ng
Mr. McKinley, and refusing to support Mr. Bryan, when I differed
from Mr. McKinley on the great predominant question how we
should deal with the people of the Philippine Islands. But
the men who criticised me most bitterly were some of them
the men who applauded my purpose to do so when it was first
declared. One of them, the President of the Anti-Imperialist
League, wrote me a letter saying that I could be more useful
to that cause by remaining a Republican than in any other
way, and declared in a public interview that of course Mr.
Hoar would remain a Republican. The Secretary of the same
organization, after I had made a speech in which I had declared
my purpose to continue to support Mr. McKinley, in spite
of his grievous error in this respect, wrote me a letter
crowded with the most fulsome adulation, and declared that
my position was as lofty as that of Chatham or Burke. I
could cite many other instances to the same effect. But
what other men think, however respectable they may be, is
of course of no importance. Every man must settle for himself
the question of his individual duty. I could not find that
the chance that Mr. Bryan, who had urged the adoption of the
Spanish Treaty and had committed himself to the opinion that
it was right to do everything we promised to do in that Treaty,
would act wisely or righteously if he were trusted with power,
or that he could get his party to support him if he were disposed
to do so, warranted my running the risk of the mischief he
was pledged to accomplish; still less running the risk of
giving the government of this country to his supporters for
the next four years. There are many good men in the Democratic
Party. But the strength of that organization in 1900, as
it is to-day, was in Tammany Hall, in the old Southern leaders
committed to a policy of violence and fraud in dealing with ten
million of our American citizens at home, aided by a few
impracticable dreamers who were even less fitted than the
Democratic leaders to be trusted with political power.

The Republican Party, whatever its faults, since it came
into power in 1860 has been composed in general of what is
best in our national life. States like Massachusetts and
Vermont, the men of the rural districts in New York, the
survivors and children of the men who put down the Rebellion
and abolished slavery, saved the Union, and paid the debt
and kept the faith, and achieved the manufacturing independe