a disadvantage.
We are not a colonizing nation. Indeed, it has
been thought improper even to take up an island or
two, and, not only a commercial island that was im
portant, but one that occupied a military and naval
position of great strategic interest and necessity to
the United States.
Then again in this contest for the commerce of
the world we are without steamship lines. Our
communications, our naval marine, has not been re
established yet; and until we have great steamship
lines plying regularly and swiftly to these countries
with which we would trade, we can not compete
with the nations that have. So long as it remains
true that a man or merchandise must go from Rio
THE GREAT MASS MEETING 4! I
to Liverpool in order to get to New York, we are
not in a good position for competition. And
then again these fields have been largely occu
pied. We should come into many of them as a new
trading nation in many branches of commerce.
Already English and German and French and other
agents have sought out the peculiar demands of these
countries and have adapted their products to sale
there. Already they have established banking in
stitutions, so that exchange is easy between these
foreign ports and London. That has not yet been
done by us, though I hope it may be, and New York
may stand in such relation to many of these great
South American countries. So that we are in too
much of a hurry, I think, to take down our fences.
But that is not all. There is good reason to believe
that this excuse for these tariff reforms is not wholly
sincere, for, my countrymen, we had already, under
section 3 of the tariff law of 1890, known as the
reciprocity section we had already secured the most
advantageous commercial arrangements with many of
the great South and Central American countries, with
Cuba and Porto Rico, and even with Germany itself.
We had secured terms that gave us the markets of Cuba
for American breadstuffs and provisions, and for an
important line of manufactured products upon terms
no other nation in the world could enjoy, and that
gave us practically the control of the trade.
We had even found Germany's interest, she
412 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
being a large exporter of beet sugar to the
United States, was such as to induce that great em
pire to make a favorable arrangement with us as to
the introduction of American products into Germany
in exchange for free sugar in the United States.
This had cost us nothing. We had given to American
households free sugar. A notable item of diminished
cost in the household of the poor is free sugar; and we
have not reduced the wages of a single American
workman. We had got it without cost, save as the
public treasury surrendered the revenues. How was
this regarded abroad? The Democratic platform of
1893 called it a sham reciprocity.
How was it looked upon in England? The Lon
don chamber of commerce memorialized the govern
ment to appoint a commission to devise some method
to counteract what they called this American com
mercial crusade. The president of the associated
chambers of commerce of Great Britain declared that
British trade with those countries had fallen off in
that year some $24,000,000, and that this was strongly
due to the American reciprocity plan. And recently
I noticed in an English newspaper an article congratu
lating itself upon the fact that under the new
tariff bill this arrangement had all been overthrown.
I believe that through these arrangements and
by them, through our nearness to the Cen
tral and South American countries, and to
the islands in the West Indies, through that
THE GREAT MASS MEETING 413
bond of sympathy that exists between sister repub
lics, we had a large field for foreign trade that, by
the proper encouragement for the establishment of
steamship lines, would have greatly stimulated Ameri
can productions, both in agriculture and in the me
chanic arts. And this was all thrown away, every one
of these arrangements stricken down, and stricken
down by gentlemen who excuse their whole project
only upon the theory that they want the markets of
'the world. I think that we may well call the Demo
cratic party to account for its failure to deal with
these great public questions in an intelligent and
patriotic manner. I do not believe there is a Dem
ocratic business man who, if he were a stockholder
in a concern whose directory had dealt like this with
great affairs, would not at the next stockholders*
meeting elect a new board. And yet after all this
dreadful time we have had, after drawing the coun
try through this slough of despond, we are still told
that the end has not yet been reached; that the work
is to go on. Mr. Cleveland tells us that, Mr. Wilson
tells us, and the Democratic senators tell us that. It
is very distressing information. It is always a com
fort when we can say that the worst has happened, and
that there is nothing worse in store for us. If we could
only know that we were at the bottom of the well, and
that no other depths yawned for us, we would anoint
our bruises and look up and see if out of the darkness
some star did not show itself, and then try to get out
414 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
of the hole. But these gentlemen all tell us that this
war is to go on; but they are not quite sure to have
their own way about it. This congress has three
months more of life and only three. A great deal of
that time will be required to frame the necessary appro
priation bills. And if, as I believe, the congress chosen
this fall is Republican, all the balance of the time of
the session, I am sure, will be taken up by our Repub
lican senators explaining to their Democratic col
leagues what the election this fall meant. And we
shall have an end of this destructive war on our Ameri
can industries.
I have wondered why our Democratic leaders
should hate an American smokestack. And yet
they have in these campaigns described the American
manufacturer as a thieving robber-baron. They have
had no terms but those of denunciation for him. I
never could see why this could be so why it was
an offense against society or the country for a man
to build a mill and give employment to men and
women at decent wages inside of it. But
these appeals have been made, and the minds of
the workingmen were inflamed against their employ
ers. They were made to believe that the man who
paid them wages was their enemy, and they must
assume toward him the attitude of hostility. They
were told that the benefits of protection were not
equally distributed, and that the manufacturer got
too much. Other men were told if they did not
THE GREAT MASS MEETING 415
work in protected industries they got no benefit
from protection; as if there was not a gradation be
tween wages, the common wages of the common la
borer on the street up to the skilled man in the
shop. If the skilled man or engineer gets $20 a
month, will the laborer on the street get $i a day?
There is a relation of these things. This question
touches all labor. And it is sophistry to attempt to
separate labor into two classes, one in the protected
industries and one out of it. All are alike interested,
and yet their minds have been poisoned, and they were
told that we lived under a system that made the rich
richer and the poor poorer; and by way of curing it
they brought in a time when we were all poor.
My countrymen, I wish we could banish epithets
from our public discussion. I wish we could get
our people all to understand that when we have
prosperous times they are good for everybody;
not equally, one may gain more than another;
but when we have good times everybody shares
them in his measure. And when we have evil
times, every man shares the sorrow of them. We are
in our social and civil life so knit together that it is
an impossible condition of things when the times can
be prosperous for some of our people and disastrous
for others. Let us take that lesson to our hearts. Let
us put bitterness out of them. Let us stop these envy-
ings and these jealousies, and look at these questions
from the standpoint of a common love for a common
4l6 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
i
country, and a brotherhood among the citizens of that
land. The workingman is told that the um
brella that sheltered him and his employer is not
held quite level. He was getting too much of the
drip. He was made angry and he said: "I will
smash the umbrella and we will both be out in the
wet." But the poor fellow forgot that the employer
had a rubber coat, while he was in his shirt sleeves. I
think we are wiser now than we were. Adversity is a
great teacher. Experience exacts a high tuition, but
we carry its lessons a long time. The Democratic
party was uninstructed and inexperienced. All of the
cost we have suffered has been brought about in an
effort to educate it to the management of the
government. It has been a very costly experiment,
and I submit to you whether we had not better close the
school.
I think that the great masses of every political creed
and of every religion are patriotic lovers of their
country, and that according to their lights they are
willing to serve it. It is a country worthy the love
of us all. It has a noble history, a history illus
trated by great deeds, a history sanctified by
great sacrifices, a history that has set in the galaxy
of the world's great statesmen some enduring names,
a history that has set in the rolls of the military
chieftains names that are at the top, a country that
has fought a great war to a successful issue without
a standing army. A country that has preserved a
THE GREAT MASS MEETING 417
vast domain, domestic peace, and individual security;
a country that has riches untold, a country whose flag
the world recognizes as the emblem of a great power
resting upon the affection of its own people.
It is worthy of our love. It should be be
fore everything else but God. Wife, children,
mother, lover all these men have put aside for it,
and they have poured out their blood in its defense,
glad that they might thus contribute to the security
of their country and the honor of the flag.
Is it too much, then, to ask you, my coun
trymen, here to-night, in this great national
crisis, in this time when our American workmen
are suffering and out of employment, in this time
when wages are going down and hope is going out,
to stand by that good American doctrine that would
maintain these wages at a living standard and de
fend our homes against an enemy more fatal to our
peace and prosperity than any armed legions that
could be marshaled against them the invasion of pau
perism ?
I read this morning that the operatives of Fall
River, after a loss of a million or more in wages
and the exhaustion of their union treasury funds,
have returned to work at the scale proposed. I went
only a week or two ago through a busy section of
my own state, where industries, stimulated by the
discovery of natural gas as a fuel, have sprung up in
the last six years with marvelous rapidity. I walked
41 8 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
through lines of workmen from some of those shops
bearing on their hats this legend: "Wages 221-2
per cent, off." So it is down, down, down! My
countrymen, let us stop this war on American in
dustry and American homes. Let the greatest of the
manufacturing states, by her people in this election,
speak in a voice that shall be heard from ocean to ocean
in condemnation of those who have brought these
disasters upon the country. I believe that will be the
verdict of the country.
A TALK ABOUT THE LITTLE ONES
In "The Interior" Chicago, August, 1896
Why should I be asked to write about education,
who am not an educator? In truth, all I under
stand as to this particular is only this: that the
greatest and most important difficulty of human
science is the nurture and education of children.
There is a sense in which we are all educators un
licensed teachers. We have no roll of our pupils
they are a truant lot, and take their lessons in a cas
ual way. We are seldom conscious that we are im
parting instruction, and the pupils do not know that
they are taking lessons. Perhaps the sum of what
is learned in this way is greater and more potent
in the life of the pupils than what is learned in the
schools. The former is absorbed; the latter may be
only a skin polish. If this educational number of
The Interior is dedicated to the schools, I can con
tribute only reminiscences; but if it is educational in
the broader sense, I might indulge in some sugges
tions; and, for the increased room it will give me, I
shall assume that it is so.
419
42O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
When the boy is six, or it may be seven years of
age, the parents say: "It is time we were putting
him in school." My dear, deluded friends, he has
been "in school" since he was eighteen months old;
and for the most of that time he was a scholar with
out opinions and without doubts; he controverted
nothing, save only when his physical desires were
crossed, and was more alert, observing, curious and
retentive than he will be again. Nothing has be
come commonplace to him. He has acquired his let
ters can read a little; but has any grown person
ever had a conversation with him? He has been
lectured, teased, chaffed and petted; has had some
moral and religious precepts imparted to him. His
antics of body and mind have been laughed at; but
has any man or woman ever had a conversation with
him? He has had, perhaps, governesses and nurses,
but never in most cases an adult companion. He
may be pert in some things and ways, but he has a
store of things that he hides, and will only uncover
to a chum. Every boy and girl needs an adult chum
as an educational force. Consider the case of a boy.
He has been brought into a vast workshop, where
the most subtle forces and the most intricate mechan
isms are humming and whirling; into a vast picture
gallery where thousands of canvases, great and
small, are hung; into a great auditorium where on
many stages clowns and tragedians are acting and
reciting. He needs help; for a habit that will in-
A TALK ABOUT THE LITTLE ONES 421
fluence, yes control, his intellectual life is now being
acquired. Is he to have a wandering or a fixed eye;
a habit of attention or of mental dissipation? Per
ception is near the base of all intellectual growth.
That men can see, and see not, was one of the Bible
paradoxes that my infant mind hearing heard not.
But the explanatory words "perceive" and "under
stand" make the saying not only plain but profound.
Seeing is a mental, not an optical fact. The great
men in every department of labor are the men who
seeing, see, and hearing, hear. A "scatter-brain"
may run on to a bee tree, but he can not be depended
upon to supply the table with honey. We note many
mental "characteristics" in men. We say this one
has a good memory, and this one great reasoning
powers; but from a mental standpoint there are in
truth only two great classes among men the men
who give attention and the men who do not.
The first command on the drill ground is "atten
tion;" and it ought to be the first in the nursery, the
home and the school. The best way to cultivate the
memory is to get a focus and then to give a proper
exposure. The most of the things we have forgot
ten are things we never knew. As soon as a child
is old enough to notice anything, he may be taught
to make his notice particular and not casual.
"The clay is moist and soft; now, now make haste,
And form the vessel, for the wheel turns fast."
422 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
Why did the good God make things to differ
the leaf and bark and seed, only enough alike to in
dicate the family, and yet no counterparts in any
family if not for our notice? You can make noth
ing of a boy to whom a tree is a tree, until you
have taught him that it is not so. The boy who has
learned to distinguish a beech from a box alder will
make other distinctions more easily. I am persuaded
that we make too little of childhood in our educa
tional system. The schoolroom gets him soon
enough, perhaps too soon, and with too hard a grip;
but the guide of the two, three, four and five-year
old has been too much off duty. Do not mistake me.
The pupils are not to be called in from play; there
is to be no hour; they are not to be crammed, nor
their feet set in paths, nor to have any suspicion that
they are taking a lesson. The object is not knowl
edge, but the training of a faculty that is then very
alert the faculty of perception. Do not plan to
bring objects to their notice so much as to lead them
to notice more accurately things that have already
attracted their notice. Do not try to be exhaustive,
but only to add something. Senator Stanford told
me that in the training of his young horses he al
ways stopped the exercise inside the fatigue limit.
The faculty of description, of making others see
and enjoy what you have seen and enjoyed, is the
handmaid of perception, and the two should walk
together. Do not do all the talking; let the child
A TALK ABOUT THE LITTLE ONES 423
have a chance. Montaigne says : " Tis the custom
of schoolmasters to be eternally thundering in their
pupils' ears, as though they were pouring into a fun
nel. * * * I would not have him alone to in
vent and speak, but that he should also hear his pu
pils in turn." The tank may be full, but if there is
no tap how shall we draw from it? Composition
will be made easy, and the accuracy of the child's
observation will be tested by drawing him on to de
scribe what he has seen. To make giving out easy
is quite as much in the way of education as a fa
cility of storing up. The filling of the corn crib im
plies the emptying of it. It may be well enough to
have children commit to memory worthy verse and
prose, but a description is better mental exercise than
a recital. Remember the little fellow is often very
modest and very easily squelched. A laugh, and
as a little friend of mine gave the scripture at fam
ily prayers "there was a great clam." The old
saying, "Children should be seen and not heard" has
no truth in it, as applied to family life. Every
child should be heard, not intrusively, but often,
and with attention and sympathy. You are at great
pains about his table manners what he shall eat,
and that he shall not eat it with his knife; but we
have authority for saying that what comes out of
the mouth is more important.
I would not take any of the frolic out of a child's
life no lifting of the finger, no pedantic gravity,
424 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
no forcing or cramming but I would make play and
story, the walk, the evening hour upon the knee, all
contribute little by little to the development of the
faculties of observation and description. It will
make the inevitable composition on the cow much
easier and more instructive if the writer has ob
served that all cows do not have horns, and that the
long brush tail is not worn so much for the milk
maid as for the flies. Said a little girl, who had
with her class just written about the cow, "Mr. Har
rison, there was one thing every one of us forgot."
"What was that?" I asked. "Why, that the cow
has a compound stomach." The truth was, I sus
pect, that they had never known it, had never ob
served the vigorous chewing of the cow as she stood
in the barnyard. But these were city girls, and the
milkman, and not the cow, should have been as
signed 'for their theme.
The person, boy or girl, man or woman, who has
acquired the habit of attention, of close observation,
and the faculty of describing what has been observed,
is an educated person in a truer sense than many an
other who is more learned. The former is in the
way of becoming an intellectual pioneer the latter
may be only a bin of mixed wheat. It must be that
in looking at things for six years a habit of looking
will be acquired, and it is immensely important that
it should be a right habit. Bacon says: "Certainly
custom is most perfect when it beginneth in young
A TALK ABOUT THE LITTLE ONES 425
years, this we call education which is in effect but
an early custom."
I hope these suggestions, misapplied, will not get
any of my young friends into trouble. I do not re
commend the rod as a means of fixing the attention;
though in a way it has that effect. In the case of the
child in the home, the lessons should be chiefly given
as the stimulant was given to the teetotaler, in Mr.
