ftEPEW 
 
 rOUTICAL /Y\»SSlON 
 
 OP THE United C>tatbs 
 
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The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030923654 
 

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 THE POLITICAL MISSION OF THE UMTED STATES. 
 
 ORATION 
 
 BY 
 
 HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 
 AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE BIRTHDAY OF WASHmGTON; 
 BY THE UmON LEAGUE CLUB OF CHICAGO. 
 
 Al CENTBAL OTSIC HiXL, FEBEUAEI 22, 1888. 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 
 E660.D41 P7 
 
 The political mission of the United Stat 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 030 923 654 
 
ENGFIAVEO BY T, J0H^^O^I. 
 
 BY PERMISSION OF THE CiNTURY CO. 
 
 '6^^^^ 
 
THE POLITICAL MISSION OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ORATION 
 
 BY 
 
 HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 
 AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE BIRTHDAY OF WASHINGTON, 
 BY THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB OF CHICAGO. 
 
 AT CENTRA! MISIC HALL, PEBETJART 22, 1888. 
 
Mr. President and Gentlemen : 
 
 THE subject assigned to me falls more nat- 
 urally into the domain of the philosophical 
 theorist, or of the practical pohtician, than 
 of the active man of affairs. We are all men 
 of business, and absorbed in its details, and 
 neither our time nor our associations admit 
 of prolonged speculations upon the possibih- 
 ties of government. We are an industrial 
 people, and the great question with us is. 
 How do institutions best serve our needs *? We 
 are not so whoUy materialistic that we cannot 
 deeply feel the sentiments of hberty and nation- 
 ahty, and yet both form the broad foundations 
 upon which we must build for permanence. 
 No intelligent consideration of the questions 
 affecting our present and future is possible 
 without an understanding of the successive 
 stages in the development of our system. 
 
 The political mission of the United States 
 has so far been wrought out by individuals and 
 territorial conditions. Four men of unequaled 
 
genius have dommated our century, and the 
 growth of the West has revolutionized the 
 Repubhc. The principles which have heretofore 
 controlled the policy of the country have mainly 
 owed their force and acceptance to Hamilton, 
 Jefferson, "Webster, and Lincoln. 
 
 The two great creative contests of America 
 were purely defensive. They were neither the 
 struggles of dynastic ambitions nor of demo- 
 cratic revenges. They were cahn and deter- 
 mined efforts for good government, and closed 
 without rancor or the husbanding of resources 
 for retaliation. The Revolution was a war for 
 the preservation of weU-defined constitutional 
 liberties, but dependent upon them were the 
 industrial freedom necessary for the develop- 
 ment of the country, the promotion of manu- 
 factures, and independence of foreign producers. 
 
 The first question which met the young con- 
 federacy, torn by the jealousies of its stronger 
 and weaker colonies, was the necessity of a 
 central power strong enough to deal with foreign 
 nations and to protect commerce between the 
 States. At this period Alexander Hamilton 
 became the savior of the Repubhc. If Shake- 
 speare is the commanding originating genius of 
 England, and Groethe of Germany, Hamilton 
 
must occupy that place among Americans. At 
 seventeen lie had formulated the principles of 
 government by the people so cleariy that no 
 succeeding pubhcist has improved them. Before 
 he was twenty-five he had made suggestions to 
 the hopeless financiers of the Revolution which 
 revived credit and carried through the war. 
 With few precedents to guide him, he created a 
 fiscal system for the United States which was so 
 elastic and comprehensive that it still controls 
 the vast operations of the treasury and the cus- 
 toms. Though but a few years at the bar after 
 his retirement from pubhc life, his briefs are 
 embodied in constitutions and statutes, and to 
 his masterly address the press owes its freedom. 
 This superb intelligence, which was at once 
 philosophic and practical, and with unrivaled 
 lucidity could instruct the dullest mind on the 
 bearing of the action of the present on the des- 
 tiny of the future, so impressed upon his contem- 
 poraries the necessity of a central government 
 with large powers that the Constitution, now 
 one hundred and one years old, was adopted, and 
 the United States began their life as a nation. 
 
 At this period, in every part of the world, the 
 doctrine that the Government is the source of 
 power, and that the people have only such 
 
rights as the Grovemmeiit had given, was prac- 
 tically unquestioned, and the young EepubHc 
 began its existence with the new and dynamic 
 principle that the people are the sole source of 
 authority, and that the GToTemment has such 
 powers as they grant to it, and no others. 
 
 Doubt and debate are the safety-valves of 
 freedom, and Thomas Jefferson created both. 
 He feared the loss of popular rights in centraU- 
 zation, and beheved that the reserved powers of 
 the States were the only guaranties of the hber- 
 ties of the people. He stands supreme in our 
 history as a poHtical leader, and left no suc- 
 cessor. He destroyed the party of Washing- 
 ton, Hamilton, and Adams, and .built up an or- 
 ganization which was dominant in the country 
 for half a century. The one question thus 
 raised and overshadowing all others for a hun- 
 dred years, half satisfied by compromises, half 
 suppressed by threats, at times checking pros- 
 perity, at times paralyzing progress, at times 
 producing panics, at times preventing the solu- 
 tion of fiscal and industrial problems vital to 
 our expansion, was, Are we a Nation ? 
 
 For nearly fifty years the prevailing senti- 
 ment favored the idea that the federal compact 
 was a contract between sovereign States. Had 
 
 6 
 
the forces of disunion been ready for the arbit- 
 rament of arms, the results would have been 
 fatal to the Union. That ablest observer of the 
 American experiment, De TocquevUle, was so 
 impressed by this that he based upon it an ab- 
 solute prediction of the destruction of the Re- 
 pubhc. But, at the critical period, when the 
 popularity, courage, and audacity of Greneral 
 Jackson were almost the sole hope of national- 
 ity, "Webster dehvered in the Senate a speech 
 unequaled ia the annals of eloquence for its 
 immediate effects and lasting results. The ap- 
 peals of Demosthenes to the Athenian democ- 
 racy, the denunciations of Cicero against the 
 conspiracies of Catahne, the passionate outcries 
 of Mirabeau, pending the French Revolution, 
 the warnings of Chatham in the British Parha- 
 ment, the fervor of Patrick Henry for inde- 
 pendence, were of temporary iaterest, and 
 yielded feeble results, compared with the tre- 
 mendous consequences of this mighty utter- 
 ance. 
 
 It broke the speU of supreme loyalty to the 
 State and created an unquenchable and resist- 
 less patriotism for the United States. It ap- 
 peared in the school-books, and, by declaiming 
 glowing extracts therefrom, the juvenile orators 
 
of that and succeeding generations won prizes 
 at academic exhibitions and in mimic con- 
 gresses. Children educated parents, and the 
 pride of the fathers and the kindled imagina- 
 tions of the sons united them in a noble ideal 
 of the great Repubhc. No subsequent patri- 
 otic oration met the requirements of any pub- 
 lic occasion, great or smaU, which did not 
 breathe the sentiment of " Liberty and union, 
 now and forever, one and inseparable." As the 
 coldest clod, when first inspired by the grand 
 passion of his life, becomes a chivahic knight, 
 so, when at last the Union was assailed by 
 arms, love of country burst the bonds of materi- 
 ahsm and sacrificed everything for the preserva- 
 tion of the nation's life. Prom the unassailable 
 conviction of the power of the Greneral Grovem- 
 ment to protect itself, to coerce a State, to en- 
 force its laws everywhere, and to use aU the 
 resources of the people to put down rebellion, 
 came not only patriotism, but pubhc conscience. 
 With conscience was the courage, so rare in 
 commercial communities, which will peril busi- 
 ness and apparent prosperity for an idea. This 
 defeated the slave power, and is to-day the most 
 potent factor in every reform. 
 
 The field for the growth and development of 
 
this sentiment, and for its practical application 
 without fear of consequences, was the great 
 West. Virginia's gift to the Union of the 
 North-west Territory, which now constitutes 
 five great States, and its prompt dedication to 
 freedom, and Jefferson's purchase from the 
 First Napoleon of the vast area now known as 
 Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, 
 Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, Da- 
 kota, Montana, Wyoming, and the Indian Ter- 
 ritory, were the two acts of generosity and 
 consummate statesmanship which definitely 
 outlined the destiny of the Kepubhc and its 
 pohtical mission. 
 
 In the genesis of nations there is no parallel 
 with the growth of the West and its influence 
 upon the world. The processes of its settle- 
 ment reduce to comparative insignificance the 
 romances and reahties of the State-builders of 
 the past. Movements of peoples which at other 
 periods have been devastating migrations, or 
 due to the delirium of speculations, are here the 
 wise founding and sober development of pros- 
 perous communities. The fabled Argo, sailing 
 for the Golden Fleece, neither bore nor found 
 the wealth carried and discovered by the emi- 
 grants' wagons on the prairies. The original 
 
conditions surrounding our hardy and adventur- 
 ous pioneers ; tlie riclies in poverty, where hope 
 inspired the efforts and the self-denial to clear, 
 or develop, or improve, or stock the farm, which 
 was to be at once the family home and estate ; 
 the church and the school-house growing simul- 
 taneously with the settlements ; citizenship of 
 the great Repubhc, which could only come 
 through the admission of the territory as a 
 State into the grand confederacy of Common- 
 wealths, and only be lost by the dissolution of 
 the Union ; citizenship which meant not only 
 pohtioal dignity and independence, but incalcu- 
 lable commercial and business advantages and 
 opportunities, — these were the elements which 
 made the West, and these were the educators of 
 the dominant power in the nation for the pres- 
 ent and the future. Thus the West, the child of 
 the Union, met the slave power with deter- 
 mined resistance, and its threats with a defiant 
 assertion of the inherent powers of the nation, 
 and with the pledge of its young and heroic life 
 for their enforcement. 
 
 This double sentiment found its oracle and 
 representative in Abraham Lincoln. He con- 
 sohdated the North-west by declaring that the 
 Mississippi shall flow unvexed to the sea. In 
 
 10 
 
the great debate with Douglass, his challenge 
 rang through the whole land, a summons to 
 battle. "A house divided against itself," he 
 said, " cannot stand. I beheve this government 
 cannot endure permanently half slave and half 
 free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved 
 — I do not expect the house to faU — but I do 
 expect it will cease to be divided." To enforce 
 that expectation he called a million of men to 
 arms, he emancipated four millions of slaves by 
 Presidential proclamation, and when the vic- 
 tory was won for hberty and unity, this most 
 majestic figure of our time, clothed with the 
 unlimited powers of a triumphant Grovemment, 
 stood between the passions of the strife, and 
 commanded peace and forgiveness. When he 
 fell by the hands of the assassin the hundred 
 years' struggle for National existence was 
 ended. He throttled sectionahsm and buried it. 
 The Repubhc for which half a million men had 
 died and a million had been wounded was so 
 firmly bedded in the hearts, the minds, and the 
 blood of its people, that the question of dissolu- 
 tion will never more form part of the schemes 
 of its politicians, or require the wisdom of its 
 statesmen and the patriotism of its people. 
 It is impossible to estimate the effect upon our 
 
