Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/260

236 that, if our people ever ceased to respect and to believe in the high ideals of right, justice and liberty, set up by the Fathers of the Republic and expressed in the Declaration of Independence, our democracy would lose the element of conservative poise necessary for its stability, and the Republic, while perhaps remaining a Republic in name, would not remain one in essence. Without popular reverence for those ideals, without popular belief in those high principles to appeal to, a democracy will inevitably be ruled by greed and selfish ambition, and the powers of the government will be more and more grasped and used to serve the ignoblest impulses and passions of human nature. A democracy working through universal suffrage ruled by such influences and believing in nothing is apt to become the worst government that can be conceived. And nothing can in this respect be more dangerous in its effects upon a democracy like ours than a policy of conquest and of arbitrary rule over vassal provinces and subject populations such as we have now begun.

Imagine what it will lead to if our people are constantly taught, as they now are, that there is a rich country in our grasp which we must have, there being lots of money to be made in it; that the means by which we get it may indeed be somewhat queer, but we must not be foolishly sentimental about that; that we are a masterful race and the inhabitants of that country are a poor lot, and that the strong must not be too squeamish about the rights of the weak; that the Declaration of Independence, with its talk about human equality and “consent of the governed,” and all that, is a mere glittering generality and antiquated rubbish; that we have outgrown the Constitution and must not let it stand in the way of quest of wealth; that we have power and must use that power for our profit, it matters little how. Is not this the real gist of the arguments for the imperialistic policy with which the country