, while the flag
has, it may in time reach them. Meantime no mocking of that
perambulating and capricious instrument! It contains the power to
acquire islands, or the whole of China, by conquest or treaty; and the
power to govern them as we choose, limited only by our ideas of Justice.
It would not do to let them have popular sovereignty, any more than it
would have done in Douglas' day to let Kansas have popular sovereignty.
The right to prohibit or allow slavery in a territory goes with the
right to extend the Constitution with its XIV Amendment to the
Philippine Islands, or not to extend it--and we have chosen not to
extend it. Thus the extra constitutional foundations of the Republican
party have led to colonialism.

Douglas, in bronze, looks over the lake to the east--to what? Perhaps to
the hills of Vermont and his youth, when no forecasting angel could have
told him what could come to him and his country. Perhaps he knows now
that free souls are better than free soil, since he never had much use
for the kind of free soil that was shouted at him.

This morning's paper has long dispatches about the progress of our
troops in the Philippines. Perhaps that is the reason why Douglas' back
is to the west. Surely he does not mean that he turns his back upon the
domain of Mexico and Oregon. It must be only upon the conquests of the
new capitalism. I am glad, and more than glad, that negro slavery was
abolished. It was nothing but a wooden plow anyway. Our new steel plows
work much better and they have this advantage: they accomplish more,
they are in themselves more of slaves, and they are creators of time and
of greater wealth.

There are strikes over the land. Why? Are not men free? Yes, they are
free to choose their work if they know how to do more than one thing, or
if they are able to move from the place where they have been employed.
But they are not free to organize, to agitate for better wages, or to
strike. What is this matter of freedom after all? It reminds me of the
steps of a stairway. A step consists of a horizontal board and a
vertical board and then another horizontal board. The first horizontal
board is the present condition, and the second horizontal is the liberty
that is desired, the vertical board is the difficulty in the way. One
must overcome resistance to step up. When he does he has achieved the
liberty to which he aspires. But he is standing on the same sort of a
level that he did before. This