Before me is the spirit of George Washington, behind me that of McKinley.
CHAPTER XXI.
SCHRANK'S UNWRITTEN LAWS.
The following are John Flammang Schrank's four unwritten laws, "The Pillars of the Republic," he calls them. They are presented exactly as written by Schrank, and as incorporated in the report of the alienists.
BY JOHN FLAMMANG SCHRANK.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have hitherto connected them with another, due respect to mankind requires that we should declare the cause of such action. In these modest lines our forefathers have at once laid out the roads on which we should travel, it demonstrates their willingness to consult the opinions of others, as well as it duly respects the rights and feelings of others. In these critical days it is more than necessary to call the attention of the nation to the three wonderful documents which have established our people as an independent nation and under their guidance laid down in these documents we have become the most powerful nation on earth. The Declaration of Independence; The Constitution, and the farewell-address of George Washington. The most sacred custom of all nations has ever been their reverence for their ancestors, the honor they pay to their dead, and the utmost respect to the good deeds who live after them, these customs observed hundreds of years handed down from one generation to another, we have come to call the traditions of a people. Tradition is an unwritten law when it concerns a whole nation, it is above the written statute, I would doubt the right of a court to have jurisdiction over a man who has defended tradition of his country, against violation. As we are not an original nation or race, the founders of the republic were the sons of the nation whose language we speak, it is tradition with us especially that identified us as a nation. This nation has four unwritten laws, the oldest and most sacred, because established by Geo. Washington, is the third term tradition, it has never been violated and is an affective safe-guard against unscrupulous ambition, but never before has been established a test case of its inviolability as a warning to coming adventurers. In the present campaign for the first time in American history we are confronted by a man to whom practically nothing is sacred and pretends to stand above tradition. This man abused our constitution, he wants it amended until it is abolished. If our constitution is too old and in the way of progress after we have grown to be a rich nation with it, then the ten commandments so many thousand years old, must be a useless piece of junk. He has abused our highest Courts, he has spoken in the profanest language of our legislators, he has abused our best and most venerable citizens, calling them liars and scoundrels, he has shamefully abused our president, thereby undermining the dignity of the office, how can we expect our foreign born citizens to respect our institutions when an ex-President circumtravels the Union telling everybody that those honorable men at Chicago were thieves and crooks. Shall the people rule, is one of his demagogic phrases, yet he knows that in the very sense he wants this catchword to be understood is an impossibility, the people and herewith I mean the rich as well as the poor never rule in a republic, they cannot rule, they have no time to rule, therefore they elect a body of honorable men to do the ruling to the benefit of all, in other words they entrust a body of men with their government, that is why Grover Cleveland said that a public office is a public trust. And a political party is the medium between the people and the elected government, and any party that should nominate a man in violation of the third term tradition does no longer deserve to be a party entrusted by the people. This third termer could have been of more value to the country had he lent his advice and honest opinion to his party and our president who eagerly sought his advice, for a man's honest advice is his ideas and convictions but with man's ideas it is like digging a pan of sand from a river from the gold regions, the sand must be sifted and filtered, there might be one or more grains of gold found in it. A man's ideas must pass through the brains of other men, to be sifted and filtered and every grain of gold found will be appreciated, but a man who claims that he knows it all better, is equal to saying that his pan of sand is all gold. The third termer claims that it is not a third term, if not followed by two consecutive terms, then a second term would not be a second, if given to man 8 years after his first, I wonder what to call such term, after a while he will tell us that a monarchy in this country is not a monarchy if the monarch is a native born; let it be established now and forever that it is a man's third term if he has twice been in office and if each time only twenty-four hours after taking oath and if third term is given to him or he seeks it twenty years after the second. If the third termer thought that the republican party whom he hailed from needed chastisement because she refused to violate tradition in his favor, he had the right to create a third party, nominate all officials for same and be the very soul and power behind the throne, but when it became evident that the whole party movement was only enacted to give him a third term, he had forfeited his citizenship and his life. Anybody who finances a third term movement should be expatriated and his wealth confiscated. It is ridiculous to say that if he is defeated in November it is also a verdict of the people to uphold the third term tradition, as we may as well say it is the verdict of the people to abolish the third term if he wins in November, the third term tradition has never been before the people as an issue to vote and for this reason it should never be put before them. It is almost a certainty, that if voted upon last year, the people would have declared in favor of upholding the tradition, while it is dead sure that if we were living this year in a panic, a business depression, with hundreds of thousands out of work instead of a general prosperity, the third termer would walk in over the decision of the previous year. The dangers in this campaign are these, the third termer is sure that the nomination has been stolen and that the country and the job belong to him, therefore if he gets honestly defeated in November he will again yell that the crooks of both parties have stolen the election, and should he carry a solid West, he and the hungry office seekers would not hesitate to take up arms to take by force what is denied him by the people, then we face a civil war, and it was Ab. Lincoln who said that war is hell and that he who wilfully invited war deserves death. We would then be compelled to wash out the sin of violating the third term with the blood of our sons. Yet, this is not the greatest danger we are facing. We have allowed an adventurer to circumtravel the Union with military escort, with the torch of revolution in his hands to burn down the very house we live in while we should be aware that we are surrounded by a pack of wolves ever ready to jump on us. Does anybody think that the European powers would sit idly while we are disunited, would a certain power hesitate to help the third termer and make good the gravest mistake that power has made in 1861 by not keeping this country disunited and separated while we are just getting ready to become their greatest competitor on the seas after the completion of the Panama Canal. Our strength is not in our Army or Navy nor in our Money power, our strength is in our Union. In Union alone can we uphold the Monroe Doctrine our second unwritten law so much hated and dreaded by all the world. The sister republic's Transvaal and Orange Free State were not destroyed because it was the connecting link between Egypt and the Cape, not because gold was found, no, but because Great Brit. could not allow a second United States to establish a Monroe Doctrine on African soil. Reciprocity would have profited both the Union and Canada but England fears a too close a relation between the two nations and Premier Leurier's sin was that he was first a Canadian, second an American and third a Britisher, he had to be replaced by a man who is in the first, second, and third place a Britisher. The outcome of the present campaign interests the powers more than us, all actions of Congress or Cabinet are sooner known in the Cabinets of Europe than we hear about them. There is today a "Cato" in the Senate of every country and in the folds of his cloak he has concealed several figs of unusual size, everyone of these figs represent one of our great American Trusts, and he concluded every speech with Carthage must be destroyed. With our Union destroyed we would cry with the Israelites in the desert: Lead us back to the meat pots of Egypt, give us a thousand trusts sooner than one third termer. If we think that we need a one man's rule, whose place cannot be filled by another among millions intelligent citizens, then it were about time that we got a licking from somewhere. What are we about to do, do we want the great building we have helped to build tear down and give everybody a brick, the people which is only the present generation cannot do what they want, for what they have and what they are they are greatly in obligation to the past and earlier generations who also helped to build up, therefore this generation called the people cannot do as they please which is so ardently advocated by the third termer. Have we learned no lesson about a one man's rule experienced in France with such disastrous results as the end of the reign of Napoleon I and Napoleon III.
We are trying to establish here a system like our ancestors have done in Europe which all revolutions of a 1,000 years could not abolish, it would be useless to forcibly remove a third president because the system would then be established. Are we under no obligation to the heroes of all wars for freedom and independence, are we overthrowing our republic while the heroes of the French revolutions and the martyrs of 1848 gladly gave their lives to establish republican institutions. May God enlighten the nation, may the spirit of 1776 still be alive, and when they tell us that there is a Rome on the other side let them understand that U. S. A. is not Carthage. In this campaign we may observe that prosperity is as dangerous to our institutions as hard times are, people are too busy making money, they gradually lose all interest in politics, unless a third termer tells them that government is only medium to enrich them still more, how else can we explain his remark that Mr. Perkins wants his children to live better in this country after his departure, a millionaire's children can only live better when the third term party doubles the millions of their father. In this critical time I find that men have more interest in the baseball results than to register, think and vote. But of course some people have no more sense than three guinea pigs. His movement is not progressive, they are insurgents, insurgents and revolutionary. Hardly any revolution has started without pretending that their movement was progressive.
The abolition of the third term tradition is the abolition of the Monroe Doctrine also. In this Doctrine we are overtaking the guardianship over all republics on the American continent against Foreign encroachments. Naturally the third termer would prove too in 1916 that the fourth term is only his second, to do this he would have to become the conquering hero, we would commit the same faults France did 100 years ago National aggrandisement, yet France no larger today than before Napoleon I. The fourth termer could hardly gather laurels in a European or Asiatic war the natural consequences would that South America would become the field of his actions. We have upheld the Monroe Doctrine without the consent of these countries so she could prevent those nations from inviting a European power to protect them by declaring that inasmuch as the third term tradition is abolished, the Monroe Doctrine is no longer binding, because they are more afraid of the third termer than they would be of any foreign prince. The prudence of our forefathers has delivered to us an equally sacred unwritten law which reads that no president should embrace another Creed than Protestant if possible a sect of the English church. I am a Roman Catholic. I love my religion but I hate my church, as long as the Roman parish is not independent from Rome, as long as Catholic priests are prevented from getting married, as long as Rome is still more engaged in politics and accumulation of money contrary to the teachings of the Lord, the Roman Catholic church is not the religion for a president of the United States. The separation of state from church in France has sufficiently proved that Rome and republic are enemies.
The fourth unwritten law which is practically supplementary to the second we find in George Washington's farewell address where he advises us to live in peace with your neighbor. We have no right to start a war of conquest with any nation and our relations to the South American republic can be improved if we remove their fear of a steady conquest by us by observing this law. Does it not look ridiculous that established governments in this enlightened age sends thousands of unfortunates to prison as punishment for murdering, for to steal and rob, while these same nations are armed with all descriptable weapons like so many bandits ever ready to jump at each other's throat. What else is war but murder for to rob that which belongs to others. Since men have learned to work they have no more right to war. The salvation of the human family must be worked out by international Commercialism the sooner all industrial establishments of the world unite like in the days of the Hansa can the social questions be solved. International Commercialism must have individual legislation and jurisdiction, independent from national legislation, but must be acknowledged by all states and the United States is the only power ruled by commercialism without a mailed fiat and will be the first to recognize International Commercialism for this alone will abolish and distribute wealth more fair and just, and work to a higher state of civilization.