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Bryan or McKinley? The Present Duty of American Citizens.
X. The Presidential Election - Our Duty.
by North American Review, The
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Government by party, which seems essential under present
conditions, furnishes platforms which usually commend
themselves unreservedly to supporters; being made not so much to
stand upon as to get in upon, nothing is proclaimed in them
which is likely to offend any section of the party. Points likely
to meet with disfavor are either ignored or smothered in
meaningless platitudes. But occasions arise when the supporter who
regards parties only as means to ends, differs from the official
rulers and makers of platforms upon a vital issue, and he is then
called upon to consider seriously whether it be of such paramount
importance as to make it his duty to refrain from voting, or even
to vote against his party. The former course is adopted
frequently, the latter rarely; nevertheless it sometimes becomes our
duty to go to this extreme.
In the last Presidential campaign the Gold Democrats reached
the first stage and refused to vote for the candidate of their party,
but did not generally vote for the opposing candidate. A
candidate of their own was nominated; but many felt the standard
of value to be of such vital importance as to dwarf all other
considerations, and, preferring Country to Party, left their party, to
support the Republican candidate. Those who did so were
certainly actuated by a compelling sense of duty, for the leaving
of party by loyal members is equivalent to the breaking up of
family relations hitherto harmonious and happy. It is the last
resort, only justified when all else has failed. We should labor
long and hard for reform within our party before attempting to
enforce reform upon it from without, yet it is not among the
unswerving supporters of party that a country in times of trial
finds its saviours. My party, right or wrong ! and My country,
right or wrong ! are the cries of those who can never be of the
highest value as citizens, or safe guides in a national crisis. On
the contrary, these are the most dangerous of all classes to their
countrys welfare; for parties and States are bound to regard what
is right and must be opposed by those whose conscience is
awakened to wrongdoing by either. The most precious citizen is
the man who will go with his country or his party only if it be
right, but who upon occasion hesitates not to condemn either when
in his opinion it champions the wrong. It is not those who
support but those who rebuke the wrong, whether of country or party,
who are the salt of a nation, and truly patriotic. History abounds
in instances where the voice and action of the few have saved a
country, or have so impressed it that it has been deterred from
following in a wrong path into which it has strayed. This is
particularly true in regard to questions involving Peace or War.
Among the axioms of the demagogue, none is considered safer
than this: Show the people sport and they will follow you,
the sport being the killing of men by men in battle under the
name of war. It is so easy to wave the flag and carry the
excited masses into bloodshed, but how low has the statesman sunk
who descends to this! Dr. Johnson said to Boswell that
patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. It is also the sure resort
of the demagogue. War is always a winning card for the
scheming politician to play when differences arise between nations,
because it appeals to the baser part of man, dethrones divine reason,
exalts brutal passion, excites the traits man shares with the brute
which degrade humanity
Our own country is young and its record, until recently, has
been free from the crime of aggressive warfare upon other
civilized peoples. The War for Independence was righteous, being in
defence of constitutional liberties, which we should ever stand
ready to defend. Its triumph benefited both oppressor and
oppressed. It is better for Britain and for America that the one
should be independent of the other. The War of 1812 was in
defence of rights assailed upon the sea, and what the Republic
fought for is now established. The War for the Union was equally
for the benefit of North and South, of slave and of master. It
preserved for all a common country.
It is from Britain, the elder branch of our English-speaking
race, that the most valuable lessons are to be derived as to the
folly of aggressive wars. The war against the American Colonies
is now admitted by all parties in Britain to have been a mistake.
The whole campaign against Napoleon, which still loads Britain
with her huge national debt, is now seen to have been a mistake
also. Under similar conditions, it would not be entered upon
today. As to the Crimean War against Russia, Lord Salisbury has
recently stated that it was a great blunder. The men most highly
honored in British history, as having been the true guides who
pointed out the path their country should follow and denounced
its errors, are Burke and Chatham, who denounced the American
War; Bright and Cobden, who denounced the Crimean War; not
George the Third and Lord North, nor the Jingoes who howled
for the Crimean War against Russia. These now stand in their
proper places as false guides, and, if truth be spoken, in many
cases as demagogues, who played the card of war simply because
that was the issue upon which they could ride to or retain power.
