tions of civil and religious liberty, and the United States of America, first-born of these institutions, facing westward, carrying the same institutions, with the practical experience of over a hundred years in self-government will some day meet in the far-off Orient, having belted the globe with institutions of civil and religious liberty and constitutional free government for all mankind.

The white man can never lay down his burden so long as oppression and national injustice and wrong exist among the children of men. Nations like individuals owe something to a common humanity, for they are the trustees of civilization. It is ordained in the retribution of that overruling Providence which controls in the affairs of men that nations cannot shirk their responsibilities to liberty and humanity when cast upon them in the course of human events without bitter retributions soon or late in national disasters.

"The ships will part the unknown sea,

The march of thought will reach the strand;
The onward wave of destiny

Will change the features of the land.

"The evil must give place to good,

The false before the true must fade;
There is no stay in Nature's way.

Men cannot choose or peace or war ;'
She sets the task, and none may ask
What her far-reaching counsels are.

"Not in the way the world would please
The needed changes may be wrought:
When and wherever fate decrees

The destined battles will be fought.

"The towers of strength give way at length,

If they be not by right maintained,

And in their place a higher race

Shall build as it has been ordained.

The American defenders of the Tagalo insurgents have no excuse for themselves in any acts of the American colonists. Our fathers in 1776 took up arms against unjust legislation and the attempt by the ministry of George III. to restrict the rights and privileges of Englishmen. The colonists had governments of their own, which they were defending against encroachments by the British Parliament.

The Tagalos in attacking the American army which delivered them from Spanish despotism had no government of their own to defend, for none had ever been established; and they were not resisting unjust laws, for no laws of any kind had been passed; nor had any act of any kind been done by the American people or its army injurious or even unfriendly to the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands.

President Lincoln on the 4th of March, 1861, from the eastern portico of this Capitol in addressing his dissatisfied fellow countrymen, said: "You can have no conflict without yourselves being the aggressors."

In like manner President McKinley through his commanding general notified the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands that they could have no conflict with the United States without they themselves being the aggressors.

General Otis, January 9, 1899, in a communication to Aguinaldo, said: "I am under strict orders of the President of the United States to avoid conflict in

every way possible. There shall be no conflict of forces if I am able to avoid it."

In the evening of February 4, 1899, Aguinaldo and his Tagalos became the aggressors and opened fire along their whole entrenched line upon the American soldiers guarding Manila. The same night Agoncillo, friend and special agent of Aguinaldo, leaves Washington hastily by the midnight train for Canada, hours before any one else in Washington knew of the attack of the Tagalos upon the American army. From that time to this the Tagalo insurrection has continued in pursuance of the plans formed by Aguinaldo in August, 1898, before the capitulation of Manila, when he announced himself dictator and addressed a communication to the leading powers, asking their recognition of the independence of the Philippines, and in pursuance of his purpose to capture or drive the American army out of Manila.

The Tagalos, under Aguinaldo, took up arms to kill their benefactors, who had never done them an injury, but who had periled their lives to release them from the cruelties of Spanish rule. At the demand of such an enemy-an enemy that knows no gratitude and whose barbarism holds prisoners of war for a money ransom-shall the flag of our fathers be lowered a flag that never yet was lowered, save at the grave of the hero who died in its defense?

There is no justification for the American defenders of the Tagalo insurgents in anything contained in the Declaration of American Independence. The revolt of the American colonies began in a protest against unjust laws. Even after the few overzeal

ous patriots had thrown the shipload of imported tea into the waters of Massachusetts Bay, Washington, Franklin, Adams, and Hancock, and most of their copatriots, had no idea of establishing a government independent of that of Great Britain.

The Earl of Chatham, Burke, Barre, Wilkes, and other English statesmen in advocating the cause of the colonies were defending the constitutional rights of Englishmen. And none of them ever advocated the right of the colonies to set up for themselves an independent government.

At length, after the failure of petition and protest, fifty-six bold merchants, farmers, lawyers, and mechanics, representing the organized governments of thirteen colonies, on the 4th of July, 1776, declared that their allegiance to the Crown of Great Britain was at an end. In justification of their act in severing their allegiance to the mother country and in combating the dogma of the divine right of kingly rule they proclaimed certain self-evident truths, among which was that "The just powers of governments are derived from the consent of the governed."

Up to that time mankind had been regarded as composed of two classes-the one born to rule, the other to be ruled; the one possessing all rights in the State, the other possessing no rights save such as might be conferred by the ruling class. It was in combating this claim of the few and the old political dogma of the divine right of kingly rule that our fathers declared that governments derived their just powers from the consent of the governed. In theory, a selfevident truth; but in actual practice then and ever

since governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, if the governed are fitted for self-government. Consent of the criminal classes or the stupidly ignorant is not necessary for a just government, never has been, and never will be.

The self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence proclaimed by our fathers in opposing the political dogmas of their times were ideals to be finally reached in the onward progress of the race to a higher and more perfect civilization, as the polar star, fixed in the heavens, is a guide for the mariner in his course for a haven of safety over tempest tossed

seas.

These ideals were not intended or expected by those who declared them to be reduced to immediate practice, for they did not themselves incorporate them into the framework of the new government which they established. One seventh of the entire population under their new government were chattelborn slaves, bought and sold at the auction block, and continued such for almost a century after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. The consent of women, one half of the population to be governed, was not sought then nor since in order to give just powers to their government.

The Saviour of mankind, when on earth, bade his disciples, "Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." If this injunction is to be the practical test of Christian character then there are no Christians in the world. But a time was promised in the long-coming future when this test applied to the pilgrims on earth would not be mere theory.