"We do not take possession of our ideas, but are possessed by them. They master us and force us into the arena, Where, like gladiators, we must fight for them.” -HEINE THE ARENA VOL. XXV. APRIL, 1901. No. 4. THE PASSING OF THE DECLARATION. T is not the design of this paper to attempt either to justify or to arraign the motives and present tendencies of the United States concerning its self-evident ambition for international supremacy. That ambition, while unquestionably a fact, yet, so far from being in the nature of a transient fancy excited by recent military and naval successes, is an original instinct planted in the very constitution of Anglo-Saxon character and attested by the continuous drift of fifteen hundred years. That the Anglo-Saxon is predestined by his own racial conditions to be a controlling factor in world politics need hardly be affirmed, and, if we may form conclusions from the past and present stages of his historic development, there seems to be no disposition on his part to avoid that destiny. He has been as inclusive in his ambition, as aggressive in his policy, as ruthless in his conquest, as the Roman ever was, and far more successful in his administration. But he will never admit that, like the Roman, the basic principle of his empire has been the domination of force. Both the Englishman and the American, but particularly the latter, have an inherent and apparently ineradicable hostility to calling things by their right names and looking facts squarely in the face-an inconsistency of precept and practise that tends not unnaturally to throw distrust upon the sincerity of our attachment to certain well-known and much protested principles. It was the consciousness of this fact in a few of the more sensitive minds and its application to contemporary conditions that furnished the main text for the fulminations of the Opposition during the recent period of political debate-an opposition sound in theory but contrary to the testimony of historical facts. As a matter of theory, "imperialism" in any form is repugnant to American ideals. As a matter of fact, we have been, and are to-day more than ever, an imperialistic nation, and an imperialistic nation with a more vital and intense significance than the most zealous expansionist of five months ago probably imagined. It is not the purpose of this essay to disparage our national genius or to find fault with the "course of empire," but merely to submit in brief outline a few of the historic and material inconsistencies between government as theoretically conceived and government as practically administered by the American people; and finally, if the facts adduced shall warrant the conclusion, respectfully to suggest that we henceforth exclude from our political phraseology those extravagant professions of superior inspiration of which our national utterance is full, and concerning which our national history has been a continuous refutation. It was urged during the recent campaign that the United States should not attempt the business of ruling subject colonies, for the reason that such a course would be contrary to the Declaration of Independence and a plain departure from our constitutional intent; or, as expressed in the somewhat specious phrase of the Kansas City platform-"The Filipinos cannot be citizens without endangering our civilization; they cannot be subjects without imperiling our form of government." Undoubtedly it is contrary to the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence to hold the Filipinos as subjects under any pretense whatever, because such holding implies, first, the assumption of racial superiority, and, second, the right of the superior by reason of that superiority to rule-both of which assumptions the Declaration of Independence clearly denies. But, on the other hand, that instrument is contrary to the Constitution of the United States, and not only that, but contrary to the common necessities of any government as well as to the common sense of mankind. The Declaration of Independence tolerates no discrimination against persons, knows no superiority of one over another, and approves no government as just that does not find its source and sanction in the theory of popular sovereignty. The Constitution of the United States recognizes all three, and imposes an external and superior authority over a vast majority of inhabitants who are without any voice in government either direct or representative. It is difficult to harmonize "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" with the almost general exclusion by the various States of the Union of a majority of their inhabitants from the exercise of suffrage. Theoretically the forty-five States of the Union are forty-five commonwealths whose constitutional and statutory enactments are determined voce populi. Practically they are so many oligarchies based on qualifications of age, sex, mental acquirement, and whatever additional limitations the ruling class sees fit to make. It will be no innovation in principle for the United States to administer laws to colonial dependencies and govern distant subjects from the "imperial city." In a sense, all are subjects who owe allegiance to government; but there is a specific and technical sense in which the term properly belongs to our American system, however distasteful that fact may be to our democratic sentiments. To begin with, the subject state may be predicated of all women in all States except five. They constitute more than one-half the population of the country. Add to these all men of less than twenty-one years of age, who form not far from one-half the remainder. These two classes, comprising the vast majority of the citizenship of this country, have no voice in its legislation and no initiative in the determination of their own interests. So with the Territories. Here all the inhabitants, whether men or women, minors or adults, are subjects par excellence, governed by an exterior power and taxed without any semblance to the right of representation. They may not vote for President, nor participate in national legislation, nor elect their own judiciary, but are governed by the Congress of the United States and by officials appointed by the highest executive authority. It is a fundamental principle of AngloAmerican jurisprudence that judges shall be irremovable by the Executive power. This guaranty has been persistently denied to the Territories, and there is no Territorial judge who is not liable to removal at any time by the President of the United States a fact that suggests the question, What becomes of the inviolability of the courts? There is no essential difference, so far as the matter of rights is concerned, between the American Territories of to-day and the thirteen colonies before the Revolutionary war. The rights of the colonies depended wholly upon the imperial will; that is, the will of the Executive power. So do the rights of the Territories today. When the imperial will changed, the rights of the colonies changed; and so at any time may the rights of the Territories change and even disappear with the fluctuations of the Executive mind. True, the Territories may in time · become States, although the Constitution contains no guaranty that they shall, since it was the plain intention of the framers of that document that we should, if we wanted to, hold dependencies and hold them indefinitely and never allow them to become anything else. Utah was denied Statehood for fifty years. Arizona and New Mexico have been seeking admittance to the Union for more than fifty years, and are still on the "waiting list" with the apparent probability of remaining there. Take another aspect of this same thought. This nation itself came into being through an act of unquestionably usurpative and imperialistic nature. The years immediately following the Revolutionary war found the newly independent States internally in a condition of grave danger-the result of financial disorder and general governmental inutility. At the instigation of a few prominent individuals a convention was appointed to remedy the existing defects by amending the Articles of Confederation. The purpose of the convention, as |