e world was not
retrograding, and always will be. The notion that such government is a
revival of slavery, and that the United States by doing its share of
such work in behalf of civilization would therefore become infamous,
though put forward with apparent gravity in some eminently respectable
quarters, is too fantastic for serious consideration.

Mr. Jefferson may be supposed to have known the meaning of the words he
wrote. Instead of vindicating a righteous rebellion in the Declaration,
he was called, after a time, to exercise a righteous government under
the Constitution. Did he himself, then, carry his own words to such
extremes as these professed disciples now demand? Was he guilty of
subverting the principles of the Government in buying some hundreds of
thousands of Spaniards, Frenchmen, Creoles, and Indians, "like sheep in
the shambles," as the critics untruthfully say we did in the
Philippines? We bought nobody there. We held the Philippines first by
the same right by which we held our own original thirteen States,--the
oldest and firmest of all rights, the right by which nearly every great
nation holds the bulk of its territory,--the right of conquest. We held
them again as a rightful indemnity, and a low one, for a war in which
the vanquished could give no other. We bought nothing; and the twenty
millions that accompanied the transfer just balanced the Philippine
debt.

But Jefferson did, if you choose to accept the hypercritical
interpretation of these latter-day Jeffersonians--Jefferson did buy the
Louisianians, even "like sheep in the shambles," if you care so to
describe it; and did proceed to govern them without the consent of the
governed. Monroe bought the Floridians without their consent. Polk
conquered the Californians, and Pierce bought the New Mexicans. Seward
bought the Russians and Alaskans, and we have governed them ever since,
without their consent. Is it easy, in the face of such facts, to
preserve your respect for an objection so obviously captious as that
based on the phrase from the Declaration of Independence?

Nor is the turn Senator Hoar gives the constitutional objection much
more weighty. He wishes to take account of motives, and pry into the
purpose of those concerned in any acquisition of territory, before the
tribunals can decide whether it is constitutional or not. If acquired
either for the national defense or to be made a State, the act is
constitutional; otherwise not. If, th