The Commoner

Then and Now.

Recently The Commoner congratulated the Des Moines Register and Leader, a republican paper, because it had summoned sufficient courage to print a quotation from Abraham Lincoln. Commenting upon this compliment, the Register and Leader insists that no republican paper has reason in view of the party's policy to feel embarrassed by quotations from Lincoln's speeches and that the government that has been established in the Philippine islands is not in violation of the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

The editor of this republican paper is, indeed, a genius if he can present intelligent argument in line with his contention. The principles of the Declaration of Independence should be well understood; but in this day when so many republican leaders are sneering at those principles and when a republican editor has the hardihood to insist that our Philippine policy is in line with those principles it will not be out of place to refer, in passing, to the great state paper which Moses Coit Tyler called "a passionate chant of human freedom."

That all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among these being life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, is the statement of the preamble; and it is further declared that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

It is hardly necessary to dwell upon this point