The expansion and preservation of the race are to be attained only by union, which self-interest inspires. The failure to adopt it is an act of felo de se.
III.—DUTY
I have said before, in substance,[3] that a nation has a duty to perform to itself and to the outside world, precisely as an individual has a duty to fulfil {147} to himself and his fellow-beings. The entire limit of either's obligation is not performed by simply attending to his own selfish needs.
The more civilised we are the clearer this duty is enjoined. As Demosthenes said: "To a Democracy nothing is more essential than scrupulous regard to equity and justice." A nation does not exist merely for pure selfishness—or simply to protect the lives, enhance the fortunes, and secure the happiness of its own immediate citizens. It cannot erect a wall around its people and live entirely within itself. This is as unnatural as it is impossible. There must be intercommunion with other powers and peoples. To render its full duty to its citizens, there must be intermingling with outside nations. Through these means its own people become richer, more prosperous, and cultivated, and the nations with whom it associates benefit proportionately from the intercourse. With us there can be no such thing as national isolation. Especially is this remark applicable to the United States at this time; on the eve of embarking upon a colonial policy. Our hands once placed upon a colony can never be withdrawn. This is one of the characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon race and in our case strongly supported by duty. We shall benefit the colonists in all ways, but they will remain part of our system until it is dissolved.
Our duty, growing out of the best and noblest conceptions of the origin and purpose of social existence, should teach us, along with our material interests and often by means of them, to propagate {148} and extend everywhere the principles upon which our civilisation is founded.
I do not mean that this thought should inspire conquest—for mere enlargement of territory or other aggrandisement. On the contrary, in our dealings with and treatment of other nations, the abstract principles of right should never be forgotten.
But, wherever we land in our national pilgrimage, either by conquest or purchase, we must reign supreme.
I take it for granted that our views upon these subjects are the most humane and liberal. At least this is our great boast. We claim to lead civilisation. Is this assumption justified? The history of our lives from our national birth until the present time must be appealed to.[4] It is perhaps true that we have not always lived up to our ideals, but these ideals have never been destroyed. They may have been obscured, but the clouds which covered them have lifted again, and they have reappeared in their original vigour and beauty. It seems to be a marked characteristic of an Anglo-Saxon to propagate and push his principles everywhere. Without boasting, unconsciously, he goes on to the mark, and often with an appearance of cynical indifference. Inwardly he is not content unless all whom he meets participate in his enlightenment, and when it becomes in any degree difficult or impracticable, it may be assumed that the fault is not wholly his. Where racial or other antagonism is so pronounced as to render assimilation impossible, {149} there is at least the minimum of evil in the onward march to a higher plane. The idea of most other nations is to limit their national principles to themselves. They seem to take no real interest in sowing their political seeds in foreign soils. Their objects are purely selfish.
It is our contention that the influence of the Anglo-Saxon race has been for good everywhere; that its principles have found lodgment in some form or other in all governments; that its laws and customs have percolated more or less into all political systems; and that all existing political bodies have in substance, if not in form, consciously or unconsciously engrafted into their systems some of the notions and principles of liberty and justice as applied by the English-speaking people. England has been called, and truly, "the mother of constitutions and the constitutional system." Our principles of national and individual liberty are so inseparable from true government that where they are not found, a real, beneficial, political institution does not exist.
As Mr. Webster said[5]: