Chapter 4

Finally take the case of Venezuela in 1895. I believe I am not mistaken when I say that, during the twenty-five preceding years, Venezuela had undergone almost as many revolutions. It certainly had not enjoyed a stable government. Through disputes over questions of boundary, Great Britain proposed to confer that indisputable blessing upon a considerable region. We interfered under a most questionable extension of the Monroe Doctrine, and asserted the principle of "Hands-off." Having done this,--having in so far perpetuated what we now call the scandal of anarchy,--we did not establish "tutelage," or a protectorate, ourselves. We wisely left Venezuela to work out its destiny in its own way, and in the fullness of time. That policy was far-seeing, beneficent, and strictly American in 1895. Why, then, make almost indecent haste to abandon it in 1898?

Instead, therefore, of finding our precedents in the experience of England, or that of any other European power, I would suggest that the true course for this country now to pursue is exactly the course we have heretofore pursued under similar conditions. Let us be true to our own traditions, and follow our own precedents. Having relieved the Spanish islands from the dominion of Spain, we should declare concerning them a policy of "Hands-off," both on our own part and on the part of other powers. We should say that the independence of those islands is morally guaranteed by us as a consequence of the treaty of Paris, and then leave them just as we have left Hayti, and just as we left Mexico and Venezuela, to adopt for themselves such form of government as the people thereof are ripe for. In the cases of Mexico and Venezuela, and in the case of Hayti, we have not found it necessary to interfere ever or at all. It is not yet apparent why we should find it necessary to interfere with islands so much more remote from us than Hayti, and than Mexico and Venezuela, as are the Philippines.

In this matter we can thus well afford to be consistent, as well as logical. Our fundamental principles, those of the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Monroe Doctrine, have not yet been shown to be unsound--why should we be in such a hurry to abandon them? Our precedents are close at hand, and satisfactory--why look away from them to follow those of Great Britain? Why need we, all of a sudden, be so very English and so altogether French, even borrowing their nomenclature of "imperialism?" Why can not we, too, in the language of Burke, be content to set our feet "in the tracks of our forefathers, where we can neither wander nor stumble?" The only difficulty in the way of our so doing seems to be that we are in such a desperate hurry; while natural influences and methods, though in the great end indisputably the wisest and best, always require time in which to work themselves out to their results. Wiser than the Almighty in our own conceit, we think to get there at once; the "there" in this case being everlasting "tutelage," as in India, instead of ultimate self-government, as in Mexico.

The policy heretofore pursued by us in such cases,--the policy of "Hands-off," and "Walk alone," is distinctly American; it is not European, not even British. It recognizes the principles of our Declaration of Independence. It recognizes the truth that all just government exists by the consent of the governed. It recognizes the existence of the Monroe Doctrine. In a word, it recognizes every principle and precedent, whether natural or historical, which has from the beginning lain at the foundation of our American polity. It does not attempt the hypocritical contradiction in terms, of pretending to elevate a people into a self-sustaining condition through the leading-string process of "tutelage." It appeals to our historical experience, applying to present conditions the lessons of Hayti, Mexico, and Venezuela. In dealing with those cases, we did not find a great standing army or an enormous navy necessary; and, if not then, why now? Why such a difference between the Philippines and Hayti? Is Cuba larger or nearer to us than Mexico? When, therefore, in future they ask us what course and policy we Anti-Imperialists propose, our answer should be that we propose to pursue towards the islands of Antilles and the Philippines the same common-sense course and truly American policy which were by us heretofore pursued with such signal success in the cases of Hayti, Mexico, and Venezuela, all inhabited by people equally unfit for self-government, and geographically much closer to ourselves. We propose to guarantee them against outside meddling, and, above all, from "tutelage," and make them, by walking, learn to walk alone.

This, I submit, is not only an answer to the question so frequently put to us, but a positive policy following established precedents, and, what is more, purely American, as distinguished from a European or British, policy and precedents.

I remain, etc.,

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS.

