The Declaration of Independence: An Address

by Winslow Warren

Even the Anglo-Saxon, with all his success in many respects, as a colonist, has utterly failed to lead an inferior race up to self-government—he may have carried with him some material advantages, but his assumed and vaunted burden cannot be separated from his love of power and soaring ambition.

His dominating superiority makes him a hard master of another race, and he fails utterly in sympathetic appreciation of racial differences and characteristics.

No one can dispute his marvellous capacity, the forcefulness of his dealings, and in many cases his patient, earnest attempt to better the conditions of those whom he rules; but he never has accepted nor understood the peculiar natures of his subjects nor enlisted their sympathies or affections. Without intending to be cruel, his cool assumption of the power to remake people and force them into his own mould has led him into errors which have caused great hardship and have ended in estrangement and hatred.

Neither material prosperity nor orderly government wins the hearts or permanently changes the habits of peoples whose traditions have been interfered with and whose imaginative and fickle natures have not been taken into account. A foreign government remains forever foreign to a people whose love has not been gained, and who are made to feel that they are inferior and never to be on terms of full equality with their masters.

No more conspicuous instance can be found than in the condition of India after a century and a half of English rule, much of it by excellent men of great capacity and strength, and of honest intention. It began with the rule of the sword, and to-day it is nothing else,—it has not led the people towards self-government, nor has it succeeded in inspiring confidence and affection,—stripped of the thin veneer of civilization which has been spread over the land, the conqueror and the conquered still face each other as ever alien and hostile races, the conquered hating their masters, and sullenly biding their time for revolt, and the conqueror holding them down by force and fear only. The gulf between the races is as broad as ever, and everything indicates that a withdrawal of British power would be followed by a temporary return to much the former conditions of semi-barbarism, until something better was evolved by struggle and experience, aided now by the bright example of a neighboring power.

Egypt, which on the surface shows good results, has done little but exchange a Turkish for an English ruler, so far a gain, for it has been followed by an apparent advance in material prosperity and a lightening of the burdens, but it is not easy to ascertain how far the prosperity has really benefited the people; and remembering that Egypt was once the centre of advanced civilization, it is by no means proved that as a free people they would not have been further on the road towards a hopeful self-government.

If we look to the Dutch colonies in Asia, we find at best a condition of peonage and political servitude and a war that has had little cessation in fifty years. There again it is force and fear and not self-government. In German, French, or Russian colonies no one seeks for self-government, and the hopelessness of their situation is that neither fraternization with the people exists nor improvement of conditions by emigration from the ruling countries.

To point the contrast, and to evidence the truth of the principles of the Declaration, we may well consider the rising empire of Japan, inhabited by a people differing but little from the neighboring races, a century ago not far removed from barbarism, pagan in religion, though tolerant, Asiatic in habits and thought, self-governed and independent because it has been left to work out its own problems, yet now by its own energy advancing towards civilization and Christianity, and rapidly becoming a great power in the East. No stronger exemplification can be found of the principle that a people is better fitted for self-government than any other, and that its own experience and efforts offer better tutelage than the wisest and most beneficent rule of foreign masters.

The plans of statesmen, the ambition of nations may come into conflict with the doctrines of the Declaration, but they are of no concern as compared with the truth or falsity of the principles it contains. If it is not to be followed as a standard of governmental ethics, and is a visionary statement of unpractical theories, we seem somehow to have lost our bearings, and to have parted with our guiding lights. No true American, whatever his party allegiance, can avoid or lightly treat these important questions, nor can the right solution come from a consultation of his interests or prejudices, nor from any source other than the experience of the years since 1776, and a careful consideration of the wisdom or folly of the teachings of those who have made this country what it is. No day can better emphasize these thoughts than this anniversary, and if in avoiding anything of a partisan nature I have willingly laid myself open to the charge of triteness, let us remember that the trite things of this world are often of the most importance, and the more familiar they are, the more apt they are to be disregarded or forgotten. They cannot be foreign to the purposes of this meeting, for although the original parchment of the Declaration at Washington has faded out, the principles of this most important and startling of State Papers will always be living light, and if the day should ever come when it would be unbecoming to discuss them here, one of the great purposes of this Association would have been lost, and the nature of our people and our theory of government changed.