 11 
 
material and moral development of the disap- 
 pearance of the dread and deadly issue of dissolu- 
 tion and civil war from our pohtics. The Nation, 
 emancipated from the thraUdom of perpetual 
 peril, advanced by leaps and bounds in its fiscal 
 pohoy and industrial progress. Our substantial 
 growth in every element of national strength, 
 siace the war, has been greater than ia aU the 
 years which preceded. But the very conditions 
 of this tremendous development and the mighty 
 forces concentrated and involved, present grave 
 problems, which must be solved if we would be 
 safe. Said De Tocqueville, in 1834, " I cannot 
 beheve in the duration of a Government whose 
 task is to hold together forty different peoples, 
 spread over a surface equal to the half of 
 Europe, to avoid rivalries, ambitions, and strug- 
 gles among them, and to imite the action of 
 their independent wills for the accomphshment 
 of the same plans. Unless I am greatly mis- 
 taken, the Federal Government of the United 
 States tends to become daily weaker ; it draws 
 back from one kind of business after another ; 
 it more and more restricts the sphere of its 
 action. Naturally feeble, it abandons even the 
 appearance of force." 
 With the admission of the territories already 
 
 12 
 
knocMng at the door and fully qualified to be- 
 come States, we will have reached De Tocque- 
 ville's fatal forty. But in the mean time the 
 pendulum of our pohtics has swung back from 
 the Jeffersonian to the Hamiltonian extreme. 
 The Federal Government is everything, the 
 States, in a national sense, nothing. The abo- 
 htion of slavery, and with it sectional lines, 
 and the civil war, have done much to produce 
 this ; but commerce has done more. The apph- 
 cation of steam and electricity to trade has 
 made forty Commonwealths one. It is not dis- 
 tance alone which creates the dangers of the 
 disintegration of a Government, but difficulty 
 of intercommunication. Sixty millions of people 
 covering a continent are in much closer commun- 
 ion to-day than were the four millions along 
 the Atlantic coast at the time of the adoption 
 of the Constitution. The President, whose 
 authority De Tocqueville thought weak and 
 gradually being reduced to a shadow, has ac- 
 quired power beyond the dreams and fears of 
 the fathers. The arbitrary arrests, the procla- 
 mations of far-reaching import at which Mr. 
 Lincoln did not hesitate, indicate what a Presi- 
 dent may do in time of war. A civil service 
 four times as large as our standing army, and 
 
 13 
 
subject to executive appointment and removal, 
 and the frequent exercise of the veto power 
 by President Cleveland, exhibit the extent of 
 his powers, even in peace. 
 
 The United States has been fortunate in its 
 Presidents. The poorest and weakest of them 
 had patriotism and a sense of pubhc duty which 
 prevented the resort to desperate expedients for 
 the retention of power. But as the country in- 
 creases in population and in new communities, 
 the functions of the Executive become more 
 potent. The Legislative and Judicial branches 
 remain the same, but the President grows as a 
 potential factor of Government. We are always 
 at the mercy of the majority, but its intelHgence 
 has heretofore protected us from its easily 
 stated and possible perils. But with a hundred 
 millions of people and a commensurate civil 
 service ; with the blind fury of intense pohtical 
 passions ; with an able, audacious and unscrup- 
 ulous President anxious for reelection, and sus- 
 tained by his party in anything which secures 
 it, the situation wiU be full of danger. 
 
 The best of Presidents have lowered the stand- 
 ard of administration when seeking a second 
 term. The present Executive is an officer 
 highly esteemed for singular honesty and direct- 
 
 14 
 
ness of purpose, and remarkable for inexperience 
 in the duties of govemment and for ignorance 
 of the great issues before the country. With 
 perfect frankness and honest intention to carry- 
 out his pledges he defied the traditions of his 
 party in his bold utterances for civil service re- 
 form. He both understood what he was prom- 
 ising, and beheved he had the courage and the 
 power to make good his word. The best senti- 
 ment of the country is overwhelmingly behind 
 him on this question. And yet, as the canvass 
 of 1888 opens, the tremendous advantages of 
 an auxiliary force of one hundred thousand 
 faithful workers has relegated Roman virtue to 
 the rear and brought the spoils system to the 
 front. Methods have changed, and the bor- 
 rowed nomenclature of Reform means the old 
 practices, with the familiar result of the con- 
 stant substitution of the partisan recruit for the 
 veteran official. 
 
 With the growth of the Repubhc, the known 
 and imphed powers of the President become of 
 increasing value. As, with larger and more 
 populous districts, Congress becomes more dis- 
 tant and vague, the people wiU need and de- 
 mand an Executive to whom appeal can be 
 immediate, and whose responsibility is direct. 
 
