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siege of Boston. To these men Ireland was still their country, and America a place to get their daily bread. This put me upon thinking. What, then, is patriotism, and what its true value to a man? Was it merely an unreasoning and almost cat-like attachment to certain square miles of the earth's surface, made up in almost equal parts of life-long association, hereditary tradition, and parochial prejudice? This is the narrowest and most provincial form, as it is also, perhaps, the strongest, of that passion or virtue, whichever we choose to call it. But did it not fulfil the essential condition of giving men an ideal outside themselves, which would awaken in them capacities for devotion and heroism that are deaf even to the penetrating cry of self? All the moral good of which patriotism is the fruitful mother, my two Irishmen had in abundant measure, and it had wrought in them marvels of fidelity and self-sacrifice which made me blush for the easier terms on which my own duties of the like kind were habitually fulfilled. Were they not daily pinching themselves that they might pay their tribute to the old hearthstone or the old cause three thousand miles away? If tears tingle our eyes when we read of the like loyalty in the clansmen of the attainted and exiled Lochiel, shall this leave us unmoved?

I laid the lesson to heart. I would, in my own way, be as faithful as they to what I believed to be the best interests of my country. Our politicians are so busy studying the local eddies of prejudice or interest that they allow the main channel of our national energies to be obstructed by dams for the grinding of private grist. Our leaders no longer lead, but are as skilful as Indians in following the faintest trail of public opinion. I find it generally admitted that our moral standard in politics has been lowered, and is every day going lower. Some attribute this to our want of a leisure class. It is to a book of the Apocrypha that we are indebted for the invention of the Man of Leisure. But a leisure class without a definite object in life, and without generous aims, is a bane rather than a

blessing. It would end in the weariness and cynical pessimism in which its great exemplar Ecclesiastes ended, without leaving us the gift which his genius left. What we want is an active class who will insist in season and out of season that we shall have a country whose greatness is measured, not only by its square miles, its number of yards woven, of hogs packed, of bushels of wheat raised, not only by its skill to feed and clothe the body, but also by its power to feed and clothe the soul; a country which shall be as great morally as it is materially; a country whose very name shall not only, as now it does, stir us as with the sound of a trumpet, but shall call out all that is best within us by offering us the radiant image of something better and nobler and more enduring than of something that shall fulfil our own thwarted aspiration, when we are but a handful of forgotten dust in the soil trodden by a race whom we shall have helped to make more worthy of their inheritance than we ourselves had the power, I might almost say the means, to be.

A WARNING AGAINST THE SPIRIT OF EMPIRE

GEORGE F. HOAR

[From a speech in the Senate of the United States on April 17, 1900, against the retention of the Philippines, which had fallen to the United States as one of the results of the Spanish-American War. The speech was called forth by a bill introduced into the Senate and vigorously defended by Senator Beveridge of Indiana, which not only favored the retention of the Philippines, but also seemed to foreshadow an era of colonial expansion on the part of the United States. Senator Hoar's speech was in opposition to this bill.]

I HAVE listened, delighted, as have, I suppose, all the members of the Senate, to the eloquence of my honorable friend 1 from Indiana. I am glad to welcome to the public service his enthusiasm, his patriotism, his silver speech, and the earnest

1 Senator Beveridge.

ness and the courage with which he has devoted himself to a discharge of his duty to the Republic as he conceives it. Yet, Mr. President, as I heard his eloquent description of wealth and glory and commerce and trade, I listened in vain for those words which the American people have been wont to take upon their lips in every solemn crisis of their history. I heard much calculated to excite the imagination of the youth seeking wealth, or the youth charmed by the dreams of empire. But the words, Right, Justice, Duty, Freedom, were absent, my friend must permit me to say, from the eloquent speech. I could think, as this brave young Republic of ours listened to what he had to say, of but one occurrence:

Then the Devil taketh Him up into an exceeding high mountain and showeth Him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. And saith unto Him, "All these things will I give Thee if Thou wilt fall down and worship me."

Then saith Jesus unto him, "Get thee hence, Satan!"

When on the 8th of July, 1898, less than two years ago, the lamented Vice-President1 declared the session of the Senate at an end, the people of the United States were at the highwater mark of prosperity and glory. No other country on earth, in all history, ever saw the like. It was an American prosperity and an American glory.

We were approaching the end of a great century. From thirteen states we had become forty-five states. From three million people we had become nearly eighty million. An enormous foreign commerce, promising to grow to still vaster proportions in the near future, was thrown into insignificance by an internal commerce almost passing the capacity of numbers to calculate. Our manufacturers, making their way past hostile tariffs and fiscal regulations, were displacing the products of the greatest manufacturing nations in their own markets. South of us, from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn, our Monroe doctrine had banished from the American continent

1 Garret A. Hobart.

the powers of Europe; Spain and France had retired; monarchy had taken its leave; and the whole territory was occupied by republics owing their freedom to us, forming their institutions on our example. Our flag was known and honored throughout the earth, was welcomed everywhere in friendly ports, and floated everywhere on friendly seas. We were the freest, richest, strongest nation on the face of the earth — strong in the elements of material strength, stronger still in the justice and liberty on which the foundations of our empire were laid. We had abolished slavery within our own borders by our constitutional mandate, and had abolished slavery throughout the world by the influence of our example.

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We had won the glory of a great liberator in both hemispheres. The flag of Spain . . had been driven from the Western Hemisphere, and was soon to go down from her eastern possessions. The war had been conducted without the loss of a gun or the capture of an American soldier in battle. The glory of this great achievement was unlike any other which history has recorded. It was not that we had beaten Spain. It was not that seventy-five million people had conquered fifteen million. Not that the spirit of the ninetenth century had been too much for the spirit of the fifteenth century. Not that the young athlete had felled to the ground the decrepit old man of ninety. It was not that the American mechanic and engineer in the machine shop could make better ships or better guns; or that the American soldier or sailor had displayed the same quality in battle that he had shown on every field at Bunker Hill, at Yorktown, at Lundy's Lane, at New Orleans, at Buena Vista, at Gettysburg; in every sea fight, on Lake Erie, or on the Atlantic. Nobody doubted the skill of the American general, the gallantry of the American admiral, or the courage of the American soldier or sailor.

The glory of the war and the victory was that it was a war and a victory in the interests of liberty. The American flag had appeared as a liberator in both hemispheres; when it

floated over Havana or Santiago or Manila, there were written on its folds, where all nations could read it, the pledge of the resolution of Congress and the Declaration of the President.

Every true American thanked God that he had lived to behold that day. The rarest good fortune of all was the good fortune of President McKinley. He was, in my judgment, the bestloved President who ever sat in the chair of Washington. . He had won golden honors by his patriotic hesitation in bringing on war, and by his interpretation of the purpose with which the people at last entered upon it.

The American people, so far as I know, were all agreed that their victory brought with it the responsibility of protecting the liberated peoples from the cupidity of any other power until they could establish their own independence in freedom and in honor.

I stand here today to plead with you not to abandon the principles that have brought these things to pass. I implore you to keep to the policy that has made the country great. I have nothing new to say. But I ask you to keep in the old channels, and to keep off the old rocks laid down in the old charts, and to follow the old sailing orders that all the old captains of other days have obeyed, to take your bearings, as of old, from the north star,

Of whose true fixed and resting quality

There is no fellow in the firmament,

and not from this meteoric light of empire.

THE RESTRICTION OF IMMIGRATION

FRANCIS A. WALKER

[From Discussions in Economics; copyright, Henry Holt & Co.]

FINALLY, the present situation is most menacing to our peace and political safety. In all the social and industrial disorders of this country since 1877, the foreign elements have

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