"The aristocracy almost to a man swore to a low valuation, so when five
years had passed the Emperor issued a decree appropriating to
Government use all land over and above six hundred and forty acres held
by private owners and paying for it one-fifth of the total assessment
for the previous five years with twenty per cent. added for
improvements, the aristocracy had to accept it and their power was
broken forever, for the Emperor leased the land to the cultivators of
the soil at the rate of four per cent. per annum of the price that the
Government paid for the land, dividing the land into small farms and
giving the renter the right of purchase at any time.
"The aristocracy and the Church have been in every country the enemies
of liberty and human progress. The Emperor saw the evil effects of the
liquor traffic and to abate the evil he abolished the manufacture and
sale of liquors by individuals and placed their manufacture and sale in
the care of the Department of Manufactures and year by year he added
tobacco, drugs and chemicals, sugar, salt, tea, coffee, coal oil, stone
coal, charcoal and all the metals, and placed the coinage and currency
of the Empire under the control of the Department of Finance known
throughout the world as the Bank of Eurasia. He established our present
system of education and forbade the teaching of religious dogmas in the
public schools, and when every district in the Empire was surveyed and
the people thereof enjoyed a District Government by electing their
Governors, Judges and other public officials and the Government owned
and operated all public utilities, he decided that the time had arrived
for a Government of the people, for the people and by the people and
called a general election to elect members of Parliament and to submit
to the people the political, civil and penal code of the Empire. The
people by an overwhelming vote ratified the code and endorsed the
Government. Four years afterward the Emperor called a general election
to choose his successor and retired to private life, beloved by his
people.
"Your people had a President who gained worldwide fame not only by the
vigorous way that he wielded the Big Stick, but also through his
undaunted courage and inflexible honesty. Place him again in the
Presidential chair and he will open the way for a government of the
people, for the people and by the people."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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