Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/244

220 cultivated as a fine art by its devotees. President McKinley himself recently furnished an example of this, bold enough to make us gasp. In the speech responding to the announcement of his nomination he said: “To the party of Lincoln has come another supreme opportunity which it has bravely met in the liberation of ten millions of the human race from the yoke of imperialism.” There is poetic genius in this sentence.

The “party of Lincoln”? It was Lincoln who said:

Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow—what are those arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for the enslaving of the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments of kingcraft were always of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people—not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. Turn it whatever way you will, whether it comes from the mouth of a king, as an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouths of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same serpent.

It was Lincoln who said: “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it.”

The party of Lincoln! If men advocating the arbitrary rule of one people over another on the old despot's plea that such rule is good for the subject, had come to Abraham Lincoln saying that they were his party, it would have required all his good nature to keep him from lifting up his big foot to kick them downstairs.

And what shall we say of President McKinley's assertion that his party has “bravely liberated ten millions of the human race from the yoke of imperialism”? In the