Finally, even on such matters as the Protective System and the encouragement of American Labor, as against the "Pauper Labor" of Europe and of the inferior races, Great Britain has for half a century now advocated the principle of unrestricted industry and free trade,—that is the "Open Door" policy logically carried to its final results. We have denied it, establishing what we in time grew to call the distinctive American system. It is, however, now asserted that "Trade follows the Flag," and that, as respects dependencies at least, the "Open Door" policy is the best policy. If "Trade follows the Flag" in dependencies, and, by so doing, affords the American producer all needful protection and every fair advantage in those dependencies, it is not at once apparent why it fails so to do at home. Is it less docile to the flag, less in harmony with and subservient to it, in the United States, within our own limits, than in remote lands under that flag beyond the seas? And, if so, how is such an apparent anomaly accounted for? But with this question we are not concerned. That problem is for the economist to solve, for in character it is commercial, not historical. The point with us is that again, as regards the "Open Door,"—free trade and no favor, so far as all outside competition is concerned, American labor and "pauper" labor being equally outside,—on this long and hotly contested point, also, England appears on the face of things to have had after all much the best of the argument.
As regards "Pauper Labor," indeed, the reversal contemplated of established policy in favor of European methods is specially noteworthy. The labor of Asia is undeniably less well paid even than that of Europe; but it is now proposed, by a single act, to introduce into our industrial system ten millions of Asiatics, either directly, or through their products sold in open competition with our own; or, if we do not do that, to hold them, ascribed to the soil in a sort of old Saxon serfdom, with the function assigned them of consuming our surplus products, but without in return sending us theirs. The great counterbalancing consideration will not, of course, be forgotten that, like the English in India, we also bestow on them the Blessings of Liberty and the Bible; provided, always, that liberty does not include freedom to go to the United States, and the Bible does include the excellent Old Time and Old World precept (Coloss. 3: 22), "Servants, obey in all things your masters."
It is the same in other respects. It seems to be admitted by the President, and by the leading authorities on the imperialistic policy, that it can only be carried to successful results through the agency of a distinct governing class. Accordingly administration through the agency of military or naval officers is strongly urged both by the President and by Captain Mahan. Other advocates of the policy urge its adoption on the ground, very distinctly avowed, that it will necessitate an established, recognized Civil Service, modelled, they add, on that of Great Britain. If, they then argue, Great Britain can extend—as, indeed, she unquestionably has extended—her system of dependencies all over the globe, developing them into the most magnificent empire the world ever saw, it is absurd, unpatriotic, and pessimistic to doubt that we can do the same. Are we not of the same blood, and the same speech? This is all historically true. Historically it is equally true that, to do it, we must employ means similar to those Great Britain has employed. In other words, modelling ourselves on Great Britain, we must slowly and methodically develop and build up a recognized and permanent governing and official class. The heathen and barbarian need to be studied, and dealt with intelligently and on a system; they cannot be successfully managed on any principle of rotation in office, much less one which ascribes the spoils of office to the victors at the polls. What these advocates of Imperialism say is unquestionably true: The political methods now in vogue in American cities are not adapted to the government of dependencies.
The very word "Imperial" is, indeed, borrowed from the Old World. As applied to a great system of colonial dominion and foreign dependencies it is English, and very modern English, also, for it was first brought into vogue by the late Earl of Beaconsfield in 1879, when, by Act of Parliament introduced by him, the Queen of England was made Empress of India. It was then he enunciated that doctrine of imperium et libertas, the adoption of which we are now considering. While it may be wise and sound, it indisputably is British.
Thus, curiously enough, whichever way we turn and however we regard it, at the close of more than a century of independent existence we find ourselves, historically speaking, involved in a mesh of contradictions with our past. Under a sense of obligation, impelled by circumstances, perhaps to a degree influenced by ambition and commercial greed, we have one by one abandoned our distinctive national tenets, and accepted in their place, though in some modified forms, the old-time European tenets and policies, which we supposed the world, actuated largely by our example, was about forever to discard. Our whole record as a people is, of course, then ransacked and subjected to microscopic investigation, and every petty disregard of principle, any wrong heretofore silently, perhaps sadly, ignored, each unobserved or disregarded innovation of the past, is magnified into a precedent justifying anything and everything in the future. If we formerly on some occasion swallowed a gnat, why now, is it asked, strain at a camel? Truths once accepted as "self-evident," since become awkward of acceptance, were ever thus pettifogged out of the path, and fundamental principles have in this way prescriptively been tampered with. It is now nearly a century and a quarter ago, when Great Britain was contemplating the subjection of her American dependencies, that Edmund Burke denounced "tampering" with the "ingenuous and noble roughness of truly constitutional materials," as "the odious vice of restless and unstable minds." Historically speaking it is not unfair to ask if this is less so in the United States in 1898 than it was in Great Britain in 1775.
What is now proposed, therefore, examined in connection with our principles and traditional policy as a nation, does apparently indicate a break in continuity,—historically, it will probably constitute what is known in geology as a "fault." Indeed, it is almost safe to say that history hardly records any change of base and system on the part of a great people at once so sudden, so radical, and so pregnant with consequences. To the optimist,—he who has no dislike to "Old Jewry," as the proper receptacle for worn-out garments, personal or political,—the outlook is inspiring. He insensibly recalls and repeats those fine lines of Tennyson:
"To-day I saw the dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie.
"An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk: from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.
"He dried his wings: like gauze they grew:
Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of light he flew."
