ial
inducements are held out which would lead us to treat these islands
simply as a commencement--the first instalment--in a system of unlimited
extra-territorial dependencies and imperial expansion. With these
responsibilities and obligations we here this evening have nothing to
do, any more than we have to do with the expediency or probable results
of the policy of colonial expansion, when once fairly adopted and
finally entered upon. These hereafter will be, but are not yet,
historical questions; and we are merely historical inquirers. We,
therefore, no matter what others may do, must try to confine ourselves
to our own proper business and functions.

My purpose, therefore, is not to argue for or against what is now
proposed, but simply to test historically some of the arguments I have
heard most commonly advanced in favor of the proposed policy of
expansion, and thus see to what they apparently lead in the sequence of
human, and more especially of American, events. Do they indicate an
historic continuity? Or do they result in what is geologically known as
a "fault,"--a movement, as the result of force, through which a stratum,
once continuous, becomes disconnected?

In the first place, then, as respects the inhabitants of the vastly
greater number of the dependencies already acquired, and, under the
policy of imperialistic expansion, hereafter to be acquired. It is
argued that we, as a people at once dominant and Christian, are under an
obligation to avail ourselves of the opportunity the Almighty, in his
infinite wisdom, has thrust upon us,--some say the plain call he has
uttered to us,--to go forth, and impart to the barbarian and the heathen
the blessings of liberty and the Bible. A mission is imposed upon us.
Viewed in the cold, pitiless light of history,--and that is the only way
we here can view them,--"divine missions" and "providential calls" are
questionable things; things the assumption and fulfilment of which are
apt to be at variance. So far as the American is concerned, as I have
already pointed out, the historic precedents are not encouraging.
Whatever his theories, ethnical, political, or religious, his practice
has been as pronounced as it was masterful. From the earliest days at
Wessagusset and in the Pequot war, down to the very last election held
in North Carolina,--from 1623 to 1898,--the knife and the shotgun have
been far more potent and active instruments in his dealings with the
inferior ra