The same fate awaits those who have precipitated war against the
South African Republics, upon the pretence that they were
concerned to make it easier for Britons there to abandon citizenship
and become Afrikanders. Not these men, but Campbell-Bannerman,
Harcourt, Morley, Courtney, Sir Edward Clarke and their
colleagues are soon to be held in esteem, and extolled as the true
patriots who protested against the wrong. In due season, also,
those of our Republican party who drove the President into war
and the purchase of the Philippines, against his own wise desires,
will occupy a position similar to that of the British Jingoes. If
there be one duty which a man of influence has to perform to his
country higher than another, it is to refrain from arousing the
passions of the people against other nations and to keep them in
the paths of peace. Humanity has travelled far and upward in the
ages past, but there still remains in us a sub-stratum of the savage,
far too readily moved to draw the sword and kill. He who appeals
to this as a means of popularity must despise himself, and in the
court of his own conscience stand ever condemned, the most
torturing punishment that can fall upon man.
In the present Presidential campaign, many Republicans who,
like the writer, voted for the first Republican ticket and never
voted any other than a Republican ticket, are called upon to
consider the departure of the official leaders of their party from the
policy of the Republic, in the purchase and attempted conquest
of the Filipinos, with the intention of holding their country as
conquered territory and not as part of the Union, with its citizens
equal under the flag The Union is to be composed not of one
homogeneous whole, the flag is to wave not over citizens possessed
of equal rights, but we are to follow the example of the military
nations of Europe and endeavor to govern far distant peoples as
subjects not citizens, vassals not freemen. No more complete
reversal of doctrines hitherto held precious by Americans can be
conceived. In this attempt, up to last returns, we have already
sacrificed 5,467 men killed or wounded, and squandered 186
millions of dollars, no doubt over two hundred millions to date, and
constantly increasing, all wrung from the people by additional
taxation. We have sent 81,000 soldiers to one of the twelve
hundred islands we forced Spain to sell us for twenty millions of
dollars, contrary to the instructions first given to the Peace
Commissioners. Sixty-three thousand soldiers still remain there, and
this force, more than double the entire standing army of the
United States until recently, is still required to keep down the
people. Hence, sufficient force could not be spared from Manila
to rescue our Ambassador at Pekin. One writer states that four
thousand of them are in hospital; thus wastes our army away!
And we only hold the region around Manila; all else of the
115,000 square miles of the territory we claim to have bought
and are vainly hoping to conquer remains, as before, unvisited by
our force. This is a serious situation.
The question which the member of the Republican party has
to decide at this juncture is, whether this mis-step be sufficient to
cause him to refrain from voting for its nominee, or even to vote
against him. Before this can be decided, we must consider the
alternative and its consequences, for our acts are right or wrong
in political life according to the results to be avoided or attained
for our country through them. It is to-day a question of weighing
differing results against each other and deciding upon which
side the balance of good lies.
Let us therefore consider the platforms of the contending
parties.
The Republican platform is vague upon the anti-American
idea of permanent, conquered, foreign dependencies outside of the
Union. It says: " Our authority could not be less than our responsibility; and
wherever sovereign rights are extended, it becomes the high duty of
the government to maintain its authority, to put down armed
insurrection, and to confer the blessings of liberty and civilization upon all
the rescued peoples. The largest measure of self-government
consistent with their welfare and our duties shall be secured to them by law.
To Cuba independence and self-government were assured in the same
voice by which war was declared, and to the letter this pledge shall
be performed."
No serious objection need be urged to this, except that we do
not believe that the payment of two dollars per head for ten
millions of the Filipinos can give sovereign rights over men, nor that
Spain could give clear title against our allies the Filipino patriots,
who had risen against her in righteous rebellion for independence.
But the important point is that our party here pledges itself anew
in its platform to give Cuba independence and self-government,
fit work for the party of Freedom. What we should continue to
press upon the party is to consider whether it would not be best
to promise the Filipinos what we have promised the Cubans. It
does not seem good sense to pursue a different policy for them.
Admiral Dewey is not the only one who assures us that they are
better qualified to govern themselves than the Cubans. What was
good and wise policy for the one seems so for the other. We have
encouraged the highest aspirations of the latter for
independence, as President McKinley so finely said. We see here that
the true mission of our giant republic lies in the creation and
protection of the new republic of Cuba. We should one day, and not
long hence, make our country the mother of nations, and regard
the Republic of Cuba and the first Republic of the Orient as our
noblest work, in line with the emancipation of our slaves. There
is nothing in our platform antagonistic to this policy. The
Republican party is the only proper agency for this sublime task.
The Democratic party has earned no right by virtue of its past
record to rob our party of its heritage.
The apologetic note is heard more and more touching the
Philippines, which are rapidly proving themselves in every respect
undesirable, and few indeed fail to express the wish in private,
though their tongues may be silent in public, that the President
had adhered to his original instructions to the Peace
Commissioners. We shall probably soon return to the true path,
welcoming expansion of contiguous territory where we can grow our own
race and enrol them as citizens, but refraining from forcing our
rule upon others in far distant lands or from ever accepting the
idea that the American flag can permanently float over any but
citizens possessed of equal rights, members of the one glorious
Union, "now and forever indivisible."
Along with the platform, we are bound to consider the Man
who is to steer the Ship of State under its provisions. Much
depends upon him. What, then, of President McKinley, if his
official career is to be extended over a second term? What manner
of man is he? No one who knows Mr. McKinley and his life
can fail to wish for him, as an individual, many long years of
unclouded happiness, for every domestic virtue is his. His place
as a man is securely fixed in all hearts; but his official place in
history, as one who has filled the highest political office upon the
earth, we trust is not to be determined by his past, but by his
future conduct of affairs; for, were he to retire at the end of his
first term, his position must rank low indeed, for he would leave
his country still involved in one of the most complete failures
of modern times, the attempt to bring forth from his Pandora box,
the Philippines, any result other than deplorablea Sisyphean
labor in which success is impossible.
The writer believes that the President, freed from the many
embarrassments which hamper all Presidents during their first
term, will prove more of a master, and that more of the President
and less of his party managers will prove most advantageous for
the country. He has been much wiser than others in the party
who have shouted loudest. Let it never be forgotten that he was
sound upon the question of war, and that his hand was cruelly
forced by men far his inferiors in statesmanship. Again, he was
entirely right in regard to the Philippines, as his instructions to
the Peace Commissioners prove. Here, again, the shouting
crowds, backed by political managers, drove him into a reversal of
his wise policy. He was right, also, in regard to Porto Rico, but
compelled by his political managers to retract, and agree to the
present discreditable legislation. The writer has no desire to
imply that, in his opinion, the party managers were not right in their
view that an extension of our laws to Porto Rico, with the dark
shadow of the Philippines behind, would have disrupted our party.
He believes that the masses of working-men, both in agriculture
and manufacturing, upon whom our party rests, will never agree to
the free introduction of the products of tropical possessions; hence
the mistake, in his opinion, of our party persisting in the effort
to attach the Philippines or merge them into our political system.
But Porto Rico being now a part of the Union, merged as a
strategic base never to be surrendered, the President was right in
holding it to be our plain duty to give it all the rights of Union
Thus, upon all these important issues, the President has shown
true statesmanship, and gives foundation for the hope that, during
his second term, with the people at his back, he will show increased
and justifiable confidence in his own conclusions, lie would be
his own wisest counsellor, if he had a proper estimate of his own
remarkable insight and faculty for grasping at once the true
bearing of public affairs.
The marked success, thus far, of his management of tbe
dangerous Chinese question, when Congress and party leaders are
fortunately scattered, is another case in point. Left to himself, he
has succeeded in giving our country a position never before
attained in international affairs, and kept our government right
when all others were wrong, Russia perhaps excepted, whose views
were withheld until recently from public expression. The United
States hare taken and held the leading position among the
cooperating nations from the start, and seem now to be the natural
mediator through whom peace is to be restored. A higher honor
for the Republic could not be imagined than that she should be
the blessed instrument to bring about peace among men.
There is thus abundant reason to hope that President
McKinley may yet shape events in such a way as to be able to repeat to
the Filipinos his few potent words to the Cubans, promising his
aid and protection in establishing a free and independent
government, thus "realizing their highest aspirations." These few
words would change the entire situation and give him rank with
the greatest; for the future would then remember him as the
Father, not the Suppressor, of the first Republic of the Orient,
which, like the Cuban Republic, would come slowly but steadily
forth under his fostering care. Next to Lincoln's emancipation
of our own oppressed, this act would rank in the history of his
country. Here lies true glory for a patriot to win for the
Republic. Some President will win it; but we shall not believe that
the prize is not reserved for President McKinley, and for the
Republican party, to which such work properly belongs. It was
born to emancipate, not to enslave. If it ceases to create Citizens,
and creates and rules over Vassals to whom it denies equality in
the Union, it deserves to die.
When we study the Democratic platform we find that its
Americanism, as opposed to Imperialism, rings true. It stands,
as the writer feels, for the true policy, the only policy consistent
with the fundamental ideas which gave birth to the Republic, and
to which it must hold true or fall from its hitherto proud position
among the nations of the earth. It is also American in every
syllable against militarism, and the huge standing army for which
our party is responsible, but which, let us hope, the coming
Congress is to reduce. It is right upon Porto Rico, where it occupies
the Presidents first position, and tells the people our "plain duty."
It is right in regard to Cuba; but here our party, the writer
rejoices to say, is in full accord. It is right, also, in regard to
expansion. It is right in condemning the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty
as un-American. It is right in regard to the Boers. It is right
in regard to the speedy repeal of war taxes, but here again our
party is equally so. One of the first acts of the new Congress,
both from a party and a national point of view, should be the
repeal of many petty, irritating taxes which should never have
been imposed.
This being said, all has been said that can be urged in favor
of the Democratic ticket. The most serious objection to it is not
the proposed lowering of the standard of value, serious though
that be. It lies in the insidious attacks upon the Supreme Court,
which strike at the foundations of human society. It saps the
roots of peace and order, and, if successful, substitutes license for
law, and throws us back to barbarism, even to savagery. Without
courts of law and profound reverence for their final decisions,
which should be considered as sacred, we have nothing, for it is
upon these that civilization rests. President McKinley at present
stands for war and violence abroad, but Mr. Bryan stands for these
scourges at home. Whatever Democrats may urge in explanation,
or as to the literal meaning of the words employed, the fact
remains that an attack is made in the platform of a political party
upon a decision of the Supreme Court, the highest and grandest of
all human tribunals the world has ever seen, and which, being
undermined, there remains only civil disorder. It is not possible
to support a party whose platform contains such an attack; better,
far better, continue for a time the wrongful effort to force our
government upon the Filipinos, in total disregard of Republican
ideas, than fail to repel this covert attack upon the reign of law
at home.
The Silver Issue, as a question for discussion, is a "back number."
The only argument against the highest standard of value
which had plausibility was the quantitative theory, which would
be right if gold and silver were used for exchanges. But it is
groundless from the simple fact that for only five per cent. of
exchanges are the metals used; to the extent of ninety-five per
cent. they are transacted upon credit, and it is this vast fabric
of credit, upon which the business of the world rests, that the
threatened change of the standard of value would throw into
confusion. The trifling five per cent. for which the metals are used
need scarcely be taken into account. Since the supply of gold has
been and is being so surprisingly augmented at a ratio ever
increasing, Mr. Bryan is too late, for the question is no longer the
scarcity of gold, but rather its threatened superabundance, as far
as the stability of the standard is concerned, according to the
quantitative theory, upon which Mr. Bryan has hitherto stood. Not a
voice is heard any longer in any other part of the world against
the gold standard. When the Democratic platform talks of
international bimetallism, it harks back to a bygone delusion which
all other nations have discarded. Fiat money is now the only lure
that can hereafter be tried with any hope of winning votes; the
monetization of silver having been discussed, decided, and laughed
out of court throughout the world. Nevertheless, we cannot disguise
the fact that the election of Mr. Bryan would undoubtedly cause
apprehension to the timid, and a few timid men suffice to make a
panic; for there is no chord more sensitive than the credit upon
which ninety-five per cent. of all business rests. Mr. Bryan as
President, with a Secretary of the Treasury of like views, might
resolve to pay in silver as being coin - a course which would bring
financial panic in every channel of business in an hour. In saying
this, we pay Mr. Bryan the deserved compliment of recognizing
that he has convictions, and that the danger of panic and all the
suffering it entails to the toiling masses, who are ever the worst
sufferers, is in exact proportion to the faith his countrymen have
in his honesty and fidelity to principle. We all fear, and have a
right to fear, that with a reputation for devotion to principle akin
to that earned by Lincoln, Mr. Bryan would support and try to
enforce his convictions. This means a President, with all the
influence a President has in Senate and House, which is generally
potent, determined by every means in his power to throw the
exchanges of the country into chaos. We cannot be a party to aid
his elevation to power, strongly as we approve his true
Americanism as far as Imperialism goes, or deeply as his character and
ability have impressed us. An earnest, honest man in the wrong
is more to be dreaded than the average politician, who changes
with the wind. Mr. Bryan is much too earnest, too sincere and
true to be entrusted with power, filled as he is with ideas
subversive of economic laws, and of the laws upon which our complex
human society rests.
The Democratic platform favors an income tax, which Mr.
Gladstone declared tended to make a nation of liars. So deeply
impressed was he with its injurious effects upon the national
character that he resolved to repeal it. That a true American can
favor the miserable espionage required to enforce it is surprising.
Nothing would be more un-American than to subject every man's
business and financial affairs to the scrutiny of government
officials, who would be in many cases affiliated with rival concerns or
possible competitors in the future. The tax was cheerfully borne
for some years duing the War for the Union, and would be again
under similar circumstances, although it would be a grave mistake
to resort to it. The tariff is a far better instrument for assessing
the rich, more effective, and free from objectionable espionage.
The writer believes in collecting the revenues, as far as possible,
from the rich, and favors heavy death taxes upon estates in lieu of
income tax. There is no reason why the necessary expenditures
of the government should not come chiefly from this class through
such taxes, and through the tariff. When we tire of our
Philippine policy - as we shall ere long - and reduce our army to its
normal number, sufficient revenue will be easily secured. Costly
foreign wines, tobacco, laces, silks, linens, broadcloth, and the
thousand and one luxuries we import, should be made to pay
excessively high duties. Domestic products are used by the masses;
and those Americans who indulge in foreign articles, which
are really luxuries, should be made to pay for their fastidious
tastes as a matter of revenue. To tax foreign luxuries heavily and
to collect a high percentage of death duties upon estates should be
the policy, instead of exposing every mans business affairs and
giving the dishonest the advantage over the honest, as all
experience shows an income tax does, and must do in the nature of
things.
Besides this, an income tax involves the creation of an
enormous staff of permanent officials, who have in their keeping a
knowledge of the private affairs of their fellow-citizens, dangerous
to all. Even if these officials were appointed, as in Britain,
substantially for life, the tax would soon be found intolerable in a
new land like ours, free from a distinct and permanent official
class unconnected with business aiff airs and leading lives as
members of a profession apart from the people in general. We have in
Mr. Bryan an extraordinary man - a typical American, as
President McKinley himself is, a product that only American soil can
grow - a man of the people in every fibre, like McKinley and Lin-
coln; but his career shows that the theoretical and superficial
views of affairs still captivate him. He seems not to have studied
down to the root of things, and he has yet to learn how often the
theoretical and practical effects of legislation differ. In theory
there is no tax fairer than that upon income, in practice none
so injurious to a nation.