Lincoln's story "unbeknownst to him."
AT THE REPUBLICAN RATIFICATION
MEETING
Carnegie Hall, New York, August 27, 1896
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN I am on the Republican
retired list, not by reason of any age limit nor by
the decree of any convention, but voluntarily that the
younger men might have a chance, and that I might
have rest. But I am neither a soured nor a bed
ridden citizen. My interest in my country did not
cease when my last salary check was cashed. I
hoped to add to relief from official duties retire
ment from the arena of political debate. But the
gentlemen having in charge this campaign seemed
to think that I might in some way advance the in
terest of those principles which are not less dear to
me than they are to you, by making in this great
city a public address. I thought they greatly mag
nified the importance of anything that I could say,
but I could not quite content myself to subordinate
what others thought to be a public duty to my pri
vate convenience. I am here to-night not to make
426
THE REPUBLICAN RATIFICATION MEETING 427
a "keynote" speech, but only to express my personal
views, for which no one else will be in any measure
responsible, for this speech has not been submitted
to the judgment of any one until now.
I shall speak, my fellow-citizens, as a Republican,
but with perfect respect for those who hold differ
ing opinions. Indeed, I have never had so much re
spect for Democrats as I have now; or, perhaps, I
should say I have never had so much respect for so
many Democrats as I have now. That party has
once more exhibited its capacity to be ruptured, and
a party that can not be split is a public menace.
When the leaders of a party assembled in conven
tion depart from its traditional principles and advo
cate doctrines that threaten the integrity of the gov
ernment, the social order of our communities and
the security and soundness of our finances, the party
ought to split and it dignifies itself when it does
split. A bolt is now and then a most reassuring
incident, and was never more reassuring and never
had a better cause than now.
But these Democratic friends, who are disposed
more or less directly to help the cause of sound
finance in this campaign, ought not to expect that
the Republican party will reorganize itself because
the Democratic party has disorganized itself. The
Republican party, if sound money triumphs, as I be
lieve it will, must, in the nature of things, consti
tute the body of the successful army. We ought not,
428 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
therefore, to be asked to do anything that will af
fect the solidity, the loyalty, the discipline or the en
thusiasm of the Republican party.
The Republican party fronts the destructionists and
trumpets its defiance to the enemies of sound money.
It will fight, however, without covering any of the
glorious mottoes and inscriptions that are upon its
banner. When the house is on fire and many of
our Democratic friends believe that to be the pres
ent domestic situation the tenant on the top floor
ought not to ask the tenant in the basement to bury
any of his opinions before he joins the fire brigade.
And our Democratic friends who realize as we realize
the gravity, the far-reaching consequences of this
campaign, ought not to ask the Republican party to
reorganize itself; or to put aside any of the great
principles it has advocated, in order to win Demo
cratic votes. If this opinion is sincerely held, as
they insist and as I believe, it ought to determine
their action without reference to what anybody else
may do. And I submit to these gentlemen, for whose
opinions I have the highest respect, whether, if it
be true, as they say, that the success of the Chi
cago nominee would plunge this country into irre
trievable commercial distress and drag the nation's
honor in the dust, there can be any question for
them but this: "How can we most surely defeat
the Chicago nominee?"
Neither conventions nor committees can create
THE REPUBLICAN RATIFICATION MEETING 429
issues, nor assign them their places in a campaign.
That is the leading issue of a campaign which most
agitates and most interests the people. In my opin
ion there is no issue presented by the Chicago con
vention more important and vital than the issue
raised as to the powers and duties of the national
courts and the national executive. The defense of
the constitution, of the integrity of the supreme
court of the United States, and of the president's
power and duty to enforce all of the laws of the
United States without awaiting the call or the con
sent of the governor of any state, has again be
come an important and living issue. Tariff and
coinage laws will be of little moment if our consti
tutional government is overthrown. When we have
a president who believes that it is neither his right
nor his duty to see that the mail trains are not ob
structed and that interstate commerce has its free
way, irrespective of state lines, and courts that fear
to use their ancient and familiar powers to restrain
and punish law-breakers, free trade and free silver
will be appropriate accompaniments of such an ad
ministration, and can not add appreciably to the na
tional distress or the national dishonor.
There is only one rule by which we can live use
fully as a nation or peacefully as citizens. It is the
rule of the laws, constitutionally enacted and finally
interpreted by the judicial tribunal appointed by the
constitution. When it becomes the rule that vio-
43O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
lence carries its end, we have anarchy a condition
as destructive to honest labor and its rewards as
death is to the tissues of the human body.
The atmosphere of the Chicago convention was
surcharged with the spirit of revolution. Its plat
form was carried, and its nominations made with ac
companying incidents of frenzy that startled the on-
loo'kers and amazed the country. The courts and the
president were arraigned for enforcing the laws, and
government by the mob was given the preference
over government by the law enforced by court de
crees and by executive orders. The spirit that ex
hibited itself in this convention was so wild and
fierce that Mr. Bryan likened it to the fiery zeal that
possessed the crusaders who responded to the im
passioned appeals of Peter the Hermit to rescue the
sepulcher of our Lord from the hands of the infidels.
His historical illustration was more apt then he knew,
for the zeal of the crusaders was a blind and ignorant
zeal; they sought to rescue the transient and ineffect
ual sepulcher that had held the body of the Son of
God, while* they trampled upon the precepts of love
and mercy which He had left for their guidance in
life. He tells us further that this silver crusade has
arrayed father against son, and brother against
brother, and has sundered the tenderest ties of love.
Senator Hill, watching the strange proceedings, had
to extend that brief political creed from which he
has gained so much renown. He felt compelled to
THE REPUBLICAN RATIFICATION MEETING 43!
say: "I am a Democrat, but I am not a revolu
tionist." Senator Vest, realizing that they were in
augurating a revolution, reminded the convention
that revolutions did not begin with the rich and pros
perous. Mr. Tillman felt that the change in the
management of public affairs was to be so radical
that he proposed sulphur fumigation for the ship be
fore the new crew took possession of it.
Now, my friends, all these things indicate the
temper in which the platform was adopted and the
nominations made. There was no calm deliberation.
There was frenzy. There was no thoughtful search
ing for the man who, from experience, was most
able to direct public affairs. There was an impuls
ive response to an impassioned speech. Not amid
such surroundings as these, not under such influ
ences, are those calm, discreet things done that will
commend themselves to the judgment of the Ameri
can people. They denounce in their platform inter
ference by federal authority in local affairs as a vio
lation of the constitution of the United States and a
crime against free institutions. Mr. Tillman, in his
speech, applied this declaration. It was intended to
be a direct condemnation of Mr. Cleveland, as presi
dent of the United States, for using the power of
the executive to brush out of the way every obstacle
to the free passage of the mail trains of the United
States and of interstate commerce. My friends,
whenever our people elect a president who believes
432 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
that he must ask of Governor Altgeld, or of any
governor of any state, permission to enforce the laws
of the United States we have surrendered the vic
tory the boys won in 1861.
In 1 86 1 the question was raised whether the
United States coufd pass its troops through Ken
tucky to meet a rebel army in Tennessee. We were
four years in settling the question fully but it was
settled forever. My friends, this division of pow
ers between the general and local authorities is a
plain and easy one. A disturbance which is purely
local in a state is a state affair. The president can
not send troops or lend any aid unless the legisla
ture calls upon him for help, or the governor, if the
legislature is not in session. But when a law of the
United States is resisted, it is the sworn duty of the
president to execute it; and this convention arraigns
the president for doing what his oath compelled him
to do. Comrades of the war for the Union, sons
of those that went out to battle that the flag might
not lose its luster, will you consent, after these years,
that the doctrine that was shot to death in the great
war shall be revived and made victorious in a civil
campaign ?
But this assault does not end there. The supreme
court of the United States and the lower federal
courts are arraigned because they use the familiar
writ of injunction to suppress violence, to restrain
men from breaking the law; and that platform plain-
THE REPUBLICAN RATIFICATION MEETING 433
ly means I will show you that it was so under
stood in the committee on resolutions that when
the supreme court, exercising its constitutional pow
er and duty, gives an interpretation to a law of the
United States that is not pleasing to congress, they
will increase the number of judges and pack the
court to get a decision to please them.
Our fathers who framed this government divided
its great powers between three great departments
the legislative, the executive and the judicial. They
sought to make these independent, the one of the
other, so that neither might overshadow or destroy
the other. The supreme court, the most dignified
judicial body in the world, was appointed to inter
pret the laws and the constitution, and when that
court pronounces a decree upon any constitutional
question, there is but one right method, if we dis
agree, to overturn the decree, and that is the meth
od pointed out by the constitution, to amend it to
conform to the views of the people. Mr. Hill said
in his convention speech as to this assault upon the
court: "That provision, if it means anything,
means that it is the duty of congress to reconstruct
the supreme court of the country. It means" and
now note his words "and it was openly avowed
that it means the adding of additional members to
it or the turning out of office and reconstructing the
whole court. I will not follow any such revolution
ary step as that."
434 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
You are to answer, then, my fellow-citizens, in
all the gravity of a great crisis, whether you will
sustain a party that proposes to destroy the balance
which our fathers instituted in our system of gov
ernment and to inaugurate the policy that whenever
a tumultuous congress disagrees with the supreme
court and a subservient president is in the White
House, the judgment of the court shall be reconsid
ered and reversed by increasing the number of
judges and packing the court with men who will
decide as congress wants them to. I can not exag
gerate the danger of this assault upon our constitu
tional .form of government. One of the kindest and
most discriminating critics who ever wrote with a
foreign pen about American affairs, Mr. Bryce, in
his "American Commonwealth," pointed out the dan
ger growing out of the fact that the constitution
did not fix the number of the supreme court judges,
and that it was possible for a reckkss congress and
a reckless executive to subordinate and practically
destroy the supreme court by the process I have just
described. After speaking of this he says: "What
prevents such assaults on the fundamental law?
Nothing but the fear of the people, whose broad,
good sense and attachment to the principles of the
constitution may be generally relied upon to con
demn such a perversion of its powers."
Our English friend did not misjudge us, I think.
The sound, good sense of the American people,
THE REPUBLICAN RATIFICATION MEETING 435
when an issue like this is presented, can be depended
upon to save the courts from the threatened destruc
tion. The question is whether Mr. Bryan's view
or Mr. Tillman's view of a constitutional question
shall prevail, or that of the august tribunal appointed
by the constitution to settle it. The courts are the
defense of the weak. The rich and powerful have
other resources, but the poor have not. A high-
minded, independent judiciary that will hew to the
line on questions between wealth and labor, between
the rich and the poor, is the defense and security of
the defenseless.
I do not intend to spend any time in the discussion
of the tariff question. That debate has been won
and need not be protracted.
It might have run on eternally upon theoretical
lines. We had some experiences, but they were his
torically remote, and so not very instructive to this
generation. We needed an experience of our own,
and we have had it. It has been a hard lesson, but
a very convincing one, and everybody was in the
school-house when it was given. Mr. Depew, whose
absolute accuracy and verity when he tells a story you
all know, in telling that story of our talk on the
White House 'steps, did an unintentional injury to
my modesty. I did not say or for a moment sup
pose that any influence or act of mine had lifted the
tide of American prosperity to a mark on the stone
higher than any other flood record. The Republican
436 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
policies were the lifting forces. As I have more than
once said, it is a conflict of policies, not of men.
And in this tariff debate, if it is to go on, we have
history so fresh and recent, history so indelibly writ
ten on the hearts and minds of our people, that cer
tain things must be admitted, and among those
things is this historical fact that in 1892 we had the
most prosperous times, the most general diffusion of
prosperity, and the highest mark of prosperity that
we have ever attained as a nation.
Now what has happened since? Then our busi
ness prosperity was like the strong current of a
mighty river flowing bank full; now itis like a fail
ing spring in an August drought. A panic in 1893
of a most extraordinary character has been succeed
ed by a gradual drying up less and less and less, un
til universal business distraction and anxiety pre
vail in all our communities. I do not believe there
has ever been a time, except perhaps in the very
stress of some active panic, when watchfulness even
to the point of desperation has so characterized this
great metropolis as it does to-day. Men have been
afraid to go away for a vacation. They have felt
that they must every day in this burning heat come
into the city and watch their business. That is the
situation.
What has brought it about? Gentlemen, who is
there to defend the Wilson tariff bill? Who says
it is a good tariff measure? I do not believe a
THE REPUBLICAN RATIFICATION MEETING 437
Democrat can be found to say that it is. Mr. .Cleve
land repudiated it. It was so .bad that he would
not attach his official signature to it, and it became
a law without it. He said it was full of incongru
ities and inequalities. And yet it was a better one
than he wanted to give us. What has been the re
sult of that measure? When, two years ago, dur
ing the Morton campaign in New York, I discussed
this question, I said that the old Democratic doc-
'trine was that the burden of our. public expenses
should be laid upon importations, that the tariff
should provide for the cost of running our govern
ment, and I pointed out then how our Democratic
friends had left that platform and were now endeav
oring to obtain revenue by internal taxation rather
than to allow the support of the government to fall
upon the importations of foreign goods. What has
been the result? One of these experiments in inter
nal taxation, the income tax, was held to be uncon
stitutional by the supreme court.
So eager were our Democratic friends to put di
rectly upon our people, according to the English sys
tem, taxes to support our government, that they
passed an unconstitutional act in order to levy inter
nal taxes and help out a tariff bill which had reduced
the duties upon imports. Now, what has been the
effect of that? The Wilson bill has failed to pro
duce revenue enough, supplemented by our internal
taxes, to maintain the government. There has been
438 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
an annual deficit approaching $50,000,000, and the
national treasury has been continually in a state of
embarrassment. Our manufacturers, left without ade
quate protection, have been successively and grad
ually closing up and putting out their fires. But
not only has it produced this effect, it has directly
and strongly contributed to the financial depression
that we are in. The maintenance of the gold re
serve at $100,000,000 by the government for the re
demption of our notes is essential to confidence in
the stability of our finances. When the government
reserve runs down people begin at once to say : "We
may come to a silver basis; gold is going out; the
reserve is going down."
But how can you keep a gold reserve of $100,000,-
ooo when you have not got $100,000,000 in the
treasury all told? How can you maintain the gold
reserve when you have an annual and continual def
icit in your income?
So that, my friends, this tariff bill has not only
contributed by increasing importation, by taking
away needful support from our own manufacturers,
but it has contributed by increasing the silver scare
to bring us into the condition of distrust and dis
may which now prevails. The bond sales have been
made necessary by reason of this deficit. It is one
thing when you have a good surplus in the treasury
to keep up the gold reserve, and quite another when
you have no surplus at all.
THE REPUBLICAN. RATIFICATION MEETING 439
But I do not intend to follow the tariff question
further. I am quite as much, however, opposed to
cheapening the American workingman and working-
woman as I am to cheapening our dollars. I am quite
as strongly in favor of keeping day's work at home
as gold dollars. If it could be known to-night that
that gallant soldier, that typical young American,
that distinguished and useful statesman, William Mc-
Kinley of Ohio, would certainly be elected president,
how the bears would take to cover on the stock ex
change to-morrow!
My friends, as a Republican I am proud of many
things, but I can sum up as the highest satisfaction I
have had in the party and its career that the pros
pect of Republican success never did disturb business.
In connection with this financial matter, do we all
realize how important the choice of a president is?
