ct, a great spokesman of Massachusetts is as liable to
mistake in this generation as in the last.

[Sidenote: Lack of Faith in the People.]

It is fair, I think, to say that this whole hesitation over the treaty
of peace is absolutely due to lack of faith in our own people, distrust
of the methods of administration they may employ in the government of
distant possessions, and distrust of their ability to resist the
schemes of demagogues for promoting the ultimate admission of Kanaka
and Malay and half-breed commonwealths to help govern the continental
Republic of our pride, this homogeneous American Union of sovereign
States. If there is real reason to fear that the American people cannot
restrain themselves from throwing open the doors of their Senate and
House of Representatives to such sister States as Luzon, or the
Visayas, or the Sandwich Islands, or Porto Rico, or even Cuba, then the
sooner we beg some civilized nation, with more common sense and less
sentimentality and gush, to take them off our hands the better. If we
are unequal to a manly and intelligent discharge of the
responsibilities the war has entailed, then let us confess our
unworthiness, and beg Japan to assume the duties of a civilized
Christian state toward the Philippines, while England can extend the
same relief to us in Cuba and Porto Rico. But having thus ignominiously
shirked the position demanded by our belligerency and our success, let
us never again presume to take a place among the self-respecting and
responsible nations of the earth that can ever lay us liable to another
such task. If called to it, let us at the outset admit our unfitness,
withdraw within our own borders, and leave these larger duties of the
world to less incapable races or less craven rulers.

Far other and brighter are the hopes I have ventured to cherish
concerning the course of the American people in this emergency. I have
thought there was encouragement for nations as well as for individuals
in remembering the sobering and steadying influence of great
responsibilities suddenly devolved. When Prince Hal comes to the crown
he is apt to abjure Falstaff. When we come to the critical and
dangerous work of controlling turbulent semi-tropical dependencies, the
agents we choose cannot be the ward heelers of the local bosses. Now,
if ever, is the time to rally the brain and conscience of the American
people to a real elevation and purification of their Civil Service, to
the