 15 
 
He should, however, by constitutional prohibi- 
 tion, be made inehgible for a second term. As 
 the pecuharities of his position on retirement 
 from office prevent his participation in the ordi- 
 nary business avocations of the citizen, he 
 should receive an adequate pension for hfe, and 
 on the retired hst, though stUl in. the service, be 
 subject to call for any pubhc duty where his 
 experience, character, and ability would be of 
 value. Thus his administration, free from 
 temptation and the baser ambitions, would be 
 impelled with resolute and unflinching endeavor 
 to win the plaudits of the present and the ad- 
 miration and gratitude of posterity. 
 
 While no act or thought should tend to 
 resurrect the baleful doctrine of State Sov- 
 ereignty, we need to be educated in. the direc- 
 tion of State Rights. The immensity of our 
 nationahty and its centrahzing tendencies create 
 a feeling of dependence upon Grovernment which 
 enfeebles the American character and is hostile 
 to American hberty. Home rule is the school 
 and iuspiration of manliness and independence. 
 The town meeting brings power directly to the 
 people where it belongs, and clearly and sharply 
 draws the Une between pubhc business and 
 private business. The American traveling in 
 
 16 
 
Europe chafes under the restraints of adminis- 
 tration. The bayonet or the baton is always by 
 his side. The Government carries his person 
 and goods, transmits his message, appears as a 
 proprietor in the mine and factory, and suffo- 
 cates enterprise, development, and ambition. 
 The demagogue and the agitator are already ap- 
 pealing to the sentiment for a strong &ovem- 
 ment, — to make it so strong that it wiU both 
 impoverish and enrich with its burdens and its 
 bounties, and the citizen surrendering his in- 
 dividuahty wiU go for everything to the Grov- 
 emment. This is the underlying principle of 
 despotism, under whose operation there would 
 have been no great Repubhc, and the "West 
 would have remained a wilderness. 
 
 We are too great and too generous, and have 
 too many and vast opportunities, to adopt the 
 selfish motto of "America for Americans," 
 meaning to include only those who are now 
 citizens and their descendants. But the needs 
 of the present and the preparation for the 
 future require that aU citizens shall be Ameri- 
 cans. Healthy patriotism can be sentimental, 
 but it must be intelligent. Said the philoso- 
 pher, " Let me write the songs of a people and 
 I care not who make their laws." That day 
 
 17 
 
has passed, never to return. Steam and elec- 
 tricity have broken the spell. Revolutions can 
 no longer be conjured, nor ancient rights de- 
 fended, by melody. The marching music of 
 the columns of hberty must be, not the Marseil- 
 laise or the national anthem, but the high and 
 harmonious teachings of the common school. 
 
 There is an intellectual awakening in this 
 land, and its stimulants affect the well-beiag 
 and the safety of life, and property, and law. 
 The Trades-Union is a Debating Club ; a ses- 
 sion of the Knights, a Congress of Labor; the 
 Sabbath picnic is a school, not of Divinity, but 
 of Theology. The questions discussed are vital 
 in their proper solution to the State, society, 
 and the church. The churches of all creeds and 
 men of every faith are doing magnificent work 
 in the conservation of the virtues and habits of 
 hberty, but the Preacher has lost his political 
 influence and the Priest much of the power he 
 possessed in the more primitive period. 
 
 The teachers of disintegration, destruction 
 and infidehty possess the activity of propagand- 
 ists and the self-sacrificing spirit of martyrs. 
 Their field is ignorance, their recruiting ser- 
 geants distress. Only faith grounded in knowl- 
 edge can meet these dangerous, ceaseless, and 
 
 18 
 
corrupting influences. In the midst of these 
 perils, the sheet-anchor of the Ship of State is 
 the common school. Before the era of great 
 cities and crowded populations, when it was 
 easy both to earn a living and to gain a compe- 
 tence, when the best influences of every settle- 
 ment reached every part of it, the State met 
 every requirement in furnishing, free, a fair 
 business education. But now by far the larger 
 part of our people have no common ancestry in 
 the Revolutionary war, and a generation has 
 come to its majority which knows httle of the 
 Rebellion and its results. Colonists from 
 Europe form communities, both in city and 
 country, where they retain the language, cus- 
 toms, and traditions of the Fatherland, and hve 
 and die tu the behef that the Grovernment is 
 their enemy. To meet these conditions, the 
 State provides an education which does not edu- 
 cate, and the prison, and the poor-house. 
 
 Ignorance judges the invisible by the visible. 
 Turn on the hghts. Teach, first and last, Amer- 
 icanism. Let no youth leave the school without 
 being thoroughly grounded in the history, the 
 principles, and the incalculable blessings of Amer- 
 ican Liberty. Let the boys be the trained sol- 
 diers of constitutional freedom, the girls the in- 
 
 19 
 
telligent mothers of freemen, and the sons of the 
 Anarchists will become the bulwarks of the law. 
 American hberty must be protected against 
 hostile invasion. We welcome the fugitives 
 from oppression, civil or rehgious, who seek our 
 asylum with the honest purpose of making it 
 their homes. We have room and hospitahty for 
 emigrants who come to our shores to better 
 their condition by the adoption of our citizen- 
 ship, with all its duties and responsibilities. 
 But we have no place for imported criminals, 
 paupers, and pests. The revolutionist who 
 wants to destroy the power of the majority 
 with the same dynamite with which he failed to 
 assassinate the Emperor or the Czar is a pubHc 
 enemy, and must be so treated. We are no 
 longer m need of the surplus popidations of the 
 Old World, and must carefully examine our 
 guests. The priceless gift of citizenship should 
 never be conferred until by years of probation 
 the apphcant has proved himself worthy, and 
 then a rigid examination in open court should 
 test his knowledge of its limitations as well as 
 its privileges, and his cordial acceptance of 
 both. It is monstrous that the time of our 
 courts and the patience of our juries should be 
 occupied and tried in the repeated prosecution 
 
 20 
 
of persistent disttirbers of the peace who refuse 
 to become citizens. On the first conviction by a 
 jury they should be expelled from the country. 
 This youngest of cities, destined to be one of 
 the greatest on the earth, in deadly peril of fire 
 and sack, with indomitable spirit and lofty 
 courage saved civilization in American munici- 
 pahties, and the nation by wise laws should pre- 
 vent any possible recurrence of the danger. In 
 government by majorities, the existence of the 
 system depends upon the purity of the ballot. 
 The minority must know that it is fairly beaten, 
 to peacefully accept its defeat. A crisis more 
 critical than the civil war has twice threat- 
 ened us because there was doubt as to the hon- 
 esty of the vote. In the first instance it was 
 averted by wise compromise, and in the second 
 the fears proved fallacious. But it is the high- 
 est duty to provide every safeguard against repe- 
 titions of such dangers. The whole power and 
 machinery of the State must be used for the 
 unbought and unintimidated vote and the fair 
 count. Submission to the will of the majority 
 has become universally the accepted faith of 
 the people ; and, while that faith is unshaken, 
 no party wiU ever appeal to the only other al- 
 ternative, arms. 
 
 21 
 
It is tlie duty of the general Grovemment in 
 all elections for Congress or President to pro- 
 tect, at every cost, the voter and the ballot-box. 
 It is the duty of every State to reduce to a 
 minimum the opportunities for fraud upon the 
 citizen or the improper influencing of his choice. 
 It is a general and local scandal that the ex- 
 penses of the candidate have grown beyond the 
 means of the poor and honest man. No system 
 can be right or safe under which the treasuries 
 of the opposing parties must be filled with sums 
 so vast that they equal the great accumulations 
 of prosperous corporations. The ballots should 
 be printed by the State and distributed at the 
 pubhc cost, under conditions which would 
 enable the most ignorant voter to select his 
 ticket without help, and deposit it with no one 
 knowing its contents but himself. Then, as 
 the Repubhc grows in power and population, 
 its safety and perpetuity will be assured by 
 keeping pure the channels through which the 
 ever increasing milli ons of freemen with more 
 majestic and impressive force express their 
 will. 
 
 The political mission of the United States is 
 purely internal. The wise policy and traditions 
 of Washington against entanghng alliances with 
 
 22 
 
foreign nations have been happily strengthened 
 by our geographical position. The moral effect 
 of our experiment upon the destinies of peoples 
 and governments has been greater than that of 
 aU other causes combined. In preserving in 
 letter and spirit our liberties, in developing our 
 resources and adding to the wealth, prosperity, 
 and power of the Republic, in the adoption of 
 those measures which favor happiness and con- 
 tentment within our borders, we are indirectly 
 aiding the struggling masses, and furnishing the 
 arguments for, and inspiring the hopes of, the 
 patriots of every country of the world. 
 
 It is vital to the success of our mission that 
 aU questions be boldly met, fearlessly discussed, 
 and promptly acted upon. The area of arable 
 acres in the United States is twenty per cent. 
 larger than that of China, which supports a 
 population of nearly four hundred miUions. As 
 time is reckoned in the history of nations, in 
 the near future there will be two hundred mill- 
 ions of people in this country. AU of them 
 will be dependent upon industrial conditions, 
 and the larger part of them will be wage-earn- 
 ers. Our problem is not, how can they be con- 
 trolled? for they are the majority, and the 
 majority is the G-ovemment, but, how are they 
 
 23 
 
to be satisfied ? Macaulay's prediction has been 
 supported by tbe ablest political economists of 
 the Old World. They claim that with the con- 
 ditions of crowded populations always on the 
 brink of starvation, with hopeless poverty and 
 chronic distress such as prevail under European 
 governments, the Republic will end in anarchy, 
 and anarchy in despotism. 
 
 Whether there be much or Uttle in these 
 gloomy forebodings, the least of them sternly 
 impresses the lesson of maintaining and pro- 
 moting, by every measure which experience has 
 tested and wisdom can suggest, that poUcy 
 which will keep wages above the hne of mere 
 subsistence, and in the general prosperity of 
 diversified industries hold open the opportuni- 
 ties for every man to rise. This issue is broadly 
 national, and is of equal interest to the North 
 and South, the East and West. Cheap trans- 
 portation has obhterated the lines which for- 
 merly divided the planters and the manufactur- 
 ers, and engendered and embittered the sectional 
 controversies. The new South thrills with the 
 movement of mighty industries which are de- 
 veloping her mines, utihzing her great forces 
 and resources, and founding her cities. The 
 flames of busy furnaces iUumine her wasted 
 
 24 
 
fields, and near and quick markets awaken to 
 hitlierto unknown activities her dormant agri- 
 culture. The hum of the spindles and the in- 
 spiring music of machinery sound over the 
 prairies and along the lakes as well as among 
 New England hills and Pennsylvania mines. 
 
