Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 August 1900 — WHAT IS IMPERIALISM. [ARTICLE]

WHAT IS IMPERIALISM.

Our government is based upon the theory not only that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, but that those powers shall never be separated from the people—to the end that the working autonohiy of our Republic may always prove to be a “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” as happily expressed by the immortal Lincoln in his Get tysburg speech. The jealous care of those who drew tKe specifications and outlined the charts by which our Ship of State was to be constructed and run was ever exercised to prevent the possibility of any popular self-government’s being far removed from the people themselves—to prevent its being taken out of the hands of the people or placed beyond their control. With that end steadfastly in view, their all controlling aim was to so safe-guard every function of the people’s government as to make all persons, chosen from time to time to administer temporarily’ the public affairs of the Republic. keenly and immediately responsible to the people, whose instruments and servants they were intended to be always. The bed-rock idea of the whole plan was a firm belief that the closer the government is kept to the people and the more keenly responsible each public servant is kept to the will of the people, the safer and* the better will the liberties and the sacred rights of Hie people -be preserved, and the more impossible ami ineffective will be the ever-present temptation (on the part of those temporarily in authority) to pervert and use the functions of government in promoting selfish ends, securing special privileges or working out unjust and unfair advantages. In theory’ at least, therefore, fle find (“very public servant responsible, directly or indirectly, to the people. And in studying the deliberations in which the safe-guards and wise-provisions thrown by them around our government were formed, we also find that those unselfish patriots who planned it were so jealous about having the people’s control over every governmental function preserved in its entirety that everything winch was or is one degree removed from the direct control of the common people was and is the result of a compromise- not a compromise, however. between those who favored a marked degree of removal from the common people, on the one hand, and those who favored the most immediate responsibility to the common people, on the other; .but a compromise between those who, while favoring alike the most immediate responsibility of the government to the people, were trying to accomplish three things: a “government of the people, by the people, for the people,'’ winch should preserve justice, insure equality and be sufficiently strong and staple t* perform its functions effectively. But in these latter days, the tendency to remove the government away from the people more and more, as well as the tendency to regard lightly and bjrush aside easily the sacred landmarks of limitation set in our Constitution, and even to sot the Uonstituion itself aside as a thing of the past, obsoi lete, out-of-date and inapplicable | to present conditions- seems to be I growing more accelerated and cmi phasized day after day, week after week, month after month and year. I And the manifestation of these tendencies has become justly alarming to those of our people | who beljeve in constitutional government and are painfully con-

scious of the increasing frequency and boldness with which its welldefinded limitations are being questioned, strained or totally dis-” regarded. This tendency *to remove the government further and further from the people, to constantly minimize the force of the people’s voice in the disposition and management of the current affairs of our government and to increase and greatly magnify the powers which those temporarily elected to office may exercise without hindrance and with absolute impunity is what is meant by imperialism. We have seen very plain manifestations of it during the past few months, or at least that eternal vigilance which is the price of liberty has become alarmed at the trend of current tendencies in government matters. A Democratic Republic is that form of government in which a self-governing people rule, while an Imperial Republic is that form of elective government in which agencies more or less independent of the popular will may rule—an Empire with an elected ruler who, once in power, may be all-power-ful and largely independent of those who elect him, and that trend of events which has a tendency to change the-farmer into the latter and which millions of our people think they see manifested in the present administrative and legislative policy of our Government has provoked that earnest protest which makes such policy the paramount issue in the pending Presidential contest.