It was during the War of the Rebellion, too, that a legislature of Virginia met in Alexandria and passed a law cutting the state in two, to erect the new state of West Virginia. Now, article 4, section 3, of the United States constitution expressly declares that "no state shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state, nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned and of the Congress." Yet the state of West Virginia is a historical, political and geographical fact, notwithstanding that the precedent thus established is a dangerous one, and the division wrought great injustice to the Old Dominion in throwing upon her shoulders the entire debt of the original state. Here was not only a violation of the constitution, but a "historical crime;" yet both constitution and the crime remain to vex the souls of the strict constructionists and to remind us all how weak a thing is any constitution when it blocks the way of a popular demand. There is no need to multiply instances, though there are many others--notably during the period of "reconstructing" the conquered states after the war. The constitution offers no more substantial obstacle to the acquisition of territory in the Philippines than it did in the other cases cited, provided only that public expediency and the demand of the people are on the other side. * * * * * Scarcely less importance is attributed by the anti-expansionists to our alleged "historical _policy of isolation_," which, we are told, would be violated by thrusting our hands as a nation into the larger affairs of international politics. For some reason the idea seems to prevail that George Washington and other statesmen of his period designed the Republic for a remote, parochial career, hedged about by a Chinese wall, excluding all foreign influence from our affairs and retaining our own energies within our own boundaries. "America for the Americans," is the shibboleth of this school of political philosophers, and they really seem to believe that the Republic will in some way be happier and richer if we keep aloof entirely and forever from the rest of the world. As a matter of fact, the only nation on earth that has ever maintained such a policy to its logical end and conclusion is China, and China is now awaiting participation in a grand international banquet, whereat, like Polonius, she is not to eat but to be eaten.