 The theory of the wealth of nations has heen 
 discussed by the ablest and most competent of 
 philosophers and statesmen, from the time of 
 Adam Smith, with the demonstrated result that 
 principles of pohtical economy are not of uni- 
 versal apphcation, but must be modified by the 
 conditions and necessities of different nations. 
 At the zenith of prosperity, when confidence 
 and credit were projecting enterprises which 
 covered the continent, and were fraught with 
 untold wealth and healthy expansion, or disaster 
 and coUapse, upon a scale of equal magnitude 
 and commensurate distress. President Cleveland 
 has boldly and happily challenged the pohcy 
 upon which aU these investments were based. 
 
 The President says to the combined forces of 
 Capital and Labor, flushed with past successes 
 and eager for the conquest of the world, "Halt ; 
 you are on the wrong road." Business is built 
 upon stability of statutes. Fluctuations in the 
 law must not be a factor in the calculations of 
 
 25 
 
commerce. It is fortunate for the future of the 
 country that the President has taken a position 
 so radical and defiant that discussion and decis- 
 ion are imperative. If the result is as I think 
 it will and ought to be, the defeat of the Presi- 
 dent and of his party, he will take his place 
 among the few eminent speciahsts and experi- 
 mentalists who have died in demonstratiag that 
 the gun was not loaded. 
 
 During a quarter of a century of passionate 
 nationahty, of free labor, of protected indus- 
 tries, the growth of the Repubhc has been with- 
 out precedent or parallel in ancient or modem 
 times. Its population has increased at the rate 
 of a million a year, and a thousand millions per 
 annum have been added to its accumulated 
 wealth. It has paid five-sixths of the enormous 
 losses of the civil war, it has borne the burden 
 of a gigantic debt, it has spent with lavish 
 hand and yet has saved half as much as aU the 
 rest of the world. With sixty thousand mill- 
 ions of capital, and a developed capacity for 
 creating a product worth over ten billions a 
 year, its pohtical mission is, as far as possible, 
 to monopolize its home market in the materials 
 it possesses or can manufacture, to cross the 
 seas, to enter all ports and explore new coun- 
 
 26 
 
tries, and to compete with the most adyanced 
 nations ia all the markets of the earth. 
 
 Niaety-nine years ago, on the fourth day of 
 July, 1789, G-eorge Washington signed the first 
 tariff act passed hy the young Repubhc. Polit- 
 ical independence had been proclaimed by the 
 immortal Declaration of 1776, but the country 
 was still dependent upon Grreat Britain for 
 every article of manufacture in metals or 
 fabrics. With more gloomy forebodings than 
 those caused by the separation of the Empire 
 was this news received ia England. It was the 
 emancipation of raw materials and the birth of 
 manufactures ia the United States, and without 
 them the Repubhc had no " manifest destiay." 
 At the close of an exhausting war, with an 
 unpaid, half-clothed and riotous army, a worth- 
 less currency, shattered credit, and an empty 
 treasury, Alexander Hamilton, great in every 
 department of mental activity, but the greatest 
 of Finance Ministers, was called upon to pro- 
 vide the moneys for carrying on the G-overn- 
 ment, meeting its obhgations, and restoring its 
 credit. In a report, whose arguments have 
 never been answered or equaled, he gave as the 
 solution of the present problem and of future 
 prosperity, protection to home industries as a 
 
 27 
 
continuous policy, and, when necessary, boun- 
 ties and premiums besides. The closing year of 
 the century of Hamilton's idea finds thirteen 
 States grown to thirty-eight, four millions of 
 people increased to sixty, and nominal national 
 wealth to sixty billions. A manufacturing 
 plant not worth half a million of doUars has 
 expanded until its annual product is six 
 thousand millions, and the consumption per 
 year by our own people of the output of our 
 farms and our factories is not less than five 
 times the consoUdated capital of 1789. From 
 an increasing indebtedness to foreign nations, 
 which drained all our resources, the returning 
 tide of the balance of trade is flowing in enrich- 
 ing currents through every artery of our indus- 
 trial life. Upon this golden monument, with a 
 hundred millions of surplus ia the national 
 treasury and proud and prosperous populations 
 all around, the cuhninaticig c'entury finds Presi- 
 dent Cleveland proclaiming with equal boldness, 
 if less originahty, the new departure. 
 
 The celebration of the biri;hday of the Father 
 of his Country recalls at this juncture the pecu- 
 har significance of the language of the law 
 which received his first signature as President, 
 and which had his heartiest approval : " Whereas 
 
 28 
 
it is necessary for the support of tlie G-ovem- 
 ment, for tlie discliarge of the debts of the 
 United States, and the encouragement and pro- 
 tection of mamifactures, that duties be levied 
 on goods, wares, and merchandise imported." 
 Since that most fruitful legislation, whenever 
 theory has overcome the plain teachings of 
 practice, the penalty has been panics and dis- 
 tress. " The friend of the many against the 
 profits of the few " is the seductive r61e which 
 captivates the free trader, and its ghttering al- 
 lurements on a subject new to his thought and 
 studies have led out to sea the strong common 
 sense of Mr. Cleveland. It is the basis of the 
 pohcy upon which he has staked his own for- 
 tunes and those of his party. " The tariff raises 
 the prices to consumers," he says, "of all arti- 
 cles imported and subject to duty, by precisely 
 the sum paid for such duties " ; and, as the con- 
 sumers are enormously in excess of the laborers 
 upon purely protected articles, he rushes natu- 
 rally and triumphantly to the conclusion that 
 tariff laws are " the vicious, inequitable, and il- 
 logical source of unnecessary taxation." 
 