_Hon. Carl Schurz, 16 E. 64th Street, New York City._

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "Obviously, men are not born equal in physical strength or in mental capacity, in beauty of form or health of body. Diversity or inequality in these respects is the law of creation. But this inequality is in no particular inconsistent with complete civil or political equality.

"The equality declared by our fathers in 1776 and made the fundamental law of Massachusetts in 1780, was _Equality before the Law_. Its object was to efface all political or civil distinctions, and to abolish all institutions founded upon _birth_. 'All men are _created_ equal,' says the Declaration of Independence. 'All men are _born_ free and equal,' says the Massachusetts Bill of Rights. These are not vain words. Within the sphere of their influence, no person can be _created_, no person can be _born_, with civil or political privileges not enjoyed equally by all his fellow-citizens; nor can any institutions be established, recognizing distinctions of birth. Here is the Great Charter of every human being drawing vital breath upon this soil, whatever may be his conditions, and whoever may be his parents. He may be poor, weak, humble, or black,--he may be of Caucasian, Jewish, Indian, or Ethiopian race,--he may be born of French, German, English, or Irish extraction; but before the Constitution of Massachusetts all these distinctions disappear. He is not poor, weak, humble, or black; nor is he Caucasian, Jew, Indian, or Ethiopian; nor is he French, German, English, or Irish; he is a MAN, the equal of all his fellow-men. He is one of the children of the State, which, like an impartial parent, regards all its offspring with an equal care. To some it may justly allot higher duties, according to higher capacities; but it welcomes all to its equal hospitable board. The State, imitating the divine Justice, is no respecter of persons."--_Works of Charles Sumner, Vol. II., pp. 341-2_.

[2] Historically speaking, the assertion in the Declaration of Independence has been fruitful of dispute. The very evening the present paper was read at Lexington the Mayor of Boston, in a public address elsewhere, alluded to the "imprudent generalizations of our forefathers," referring, doubtless, to what Rufus Choate, forty-two years before, described as "the glittering and sounding generalities of natural right" to be found in the Declaration, "that passionate and eloquent manifesto." Mr. Calhoun declared (1848) that the claim of human equality set forth in the Declaration was "the most false and dangerous of all political errors," which, after resting a long time "dormant," had, in the process of time, begun "to germinate and produce its poisonous fruits." Mr. Pettit, a Senator from Indiana, pronounced it in 1854, "a self-evident lie." In the famous Lincoln-Douglas debate in Illinois (1860) the question reappeared, Mr. Douglas contending that the Declaration applied only to "the white people of the United States;" while Mr. Lincoln, in reply, asserted that "the entire records of the world, from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, that the negro was not included in the Declaration." The contention of Mr. Douglas had recently again made its appearance in the press as something too indisputable to admit of discussion. It is asserted that, in penning the Declaration, Mr. Jefferson could not possibly have intended to include those then actually held as slaves. On this point Mr. Jefferson himself should, it would seem, be accepted as a competent witness. Referring to the denial of his "inalienable rights" to the African, he declared at a later day, "I tremble for my country, when I reflect that God is just." What he meant will, however, probably continue matter for confident newspaper assertions just so long as anybody in this country wants to make out, as did Stephen A. Douglas in 1860, a plausible pretext for subjugating somebody else,--Indian, African, or Asiatic. As Mr. Lincoln expressed it, "The assertion that all men are created equal was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain, and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that but for future use. Its author meant it to be, as, thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling block to all those who, in after times, might seek to turn a free people back into the paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant, when such should reappear in this fair land, and commence their vocation, they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack."--_Works_, Vol. I., p. 233.

[3] Green's Short History (Ill. Ed.). Vol. I. p. 9.

[4] The Roman legions were withdrawn from Great Britain in 410; Magna Charta was signed in June, 1215, and the reign of French kings over England came to a close in 1217. It is a striking illustration of the deliberation with which natural processes work themselves out, that the period which elapsed between the withdrawal of Rome from England, and the recovery of England by the English, should have exceeded by more than a century the time which has as yet elapsed since England was thus recovered.