To others, older perhaps, but at any rate more deeply impressed with the difference apt to develop between dreams and actualities, the situation calls to mind a comparison, more historical it is true, but less inspiriting so far as a commitment to the new policy is concerned. At the risk, possibly, of offending some of those present, I will venture to institute it. In the fourth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, I find this incident recorded: "The devil taketh him [the Saviour] 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. Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him." Now, historically speaking, and as a matter of scriptural exegesis, that this passage should be accepted literally is not supposable. Satan, on the occasion referred to, must not be taken to have presented himself to the Saviour in propriâ personâ with his attributes of horns, tail, and cloven hoof, and made an outright proposition of extra-territorial sovereignty. It was a parable. He who had assumed a lofty moral attitude was tempted by worldly inducements to adopt a lower attitude,—that, in a word, common among men. It was a whispering to Christ of what among nations, is known as "Manifest Destiny;" in that case, however, as possibly in others, it so chanced that the whispering was not from the Almighty, but from Satan. Now if, instead of recognizing the source whence the temptation came, and sternly saying, "Get thee hence, Satan," Christ had seen the proposition as a new Mission,—thought, in fact, that he heard a distinct call to Duty,—and so, accepting a Responsibility thrust upon him, had hurried down from the "exceeding high mountain," and proceeded at once to lay in a supply of weapons and to don defensive armor, renouncing his peaceful mission, he would have done exactly—what Mohammed did six centuries later!
I do not for a moment mean to suggest that, as respects the voice of "Manifest Destiny," there is any similarity between the case of the Saviour and that which we, as a people, are now considering. I am not a prophet, nor do I claim prophetic insight. We are merely historical investigators, and, as such, not admitted into the councils of the Almighty. Others doubtless are, or certainly claim to be. They know every time, and at once, whether it is the inspiration of God or the devil; and forthwith proclaim it from the house-tops. We must admit—at any rate no evidence in our possession enables us to deny—the confidential relations such claim to have with either or both of the agencies in question,—the Divine or the Infernal. All I now have in mind is to call attention to the obvious similarity of the positions. As compared with the ideals and tenets then in vogue,—principles of manhood, equality before the law, freedom, peace on earth, and good-will to men,—the United States, heretofore and seen in a large way, has, among nations, assumed a peculiar, and, from the moral point of view, unquestionably a lofty attitude. Speaking historically it might, and with no charge of levity, be compared with a similar moral attitude assumed among men eighteen centuries before by the Saviour. It discountenanced armaments and warfare; it advocated arbitrations, and bowed to their awards; spreading its arms and protection over the New World, it refused to embroil itself in the complications of the Old; above all, it set a not unprofitable example to the nations of benefits incident to minding one's own business, and did not arrogate to itself the character of a favorite and inspired instrument in the hands of God. It even went so far as to assume that, in working out the inscrutable ways of Providence, character, self-restraint, and moral grandeur were in the long run as potent in effecting results as iron-clads and gatling-guns.
Those who now advocate a continuance of this policy are, as neatly as wittily, referred to in discussion, "for want of a better name," as "Little Americans," just as in history the believers in the long-run efficacy of the doctrines of Christ might be termed "Little Gospellers," to distinguish them from the admirers of the later, but more brilliant and imperial, dispensation of Mohammed. That the earlier, and less immediately ambitious, doctrine was, in the case of the United States, only temporary, and is now outgrown, and must, therefore, be abandoned in favor of Old World methods, especially those pursued with such striking success by Great Britain, is possible. As historical investigators we have long since learned that it is the unexpected which in the development of human affairs is most apt to occur. Who, for instance, in our own recent history could ever have foreseen that, in the inscrutable ways of the Almighty, the great triumph of Slavery in the annexation of Texas, and the spoliation of that inferior race which inhabited Mexico, was, within fifteen years only, to result in what Lincoln called that "terrible war" in which every drop of blood ever drawn by the lash was paid by another drawn by the sword? Again, in May, 1856, a Representative of South Carolina struck down a Senator from Massachusetts in the Senate-chamber at Washington; in January, 1865, Massachusetts battalions bivouacked beside the smoking ruins of South Carolina's capital. Verily, as none know better than we, the ways of Providence are mysterious, and past finding out. None the less, though it cannot be positively asserted that the world would not have been wiser, more advanced, and better ordered had Christ, when on that "exceeding high mountain," heard in the words then whispered in his ear a manifest call of Duty, and felt a Responsibility thrust upon him to secure the kingdoms of the earth for the Blessings of Liberty and the Bible by so small a sacrifice as making an apparently meaningless obeisance to Satan, yet we can certainly say that the world would now have been very different from what it is had He so done. And so in the case of the United States, though we cannot for a moment assert that its fate and the future of the world will not be richer, better, and brighter from its abandonment of New World traditions and policies in favor of the traditions and policies of the Old World, we can say without any hesitation that the course of history will be greatly changed by the so doing.
In any event the experiment will be one of surpassing interest to the historical observer. Some years ago James Russell Lowell was asked by the French historian, Guizot, how long the Republic of the United States might reasonably be expected to endure. Mr. Lowell's reply has always been considered peculiarly happy. "So long," said he, "as the ideas of its founders continue dominant." In due course of time we, or those who follow us, will know whether Mr. Lowell diagnosed the situation correctly, or otherwise. Meanwhile, I do not know how I can better bring to an end this somewhat lengthy contribution to the occasion, than by repeating, as singularly applicable to the conditions in which we find ourselves, these verses from a recent poem, than which I have heard none in the days that now are which strike a deeper or a truer chord, or one more appropriate to this New England Paschal eve: