try to walk, not by being kept everlastingly in "leading
strings." This was the American, as contradistinguished from the
European policy; and Mexico to-day walks firmly.

Finally take the case of Venezuela in 1895. I believe I am not mistaken
when I say that, during the twenty-five preceding years, Venezuela had
undergone almost as many revolutions. It certainly had not enjoyed a
stable government. Through disputes over questions of boundary, Great
Britain proposed to confer that indisputable blessing upon a
considerable region. We interfered under a most questionable extension
of the Monroe Doctrine, and asserted the principle of "Hands-off."
Having done this,--having in so far perpetuated what we now call the
scandal of anarchy,--we did not establish "tutelage," or a protectorate,
ourselves. We wisely left Venezuela to work out its destiny in its own
way, and in the fullness of time. That policy was far-seeing,
beneficent, and strictly American in 1895. Why, then, make almost
indecent haste to abandon it in 1898?

Instead, therefore, of finding our precedents in the experience of
England, or that of any other European power, I would suggest that the
true course for this country now to pursue is exactly the course we have
heretofore pursued under similar conditions. Let us be true to our own
traditions, and follow our own precedents. Having relieved the Spanish
islands from the dominion of Spain, we should declare concerning them a
policy of "Hands-off," both on our own part and on the part of other
powers. We should say that the independence of those islands is morally
guaranteed by us as a consequence of the treaty of Paris, and then leave
them just as we have left Hayti, and just as we left Mexico and
Venezuela, to adopt for themselves such form of government as the people
thereof are ripe for. In the cases of Mexico and Venezuela, and in the
case of Hayti, we have not found it necessary to interfere ever or at
all. It is not yet apparent why we should find it necessary to interfere
with islands so much more remote from us than Hayti, and than Mexico and
Venezuela, as are the Philippines.

In this matter we can thus well afford to be consistent, as well as
logical. Our fundamental principles, those of the Declaration, the
Constitution, and the Monroe Doctrine, have not yet been shown to be
unsound--why should we be in such a hurry to abandon them? Our
precedents are close at hand, and satisfactory--why look away