Do you know that as the law is now, without the
passage of any free coinage law at all, it is in the
power of the president of the United States to bring
the business of this country to a silver basis? All
he has to do is to let the gold reserve go, to pay out
silver when men ask for gold, and we are there al
ready. It is only because the presidents of the United
States that we have had, and the one we have now,
have regarded it under the law as their public duty
to maintain that parity between our gold and silver
coins which the law declares is the policy of the gov
ernment, and because they have had the courage to
440 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
execute the powers given to them by the resumption
act to carry out that declaration of public law, that
we are not now on a silver basis. I undertake,
therefore, to say that if Mr. Bryan or a man holding
his views were in the presidential chair, without any
legislation by congress we should be on a silver basis
in a week's time.
Three or four years ago, when 1 was in New York,
one of those reporters who hear things that are not
intended for them, got hold of a remark of mine about
the wild .horses that Mr. Cleveland had to handler-
I simply meant by that what has been since demon
strated, that he did not have a compact or solidified
party behind him; that the Democratic party in con
gress represented every shade of "ism" that had ever
been produced in the country, and that he could not
get on with it. My prophecy has become a verity.
They abandoned him, and now, as that caution was
meant to indicate that we needed to look out for con
gress as well as our president, this caution is intend
ed to show you at this time that we need to look after
our president if we would avoid the calamity of hav
ing this country put upon the Mexican basis of
money.
The silver question what is it? Do we want sil
ver because we want more money, a larger circulat
ing medium ? I have not heard anybody say so. Mr.
Bryan is not urging it upon that basis. If anybody
were to give that as a reason for wanting free sil-
THE REPUBLICAN RATIFICATION MEETING 441
ver, he would be very soon confounded by the fact
that free silver would put more gold out of circu
lation than the mints of the United States could pos
sibly bring in in years of silver, and that instead of
having more money, we should have less. Our six
hundred and odd millions of gold driven out of cir
culation will reduce the per capita money of this
country between $8 and $9. So it is not for more
money. We have an abundant supply of circulating
medium gold, silver, national bank paper, green
backs, treasury notes, fractional silver. We have
something like $23 per capita of our population.
What is .it, then, that creates the demand for free
silver? It is openly avowed it is not more dollars,
but cheaper dollars, that are wanted. It is a lower
standard of value that they are demanding. They
say gold has gone up until it has ceased to be a
proper standard of values, and they want silver. But
how do they want it? Now, my friends, there is a
great deal of talk about bimetallism and the double
standard, and a great deal of confusion in the use
of these terms. Bimetallism is the use of the two
metals as money. By a double standard we mean
that we shall have a gold dollar and a silver dollar
which shall be units of value by which all property
and all wages and everything is to be measured.
Now, our fathers thought that when they used
these two metals in coinage as money units a double
standard they must determine the intrinsic relative
44 2 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
value of the two. That a comparison of the markets
of the world would show just what relation one
ounce of silver bore to one ounce of gold; how
many ounces of silver it took to be equal to one
ounce of gold, and they carefully went about ascer
taining that ratio. Thomas Jefferson and Alexan
der Hamilton gave their great powers to the deter
mination of that question. They collected the mar
ket reports and when they had found what appeared
to be the general and average relative value of the
two metals they fixed upon a ratio between them.
Now, what was the object of all that? Why did
they not "lump" it? Because they fully understood
that unless these dollars were of the same intrinsic
value both of them could not be standards of value
and both could not circulate. Why, every boy
knows that it is essential that the length of his stilts
below the tread shall be the same. What is the law
that governs here? It is just this simple law of hu
man selfishness and self-protection that if you have
two things either of which will pay a debt and one
is not as valuable as the other, you are sure to give
the less valuable one. It is upon the principle that
a man who can pay a debt with one dollar won't
give two precisely that. So that unless these two
units maintain approximately the relative value as
signed to them in coinage, so that sixteen ounces of
silver is worth one ounce of gold, you can not make
such dollars circulate together. The one that is the
THE REPUBLICAN RATIFICATION MEETING 443
more valuable the man will keep in his pocket, or
he will sell it to a bullion broker, and everybody
will use the other. It is an old law, proclaimed
years ago in England by Gresham, that the cheaper
dollar drives the better one out. It has been illus
trated in our history repeatedly. It has been illus
trated in the history of every commercial nation in
the world, and everybody can see why it is so. You
might just as well say that if we had two kinds of
bushels, if the law should declare that sixty pounds
of wheat was a bushel and thirty pounds of wheat
was a bushel that the farmer would deliver wheat
by the sixty-pound measure.
Now, so nice were our fathers about this adjust
ment that they went into decimal fractions. We say
1 6 to i. In fact, that is not the ratio. It is 15.988
plus. It is so near 16 that we call it 16, but the
men who made our silver dollar and our gold dol
lar were so nice in their calculations that they went
into decimal fractions, into thousandths, to adjust ac
curately the coinage to the commercial ratio. Now,
what do these people propose to do? To take any
account of thousandths? No. When the markets of
the world fix the relative value of silver and gold
at thirty or thirty-one ounces of silver to one ounce
of gold, they propose to say sixteen. Well, my
friends, there has been nothing more amusing and
yet I fear that with the thoughtless it may have been
in some measure misleading than the repeated dec-
444 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
laration of Mr. Bryan that everybody admitted that
bimetallism was a good thing there is no debate on
that subject and that the debate of the campaign
has come down to this fine point: "The Republicans
say that we can not have this good thing without
the consent of England, and we say we can have it
ourselves," and he has endeavored to pivot this great
campaign with its tremendous issues upon that pin
point.
We hear a great deal about the great resources
and wealth and power of this country, and I do not
allow anybody to go beyond my appreciation of
them; but what is the use of talking about all that
when you do not propose to put this wealth and power
and influence behind the silver dollar at all. As
things are now, the silver dollars that we have are
supported by the government; its wealth and its
pledge are behind them. The government has issued
these dollars on its own account not for the mine
owner and it has pledged its sacred honor that it
would make every one of them as good as a gold
dollar. And that is a powerful support. Without
it, disparity between these two metals would at once
show itself in the markets. There would be some
reason in the talk which our Populistic friends in
dulge in when they speak of the power of this gov
ernment, if they proposed to put this power behind
their free coinage. But they do not. They propose
that the men who dig silver out of the mines may
THE REPUBLICAN RATIFICATION MEETING 445
bring it to the mint and have it stamped and handed
back to them as a dollar, the government having no
responsibility about it.
These men would reject with contempt the propo
sition that free coinage should come with a pledge
on behalf of the government to maintain the parity
of the two dollars. But this appeal is well adapted
to touch our American bumptiousness, and well
adapted to touch that prejudice against England
which many people have. But can we do this thing
ourselves? Is it a question whether we will do it, or
wait somebody's consent? Not at all.
I will tell you what this government can do alone.
It can fix its money unit. It can declare by law what
shall be the relative value of an ounce of gold and an
ounce of silver, but it can not make fchat last declara
tion good. It is unquestionably fully within the power
of the government to bring this country to a silver
basis by coining silver dollars and making them legal
tender. This government can say you shall take
these dollars in discharge of any debt owing to you,
notwithstanding you may have loaned gold dollars;
but it can not say, and enforce its decree, if it should
call out the regular army and navy and muster all
our great modern ships and add the militia, and put
William J. Bryan in command of them it can not
enforce the decree that one ounce of gold is the
equivalent of sixteen ounces of silver. Not only that,
not France and England and Germany can do that
446 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
unless the markets respond. Why? You may
make me take a. silver dollar for a debt, but you can
not make me give as many yards of cloth for a sil
ver dollar as I have been in the habit of giving for
a gold one.
If I have a gold dollar in this hand and a silver
one in that, and you declare they are equal, and I can
take the gold dollar to a bullion broker and get two
silver dollars for it, I know it is a lie. If I have
nothing but a gold dollar, I will not give that gold
dollar for twenty pounds of sugar. I will take it
to a broker and get two silver dollars for it, get
the twenty pounds of sugar and have one silver dol
lar -left. So it is, my friends. We can of ourselves,
of our own wisdom, declare the unit of value. We
can coin silver freely, but we can not make sixteen
ounces of silver equal to one ounce of gold unless
it is. And it is not unless the merchants take it at
that rate. It is trade; it is the merchant; it is the
man who exchanges and deals in these things who
fixes the relative value, and if you do not adopt in
coinage the value he fixes, the gold dollar will go
out of circulation.
What is another consequence? In this connection
these gentlemen say, "Why! didn't we win the bat
tle of Bunker Hill? Didn't we whip the British
at Yorktown? And do you mean to say we can't
do it again ?"^ The logic of these gentlemen if I
may use such a term in connection with such balder-
THE REPUBLICAN RATIFICATION MEETING 447
dash is that a nation that can do these great things
and establish its political independence can also be
financially and commercially free. It can not be free
of the laws of trade. You can say that ten muskrat
skins are equal to ten beaver skins, but that does not
make it so; the fur trader is stronger than congress
in settling that question.
The free coinage of silver now is the financial and
moral equivalent of a declaration that fifty-cent pieces
are dollars. They might just as well pass a law that
half dollars are dollars. That would not make it so,
would it? It would be a legal dollar, but it would
not buy a dollar's worth of anything. The mer
chant would take care of himself. A man keeps a
store down here on Broadway, and that law is go
ing into operation to-morrow. He summons all his
clerks, buys twenty-five cents' worth of pencils, and
before he opens his store in the morning he has
marked up his goods to the new scale. He can do
that. But there are great numbers of people who
enlist our interest, and some of them enkindle our
sympathies, who can not use the pencil. Take the
workingman. He can not go to the pay-roll with
a pencil and mark it up. He has got to consult
somebody. He has to enter into an agreement. He
must get another man's consent before he can mark
up his wages. Then there is the pensioner, those
that are receiving pensions from this government for
gallant deeds done in the war, or for the loss of loved
448 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
ones. They can not take their pension certificates,
and where they read $8 make them read $16. They
must wait for an appeal to congress, and a eongress
that is Populistic in character would be unsympa
thetic, I fear.
What can the depositors in our savings banks,
this great company of widows and orphans, the peo
ple of small means, who are putting by a few pen
nies daily against a hard time in life, what can they
do when this change eomes? Can they take their
bank passbook and where it says $10 write $20?
Not at all. Take the men who have life insurance
a man who has providently taken out a policy
that his widow and children might not come to want
when the bread-winning hand was stricken in death
can they, where the policy reads $5,000, make it
$10,000? No.
Can the managers of these institutions make it
right with them? No. This policy coerces integ
rity. However honest a president of a savings bank
may be, however full of sympathy the president of
a life association may be, he is compelled to say:
"All of the loans of this company are scaled down
to fifty-cent dollars. We loaned dollars that were
worth one hundred cents; we are now being paid
in the reduced dollar. Although our integrity re
volts against it, our honesty is coerced and we must
pay the widow one half."
My friends, these men surely do not contemplate
THE REPUBLICAN RATIFICATION MEETING 449
the irretrievable and extensive character of the dis
aster, disturbance and disruption which they are pro
posing for all of us in all our business affairs, great
and small. Take the laboring man; how full of
sympathy they are for him. My countrymen, I
never spoke a false word to the laboring man in my
life. I have never sought to reach his vote or in
fluence by appeals to that part of his nature that lies
below his intellect and his conscience. I have be
lieved, and I believe to-day, that any system that
maintains the prices of labor in this country, that
brings hope into the life of the laboring man, that
enables him to put by that which gives him a stake
in good order, in the property of the country, is
the policy that should be ours, is the true Ameri
can policy. I have resisted in many campaigns this
idea that a debased currency can help the working-
man. The first dirty errand that a dirty dollar does
is to cheat the workingman.
My. friends, a cold, statistical inquiry, non-parti
san in its character, was made by a committee of the
Senate in 1890 and some following years. The com
mittee was composed of Democrats and of Republi
cans, and they set out to study as statisticians the
relative prices of commodities and wages at differ
ent periods in the history of our country. This in
vestigation covered the years of the war when we
had a depreciated currency. It showed how prices
of goods went up 1 and in what proportion labor ad-
45O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
vanced. Goods went up rapidly, because the pencil
process is a quick process. Wages went up haltingly
and slowly, because the employer had to be per
suaded and the pencil wouldn't serve. Now, I have
here somewhere a memorandum of some of those
facts resulting from that investigation. Labor in one
period advanced 3 per cent. Goods, the things the
man had to buy out of his wages for his family and
his living, advanced 18 per cent. Through another
period the laborer's wages advanced 10 1-2 per cent,
and the price of goods advanced 49 per cent. In an
other period the wages of the laborer went up 25
per cent, and the price of merchandise advanced 90
per cent. In another period the laborer's wages went
up 43 per cent, and the prices of goods 117 per cent.
Now, these statistics are the result of a cold, scien
tific inquiry made by men of both parties to deter
mine what the truth was, and the truth they found
was an enormous disparity between the advance of
the cost of living and the advance of wages. La
borers, men who work, whether with head or hand,
would do well to take these facts to heart and settle
the question after that broad, deep inquiry to which
Mr. Bryan invites them, as to whether they want to
enter into another experience such as they had dur
ing the war, when wages advanced so slowly and
tediously, and the cost of their living moved up so
swiftly.
I have sketched very hastily some of the evils that
THE REPUBLICAN RATIFICATION MEETING 451
will result from this change to a debased dollar
a contraction of our currency by the exporting of our
gold and a readjustment of everything. I read the
other day in a paper a most amusing description of
the troubles of the ticket agent at Laredo, a station
on the Mexican railway, who had to sell tickets to
people who came from the United States with United
States money, going into Mexico, and to people who
came out of Mexico and who offered him Mexican
money. He had a large book bound of yellow scratch
paper, and he had to cover one whole sheet in his cal
culation usually when he sold a ticket. That is what
would happen everywhere. Everything would have
to be readjusted, the whole business of the country
would have to be readjusted, and while that process
was going on uncertainty would characterize busi
ness, resulting in panic and disaster.
Now, who will get any benefit? Well, the man
who owes a debt that he contracted upon a gold
basis and is able to pay it with a fifty-cent dollar.
He and the mine owner, who gets an exaggerated price
for the products of his mine, are the only two people,
or classes of people, that I can see that would have
any benefit out of it. My friends, the people who
advocate this class legislation, this legislation favor
able to the mine owners, and who offer this tempta
tion of repudiation to the debtor class, are members
of the party that has for thirty years been declaiming
against class legislation.
452 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
They make a strong appeal to the farmer. They
say it will put up prices. Well, in a sense, yes.
Nominally, yes. Really, no. If wheat goes from
fifty cents to $i, the price has been increased, you will
say; but if the price of everything else has gone
up in the same proportion a bushel of wheat won't
buy for the farmer any more sugar or coffee, or
farming implements, or anything else that he has
to purchase. If that dollar won't buy for the farm
er any more than the one he has now, where is the
good to anybody of introducing these fictitious prices ?
It would work very well for the farmer if the prices
of wheat, hay, oats and rye would double and noth
ing else would double, but if everything doubles, who
is the richer? Only the man who bought when we
had an honest dollar and paid in a debased one;
only the mine owner who uses this government to
add fifty cents, more or less, to the value of every
dollar's worth of metal that he produces from his
mine.
My countrymen, this country of ours during the
troublous times of the war had severe trials, but
these financial questions are scarcely less troublous
than those. During those times we had accumulated
a debt so large that many of our pessimistic Demo
cratic friends told us we could never pay it. We had
a currency which we were compelled to make a legal
tender that the constitution might live. But no
sooner had the war ended than the great conscience
THE REPUBLICAN RATIFICATION MEETING 453
of this people declared that the nation that had
crushed the great rebellion, that had lifted itself to
a peerless position among the nations of the earth,
should not continue to have a depreciated currency.