 In 1816, 1832, 1846, the weapons which the 
 President found in 1888 won great victories, 
 but like Samson's arms about the pillars of the 
 
 29 
 
Temple, tlie result involved all in common ruin. 
 The mill closed, the furnace fires out, the farmer 
 bankrupt, and the laborer a tramp, are the lurid 
 lessons of these well-meant experiments upon a 
 delusive theory of the relations of the factory to 
 the farm. 
 
 The genius of our scheme of general Govern- 
 ment and the spirit of our people are hostile to 
 direct taxation for national affairs. The federal 
 tax-gatherer has always provoked friction and 
 lawlessness, even under the necessities of war, 
 and his presence at every door to levy and take 
 three times the amount required by the State 
 for home and local wants would peril both pros- 
 perity and loyalty. Two hundred and fifty mill- 
 ions of dollars flow into the national treasury 
 annually, and under the customs system of col- 
 lection we are unconscious of our burdens. It 
 is only the necessities of war which justify inter- 
 nal revenue taxes, and only a concession to the 
 moral sentiment of the country which permits 
 the continuance of any part of them. No rev- 
 enue laws are perfect or permanent, but in mod- 
 ifying them to meet the changing conditions of 
 the country the principle of ample protection 
 for everything which can be successfully pro- 
 
 30 
 
duced or manufactured on American soil must 
 be maintained. 
 
 The factory doubles the value of the adjoin- 
 ing farms for the farmers, whose tariff exactions 
 are too small to be calculated. Beside the mUl 
 grows the village, and the resistless energies of 
 American development burst the village bounds 
 and build the Western city. To this new mart 
 theraUroad is constructed almost with the speed 
 of its moving trains, and the quick and cheap 
 communication between cotmtry and city fur- 
 nishes new solvents for the safety in the pros- 
 perity of the country. Protected opportunity 
 has developed our incalculable natural resources 
 and enabled us to manufacture in iron, glass, 
 cotton, and wool as well as any nation in the 
 world, and more cheaply, save only in wages. 
 If the duty on importations is the bounty to 
 labor which hfts it above the degrading and 
 dangerous conditions of Europe, and enables 
 our artisans to retain their self-respect and in- 
 dependence, it is the Repubhc's best invest- 
 ment. 
 
 Celebrating here to-day the one hundred and 
 fifty-sixth anniversary of "Washington's birth, 
 and recalling the influence of his victories in 
 
 31 
 
war, Ms counsels in convention, his acts as 
 President of the Republic, and his matchless 
 character, the visible results of the pohcy in- 
 augurated by the first exercise of his Executive 
 approval are the most marvelous. The purely 
 agricultural States which formed his confed- 
 eracy have become the foremost region of the 
 world in the variety, the usefulness and the vol- 
 ume of its manufactures, and the fertility of its 
 inventive genius. Paying its labor fifty per 
 cent, more than the rest of the world, it pro- 
 duces the food, the clothing, and the household 
 effects which the laborer uses cheaper than the 
 older nations; and the surplus of wages flow- 
 ing into the savings-banks are finally invested 
 in homes, and in the multitude of homesteads 
 is the greatest safety of society and the State. 
 The United States is the granary, the work- 
 shop, the pohtical hope of the world. It can 
 largely feed, and in the interchanges of trade 
 supply many other material wants of the peo- 
 ples who are inspired by its successful hberty 
 to strive for better government and nobler hves. 
 Its vast network of railways, its lakes, rivers, 
 and canals carry a commerce of incalculable 
 value, and its surplus above our home consump- 
 tion is to be the growing element of our na- 
 
 32 
 
tional wealtli. This grand product is freighted 
 in foreign ships, and its carriers depend for 
 their profits upon the enemies of the expansion 
 of our conunerce. I said to a representatiye of 
 the new steamship line which is to make the 
 hnk across the Pacific of the route from the 
 Bast over the American Continent and to 
 Europe, — a route whose possibilities tax the 
 imagination, — "Why, instead of connecting 
 with the Canadian Pacific and running through 
 Canada, do you not meet our Transcontinental 
 system, making Chicago your entrepot and dis- 
 tributing point for the West and New- York for 
 the East? " He answered, "Because we would 
 lose our subsidy of three hundred thousand dol- 
 lars a year from the British Groyemment." 
 
 In that answer lay the secret of the disap- 
 pearance of the American flag from the ocean. 
 In the recognition of the necessity for a com- 
 mercial nation meeting for its citizens the aid 
 given by foreign governments, which is beyond 
 the power of private enterprise, is the potency 
 and promise of American trade with the world, 
 and of the old-time supremacy of America on 
 the seas. The new conquest will give to us the 
 commerce of South America, and wealth beyond 
 the dreams of Pizarro and the Spanish victors. 
 
 33 
 
It will follow the opening of tlie African con- 
 tinent ; it will share in the riches of India and 
 the islands of the east ; our shipyards will be the 
 centers of fruitful industries along our coasts, 
 and our navy once more our boast, our protec- 
 tion, and our pride. 
 
