n a great and abiding nation.

In America the government takes from the liberty of the citizen only so
much as is necessary for the weal of the nation, which the citizen by
his own act freely concedes. In America there are no masters, who govern
in their own rights, for their own interests, or at their own will. We
have over us no Louis XIV, saying: "L'etat, c'est moi;" no Hohenzollern,
announcing that in his acts as sovereign he is responsible only to his
conscience and to God.

Ours is the government of the people, by the people, for the people. The
government is our organized will. There is no state above or apart from
the people. Rights begin with and go upward from the people. In other
countries, even those apparently the most free, rights begin with and
come downward from the state; the rights of citizens, the rights of the
people, are concessions which have been painfully wrenched from the
governing powers.

With Americans, whenever the organized government does not prove its
grant, the liberty of the individual citizen is sacred and inviolable.
Elsewhere there are governments called republics; universal suffrage
constitutes the state; but, once constituted, the state is tyrannous and
arbitrary, invades at will private rights, and curtails at will
individual liberty. One republic is liberty's native home--America.

OUR COUNTRY

From the speech of President McKinley, in response to the toast
"Our Country," at the Peace Jubilee banquet in Chicago, October 19,
1898.

MR. TOASTMASTER AND GENTLEMEN:--It affords me gratification to meet the
people of the city of Chicago and to participate with them in this
patriotic celebration. Upon the suspension of hostilities of a foreign
war, the first in our history for over half a century, we have met in a
spirit of peace, profoundly grateful for the glorious advancement
already made, and earnestly wishing in the final termination to realize
an equally glorious fulfillment. With no feeling of exultation, but with
profound thankfulness, we contemplate the events of the past five
months. They have been too serious to admit of boasting or
vain-glorification. They have been so full of responsibilities,
immediate and prospective, as to admonish the soberest judgment and
counsel the most conservative action.

This is not the time to fire the imagination, but rather to discover, in
calm reason, the way to truth, and justice, and right, and when
discovere