We resumed, and we made our greenback dollar
a par dollar in gold. Shall we now in these times,
when all the ills we suffer are curable if we will pass
a revenue bill that will generously replenish the
treasury of the United States, that will generously
protect American labor against injurious competition
and bring back again full prosperity to all our peo
ple shall we now contemplate for a moment or al
low to have any power over our hearts and minds
this temptation to debase our currency and put our
country financially alongside the Asiatic countries?
Does not every instinct of national pride, does not
every instinct of self-interest, does not our thought
ful interest in others, does not our sense of justice
and honor rise up to rebuke the infamous proposition
that this government and its people shall become a
nation and a people that debases its currency to make
debt-paying more easy?
COMPULSORY DISHONESTY
The Forum, October, 1896
Before smokeless powder was invented, an army
was sometimes wrapped in the black gases belched
from its own guns. Its soldiers were, in some re
spects, safer than when the air was clear, but the
effectiveness of its guns was greatly lessened. The
silver orators do not use smokeless powder, and,
though the great political battle has only begun, the
air is already thick. Let us go to a hilltop, or a
tree top, and see if we can not trace the lines at
a few points.
The free-silver leaders do not seem to me to deny
what their opponents assert namely, that the free
coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to i will, if the
relative commercial value of gold and silver remains
unchanged, wipe out about one-half of every existing
promise to pay money; that every promissory note,
bond, savings deposit, bank deposit, building associa
tion certificate, life insurance policy, pension, salary
and wage contract will be affected precisely as if the
note, bond, certificate, deposit book, contract or pen-
454
COMPULSORY DISHONESTY 455
sion certificate had been surrendered for a new One
in which was written one-half the amount of the
old. "How much owest thou unto my lord?" And
'he said, "A hundred measures of oil." And he said
unto him, "Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and
write fifty."
A Northwestern senator told me, when the silver
debate was on in the senate in 189091, that a
Southern senator had said to him, "I do not want
you to think that I am a fool. I know that the free
coinage of silver will scale the debts that my peo
ple owe and that's what we want. We are poor
and in debt." The senator thus addressed replied,
"Well I think you have saved your intellectual in
tegrity, but at the cost of your moral integrity."
When Senator Hill, of New York, in the Chicago
convention, pressed this objection to free coinage, and
Senator Vilas, of Wisconsin, declared that free coin
age was robbery, Mr. Bryan, in a speech that won
him the nomination for the presidency, had 'only this
to say in reply:
"But if he means to say that we can not change
our monetary system without protecting those who
have loaned money before the change was made, I
want to ask him where, in law or in morals, he can
find authority for not protecting the debtors when
the act of 1873 was passed, but now insists that we
must protect the creditor?"
Senator Hill offered an amendment to the plat-
456 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
form to carry out his thought that when the United
States degraded its coined dollars, their legal-tender
quality should not extend to existing contracts.
Some of the newspapers reported that the resolution
was adopted unanimously; but that must have been
a mistake, unless the convention in the confusion
failed to understand the question. I have not seen
an official copy of the platform, but it is understood
that the presiding officer declares that Senator Hill's
amendment was rejected. It would have taken the
soul out of the free-silver campaign; and, so far
from offering the relief that Mr. Bryan promises to
the farmer-debtor, would require him to buy gold at
an enormous premium to pay his debt, while he sold
his products for silver.
The quotation I have made from Mr. Bryan's con
vention speech and every other speech that I have
seen seems to me to affirm the legal and moral right
of the United States to degrade its money standard,
to pay its obligations in the debased coin, and to give
to its citizens the right to discharge their debts in
the same way. He meets the champion of the doc
trine that the dollar of payment should be as good
as the dollar borrowed, with a general denial and a
counter-claim. The counter-claim is presented in be
half of the debtors of 1873 who, he intimates, were
injured by the dropping of the silver dollar from our
coinage in that year.
It is the supposed injury to the debtors of 1873
COMPULSORY DISHONESTY 457
that he proposes to recoup from the creditors of
1896. He takes no account of the fact that the debtor
and creditor classes are not fixed classes in this coun
try; that the debtor of 1873 may be the creditor of
1896; and that the counter-claim pleaded in behalf of
the debtors of 1873 would be levied on their own goods
in considerable part, and be paid to the men who
are supposed to have despoiled them in 1873. About
the only bond that runs twenty-five years are railroad
and other corporate bonds. Farm mortgages rarely
run more than five years. The railroads, the banks,
the large corporations, and the United States are the
great debtors of 1873, who are still in the debtor
class; and among their creditors are the thrifty poor,
the widow, the orphan, and the disabled veteran.
The proposition is that these great debtors shall now
be permitted to discharge their obligations in dol
lars worth one-half of the dollars now in use. I
must qualify that statement: it is not that they shall
be permited, but compelled, to pay in the debased
dollar. Dishonesty is not made optional but compul
sory; for, while the United States must receive its
taxes and customs dues, and the banks their loans, in
the new dollar, they can not pay in the old. And,
more than all this, we are promised legislation that
shall prohibit us from promising to pay in gold the
gold we have borrowed. If the debtor is too hon
est to set up the defense, I suppose the court will
458 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
be required to appoint a guardian ad litem to file
the plea for him!
Only one chance of escape is offered to us from
the conclusion that one of the great historical par
ties of the country is now making a campaign for
the repudiation of one-half of all the indebtedness
of the country national, corporate and individual
and that is found in the suggestion that free coin
age will raise the value of silver sufficiently to make
the silver dollar the commercial equivalent of the
gold dollar. This suggestion was put forth when
Mr. Bryan was, in some measure, under the influence
of that conservative sense of responsibility which is
usually felt by the man who is proposed for the
greatest office instituted by the constitution. But it
is not a proposition upon which the free-silver ad
vocates agree, I think. It is not put to the front of
the campaign it was not so well thought of as to
appear in the platform, either as a probable result
of free coinage, or even as a thing to be desired. To
borrow an illustration from S. S. Prentiss, Mr.
Bryan uses the suggestion that silver will rise to a
parity with gold as a heavy bird of flight uses the
limb of a dead tree for a perch the bird keeps its
wings extended and in gentle motion while it tries
the strength of the limb. I have not observed that
Mr. Bryan has much argued the point. Indeed, he has
been sharply taken to task by friends for making it.
It destroys the whole silver program. They say that
COMPULSORY DISHONESTY 459
gold has appreciated; that the gap between the sil
ver and the gold dollar has been wholly caused by
the rise in the value of the gold dollar; that the sil
ver dollar is, therefore, the old and true measure of
values. Now, if free coinage will lift the value of
sixteen ounces of silver to the present value of one
ounce of gold, silver will then be as obnoxious as
gold. The whole scheme will fail for the scheme
is to keep silver where it is. Gold, they say, cre
ated the disparity by going up; and, if equality is
again to be established, gold must abandon its giddy
flight and come down to its heavy and conservative sis
ter. They see that a proposition to degrade the gold
dollar, by the use of an alloy, to the present bullion
value of the silver dollar would be a proposition too
raw for the palates of the people. So they let gold
go as Mr. Bryan said, they will neither give nor
ask quarter in the fight against it. By the free coin
age of silver at the present ratio gold will be ban
ished from our currency and from our country for
no man will be fool enough to give a gold dollar
for what a silver dollar will buy, when he can ex
change his gold dollar for two silver ones; and no
dollar that is at a premium that is worth more than
its face will circulate as money.
But it is not true, as Mr. Bryan seems to intimate,
that the law of 1873 changed our money standard to
the injury of the debtor class. The silver dollar
was dropped from our coinage, but it was not then
'460 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
a cheap dollar, but a par dollar the 371 1-4 grains
of pure silver contained in it were the full equiva
lent, as bullion, of the 23.22 grains of pure gold
contained in the gold dollar. The recent treasury
department circular (No. 123) shows that the av
erage bullion value of 371 1-4 grains of pure silver
during the year 1873 was $1.004; that is, the com
mercial ratio between silver and gold was 15.92
to I, while our coinage ration was 15.9884 to i. It
is not fair, then, to liken the change in our coin
age laws made in 1873 to that now proposed. The
former involved neither dishonesty nor oppression.
The dollar that was dropped and the dollar that was
retained were commercial, as well as legal, equiv
alents; and the change did not favor the creditor
class nor injure the debtor class. There had been
coined from the beginning of the government up to
1873 only 8,031,238 silver dollars; and if we may
indulge the impossible suggestion that all these dollars
were in circulation in 1873, the debtors then had only
8 million silver dollars to use in paying their debts,
while now they have more than 438 millions of full
legal-tender silver dollars to use in that way.
In order to make good the charge that the law of
1873 wrought the injuries imputed to it, the asser
tion is made that the gold dollar has appreciated
gone up. And how do they set about proving that
gold has gone up? Condensed, the argument is
this: It takes more wheat to get a gold dollar than
COMPULSORY DISHONESTY 461
formerly, and, therefore the gold dollar has gone up.
But the deduction from that premise is in the alter
native either gold has gone up or wheat has gone
down. Commonly, we would say wheat is lower, and
would seek the explanation in a large general crop or
in diminished consumption. We know that these
things do affect the price of wheat and will continue
to do so under free silver coinage. Drought and rust
and the cinch bug, a full European crop, the increas
ing output of Russia, India and Argentina, closed
American mills, and enforced economy in the homes
of American workmen these things always have af
fected and always will affect the price of wheat. An
other thing to be -taken into account in this connection
is the production of gold for if a large wheat crop
means, commonly, a lower price, so a large crop of
gold must mean a lower value for gold. The
world's production of gold in 1873 was $96,200,000,
and only in two years since then has it fallen be
low that figure. All other years show an increase
and the last five years a steady and enormous in
crease. In 1894 the production was $180,626,100,
and the product for 1895 is estimated at $203,000,-
ooo. The production of silver has increased from
$81,800,000 (coining value) in 1873 to $216,892,-
200 in 1894, and is estimated at $226,000,000 for
1895. Or, to state the production in fine ounces,
gold has increased from 4,653,675 ounces in 1873
to 9,820,125 ounces in 1895, and silver from 63,267,-
462 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
187 ounces in 1873 to 1 74 79^^75 ounces in 1895.
In view of these considerations and of these fig
ures as to production, who is wise enough to say
that gold has gone up or silver down, or how much
either metal has varied? And yet it is assumed that
the silver dollar has been a true and stable meas
ure of value, that it has neither gone up nor gone
down since 1873, an( ^ tnat ft would be honest to re
turn to that standard and settle all contracts by it.
Now how is this to be proved? or do our silver
friends think it worth while to prove anything?
This illustration, used by Mr. Bryan, is the only
attempt at argument I have seen: If he says a
man able to perform his contracts should offer to
pay one dollar per bushel for all the wheat brought
to him, would not the price of wheat go up to a dol
lar? But the United States is not to buy the silver
it only puts a stamp on it, and returns it to the
owner. It is rather as if a miller should offer to
take all the wheat brought to him, to grind it into
flour without charge, to put each one hundred pounds
of the flour into a barrel, to stamp on the head of
it "this is a barrel of flour," and to return it to the
owner. How would the price of wheat, or of flour,
be affected by that transaction?
There are many people, I suppose, who would
scorn to take advantage of a law that allowed them
to have a full discharge from their debts upon the
payment of fifty cents on the dollar, but who do pot
COMPULSORY DISHONESTY 463
feel humiliated by the suggestion that they shall pay
them with a coin called a dollar, but worth only
fifty cents as compared with the dollar they borrowed.
It is said to be the old dollar the dollar of the con
stitution, and of the fathers, and they are beguiled.
It is neither the constitution does not require con
gress to coin silver dollars at the ratio of 16 to i, or
at any other ratio, or at all. It confers upon congress
the power "to coin money, regulate the value there
of, and of foreign coin/' and neither gold nor silver
is anywhere mentioned in the constitution save in a
section prohibiting the states from doing certain
things, where it says: "No state shall * * *
make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in
payment of debts." It is not the old dollar, nor the
dollar of our fathers; for their dollar was based upon
the then existing commercial ratio between silver and
gold. If it had been suggested to Hamilton or to
Jefferson that while the commercial ratio between sil
ver and gold was 31 to i we should coin silver dol
lars at the ratio of 16 to i, they would have sug
gested the writ de lunatico inquirendo. They fol
lowed the commercial into three decimal numbers to
find the coining ratio; and these claim to be their
followers who say that the commercial ratio should
be entirely disregarded. The former sought a ratio
that would keep both dollars in circulation the lat
ter, one that gives gold to Europe and associates us
with Asia.
464 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
But, in fact, there is no reason to believe that sil
ver would appreciate as the result of free coinage,
to a parity with gold at the present ratio. All that
is guesswork a guess not so much in the direction
of the desires of the silver people, but to allay the
fears of those who dread silver-monometallism,
while desiring as large a use of silver as is consist
ent with the parity of our gold and silver dollars.
Two of the leading free-silver senators, when the
Sherman bill was pending, were, I know, much more
positive than Mr. Bryan is now that the purchase
by the government of 4,500,000 ounces of fine sil
ver per month would take up the silver surplus that
they said was weighing down the market price, and
so make and keep our silver dollar at par with the
gold dollar. The actual result was that 371 1-4
grains of pure silver worth on the average in 1889
.724 advanced in 1890 to .926, and then declined
each year until, in 1894, it reached the low limit
of .457. Shall we trust these prophets again to our
cost?
The demand for more legal-tender greenbacks in
1873 was tne product of depressed commercial condi
tions, as is the present demand for free silver coinage ;
but the former was based upon the assumption that
our per capita circulation was too low; that we did
not have enough money. The latter is not based
upon that assumption, but upon the assumption that
the money we have is too good not more dollars,
COMPULSORY DISHONESTY 465
but cheaper dollars is the demand not a silver dol
lar that will abide with the gold dollar, but one that
will exile the gold dollar. What the red flag is to a
bull, gold is to the free-silver advocates. It excites
their rage; they want to gore and toss it.
Other nations that are upon a silver basis are
struggling to be rid of the depression and trade dis
advantages that it entails. A depreciated currency,
with its always present tendency to fluctuations, is,
whether judged by philosophy or history, a curse. No
intelligent commercial people is now content to use
such a currency except under the severest necessity
nor to continue its use beyond the time of possible
relief. It is easy to fall into the slough and hard
to get out of it but it is harder to remain in it.
This great people will not consent to have a double
standard unless each money unit is the commercial
equivalent of the other; and if they must have a sin
gle standard they will have the best.
"NO MEAN CITY"
A RESPONSE AT A DINNER GIVEN BY THE COMMER
CIAL CLUB, INDIANAPOLIS, APRIL 21, 1897, AT WHICH
HE WAS THE GUEST OF* HONOR
"No mean city." The apostle Paul, when he used
these words, was in the hands of a Roman guard
that had come on the run to deliver him from a
Jewish mob. The captain of the guard believed him
to be the leader of a band of murderers, but he did
not think that he should be lynched. Paul appealed
for identification and for consideration to the fact
that he was a native of Tarsus in Cilicia a citizen
of "no mean city." To be ashamed of the city you
live in is a lesser sorrow than to have the city
ashamed of you, but still a heavy sorrow. There is
great comfort when a column of residence is to be
filled, and a Boston hotel clerk is watching the evo
lution of the name, in not being put to any disguise
or ambiguous abbreviations. Is there a greater tri
umph in life than to lift your eyes from the reg
ister to the arbiter of destinies on the other side of
the counter and to see that his fear that you might
466
"NO MEAN CITY" 467
blow out the gas has been allayed? That Indian
apolis is not an Indian reservation with a classical
termination is now generally known in the Eastern
states, and also by some of our English kin. It
seems that our English cousins only acquire geog
raphy by conquest, and only recognize political
subdivisions that they make themselves. The geog
raphy of lands to which they have lost title seems
to go hard with them as witness the recent inquiry
of a high English prelate whether New England was
a part of Massachusetts.
