In this century our territory has been enlarged fourfold, our population is eighteen times as great as it was in 1792, our revenues have been multiplied by a hundred, and the convertible wealth of the people has been increased in a greater ratio even. The railway, the telegraphic, the telephonic systems have been created. The dream of Shakespeare has been realized--we have put a girdle round about the Earth in forty minutes. More than all else, and as the culmination of all else, we have demonstrated the practicability of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. All this has been made possible by and through a system of universal public education--a system which taxes the whole people, and educates the whole people in good learning, and in the cardinal virtues which adorn, dignify and elevate the individual man and furnish the only security for progressive, successful, illustrious national life. This is the inheritance to which the generations before us are born. A great inheritance--a great inheritance of opportunity, a great inheritance of power, a great inheritance of responsibility, from which the coming generations are not to shrink. XLV IMPERIALISM AS A PUBLIC POLICY This paper is introduced upon two grounds mainly. It sets forth with a reasonable degree of fulness the views that I have entertained for three years in regard to President McKinley's policy in the acquisition and control of the islands in the Caribbean Sea and in the Pacific Ocean, and it presents a history of my relations to political movements through a long half century. SPEECH DELIVERED AT SALEM, MASS., OCTOBER 18, 1900, IN REPLY TO A SPEECH MADE BY THE HONORABLE WILLIAM H. MOODY, M. C. A truthful statement that I have been inconsistent in the opinions that I have held and advocated upon questions of public concern, would not disturb me by day, nor consign me to sleepless nights. It is now sixty years since I first held public office by the votes of my fellow-citizens. In that long period of time my opinions have undergone many changes. When I have had occasion to address my fellow- citizens upon public questions I have not reviewed my previous sayings through fear that some critic might arraign me for inconsistency. I have considered only my present duty in relation to the questions immediately before me. In the first ten or fifteen years of my manhood I accepted political economy as a cosmopolitan science and free trade as a wise policy for every country. My views in favor of free trade for the United States are set forth in printed articles, which are now accessible. They are at the service of the critics and of the advocates of free trade. Consistency is not always a virtue, and inconsistency is not always a vice. Even courts of justice change their rulings and holdings when they find themselves in error.