Again, we must believe that had he duly considered the effect
of dragging the judicial decisions of our final Court of Appeal
into the arena of party politics, he could not have sanctioned so
flagrant a violation of the theory upon which our Constitution
rests, which is that, over and above the Legislative and Executive,
which constitute the Political Department, there sits the final and
supreme Arbiter, the Judicial, in the calm atmosphere of Law,
removed from the passion and violence of party, unmoved by
political change, settling all disputes finally, and thus decreeing
and enforcing peace among all persons and all parties, and even
among the States themselves. In this Tribunal rests our assurance
of continued peaceful development. The party which drags its
judgments into a political campaign should be defeated. We
should reverence above all other institutions the Supreme Court;
it is so distinctively American, and is perhaps the most precious,
as it is the most original, of all the features of that perfect work,
the American Constitution. The elevation of the Judicial above
the Political is almost unknown, and is wholly so among English
speaking people, save with us; with all others the Political
Parliament is supreme. There is thus nothing more American than
the Supreme Court. Mr. Bryan's Americanism is sound only so
far as Imperialism goes. Upon the Income Tax, and - infinitely
more serious - upon the Supreme Court, the ark of our national
covenant, he is no more American than President McKinley is at
present upon his own truly American doctrines of "Criminal
Aggression" and "plain duty."
We find many dangers ahead in Mr. Bryan's success. First:
that of License instead of Law at home, in our very midst,
through political denunciation of judicial decisions. Second: not
Gold and Silver, but Silver alone, since an inferior drives out a
superior currency. This means defrauding Labor to the extent of
one-half of its earnings under the gold standard, and the loss to
the people of one-half of their savings in Banks, since these
savings, which are now repayable in gold, would then be repaid in
silver. Third: a Tax upon the Incomes of citizens, inaugurating
an un-American system of espionage demoralizing to the national
character.
We find against President McKinley's success a threatened
continuance of the costly and unsuccessful attempt to suppress the
laudable aspirations of the Filipinos for the independence of their
country, in accordance with the American idea of the rights of
man, which he has promised the Cubans, and for which Franklin,
Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, and the fathers of our country
rebelled and Washington drew the sword. Mr. Bryan would bring
upon his countrymen all the evils of civil strife at home, by
undermining our courts of law. President McKinley's policy only
requires our soldiers to shoot down men abroad guilty of the
crime of fighting and dying for their countrys independence.
Class once arrayed against class at home, all is lost; restoration of
peace and order could only come in a far distant future; whereas
the employment of our forces in suppressing Filipinos abroad
must be a matter of to-day only, for it is incredible that the
people will tolerate this waste of men and money much longer.
The writer believes that the end of it is near; but, even if he were
mistaken, and it were left for the Opposition at a subsequent
election to drive his party from power in Congress and restore the
true policy by refusing to maintain the present huge standing
army necessary for the purpose, he sees clearly and beyond doubt
that his duty as a citizen is to support the nominee of the
Republican party in the present contest, as being that party which alone
can preserve the country from threatened dangers at home, so
serious as to overshadow all other issues, and also as the party
which will, in the future as in the past, administer the
government for the highest and best interests of the Republic.
The Party of Protection of American Industries, of Internal
Improvements, the Party of the Union, of Emancipation, and of
the Highest Standard of Value for the moncy of the people, the
Party of Cuba Free and Independent, is not to be deserted for its
failure so far to perform this same sacred duty to the Philippines.
On the contrary, the party which has been for a generation the
guardian of our country, and whose wise legislation has secured its
present commanding position, may wisely be trusted to find the
lost path and return to it, thus retrieving its error.
This the writer believes is to be the certain and not remote
result, and for that end he shall continue to exert whatever
influence he may possess or acquire, within, not without, the party
for which he cast his first vote and for which he hopes to cast his
last, and in this he is proud to follow Ex-Speaker Reed, Senators
Hoar, Hale, Mason, ex-Senator Edmunds and others, statesmen
eminent alike for party and personal service and for personal
character.
ANDREW CARNEGIE.
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