 Last summer Victoria, Queen of England and 
 Empress of India, celebrated with imposing 
 ceremonial the fiftieth anniversary of her reign. 
 The world never witnessed a more ghttering 
 pageant, and no people in heralding and accom- 
 panying the procession with loyal enthusiasm 
 and ringing acclaim ever viewed a half century 
 of retrospect with loftier pride. The Queen, as 
 sovereign and woman, commanded their devo- 
 tion, respect, and love, but nowhere in that 
 splendid procession appeared the witnesses for 
 the triumphs of the people which will be 
 remembered as the chief glory of her reign. 
 Subject princes from India, whose ancestors 
 had faced Alexander of Macedon, and tributary 
 sovereigns from Asia and Africa and the islands 
 of the sea exhibited the conquests of Enghsh 
 arms and the world-circhng supremacy of the 
 British flag. Representatives of the reigning 
 houses of the monarchies of Europe testified to 
 her royal lineage and inherited rights, and the 
 
 34 
 
mediaeval pomp and chivalry brought the spirit 
 of feudalism into vivid contrast with the glori- 
 ous sunlight of the nineteenth century. 
 
 At the same time, in Philadelphia, the United 
 States were celebrating the hundredth anniver- 
 sary of the life of their constitution. The most 
 ancient and venerable relic of the past in its 
 procession was the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence, emblazoning every banner with the 
 motto, " We hold, these truths to be ^eH-evi- 
 dent, that all men are created equal, that they 
 are endowed by the Creator with certain inahen- 
 able rights, that among these are life, hberty, 
 and the pursuit of happiness"; and next in 
 order of age and sanctity was the Constitution, 
 the charter of our G-ovemment, commencing 
 with the immortal axiom of representative lib- 
 erty, "We, the people of the United States." 
 In our ceremonial were the mammoth printing 
 presses, the locomotive, the steamship, the 
 steam-engine, the telegraph, trained hghtning 
 ia its manifold, forms of usefulness, the inven- 
 tions and their marvelous and beneficent 
 powers, the arts in their development and per- 
 fection, the school-house and the university, 
 the hardy pioneer, the retreating savage, the 
 wilderness, the settlement, the farms and rich 
 
 35 
 
harvests, the village, the city with its magic 
 growth and wondrous industries; and, pervading 
 the pageant, the political ideal of man, pano- 
 phed with American liberty, and responsible 
 and obedient only to Grod and the law. 
 
 Westward the course of empire takes its way ; 
 The first four acts already past, 
 A fifth shall close the drama with the day ; 
 Time's noblest offspring is the last. 
 
 As the human race have moved along down 
 the centuries, the vigorous and ambitious, the 
 dissenters from bhnd obedience and the origi- 
 nal thinkers, the colonists and State-builders 
 have broken camp with the momiag, and fol- 
 lowed the sun until the close of day. They 
 have tarried for ages ia fertile valleys and be- 
 side great streams ; they have been retarded by 
 barriers of mountains and seas beyond their 
 present resources to overcome; but as the 
 family grew into the tribe,, the tribe into the 
 nation, and equal authority into the despotism 
 of courts and creeds, those who possessed the 
 indomitable and unconquerable spirit of free- 
 dom have seen the promise flashed from the 
 clouds in the glorious rays of the siuking orb of 
 day, and first with despair and courage, and 
 
 36 
 
then with coiirage and hope, and lastly with 
 faith and prayer, they have marched Westward. 
 In the purification and trials of wandering and 
 settlement they have left behind narrow and 
 degrading laws, traditions, customs, and castes, 
 until now, as the Occident faces the Orient 
 across the Pacific, and the globe is circled, at 
 the last stop and in their permanent home the 
 individual is the basis of Grovemment, and aU 
 men are equal before the law. The glorious 
 example of the triumphant success of the peo- 
 ple governing themselves fans the feeble spirit 
 of the effete and exhausted Asiatic with the 
 possibilities of the replanting of the Grarden of 
 Eden and of the restoration of the historic 
 grandeur of the birth-place of mankind. It is 
 putting behind every bayonet which is car- 
 ried at the order of Bismarck or the Czar men 
 who, in doing their own thinking, wiU one day 
 decide for themselves the problems of peace 
 and war. It wiU penetrate the breeding-places 
 of Anarchy and Sociahsm, and cleanse and 
 purify them. 
 
 The scenes of the fifth act of the grand drama 
 are changing, with the world as its stage, and 
 aH races and tongues the audience. And yet, 
 as it culminates in power, and grandeur, and ab- 
 
 37 
 
sorbing interest, the attention remains riveted 
 upon one majestic cliaracter. He stands tlie 
 noblest leader who was ever intrusted with his 
 country's hfe. His patience under provocation, 
 his calmness in danger, and lofty courage when 
 all others despaired, his prudent delays when 
 the Continental Congress was imperative and 
 the Staff almost insubordinate, and his quick 
 and resistless blows when action was possible, 
 his magnanimity to his def amers and generosity 
 to his foes, his ambition for his country and 
 unselfishness for himself, his sole desire the 
 freedom and independence of America, and his 
 only wish to return after victory to private life 
 and the peaceful pursuits and pleasures of 
 home, have all combined to make him, by the 
 unanimous judgment of the world, the fore- 
 most figure in history. Not so abnormally de- 
 veloped' in any direction as to be called a 
 genius, yet he was the strongest because the 
 best balanced, the fullest rounded, the most 
 even and most self -masterful of men, — the in- 
 carnation of common sense and moral purity, 
 of action and repose. 
 
 The Republic will hve so long as it reveres 
 the memory and emulates the virtues of George 
 Washington. 
 
 38