662 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sources undeveloped, they felt, as does every free industrial nation 

 before its apostasy, that too many strangers anxious to better their 

 lot could not come among them and share their blessings. But 

 after the curse of militancy had inclined them, as it inclined the 

 republic of Athens and that of the Dutch, to proscription, they 

 began to change their attitude toward aliens. From the policy 

 of excluding the products of foreign labor, they passed to the 

 policy of excluding foreign labor itself. At the same time they 

 sought to justify themselves with the specious logic that springs 

 from war. Though always contentious of the inevitable triumph 

 of their civilization, they declared that it could not withstand the 

 invasion of Oriental habits and customs. In the face of the fact 

 that no amount of knowledge ever transformed vice into virtue, 

 they insisted that without the test of literacy to bar the ignorance 

 and crime of Europe, the institutions of the republic could not sur- 

 vive. Nothing more hypocritical can be found in the pleas of any of 

 the great brigands of history for their assaults upon the rights or 

 territory of the people ill fated enough to evoke their envy or hatred. 



The step from attacking foreigners by prohibitory tariffs and 

 immigration laws to attacking them by means more direct is only 

 a short one. That the American people have taken it already once 

 or twice, and are about to take it again, need cause no surprise. 

 When they were under the domination of slavery, a militant institu- 

 tion stimulative of aggression, it was but yielding to the barbarous 

 impulse that possessed them to annex Texas, to wrest from Mexico 

 a vast domain, and to seek to own the island of Cuba. It was but 

 yielding to the same hateful impulse when, a few years after the 

 close of the civil war, they tried to make Santo Domingo a part 

 of the Union. That act of apostasy to the principles of a free 

 democracy was only averted by the courageous efforts of the few 

 men in public life that still felt profoundly the truths of the Fare- 

 well Address. Since then, however, the teachings of Washington 

 have again fallen into disrepute. In the clamor for a " vigorous for- 

 eign policy " and the annexation of Hawaii, we have another mani- 

 festation of the spirit of aggression that nerved the arm of the slave 

 driver as he wielded the lash and fired him with lust for the lands of 

 other peoples. 



The impulse toward despotism since the outbreak of the civil 

 war has not been confined to the Federal Government. The forces 

 of aggression let loose by that terrific struggle have passed to every 

 part of the body politic. It has seemed, in fact, as if they gathered 

 momentum as they became diffused. While the States have not, 

 as already said, encroached upon the rights of the central authority, 

 they have ravaged like flames the field of individual rights. History 



