erybody assents.

But circumstances alter cases and all cases are not alike. If your
doctrine is of universal application the ravisher who presents himself
with overwhelming force must always be gently accepted without
resistance to save time and avoid danger and expense. If the European
powers, disgusted with the success of our protective tariff and rising
commercial supremacy, should unite to abolish our lynch law, burning of
negroes at the stake, municipal corruption and some other matters, their
armies and fleets would outnumber us even more than the English
outnumber the Boers; and I suppose if you are really as much of a
"quitter" as you profess to be you would then still preach your doctrine
of submission.

When you look closely at the matter and try to fix the point of
scientific defeat in the Boer war I do not know why you should place it
at the fall of Pretoria or whatever moment you decide upon for the
defeat of the regularly organized armies. I should say it was just as
well placed before the fighting began when England showed her cards; a
population of 30,000,000, without counting the population of the
colonies, against a population that does not number 2,000,000 counting
the Cape Colony rebels; an army of 250,000 regulars against 40,000
militia.

If your doctrine is sound political morality, it applied then, and in
the face of such stupendous odds, I should say, rather more than it does
now.

But I prefer to be guided somewhat in these matters by your great
grandfather, John Adams, for whom I have always had a great fancy. If
you will pardon me for saying so I think that his attention was more
closely and intensely directed to these matters than yours has ever
been. His neck was at stake as well as your own valuable existence and
reputation. The British statute of that time provided a terrible
punishment for what he was doing. Possibly you have never read it.

"That the offender be drawn to the gallows, and not be carried or
walk; that he be hanged by the neck, and then cut down alive; that
his entrails be taken and burnt while he is yet alive; that his
head be cut off; that his body be divided into four parts; that his
head and quarters be at the king's disposal."

The disposal the king was accustomed to make of the heads and quarters
of such people was to have the quarters hung about in conspicuous parts
of London like quarters of beef; and the heads were set up on poles o