Paul used no superlatives in his reference to Tar
sus; he reserved them for the city that hath foun
dations. He assumed that there was carrying force
in the name itself; that the help of granulated ad
jectives was not needed "no mean city/' He left
something to the captain's knowledge and imagina
tion. He was proud of Tarsus; that is clear, and
he was not a man to be satisfied with negations.
The city had done something distinctively great, and
I set out the other day, with the help of the ency
clopedia, to see if I could find out what it was. I
find in the first place that it was a great seat of
learning. Its schools were of the highest excellence,
and the fame of them was as wide as Greek and Ro
man scholarship. Strabo said they were superior
to those of Athens and Alexandria. Paul was a
man of letters, as well as of faith. He was a lo
gician; a non sequitur was an abomination to him,
468 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
as it ought to be to a newspaper man. As he was
proud of the schools of Tarsus, so we are of the
schools of Indianapolis. It is "no mean city."
As the schools of Tarsus surpassed those of
Athens, so our* public schools, judged by most com
petent educational experts, are not surpassed by those
of any city in the United States. But what part,
my friends of the Commercial club, have you and
I had in making our schools what they are? We
have paid our school taxes with more or less cheer
fulness or with none at all. But has the Commer
cial club or the Board of Trade ever tendered a re
ception to the faithful men and women who have
placed the city of our love upon a pedestal of
honor? One of the oldest, most devoted and suc
cessful of our school workers recently said: "We
rarely hear from the public save when some one
wants to find a place on the pay-roll for a niece or
a cousin." There are now, I am told, in our city,
in addition to the truant class, 1,000 children for
whom there are no school accommodations. A
general tax for public schools implies a school roof
and a school desk for every child, and they should
be provided. The compulsory education law of the
last legislature should be backed by a supporting pub
lic sentiment. We should have, not a listless, far-
apart pride in our schools, but the pride of touch
and participation. Our school board should know
that while the Indianapolis public will tolerate no
"NO MEAN CITY" 469
filching, no self-seeking, no rings, it will stand by
against all assaults that have their origin in self-
interest, or in the egotistical assumption that the
critic is infallible.
Tarsus was further celebrated for its magnificent
roads, we are told. The "ships of the desert" that
bore the products of the interior through the passes
of the Taurus to the sea did not have their roll in
tensified by the right foot finding a hole and the left
a hillock. The roads were favorable to an even
keel. A city that you can not get to comfortably
is a "mean city." And here we may raise the note
of exultation an octave or two above that of Paul
though there may be a perceptible quaver when
the memory of a drive to Irvington or Crown Hill
sweeps over the choir. But our great railway sys
tem saves us. Where is there a city that offers such
facilities of ingress and egress? They may not only
come from the north and the east, the west and the
south but they may box the compass and still get
here. If a man does not desire to go to any place
in particular, but has a fancy to travel "sou' sou'
west," or "east by south," we can furnish him a
smooth road.
Tarsus was besides a free city, and the seat of an
important commerce. These were, so far as I know,
the special distinctions of Tarsus. No doubt there
were others that history has not preserved. But the
ideal city must have other excellences., It must be
4/O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
a city where people diligently mind their own busi
ness, and the public business, and do both with a
decent regard to the judgment and rights of other
men; a city where there is no boss rule in anything;
where all men are not brought to the measure of
one man's mind, or to the heel of one man's will; a
city whose citizens are brave and true and gener
ous, and who care for their own; a city having the
community spirit, but not the communistic spirit;
where capital is respected, but has no temples; a city
whose people live in homes, where there is room
for a morning glory or a sweet pea; where fresh
air is not delivered in pint cups; where the chil
dren can every day feel the spring of nature's green
carpet; where people are not so numerous as to sug
gest that decimation might promote the general wel
fare; where brains and manners and not bank bal
ances, give ratings to men; where there is neither
flaunting wealth, nor envious poverty; where life is
comfortable and toil honorable; where municipal re
formers are not hysterical, but have the habit of keep
ing cool; where the broad judgment of a capital,
and not the narrowness of the province, prevails;
where the commerce in goods is great, but not great
er than the exchanges of thought and of neighborly
kindness. We have not realized all these things.
We count not ourselves to have attained, but we
follow after.
This is a commercial club; but, after you have ex-
"NO MEAN CITY."
hibited sites and statistics to the man seeking a business
location, he will want to know about the homes, the
schools, the churches, the social and literary clubs;
whether it is a place where domestic life is conven
ient and enjoyable; where the social life is broad and
hospitable, where vice is in restraint; where moral
and physical sanitation have due provision, where
charity is broad and wise a city to which men will
grow attached, to which they will come back.
Gentlemen, you may add these things to the trade
statistics of Indianapolis. A city offering the most
alluring inducements to commerce and production, it
is pre-eminently a city of homes.
"ABRAHAM LINCOLN"
February 12, 1898
AT THE LINCOLN DAY BANQUET OF THE MARQUETTE
CLUB, CHICAGO
MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN A few weeks
ago, when the pressure of other engagements made
it apparent that it would be impossible for me to
make any preparation suitable to the dignity of this
occasion, I withdrew a previous acceptance of the
invitation of the club. But the committee, with quite
an undue sense of the importance of my presence,
arranged to facilitate my coming and going, and
promised for themselves, and for you, so far as they
were able, if I would come, to be content with but
a few words from me to-night.
The observance of the birthday of Abraham
Lincoln, which has become now so widely estab
lished, either by public law or by general custom,
will more and more force the orators of these oc
casions to depart from the line of biography and
incident and eulogy and to assume the duties of ap
plying to pending public questions the principles illus-
472
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 473
trated in the life and taught in the public utterances
of the man whose birth we commemorate.
And, after all, we may be sure that that great sim
ple-hearted patriot would have wished it so. Flat
tery did not soothe the living ear of Lincoln. He
was not unappreciative of friendship, not without am
bition to be esteemed, but the overmastering and dom
inant thought of his life was to be useful to his coun
try and to his countrymen.
On his way to take up the already stupendous work
of the presidency, he spent a night at Indianapolis.
The arrival of his train was greeted by many thou
sands of those who had supported his candidacy.
They welcomed him with huzzas, as if they would
give him token of their purpose to stand by the re
sults declared at the polls. Yet it seemed to me hardly
to be a glad crowd, and he not to be a glad man.
There was no sense of culpability either in their
hearts or in his; no faltering; no disposition to turn
back, but the hour was shadowed with forebodings.
Men did not shrink, but there was that vague sense
of apprehension, that unlocated expectancy of evil,
which fills the air and disturbs the beasts of the field
when the unclouded sun is eclipsed. When the col
umn is once started in the charge there are cheers,
but there is a moment when, standing at attention,
silence is king.
Before us stood our chosen leader, the man who
was to be our pilot through seas more stormy and
474 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
through channels more perilous than ever the old
ship went before. He had piloted the lumbering flat-
boat on our western streams, but he was now to
take the helm of the great ship. His experience in
public office had been brief, and not conspicuous. He
had no general acquaintance with the people of the
whole country. His large angular frame and face,
his broad humor, his homely illustrations and simple
ways, seemed to very many of his fellow-country
men to portray a man and a mind that, while acute
and powerful, had not that nice balance and touch
of statecraft that the perilous way before us demand
ed. No college of arts had opened to his struggling
youth ; he had been born in a cabin and reared among
the unlettered. He was a rail-splitter, a flatboatman,
a country lawyer.
Yet in all these conditions and associations he was
a leader at the railsplitting, in the rapids, at the
bar, in story-telling. He had a comparatively small
body of admiring and attached friends. He had re
vealed himself in his debate with Douglas and in his
New York speech as a man most familiar with Amer
ican politics and a profound student of our institu
tions, but above all as a. man of conscience most
kind in speech, and most placid in demeanor, yet
disturbing the public peace by his insistence that
those theories of human rights which we had all so
much applauded in theory should be made practical.
In the broad common-sense way in which he did
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 475
small things he was larger than any situation in
which life had placed him. Europe did not know
him. To the South and to many in the Northern
states he was an uncouth jester, an ambitious up
start, a reckless disturber. He was hated by the
South, not only for his principles, but for himself.
The son of the cavalier, the man who felt toil to be
a stain, despised this son of the people, this child
of toil. He was going to Washington to meet mis
givings in his own party, and to confront the fiercest,
most implacable and powerful rebellion of which
history gives us an example. Personal dangers at
tended his journey. The course before him was
lighted only by the lamp of duty ; outside its radiance
all was dark.
He seemed to me to be conscious of all this, to
be weighted by it, but so strong was his sense of
duty, so courageous his heart, so sure was he of his
own high purposes and motives and of the favor of
God for himself and his people, that he moved for
ward calmly to his appointed work; not with show
and brag, neither with shrinking. He was yet in
a large measure to win the confidence of men in his
capacity, when the occasion was so exigent as to
seem to call for one who had already won it.
As I have said at another time, the selection f
Mr. Seward for secretary of state was a brave act,
because Mr. Lincoln could not fail to know that for
a time Mr. Seward would overshadow him in the
4/6 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
popular estimation, and a wise one, because Mr.
Seward was in the highest degree qualified for the
great and delicate duties of the office. A man who
is endowed for the presidency will know how to be
president in fact as well as in name, without any
fussy self-assertion.
He was distinguished from the abolition leaders
by the fairness and kindliness with which he judged
the South and the slaveholder. He was opposed to
human slavery, not because some masters were
cruel, but upon reasons that kindness to the slave did
not answer. "All men" included the black man.
Liberty is the law of nature. The human enactment
can not pass the limits of the state; God's law em
braces creation.
Mr. Lincoln had faith in time, and time has jus
tified his faith. If the panorama of the years from
'6 1 to '65 could have been unrolled before the eyes
of his countrymen would they have said, would he
have said, that he was adequate for the great oc
casion? And yet as we look back over the story
of the civil war he is revealed to us standing above
all men of that epoch in his capacity and adapta
tion to the duties of the presidency.
It does not seem to be God's way to give men
preparation and fitness and to reveal them until the
hour strikes. Men must rise to the situation. The
storage batteries that are to furnish the energy for
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 477
these great occasions God does not connect until the
occasion comes.
The civil war called for a president who had
faith in time, for his country as well as for him
self; who could endure the impatience of others and
bide his time. A man who could by a strong but
restrained diplomatic correspondence hold off for
eign intermeddlers and at the same time lay the sure
basis for the Geneva award, a man who could in all
his public utterances, while maintaining the author
ity of the law and the just rights of the national gov
ernment, breathe an undertone of yearning for the
misguided and the rebellious; a man who could hold
the war and the policy of the government to its orig
inal purpose the restoration of the states without
the destruction of slavery until public sentiment
was ready to support a proclamation of emancipa
tion; a man who could win and hold the love of the
soldier and of the masses of the people; a man who
could be just without pleasure in the severities of
justice, who loved to forgive and pardon.
Mr. Lincoln loved the "plain people," out of whose
ranks he came, but not with a class love. He never
pandered to ignorance or sought applause by appeals
to prejudice. The equality of men in rights and bur
dens, justice to all, a government by all the people,
for all the people, was his thought no favoritism
in enactment or administration the general good.
VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
He had the love of the masses and he won it
fairly, not by art or trick. He could, therefore, ad
monish and restrain with authority. He was a man
who could speak to all men and be heard. Would
there were more such! There is great need of men
now who can be heard, both in the directors' meet
ing and in the labor assembly.
Qualities of heart and mind combined to make
a man who has won the love of mankind. He is be
loved. He stands like a great lighthouse to show
the way of duty to all his countrymen and to send
afar a beam of courage to those who beat against
the winds. We do him reverence. We bless to
night the memory of Lincoln.
AT THE BANQUET OF THE UNION LEAGUE
CLUB, CHICAGO
February 22, 1898
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE UNION
LEAGUE CLUB OF CHICAGO As much as I have talked,
I do not love it, and if there was ever a time in my life
when I talked for talk's sake I have left that time
behind me. Whatever strength I have to talk which
the excessive, superabundant and overflowing kind
ness of my fellow-citizens has given me, I feel un
der a conscientious obligation to use for my country.
The work which this club has undertaken and from
year to year so successfully executed is worthy of
wide imitation. We are living in an age when great
things crowd upon each other, when men's minds
and hearts are full of those interests which pertain
to themselves and their families. The struggle of
life, and especially of business life, seems to be get
ting more and more intense with every year, and it
is a worthy example which this club has set to these
great business organizations throughout the country,
to forget for this day all the rush and roar of pomp,
479
VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
to close these great marts of trade, and to torn their
thoughts and to engage the thought of die children
with those things that pertain to our country.
My fellow-citizens, we have a country not simply
under a bond of constitution that demands die fealty
of every man, but we have much more a country
to which the hearts of all the people of die states
are given.
We need to cultivate the sentiment of public duty,
and in die life of Washington we have a record of
a life that was devoted to it We too much forget
that we owe a public debt that we may not cast off.
But, my countrymen, if we are to have peaceful
times and prosperous times, if this government is
not to become a prey to corruption, if it is not to un
settle from those great foundations on which our
fathers placed it, there must be watchfulness and ef
fort on the part of all our citizens. You have under
taken * good work in calling the attention of die
children to the lessons of Washington's life. We are
a great people in power. Let us be great in person,
great in integrity of personal life, in that integrity
of patriotism which makes men ready not only in
time of war, when the drum-beat rouses our hearts
to an impulse of patriotism to rush forward to
death, but steadfast defenders in times of peace.
We stand now in the awful shadow of one of the
most tragic events that has ever happened in our his
tory, and yet we stand with die poise, with die self-
AT THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB .jSt
possession of a peoplo \\ho understand their might
and can abide the development oi time. \\Y .ue
not a hyMeiu-.d luopU We can wait, and we will
know our dnt\ \\IUMI it shall be revealed. We can
iiiuli-iM.mil that in a time like this there are grave
ie-ponsihilities de\o!\mi; upon the president ol the
United States, single responsihihm th.it lie may not
ill \iile with any man. Let us stand about him,
strengthening him in the e.ilm assurance th.it this
great country ilesires only what is right and can wait
until the facts are known before it issues its procla
mation.
I thank yOU for the vu.il coidialily \\huh yon
have ^lun\n me to-day. Twice \\nhm a week 1 h.i\e
spoken in ChieaiM>. \ .MI h.ue si> >!'UMI asked me here
that I thought to crowd my speeches a little so that
I might satiate you. I thank you for yom mo t
kindly welcome, and in what I have said to-day I
ha\e ende.iuued to present to \<m uh.it seemed t>
bo the duties of a true, conscientious citizenship
PRESENTATION OF FLAG TO BATTERY A
May 3, 1898
AT CAMP MOUNT, INDIANAPOLIS
CAPTAIN CURTIS, MEN OF BATTERY A, INDIANA
NATIONAL GUARD soon to have another designation
as a battery of the army of the United States.
Yesterday some of my young lady friends called
upon me and asked me to say a few words in
connection with the presentation to this battery of
the flag which they had prepared. My engagements
are such that I have been negativing all invitations
to make public addresses, and I might have denied
the ladies though my desire to please them was
very strong but I could not deny myself the grati
fication of a word of greeting, of commendation, and
a godspeed to you and to all the brave young fel
lows who have so promptly answered our country's
call to war. The Indianapolis Light Artillery has
won the highest laurels as a militia organization. You
have vanquished all competitors, you have won fame
for the state. As Indianians we are proud of you.
You will take the field under the very best auspices.
482
PRESENTATION OF THE FLAG 483
Your officers and men have attained a high efficiency
in drill. You have already a high esprit de corps.
You have been first in peace. You must not, can
not, will not, be second in war. You have attained
great efficiency in dismounting your own guns, and
now you are to try what you can do in dismount
ing the enemy's guns.
You have, as a trained and organized militia, a
great advantage over the volunteers of 1861-62. Our
foes are not, thank God, those of our own house
hold. That was war for the life of the Union; this
a war for humanity. That for ourselves; this for
the oppressed of another race. We could not escape
this conflict. Spanish rule has become effete. We
dare not say that we have God's commission to de
liver the oppressed the world around. To the dis
tant Armenians we could send only the succor of a
faith that overcomes death, and the alleviations which
the nurse and the commissary can give. But the op
pressed Cubans and their starving women and chil
dren are knocking at our doors; their cries pene
trate our slumbers. They are closely within what
we have defined to be the sphere of American influ
ence. We have said: "Look to us, not to Europe/'
and we can not shirk the responsibility and the dan
gers of this old and settled American policy. We
have, as a nation, toward Cuba the same high com
mission which every brave-hearted man has to
strike down the ruffian who, in his presence, beats
484 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
a woman or a child and will not desist. For what,
if not for this, does God make a man or a nation
strong?
We have disclaimed in the face of the nations
of Europe, who are now dividing continents much
as hungry boys might divide a melon, that we have
a purpose to seize and appropriate Cuba. We go to
set her free; to give to her own people that which
we have claimed and established for ourselves the
right to set up and maintain a government suitable
to their own necessities, controlled by their own suf
frages. We covet from her, as from all the nations
of America, only the offices of good neighbors and
the fair and natural exchange of commerce. We do
hot deny dominion to Europe in order to seize it for
ourselves. But we may justly, I think, in the West
Indies, and in the far Eastern sea, where our gal
lant navy has won so splendid a victory, hold some
little unpeopled harbors where our cruising warships
may take coal and find a refuge when in stress.
I do not doubt that speedily though no man
can set the times which God plans that this great
work to which the United States has addressed itself
will be completely and permanently accomplished. I
congratulate you, my young friends, that you are to
have a part in it. I challenge your interest and your
duty, that you quit yourselves like men; that you
enter upon your duties with the seriousness and sense
of obligation, which will make you efficient and vie-
PRESENTATION OF THE FLAG 485
torious in your campaign. Let us not forget that there
is in all this a moral impulse, and that the soldier
who goes from this high impulse of moral courage
is the best soldier after all.
Those women send you to the succor of the starv
ing and oppressed women of Cuba. They can not
carry the flag into battle, but they bring it to you
who can. And to its significance and glory as the
national emblem they add the beauty of their love
and their charge that you bear it in honor and bring
it home in triumph.
ADDRESS AS GUEST OF HONOR AT THE
BANQUET OF THE SOCIETY OK THE
CINCINNATI
At Hathaway Inn, Asbury Park, New Jersey, July 4, 1898
I recall with pride that this great natal day of our
independence is made memorable by the fall of Vicks-
burg and now again by the capture of the first Spanish
stronghold in Cuba. I am one of those who did not
see how war could be avoided. When is it possible
for an American to see a woman beaten by a brute
and not raise a punishing arm? When 200,000 men
and women are permitted to starve by the callous cru
elty of a barbarous nation, then I believe the power
of that nation must be effaced from the islands they
have so abused.
Our grievances in 1776 pale by the side of the
barbarous cruelties practiced by Spain. Let the Ger
mans and Frenchmen say what they will, this is no
war of conquest, but a war for humanity. Europe
feels as she never felt before for America. Dewey's
486
THE SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI 487
first glorious achievement at Manila set the pace and
has made it impossible that any vessel of our navy
or any regiment of our army should ever falter in
the face of the enemy.
It is time for Europe to understand that the
American navy is the match for any navy in the
world. The sneers over there are forced, and now
we are glad to know that our land forces, who do
not fight at 3,000 yards, but look into the very eye
of the adversary, have shown around the hills of
Santiago that they keep pace with the gallant navy.
In the West an impression prevails that our New
York and Eastern millionaires are a dilly dally, washy
kind of a set. But we have seen the cowboy and the
millionaire dash up the bloody slopes side by side.
We have discovered that wealth does not necessarily
enfeeble or sap the patriotism of the American heart.
Then again we have witnessed the boys who
wore the gray in 1861 fighting in the ranks with the
boys who wore the blue. I have always felt that
when Texas charged with Massachusetts and New
Jersey the charge would be invincible.
And now we have another band of hero dead.
These fallen soldiers ennoble a nation more than the
achievements of commerce. Believe me, gentlemen,
out of this war will come increased prosperity and
a more united people, possessed of a mighty power
that will insure protection and safety for all time
to come.
IN BEHALF OF THE RED CROSS SOCIETY
Long Branch, New Jersey, July 5, 1898
We had heard, before the declaration of war, of
the barbarities that were being perpetrated in Cuba.
They seemed to pass belief. That quiet recital made
by Senator Proctor, of Vermont, in the United States
senate, aroused the nation.
I do not think there has been made in any legis
lative assembly in the world in fifty years a speech
that so, powerfully affected the public sentiment as
that. And yet there was not a lurid adjective in
the speech. It was a restrained description of the
barbarities practiced chiefly upon women and children
by the Spanish rulers in Cuba. Senator Proctor said
to me in conversation in New York: "I could not
in the senate recite the worst of the atrocities of
which I found evidence in Cuba. The treatment of
the women among the reconcentrados was too brutal
to be spoken of in public."
Could we stand by and not correct those who
could be capable of perpetrating them? It seemed
to me not. The cries of these starving women and
488
THE RED CROSS SOCIETY 489
children penetrated our bed chambers and came to us
like ghastly visions of the night, and for one I could
not understand why God had made this nation great
and strong if it was not for an hour and a work
like that. We have said to the whole world this
is the exclusive sphere of American influence, and
by that declaration we proclaimed our duty to re
press such atrocities as were being perpetrated in
Cuba.
The war is waged on Red Cross lines, for hu
manity, for the relief and succor of the starving and
the helpless. And how magnificently it has been
waged! Can human sympathy be too large, can wo
men's love be too strong for those brave fellows of
our army and navy who have added new glory to
the standard of the nation and have greatly lifted
it in the respect of those countries of Europe that
respect only war power?
The comfort of a sheeted bed and what your
Western boys used to call a 'boiled shirt' is inde
scribable to those who have never missed the com
forts of their homes, and when there is added the
gentle ministration of women, a vision of the open
door of heaven seems to come to fever-stricken,
wounded men.
AT THE BANQUET OF THE AMERICAN
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE,
PARIS, FRANCE
July 4, 1899
The observance of the anniversary of the Ameri
can declaration of independence in France has a pe
culiar interest to me. We observe the great event
not in the land immediately affected by it, the dear
homeland but in the land of Lafayette, the land
whose sympathetic interest and whose large trust in
a poor and struggling people did so much to con
vert the declared right to be free into the fact of
freedom. We may believe but we can not affirm
it that in the longer end we alone might have won
our freedom. In an extremity that seemed to make'
the result of our appeal to France determinative, she
gave us succor of money to replenish an exhausted
treasury, of gallant men to fill our depleted ranks,
of ships to break harassing blockades, and to pro
tect our ravaged coasts. Mr. President, the patri
otic sire has handed down to his patriotic sons this
story of a generous intervention. It is not a forgot-
490
AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 49 1
ten episode it is told every year in our public
schools to hundreds of thousands of our American
youth. We have grown strong, but we have not
ceased to be grateful.
When America forgets her debt to France she
will be unworthy and incapable of an international
friendship. Mr. President, we have other friends,
but we have none whose friendship involves or im
plies enmity to France. We are pleased when she
is prosperous and grieved when she is troubled.
France has quite naturally adopted for herself the
republican form of government which she helped
us to establish and we believe her people have given
to their civil institutions their hearty and enduring
allegiance. That, Mr. President, is in my opinion
the test a constitution, a form of government, a
body of civil institutions, to which the love and al
legiance of the people are given. Men may come
and men may go, but the government endures. The
course of events, the public thought may be influ
enced by great men, but the anchor holds they may
not supplant the constitution. The man on horse
back, the man with a cockade, is not to be feared
the love of the people is set upon something that en
dures. This, Mr. President, is the security of the
United States, and will be the security of every free
people that cultivates it.
Our public men, our political parties, often divide
upon questions affecting the construction of our
49 2 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
written constitution; but with all our varying
thoughts of what it is in this particular or in that,
we give our allegiance to it, and not to our leaders.
Fortunately for our peace, the American constitu
tion provides a tribunal for the final and unappeal
able decision of all questions affecting the construc
tion of the constitution, and, at the same time, opens
a way by which it may be made to express the pop
ular thought, but one not so easy as to give way to
hasty and unconsidered popular feeling.
Washington spoke of the supreme court, as organ
ized under our constitution, at one time as the key
stone of our federal arch, and at another as the great
pillar that bears up the fabric of our civil institu
tions. Its decisions have now and then evoked pro
tests from the people, and these in at least one in
stance obtained that wide concurrence of the states
which was necessary to make the constitution con
form in that particular to the will of the people.
But, speaking broadly, this great tribunal has even
more than realized Washington's high conception of
its value. A tribunal whose decision in all matters
between individuals, or between individuals and the
state, is accepted, if not with full assent, at least with
loyal acquiescence, is essential to social and public
tranquillity.
The United States is most favorably situated for
the cultivation of peaceful relations with other na
tions. In the affairs of nations beyond seas, no
AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 493
question of the balance of power has ever disturbed
us. Our neighbors could not contest our supremacy,
but we will never use our power to their dis
advantage.
If the thought of any general scheme of coloni
zation could now enter the mind of any American
statesman, it would surely be corrected by the man
ifest fact that the islands and the continents have
already been divided. The United States is not, I
am sure, ambitious to take the crumbs that remain.
Her policy always has been, and I am sure we will
not depart from it, to preserve the most friendly
relations with all the nations of the world, and to
extend her commerce, not by force of arms, but by
the enticements and advantages of her superior prod
ucts. She has never failed, whether in Greece, in
Armenia, or in South America, to let it be known
that she reprobated cruelty and persecution, but she
has not felt that she had a commission to police the
world.
She would gladly have welcomed the settlement of
the Cuban question by the establishment of a hu
mane, just and liberal government of that island un
der Spain. It was only because she believed that
the true purposes of government, the ends for which
it is constituted, had been lost sight of there, and
because Cuba was almost in sight of her shores, and
the cries of her people entered into her sleep, that
she intervened. The American people will rejoice
494 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
if the Cubans shall establish a free, stable, independ
ent government. We have incurred responsibilities
there and in the Philippines, and we will not fail to
discharge them at any cost.
It is too late to debate the question whether it
might not have been wiser to have made our cam
paign in the Philippines purely a naval campaign, or
the other question whether destiny or our own choice
involved us there. We have assumed responsibili
ties toward the peaceable people there, toward Spain
and toward the world, and we must establish order
as a necessary preliminary to the consideration of
any question as to the ultimate destiny or disposi
tion of the archipelago.
We are proud of the achievements of our army
and navy, and are glad if European misapprehen
sion as to our naval construction and seamanship
is removed. We are glad if a truer appreciation of
the vast war resources of the United States prevails,
glad only because it gives security in the hemisphere
in which we are placed, not because it is a threat to
Europe.
American diplomacy has been, I think, peculiarly
sentimental. Our moral intervention for the op
pressed and our later intervention by arms have been
in the interest of liberty, not of gain.
It will not be thought unnatural, in spite of all
past differences and strifes, if a peculiar friendliness
AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 495
should be felt by us for those of our language and
race across the channel; but no one has suggested,
Mr. President, that by reason of this natural and
influential fact and motive, either Great Britain or
the United States should assume all the animosities
and quarrels of the other. The contingency of a gen
eral combination of all the powers against one or
the other of these nations, threatening its destruction,
need not be taken much account of until it arises.
Suffice it to say that the friendship of the United
States for Great Britain is not enmity to the world.
A high sense of what is right and honorable, a due
sense of obligation, fairness in our commercial in
tercourse, and friendliness in our personal inter
course, toward all who will allow us to be friendly,
are, I think, the American thought and policy.
Mr. President, the United States now more than
ever sympathizes with every practicable suggestion
and movement that tends to diminish the influence
of arms in the determination of international ques
tions. Arbitration has halted because of the diffi
culty there has been in finding a purely judicial
tribunal, one that would consider international ques
tions with the same indifference to the parties and
the same impartiality of judgment which character
ize our courts in the trial of questions between in
dividuals. When such a tribunal can be attained
and the faith of the nations in the fact of its attain-
496 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
merit confirmed, disarmament will be nearer and the
grievous burdens which the maintenance of armies
imposes upon industry will be lifted. America will
hail the glad day.
AT THE ECUMENICAL MISSIONARY CON
FERENCE
OPENING ADDRESS AS HONORARY CHAIRMAN
Carnegie Hal, New York, April 19, 1900
I count it a great honor a call to preside over
the deliberations of this great body. It is to asso
ciate oneself with the most influential and enduring
work that is being done in this day of great enter
prises.
My assignment is to the chair not to the speaker's
desk. The careful and comprehensive program that
has been prepared for the convention will, in its or
derly development, bring before you the whole sub
ject of foreign missions in all its aspects. Gentle
men whose learning and special experiences will
give not only interest but authority to their ad
dresses, will discuss assigned topics.
We shall have the arithmetic of missions, the mus
ter rolls, the book increase, the paymasters' accounts;
some will need these.
We shall have before us some veterans from the
mission outposts men and women who have exhibit-
497
498 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
ed in their work an unsurpassed steadfastness and
heroism, whose courage has been subjected to the
strain of time. They have been beleaguered; they
have known the weariness of those who look for suc
cor. From them we shall hear what the gospel has
done for tribes and lands; and, best of all, what
it has done for the individual man and woman.
These reports will be the consolidated reports of the
whole mission work of all the detachments of the
evangelical protestant army.
Hours for daily devotional exercises are assigned.
The greatest need of the foreign field is a revived,
reconsecrated and unified home church. And this
conference will be fruitful and successful in propor
tion as it promotes those ends. There will be, I
hope, much prayer for an outpouring of God's spirit.
The gigantic engines that are driving forward a
material development are being speeded as never be
fore. The din of the hammer and the axe, and the
hum of wheels, have penetrated the abodes of soli
tude the world has now few quiet places. Life is
strenuous the boy is started in his school upon the
run, and the pace is not often slackened until the
panting man falls into his grave.
It is to a generation thus intent to a generation
that has wrought wondrously in the realms of ap
plied science that God in His Word, and by the
preacher, says : All these are worthy only, and in
proportion as they contribute to the regeneration of
AT THE ECUMENICAL CONFERENCE 499
mankind; Every invention, every work, every man,
every nation, must one day come to this weighing
platform and be appraised.
To what other end is all this stir among men
this increase of knowledge? That these great agen
cies may be put in livery and lined up in the halls
of wealth to make life brilliant and soft, or become
the docile messengers of a counting house or a stock
exchange, or the swift couriers of contending armies,
or the courtiers who wait in the halls of science to
give glory to the man into whose hand God has
given the key to one of His mysteries? Do all
these great inventions, these rushing intellectual de
velopments, exhaust their ministry in the making
of men rich, and the reinforcing of armies and
fleets ? No.
These are servants, prophets, fore-runners. They
will find a herald's voice; there will be an annuncia
tion and a coronation. The first results seem to be
the stimulation of a material production and a fiercer
struggle for markets. Cabinets, as well as trade
chambers, are thinking of the world chiefly as a
market house, and of men as "producers" and "con
sumers." We now seldom have wars of succession,
or for mere political dominion. Places are strategic
primarily from the commercial standpoint. Colonies
are corner stalls in the world's market place. If the
product tarries too long in the warehouse, the mill
must shut down and discontent will walk the streets.
5OO VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
The propulsion of this commercial force upon cabi
nets and nations was never so strong as now. The
battle of the markets is at its fiercest. The great
quest of the nations is for "consumers." The voice
of commerce is: "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."
But with the increase of commerce and wealth the
stress of social difficulties is not relieved but rather
increased in all of the great nations. The tendency
is not to one brotherhood but to many. Work for
the willing at a wage that will save the spirit as
well as the body is a problem of increasing tapgle
and intricacy. Competition forces economical devices
and names wages that are, in some cases, insufficient
to renew the strength expended. It suggests, if it
does not compel, aggregations of capital, and these
in turn present many threatening aspects. Agencies
of man's devising may alleviate, but they can not
cure this tendency to division and strife and substi
tute a drift to peace and unity. Christ in the heart
and His gospel of love and ministry in all the ac
tivities of life are the only cure.
The highest conception that has ever entered the
mind of man is that of God as the father of all
men the one blood the universal brotherhood.
It was not evolved, but revealed. The natural man
lives to be ministered unto he lays his imposts upon
others. He buys slaves that they may fan his sleep,
AT THE ECUMENICAL CONFERENCE JOI
bring him the jeweled cup, dance before him and
die in the arena for his sport. Into such a world
there came a King, "not to be ministered unto but
to minister." The rough winds fanned His sleep;
He drank of the mountain brook, and made not
the water wine for Himself; would not use His
power to stay His own hunger, but had compassion
on the multitude. He called them He had bought
with a great price no more servants but friends. He
entered the bloody arena alone, and dying, broke all
chains and brought immortality to light.
Here is the perfect altruism; here the true ap
praisal of men. Ornaments of gold and gems, silken
robes, houses, lands, stocks and bonds these are
tare when men are weighed. Where else is there a
scale so true? Where a brotherhood so wide and
perfect? Labor is made noble the King credits the
smallest service. His values are relative; He takes
account of the per cent, when tribute is brought into
His treasury. No coin of love is base or small to
Him. The widow's mite he sets in His crown. Life
is sweetened; the poor man becomes of account.
Where else is found a philosophy of life so sweet
and adaptable a philosophy of death so comforting?
The men who, like Paul, have gone to heathen
lands with the message, we "seek not yours but
you," have been hindered by those who, coming
after, have reversed the message. Rum and other
corrupting agencies come in with our boasted civili-
5O2 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
zation, and the feeble races wither before the hot
breath of the white man's vices. The great nations
have combined to suppress the slave trade. Is it too
much to ask that they shall combine to prevent the
sale of spirits to men who, less than our children,
have acquired the habits of self-restraint? If we
must have "consumers," let us give them an inno
cent diet.
The enemies of foreign missions have spoken
tauntingly of the slowness of the work and of its
great and disproportionate cost, and we have too ex
clusively consoled ourselves and answered the criti
cism by the suggestion that with God a thousand
years is as one day. We should not lose sight of
the other side of that truth one day with Him is
as a thousand years. God has not set a uniform
pace for Himself in the work of bringing in the
kingdom of His Son. He will hasten it in His day.
The stride of His Church shall be so quickened that
commerce will be the laggard. Love shall outrun
greed. He exacts faith. He will not answer the
demand to show a course of stone in His great
cathedral for every thousand dollars given. But it
may justly be asked that the administrators of our
mission treasuries justify their accounts; that they
use a business wisdom and economy; that there be
no waste; that the workmen do not hinder each
other. The plowing and the sowing must be well
done. These may be and should be judged; that is
AT THE ECUMENICAL CONFERENCE 503
men's part of the work. But the care of well planted
seed is with God. We shall have reports from the
harvesters showing that He has given the promised
increase some thirty and some an hundred fold.
Gifts to education are increasingly munificent.
University endowments have been swelled by vast
single gifts in the United States during the last
few years. We rejoice in this. But may we not
hope that, in the exposition of the greater needs of
the educational work in the mission fields, to be pre
sented in this conference, some men of wealth may
find the suggestion to endow great schools in mis
sion lands ? It is a great work to increase the can
dle power of our great educational arc lights, but
to give to cave dwellers an incandescent may be a
better one.
Not the least beneficent aspect and influence of
this great gathering will be found in the Christian
union that it evidences. The value of this is great
at home, but tenfold greater in the mission field,
where ecclesiastical divisions suggest diverse prophets.
The Bible does not draw its illustrations wholly from
the home or the field, but uses also the strenuous
things of life the race, the fight, the girded soldier,
the assault. There are many fields; there are di
verse arms; the battle is in the bush and the com
rades that are seen are few. A view of the whole
army is a good thing; the heart is strengthened by
an enlarged comradeship. It gives promise that the
504 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
flanks will be covered and a reserve organized. After
days in the brush the sense of numbers is lost. It
greatly strengthens the soldier and quickens his pace,
when he advances to battle, if a glance to right or
left reveals many pennons, and a marshaled host,
moving under one great leader to execute a single
battle plan.
During the Atlanta campaign of our civil war the
marching and fighting had been largely in the brush.
Sometimes in an advance the commander of a regi
ment could see no more than half of his own line,
while the supports to his right and left were wholly
hidden. To him it seemed as if his battalion was
making an unsupported assault. The extended line,
the reserve, were matters of faith. But one day the
advancing army broke suddenly from the brush into
a savannah a long narrow natural meadow and
the army was revealed. From the center, far to the
right and left, the distinctive corps, division, brig
ade and regimental colors appeared, and associated
with each of these was the one flag that made the
army one. A mighty spontaneous cheer burst from
the whole line and every soldier tightened his grip
upon his rifle and quickened his step. What that
savannah did for that army this world's conference
of missions should do for the church.
AT THE ECUMENICAL MISSIONARY CON
FERENCE
RESPONSE TO WELCOME OF PRESIDENT MCKINLEY AND
GOVERNOR ROOSEVELT
April 21, 1900
It would have been more appropriate if some one of
our distinguished foreign guests had been assigned
to the pleasant duty of acknowledging the generous
and kindly welcome which has been brought by the
president of the United States and by the governor
of New York state, to this great conference.
But in behalf of the delegates who, from far and
near have gathered in this conference, I return to
the president of the United States our most hearty
thanks for his presence here to-night. Perhaps
some of our foreign guests miss the display, and the
regalia, and the sound of trumpets with which the
chief executives of foreign nations make their prog
ress and are greeted by their subjects. Could any
thing be more simple, and when the mind receives
the thought, anything more grand and majestic, than
the simple presence of an American president here
505
VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
to-night! We were quite prepared, sir [to President
McKinley], because you are known by your fellow-
countrymen as a Christian gentleman, that you should
extend to these who are assembled the sympathy and
fellowship of one who has part with them in the
work of setting up God's kingdom in the world;
but it was kind, sir, that you should leave those duties
that some have recently called simple, and which, at
least you and I know, are arduous and exacting to
the very extremity of human endurance, and should
add to them the labor of travel, that you might witness
here on behalf of this Christian nation the sympathy
of the whole country with this great foreign missionary
movement.
Of course, it was no trouble for Governor Roose
velt to come here. Indeed, I think he rather likes
to get away from Albany, and if we may believe
those unfailing chroniclers of the truth, whose rep
resentatives are here before me, he is not infre
quently here for the purpose of having consultations.
He availed himself of the few moments that we
spent together in the reception room to consult me
about a matter, and when I had given him my opin
ion, he said : "Well, that is what I was going to do
anyhow, no matter what you would say," I felt very
lucky that I had hit upon the conclusion at which
he had already arrived. We are glad to have from
him these hearty words of commendation of the
cause of missions. I think you can receive as the
AT THE ECUMENICAL CONFERENCE 507
truth what he has said. In my observation of him
he has a passion for the truth. The only trouble
I ever had with managing him and you know, as
he has confessed, how thoroughly I did that was
that it seemed to me he wanted to put an end to all
the evil in the world between sunrise and sunset.
He was not willing to take as much time sometimes
as I thought was necessary in order not to fracture
things too much, though we never differed as to the
end that was to be attained. He wanted to get there
very quickly I am, perhaps, a little bit too conserv
ative and slow but it is pleasant to have in his per
son one known to us all to be so thorough a soldier
of righteousness and right-doing; to hear from him
to-night his testimony to the work of missions, a
work in this country and yet a work among savage
tribes, a work identical with that which in a foreign
field other missionaries are working out.
Mr. Chairman, these personal greetings are delight
ful to us, coming from these two great executive offi
cers, but it is not so strange, for were their personal
sympathies less fully given to this cause than we
know them to be, it would be quite in line with their
office that they should come and speak to a Chris
tian assembly here to-night, and encourage the
work of spreading Christianity throughout the
world. Upon what conservative element is it that
the security and peace of our community depend?
Out of what do those maxims of life come tKat malce
508 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
it decent, that curb passion, that limit selfishness,
and that bind men together in common purposes for
the security and happiness of communities? It is,
indeed, in and out of this sacred word of God that
a system of morality has come that makes life sweet
and gives to it possibilities that would otherwise be
out of thought. It is reported that the aged Ger
man chancellor, Prince Hohenlohe, recently said as
he looked about over the world, its struggles, and
strifes, and distress, and grief, that it seemed to him
that that geological era had returned when the sau-
rians, gigantic monsters, walked the earth in their
devouring forms. He was addressing, I think, a
meeting of scholars, and he turned to scholarship as
giving him hope for a world that seemed to be greedy
for the destruction of its own members. Ah, my
friends, not scholarship, not invention, not any of
these noble and creditable developments of our era
not to these, but to the word of God and the
church of the Lord Jesus Christ must we turn for
the hope that men may be delivered from this con
suming greed and selfishness.
"Thy neighbor as thyself" that second great
commandment of our Lord in that and in the power
which it has already obtained, and the power it shall
yet obtain over the hearts and minds of men, is our
deliverance from this perilous condition of which
Prince Hohenlohe spoke. The church is not a rev
olutionary hooter. The church cf God, as it was
AT THE ECUMENICAL CONFERENCE 509
started in its way by its Lord and Master, did not
stir up rebellion, did not set men against their gov
erning officers. "Tribute to whom tribute is due."
Let Caesar have his tribute. Respect for our magis
trates as the representatives of the chief magisterial
power above, our gospel teaches. And these mis
sionaries going into these foreign lands do not go to
disturb the political conditions of the states that they
enter. Not at all. They preach no crusade; incite
no rebellion, but work by instilling the principles of
the gospel of Christ the doctrine of the parity of
man that God has made of one blood all people
that not titles and not robes, not the outer things
at all, but the heart is the seat of judgment and es
teem; and this doctrine working its quiet way
through the world will yet bring in the Kingdom that
is promised. Thy brother as thyself; thy neighbor
as thyself. Do we count the growth of the church
by our membership roll? Has the gospel done noth
ing more? Ah, think for a moment, my friends.
If you could blot out of your statute books, out of
your constitutions, out of your codes of morals, out
of your social and family institutions all that is de
rived from the sacred book, what would there be
left to bind society together?
I thank you, and again I thank our distinguished
friends in your behalf, for their presence and words
of cheer to-night. It is a great thing that this great
city, so full of stir, and rush, and business, should
5IO VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
have been so moved upon t>y this conference as to
present to us to-night this magnificent assembly.
May the Lord God, in whose hands are the hearts
of all men, turn our hearts to Him, and keep you,
Mr. President and Governor Roosevelt, and the
rulers of all these nations represented here, in His
peace and love.
AT THE ECUMENICAL MISSIONARY CON
FERENCE
FAREWELL ADDRESS
May I, 1900
I was designated to speak the opening word when
this conference assembled, and the duty is laid upon
me to-night to speak the closing word. I do not
like to regard this as the end of the conference. We
shall have no more lectures; the teachers will be re
tired; we shall not gather here any more, but it
seems to me that we might call these exercises to
night commencement exercises. It is the way the
colleges have, you know, when the professors are re
tired, and the class-rooms are closed, and they have
the last meeting. They call it a commencement, and
a very appropriate word it is. What has taken place
was preparatory, it was fitting out people; it was
setting up a mast and springing the sails a very
essential sort of work, but of no great account if it
stops there. The ship must spread her sails; she
must turn her prow away from the dock; she must
throw off her moorings, and. with her cargo of mer
chandise or of human lives, go out upon the sea
5 12 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
on an errand somewhere, to carry something or
somebody where it is needed. That is what all this
means. And so I like to think of this conference
as a school that is holding to-night its commencement ;
and of these missionaries who have been privileged
to come back, either to their native land or at least
to one of the homelands of missions, as men who
have been taking here a post-graduate course. Of
those of us who are delegates, as Christian men and
women, we have come here to make reports about
the work and to listen to the story of what has been
done; not to rest in the pride of it, but to find in
it an inspiration of greater things yet to be done.
Do you know, my friends, that these ten days of
the ecumenical conference on foreign missions in
New York have been days full of significance and
import? I have spoken before to many great audi
ences. I have seen the political spirit in this coun
try kindled to a white heat. I have in this hall ad
dressed great political assemblages, but I never have
been associated with a political campaign where the
interest was sufficient to fill this hall and three or
four overflow halls and churches three times a day
for ten days. It is a revelation to the city of New
York and to the United States, and to the world.
Men have not taken account of these things; they
are taking account of them now. There is scarcely
a business house or office in New York where they
have not been talking of these great meetings.
AT THE ECUMENICAL CONFERENCE 513
Well, if it is commencement, then every one who
has been privileged to sit here, every one who has
any part in these meetings, is under pledge to go out
into life with a renewed resolve to do more and to
do better for foreign missions than he has ever done
before. It has failed of its purpose if it has not
touched your heart as it has touched mine, with a
deeper sense of obligation to our Lord to help in
the work of evangelizing the world. Every one of
the mission boards which has been represented here,
and every allied board and agency in the cause of
missions, home and foreign, ought to feel an impe
tus and stimulus, and ought to have its treasury
filled as never before by the grateful offerings of
churches who feel their debt to their Lord.
The great Christian unity, comity whatever you
call it; we had better not puzzle over names it sim
ply means, my good bishop, [addressing Bishop
Doane] that your heart and mine have been drawn to
gether and touched, and we are more than ever before
brothers and brethren. I do not think at all that it
means that the Presbyterian church is to dissolve itself,
or that the Protestant Episcopal church is to abandon
its honored and useful place among the Christian work
ers of the world ; not at all. The impression we want
to make, that we must make, upon Christians at home
and in mission fields, is this, that we have one Prophet,
one Lord, one Book.
Why, I do not suppose that any enemy who might
'514 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
confront the United States would be left in doubt
at all in a campaign that the Seventh cavalry and
the Twenty-second infantry were fighting for the
same flag. And so it ought to be among the Chris
tian churches. We have spent an immense amount
of strength very foolishly in discussing the question
as to which of the churches has most strictly pre
served the apostolic form. Now that is a question
that never will be settled in this world, and I think
that questions that can never be settled might just
as well never be discussed. I have said, that that
question will never be settled in this world, and my
judgment is and I say it reverently, too that it
will never be settled in the next, for when the Lord
comes in His glory, when He is seen in fulfillment
of the Father's mighty promise and the travail of
His soul, and the world has come to Him, and every
knee has bowed, and every tongue confessed, there
will be no consideration of the question as to which
of the churches was nearest to the apostolic form.
It will be to the faithful ones out of all churches:
"Well done, thou good and faithful servant."
Is not this supreme loyalty to the holy catholic
church universal the church whose names are writ
ten in heaven? Is not that consistent? Is it im
pinged upon or hurt by love to my own church ? Not
at all, any more than the love I bear for the state
I live in impairs the sincerity or faithfulness of my
allegiance to that great Union o'f the states whose flag"
AT THE ECUMENICAL CONFERENCE 515
floats over us all. I do not think a man who does
not love his state, the city where he lives, the
neighbors who are about him, the home of his
father and mother who has not some special at
tachments will ever make a good citizen of the
United States. I believe this spirit, this discriminat
ing spirit, this spirit of love and fellowship has
been mightily set forward by this great conference.
The army will co-operate, the cavalry will not say
to the artillery: "We have no need of you," and
the artillery will be particularly careful to stop fir
ing when the cavalry charges. Of all the demoral
izing incidents that can happen to an army, the
worst is to be fired into by mistake for it can never
be done purposely by some of its own men. We
expect fire from the adversary; but when, as has
sometimes happened in a campaign in the timber or
brush, or in confusion, a supporting column, for
getting that men of their own flag are in front of
them, deliver their fire, no troops in the world can
stand it; it is demoralization; it is dismay. Breth
ren, we will take care as never before that we do
not stand in the way; that we do not by any possi
bility deliver a shot that shall find its mark in any
of the regiments that march under the banner of our
Lord.
And now, to these gentlemen who have so gra
ciously expressed the thanks of the visiting delegates
and missionaries, may I be permitted to say in your
5l6 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
behalf that we are all debtors. No one ever received
a prophet of God into his House that did not receive
more than he gave. You have brought to us these
precious women who have come from mission fields;
you have brought to us, into our hearts and into
our homes, sanctifying and inspiring influences with
which the breath that perished is not to be compared.
We part with you in sorrow, and yet, bitter as they
are, the Christian partings always are cheered by
the promise of the great gathering where all who
love the Lord shall see each other again. We thank
you for your gracious and instructive words; we
thank you for the inspiration you have given us;
we hope that you have caught from our hearts some
of the love we bear you, and that you will go back
to the Lord's appointed work stronger for our
prayers and for our sympathy.
And now, as we bring this meeting to a close,
may I not assure you all that the prayers of the
church in America will be offered with a frequency
and a fervor they have never had before, and that
the pockets and the purses of the American people
will be opened with a generosity they have never
shown before, to conduct this great world-work
a work which is to bring in the day when the king
doms of the earth shall become the kingdoms of our
Lord?
God bless you all, abide with you in your places,
strengthen your hearts, fill them with the converts
AT THE ECUMENICAL CONFERENCE 517
that He knows so well how to convert, and give you
success in your devoted efforts to make known His
name to those who are in darkness.
REMARKS AS PRESIDING OFFICER AT IN
DIANAPOLIS RAILROAD CHRISTIAN
ASSOCIATION ANNIVERSARY
On Sunday, Fall of 1900
I suppose the special work among railroad men
did not have its origin in any opinion that railroad
men were in greater need of the comforting and
strengthening influence of the gospel of Christ than
other men. Every man's need is so extreme in that
respect that we can not make comparisons. Per
haps rather it has its origin in the fact that those
who were managing these things thought that to get
hold of railroad men would be to occupy a strong
strategic position in the fight for good morals and
religion, because you are stirring about so much.
Knowledge increases when men go to and fro, and
most of you are going to and fro. The railroads
themselves are getting to understand that mechani
cal skill is not hurt any if it is backed up by good
moral character indeed, they are beginning to make
some requirement in that direction looking exclus-
RAILROAD CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION 519
ively to the business side of railroad management,
not because they are Christians, but because railroad
property is safer in the hands of men who are re
sponsible. I fancy that a man who believes that he
will not only be applauded by the president of the
road, but will have the applause of the King of the
Universe the Lord God is not less apt to stay in
front when a collision is imminent. The man who
receives the religious idea that he may please God
in running a lathe or an engine that to do things
well and conscientiously, scrupulously, is pleasing
not only to the boss of the shop, but to God is a lit
tle more apt to be scrupulous and honest and care
ful and brave than if he did not believe these things.
So that there can be no doubt that the old idea about
railroad men, very much like that about the
"roustabouts" and mates on the old steamboats
when it was thought that steamboat men could not
manage "roustabouts" without an immense amount
of profanity that they must be rough is giv
ing way. It is not necessary. If you are picking
out a brave man now, you can't say: "Always take
the man that swears the most." There used to be
a thought of that kind in connection with soldiers
that a soldier must be a rough, boisterous, swear
ing, drinking man. But General Howard and others
took that notion out of the minds of men. It is the
conscientious, God-fearing soldier that will stay the
longest in a hot place.
'52O VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
I am not here to make a speech, but only to ex
press by my presence and these few words my in
terest in this work and to assume formal direction of
the exercises of the afternoon.
"HAIL COLUMBIA" A LAND A SONG A
CLUB
AT THE COLUMBIA CLUB BANQUET, INDIANAPOLIS
December 31, 1900
My toast has great scope. I do not think of
anything that may not, without glaring inappropri-
ateness, be connected with it. A late speaker should
always choose such a toast. Where the antecedent
orators are addicted to ranging, it is the only way
to save an untrodden fence corner with a few clumps
of bunch grass dry but nutritious. I do not speak
of flowers, for I foresaw that there would not be
enough left for me to make a boutonniere after our
senators had been heard!
Columbia should have been the name of the
western hemisphere the republican half of the
world the hemisphere without a king on the
ground the reserved world, where God sent the
trodden spirits of men to be revived; to find, where
all things were primitive, man's primitive rights.
Royal prerogatives are plants that require a
522 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
walled garden and to be defended from the wild,
free growths that crowd and climb upon them.
Pomp and laced garments are incongruous in the
brush. Danger and hardships are commoners. The
man in front is the captain the royal commission
to the contrary notwithstanding. The platoon and
volley firing by the word would not do the open
order, one man to a tree, firing at his own will and
at a particular savage, was better. Out of this and
like calls to do things upon his own initiative the
free American was born. He thought he might get
along with kings and imperial parliaments if they
were benevolent, and did and allowed what he
wished, but they were forever doing their own pleas
ure, as the way of absolutism always is. And so
he found it necessary first to remonstrate and then
to resist.
Now a remonstrance implies an argument. The
acts complained of must be shown to have infringed
a right. At first he talked of English rights, but
it was not long until he began to talk about human
rights. The British parliament was, under British
law, supreme could repeal the Magna Charta. He
turned to the colonial charters, surely they were ir
revocable grants, but the crown courts held other
wise. What kings and parliaments had given, they
could take away. And so our fathers were driven
to claim divine endowment and to allow it to all
men, since God had made all of one blood. To
HAIL COLUMBIA
write the argument otherwise was to divest it of
its major premise. The grand conclusion no king
or parliament can rightfully take God's gift of lib
erty from any man was thus riveted to the eternal
throne itself. We made for our convenience an ex
ception in the case of the black man; but God erased
it with a sponge dipped in the white man's blood.
This divine law of individual liberty allows the
restraints that are necessary for the general good,
but it does not allow either a man or a civil com
munity to exploit for selfish gain another man or
another community.
The so-called Anglo-Saxon and especially the;
American branch of that great family should rev
erently and humbly thank God for the pre-eminent
power and influence He has given to it; for organ
ized freedom and for astounding wealth. Verily He
hath not dealt so with any other people. The gifts
of wealth and power, whether to man or nation, are,
however, to be soberly taken and wisely used.
I estimate the gift of the governing faculty to
be God's greatest gift to the Anglo-Saxon, and in
the constitution of the United States, with its di
vision of powers, its limitations upon the governing
departments and its sublime reservations in the in
terests of individual liberty, I see the highest achieve
ment of that most rare faculty.
I have no argument to make, here or anywhere,
against territorial expansion, but I do not, as some
524 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
do, look to expansion as the safest or more attract
ive avenue of national development. By the ad
vantages of abundant and cheap coal and iron, of
an enormous surplus of food products, and of inven
tion and economy in production, we are now lead
ing by a nose the original and the greatest of the
colonizing nations. Australia and New Zealand
loyally send their contingents to South Africa but
Great Britain can not hold the trades of her colo
nies against American offerings of a better or cheap
er product. The Central and South American
states, assured of our purpose not only to respect,
but to defend, their autonomy, and finding the peace
and social order which a closer and larger commer
cial intercourse with the world will bring, offer to
our commerce a field the full development of which
will realize the Eldorado. Hail to Columbia, the
home of the free, and from which only freedom
can go out!
The tune of "Hail Columbia" has for me some
unpleasant associations. Before we started on the
Atlanta campaign it was proclaimed in orders from
division headquarters that the first strain of "Hail
Columbia" should be the call of the first brigade.
And so it became associated with falling tents and
wet and weary marches. When, after much march
ing and some fighting, we had spread the scant can
vas allowed us; had rinsed our only, or our extra
shirt, and hung it out, with our wet blankets, to dry;
HAIL COLUMBIA 525
had found the most adaptable concaves of a bed of
poles; had just received the infrequent mail from the
hands of our faithful chaplain, and were deep in
the long-distance newspaper account of what we
had done and were about to do from some near
hilltop the first strain of "Hail Columbia" rang out,
and the temptation to substitute another spelling of
the first word, or at least to shorten the sound of the
"a," was irresistible. The "general" came next, and
after an interval, just long enough for the resump
tion of the wet shirt and the rolling of the blankets,
the "assembly/' and quickly afterward "to the col
ors." When we were in line "Hail Columbia" had
done its dreadful work, demolished a camp and scat
tered among its unsightly debris the fragments of a
broken command. Then for the first time a
human control of this diabolical enginery appeared
in the shape of an orderly with a long white en
velope stuck in the belt that supported his bloodless
saber. Now, I like to know where I am going be
fore I pack my trunk. Is it strange that I still feel
an impulse to reach for my overcoat when I hear
"Hail Columbia"?
And now, hail to the Columbia club an asso
ciation of loyal, liberal-minded Republicans organ
ized, not to control primaries or to divide the spoils
of office, but to maintain the ascendency of Repub
lican principles and to promote friendliness and good
will among its members. I recall the occasion and
526 VIEWS OF AN EX-PRESIDENT
the circumstances of your organization and the ar
dent readiness with which you on every occasion ren
dered honor and service to me as the party's candi
date and as your neighbor. These things abide in
my memory; they are stored where no vicissitudes
of life can disturb them. But they are more than
mere pleasant reminiscences. They are bonds of
friendship and inspirations to duty.
The decapitation of the ex-president, when the
oath of office has been administered to his successor,
would greatly vivify a somewhat tiresome ceremo
nial. And we may some time solve the newspaper
problem, what to do with our ex-presidents, in that
conclusive way. Until then I hope an ex-president
may be permitted to live somewhere midway be
tween the house of the gossip and the crypt of the
mummy. He will know, perhaps, in an especial way,
how to show the highest honor to the presidential
office and the most courteous deference to the pres
ident. Upon great questions, however especially
upon questions of constitutional law you must give
an ex-president his freedom or the axe and it is
too late to give me the axe.
Any Democratic friends who may share your
hospitality to-night will pardon me for saying to any
of them who have cast beguiling looks toward me,
that the Democratic party has never been less at
tractive than now. No plan of reorganization sug
gests itself to me exceot that suggested by a wag-
HAIL COLUMBIA 27
gish lieutenant of my regiment to a captain whose
platoons were inverted. He said: "Captain, if I
were in your place I would break ranks and have
the orderly call the roll!" Perhaps even this hope
ful program may fail from an inability to agree as to
the roll and as to the orderly.
Gentlemen of the Columbia club, I congratulate
you upon the opening of this magnificent club house
and thank you with a full heart for your many acts
of kindness.
THE END
INDEX
Adams, John 75, 125, 142-145
Adams, John Quincy 99
Anti War Party, An 223-230
Arbitration, International 239-242, 495
Asbury Park, N. J.
Address at banquet of the Cincinnati 486
B
Bancroft 110, 111, 129
Bellomont, Lord 103
Blackstone 35-39,68
Boer War 219, 220, 257-270
Bryce, James 219
Burke 70, 71, 210, 211
C
Canada 152
Charters, The Colonial 30-35, 42-48
Chinese War 243, 244
Cleveland, Grover 400, 401
Colonies, The American 10-123
Columbia Club, Indianapolis
Address at banquet 521-527
Commercial Club, Indianapolis
AcWress at banquet 466-471
Compulsory Dishonesty 454-465
Confederation, The American 124-154, 183
Congress, 1774 and 1775 115-119
(529)
53O INDEX
Constitution, The National 1-29, 189-221
Constitution, The English 4-6, 26
Curtis (Author Constitutional History U. S.) 84
D
Declaration of Independence; 120, 122, 123, 125, 126
Drayton, Justice, 64
E
Ecumenical Missionary Conference
Addresses as Honorary Chairman 497-517
Education
Military, in Schools 367-370
Of Children 419-425
Executive, The State 173
The National 429-435
F
Forum, The
Article on Compulsory Dishonesty 454-465
Frothingham 98
Franklin, Benjamin 32, 59, 77, 105-110
G
Gladstone, William E. 2, 5
Grand Army of Republic
Address at National Encampment 361-366
Great Britain
An alliance with 245-257
H
Hamilton, Alexander 442
Hawaii 188
Hoar, George F. 226-228
Hohenlohe, Prince 508
Hutchinson, Governor 50, 81, 90
I
Indianapolis
Address upon return to in 1893 358
Commercial Club "No Mean City" 466-471
Flag presentation, Light Artillery 482-485
Columbia Club banquet 521-527
INDEX
531
Inheritance Tax Cases of Illinois
Argument in Supreme Court
298-330
Jefferson, Thomas
Judiciary, The Colonial
The National
Kruger, Paul
83, 442
59, 60
429-435
266
Law Reforms, Some Hindrances to
Lecture at Ann Arbor
Lincoln, Abraham
Lodge, Henry Cabot
M
Madison, James
Marquette Club, Chicago
Address Lincoln's Birthday
Mason, George
Mayflower Compact
McKinley, William
Military Instruction in Schools
Miller, Mr. Justice
Monroe Doctrine
Morton, Levi P.
N
New England Society of Pennsylvania
Address at banquet
273-297
472-478
40,45
207
472-478
64
20
382-387, 506
367-370
206
239, 242
390, 391
371-375
Paris, France
Address American Chamber of Commerce 490-496
Parliament, The English 27, 28, 69, 70, 73-85
Penn, William 48, 49, 53, 101
Pensions, 363-365
Petition, Right of 54, 57
Philippines, The 188, 189
Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth 122
Pitt, William 71, 72, 226
532 INDEX
Political Speeches
McKinley meeting, Indianapolis, 1894 382-387
Meeting, Carnegie Hall, New York, 1894 388-418
Meeting, Carnegie Hall, New York, 1896, 426-453
Porto Rico 188, 189, 193, 208-216
R
Railroad Men's Christian Association
Address as presiding officer 518-520
Rainsford, Rev. Dr. 292
Red Cross Society 488-4S9
Roberts, James A. 292-294, 343, 344
Rosebery, Lord 5
S
Silver Question, The 405, 439-465
Spanish War 232, 253, 262, 482, 486, 488, 493
Stanford University
Lectures at 1-184
Founders' Day address 376
States, The 155-185
Story, Judge 68, 69, 80, 121, 122, 152
T
Tariff, The 384, 396-418, 435-439
U
Union League Club, Chicago
Address Washington's Birthday, 1898 331-357
Address Washington's Birthday at banquet 479-481
V
Victoria, Queen 256
W
Washington, George 9, 14, 332, 333, 342
Wealth, obligations of
Address Union League Club, Chicago 331-357
Y\Tilson, James 81
Winslow, Edward 19
World Powers 230-244
"
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Views of an
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