In dealing with our Indian tribes the government has proceeded upon the theory that they were nations, they have not been taxed, and although our treatment of them has not been creditable, our theories have been consistent; still, I have no idea that the framers of the Declaration believed that these tribes, or Oriental nations, or any semi-civilized peoples were fitted for a Republic, or that for them such a form would be wise or safe; but they did not lose sight of it as the ultimate for every people, and believed that it could only be attained by every people working out their own salvation and by that governmental evolution which through struggle and hardship alone leads to a higher and more stable form. Secretary Hay once incisively expressed it thus: “No people are fit for anything else than self-government,” and it was an eminent Frenchman who truly said, “You cannot have a Republic without Republicans.” Given the capacity to form _some_ government and you have all the conditions necessary for improvement, and in the Providence of God a people can better be trusted to improve itself than it can to gain in self-government under the subjection of others. Applying these principles as our fathers stated them, and as they applied them, unless in the case of slavery, and remembering that their sin in that case, however, much forced by their situation, was atoned for from 1861 to 1865 in blood and treasure, the problems relating to inferior races become greatly simplified, for the “white man’s burden” ceases to be war and subjection and becomes a Christian principle in recognizing as the sole right of the stronger his duty to assist and encourage the weaker in the struggle to preserve such government as suits him best and for which he deems himself best fitted. Abandoning the principles of the Declaration, the white man’s burden means to the black or yellow man political slavery and wrong. Even the Anglo-Saxon, with all his success in many respects, as a colonist, has utterly failed to lead an inferior race up to self-government――he may have carried with him some material advantages, but his assumed and vaunted burden cannot be separated from his love of power and soaring ambition. His dominating superiority makes him a hard master of another race, and he fails utterly in sympathetic appreciation of racial differences and characteristics. No one can dispute his marvellous capacity, the forcefulness of his dealings, and in many cases his patient, earnest attempt to better the conditions of those whom he rules; but he never has accepted nor understood the peculiar natures of his subjects nor enlisted their sympathies or affections. Without intending to be cruel, his cool assumption of the power to remake people and force them into his own mould has led him into errors which have caused great hardship and have ended in estrangement and hatred.