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AFTERWORD

NE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SIX YEARS AGO GEORGE WASHINGTON and his compatriots put in motion the machinery of a new government. It was indeed a new government, founded on a hitherto untried theory. It was new in the method by which it was to be operated. It was founded on the grand idea that the people have a right to govern themselves, and that they could govern themselves.

What giants of constructive statesmanship were those who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787! How lofty their ideals! How grand their conceptions! They planned the method by which the people were to govern themselves. The people were to select from among themselves representatives who were to enact such laws as might be necessary to guard the rights of the people to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and to protect and defend the new nation from whatsoever enemies might arise against it. The same people were to select the person to whom the task of seeing that the laws thus made were duly and efficiently executed.

It was a government and a nation planted in the wilderness. A population of less than seven millions was scattered along in that narrow strip of territory between the mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. What have those one hundred and thirty-six years wrought! Then the industries were almost wholly agricultural, the exports confined to tobacco and cotton. Now the territory under President Coolidge stretches from ocean to ocean, and up even to the Arctic regions, and across the seas to the very doors of China. The seven million of people have become more than one hundred and twenty million; the exports now include the product of many thousand factories as well as the products of the farms.

In this book I have attempted to tell in brief the story of the cabinet, of those men who by their talents, their learning, their wisdom have aided the Presidents to carry on this government of the people. It may be, it is true, that sometimes a President has made a mistake and selected some person not best fitted for the place he was called upon to occupy, but in the main the places have been filled by men of exalted wisdom and patriotism.

What sovereign of Europe has ever collected around his council table wiser men, more capable statesmen than those who sat around the cabinet table of James Monroe? There were John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford, John C. Calhoun, William Wirt, and Smith Thompson. Let Europe match them if it can. What other government has counted among its ministers directing its intercourse with foreign nations wiser statesmen than John Jay, John Quincy Adams, John For

syth, Daniel Webster, John M. Clayton, William L. Marcy, William H. Seward, Hamilton Fish, Thomas F. Bayard, Philander C. Knox, and Charles E. Hughes; or greater ministers of finance than Alexander Hamilton, Albert Gallatin, William H. Crawford, Salmon P. Chase, Hugh McCulloch, Carter Glass, and Andrew W. Mellon; or advisers in legal matters men more learned in the law than William Wirt, John J. Crittenden, Reverdy Johnson, Jeremiah Black, and William H. Evarts?

Great men these, but great men will arise to fill those places in the future. Wisdom did not die with this past generation, nor will it die with this. These last pages of the book are written just as Calvin Coolidge is preparing to enter upon the term as President to which the people have so triumphantly elected him. For nearly two years he has administered that high office as successor to the lamented Harding, who died a martyr to what he believed to be his duty, worn out in the very meridian of life. Mr. Coolidge picked up the affairs of the government as they dropped from the hands of President Harding. It was a difficult task he assumed. The country was burdened with a debt so enormous as hardly to be conceived by finite minds; the people were staggering under a load of taxation such as no other people had labored under; wild extravagance had grown up in every department of the government and in the domestic affairs of the people, engendered by the war. The business of the government and of the country at large had to be brought back to normalcy.

To this task President Coolidge addressed himself. Extravagance was checked, taxes reduced, and millions of the public debt paid off and discharged. So capable did he prove himself that the people called him to serve a term he and history would call his own. Around his cabinet table will sit men equal in wisdom and statesmanship to those who in other days have aided Presidents to guide and direct the nation.

THE AUTHOR.

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APPENDIX I

WASHINGTON'S PROCLAMATION OF NEUTRALITY

HE PROCLAMATION OF PRESIDENT WASHINGTON issued in 1793 declaring the neutrality of the United States during the war then existing in Europe, has been declared to be the most direct and concise exposition of the duties of a neutral nation and its citizens in time of existing war ever issued by any government.

WHEREAS, It appears a state of war exists between Austria, Prussia, Sardinia, Great Britain and the United Netherlands of the one part and France on the other, and the duty and interests of the United States require that they should, with sincerity and good faith, adopt and pursue a conduct friendly and impartial toward the belligerent powers:

I HAVE, THEREFORE, thought fit by these presents, to declare the disposition of the United States to observe the conduct aforesaid toward those powers respectively, and to exhort and warn the citizens of the United States carefully to avoid all acts and proceedings whatsoever which may in any manner tend to contravene such disposition.

AND I DO ALSO HEREBY MAKE KNOWN, That whosoever of the citizens of the United States shall render himself liable to punishment or forfeiture under the law of nations by committing, aiding, or abetting hostilities against any of the said powers, or by carrying to any of them those articles which are deemed contraband by the modern usage of nations, will not receive the protection of the United States against such punishment or forfeiture; and further, that I have given instructions to those officers to whom it belongs to cause prosecutions to be instituted against all persons who shall, within the cognizance of the courts of the United States, violate the law of nations with respect to the powers at war, or any of them.

IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, I have caused the seal of the United States of America to be affixed to these presents, and [SEAL] signed the same with my hand. Done at the city of Philadelphia, the twenty-second day of April, 1793, and of the Independence of the United States of America the seventeenth.

By the President:

TH. JEFFERSON.

GO. WASHINGTON.

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APPENDIX II

THE MONROE DOCTRINE

HE FINAL OVERTHROW OF NAPOLEON left Europe in a chaotic condition. It is true that thrones had been re-established, but the spirit of liberty was abroad. The situation over there cannot be better described than is done by Woodrow Wilson in his "History of the American People":

With the return of peace all questions had become domestic questions, and it seemed now, for the nonce, to be no serious differences of opinion concerning them. Mr. Monroe took an early opportunity to domesticate, as it were, the very foreign policy of the government, by confining its issues to the Americas. European statesmen were putting their houses in order after the convulsions of the Napoleonic wars; setting up thrones which had been overturned, rehabilitating states which had been torn asunder, reassigning territories, establishing once more the balance of power and the rights of shaken dynasties. Finding their careful work likely to be marred and rendered of no avail by the passion for liberty which had spread like an unquenchable fire out of France and touched the subjects of almost every sovereign of Europe, they drew their states together under the leadership of Austria and her consummate Metternich to crush every rising, silence every demand for liberal reform, and make good the jeoparded absolutism of their kings throughout the length and breadth of Europe. Their reactionary purposes having been accomplished with some touch of thoroughness on the continent itself, Spain prayed them to assist her to win the revolted colonies of South America back to her crown, and they seemed about to accede to her prayer.

It was this attitude of the powers of Europe that brought from President Monroe the enunciation of what we and the world now accept as the Monroe Doctrine. In 1822 President Monroe had recognized the independence of the South American republics. In his annual message to Congress in December, 1823, he proclaimed the attitude of the government toward those republics and to the American continents as a whole. He said:

In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do. It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make preparations for defense. With the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers. The political system of the allied powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America. This difference proceeds from that which exists in their respective governments; and to the defense of our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of their most enlightened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation is devoted. We owe it, therefore, to candor and