ABANDONED REPUBLICANISM.
By A. O. Tait
THERE are very few people who truly realize the serious consequences involved in the recent steps that the United States have taken in the abandonment of her fundamental principles of republicanism. The suddenness with which the move was made and the most rapid developments that have followed are truly remarkable. A regular craze has taken possession of the country to become one of the "great world powers." The events that cluster around the capture and retention of the Philippines is largely responsible for this state of feeling. And the efforts made to forcibly subjugate these islands should open everybody's eyes to the fact that the Republic is being abandoned and the Empire is being launched. For it is perfectly clear that when this country seeks to subdue peoples on distant islands and hold them as colonies, the very thing is being done against which our fathers so nobly fought in the Revolution that resulted in the establishment of this government. The Filipinos have the same right to their independence and freedom that the British colonies claimed and fought for in this country a hundred and twenty-five years ago. And for this country to deny such a right is to forsake and repudiate the whole foundation of her republican form of government. The cause, the reactionary forces,4are mightily working, and the fearful results will soon be seen. When this government was founded, the whole world was in a death struggle between kings, nobles, and the privileged classes on the one hand, and the burdened and enslaved people on the other. The minds of men had been enslaved by the superstitions of kingcraft and priestcraft. But the Reformation set the minds of men free, and the people were struggling for their rights and their freedom, both religious and secular. A commonwealth in which the people might decide their own affairs, a republic where the people might hold their necks from beneath the heel of tyranny and despotism and rule themselves, was their noble and high ideal. The history of England is one long record of the struggle of the people against the self-styled nobility. She tried hard to establish a republican commonwealth, but got instead a constitutional monarchy. In its operations it has come the nearest, perhaps, to a true republic of any government that has ever existed, aside from the United States. France made a stormy effort to establish a republic, but got instead the military despotism of Napoleon. Efforts were made elsewhere in Europe to found republics, but none of them ever really became such in the true sense of the word. The United States alone took the bold stand that governments rule in justice only when it is by the consent of the governed, and that all the people have rights that can not be alienated. This country was at first laughed at because of her "experiments in democracy," but her success led the men of the Old World to first study her, finally to admire her glorious principles and institutions of government, and unconsciously they have been copying her in many ways. America has been a towering beacon of light and progress. America, if true to her righteous principles, would peacefully revolutionize the world. But America is taking the backward track. There are men here to-day who have become emboldened to such an extent that they openly say that the principles of this government are wrong, and that they should be abandoned in favor of the old cast-off trappings of imperialism and monarchy. This could mean nothing else than to bring into this country also the conflict between the people and the wealthy and privileged classes. This means to take up the battles of the sixteenth century anew. Old controversies will be revived, and new ones will arise, and frightful will be the scenes as the two commingle. The intensity of these times will drive the battle forward furiously. Words are tame when we seek to express the awful condition into which this world is—not drifting, but leaping and bounding and plunging.