apparent solicitude for the interest of both." In short, the war at once demonstrated their "capacity for self-government" and made granting it to them for the time being unthinkable. For the war was fought not on the issue of the capacity, but on the issue of the granting. The Treaty of Paris settled the "capacity" part. The army in 1898, 1899, and 1900 can hardly be said to have had any much more decided opinion on the capacity branch of the subject, than Perry did about the Japanese in 1854. The Paris Peace Commission having solemnly decided the "capacity part" adversely to the Filipinos and the war having followed, thereafter Mr. Taft went out to make out the best case possible in support of the action of the Peace Commission and, ex vi termini, in support of everything made necessary by the fact of the purchase. Unless some one goes out to present to the American people the other side of the case, they will never arrive at a just verdict. Committed, a priori, to the task of squaring the McKinley Administration with its course as to Cuba, the only course possible for the Taft Commission was to set up a benevolent government based upon the incompetency of the governed, which, being a standing affront to the intelligence of the people, earns their hatred, however it may crave their love. By the very bitterness of the opposition it permits yet disregards, it binds itself ever more irrevocably to remain a benevolent engenderer of malevolence. Government and governed thus get wider apart as the years go by, and, the raison d'etre of the former being the mental deficiencies of the latter, it must, in self-defence, assert those deficiencies the more offensively, the more vehemently they are denied. What hope therefore can there be that the light that shone upon Saul on the road to Damascus will ever break upon the President? What hope that he will ever re-attune his ears to the voice of the Declaration of Independence, calling down from where the Signers (we hope without untoward exception) have gone, crying: "William, William, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the right of a people to pursue happiness in their own way"? The difference between the President and the writer is that both went out to scoff and the latter remained--much longer--to pray.