THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Estate of 
 Ernst and Eleanor 
 van Ll5ben Sels 
 
PROBLEMS 
 OF EXPANSION 
 
PROBLEMS 
 OF EXPANSION 
 
 AS CONSIDERED IN 
 PAPERS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 BY 
 
 WHITELAW REID 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 1900 
 
Copyright, 1898, 1900, by 
 The Cbntubt Co. 
 
 LOAN STACK 
 GIFT 
 
 THE DEVtNNE PRESS. 
 

 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 SO general have been the expressions as to 
 the value of these scattered papers and 
 addresses that I have thought it a useful 
 service to gather them together from the 
 authorized publications at the time, or, in 
 some cases, from newspaper reports, and 
 (with the consent of the Century Co. and of 
 Mr. John Lane for the copyrighted arti- 
 cles) to embody them consecutively, in the 
 order of their several dates, in this volume. 
 
 The article entitled "The Territory with 
 which We are Threatened'^ was prepared 
 before the appointment of its author as 
 a member of the Commission to negotiate 
 terms of peace with Spain, and published 
 only a few days afterward. This circum- 
 stance attracted unusual attention to its 
 views about retaining the territory the 
 country had taken. 
 
 As to the attitude of every one else con- 
 nected officially with the determination of 
 that question there has been, naturally, 
 more or less diplomatic reserve; but the 
 position of Mr. Reid before he was appointed 
 was thus clearly revealed. When the storm 
 
 216 
 
VI PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 of opposition was apparently reaching its 
 height, in June, 1899, he took occasion to 
 avow explicitly the course it was obvious he 
 must have recommended. In his address 
 at the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of Miami 
 University, referring to some apparently 
 authorized despatches on the subject from 
 Washington, he said: "I readily take the 
 time which hostile critics consider unfavor- 
 able, for accepting my own share of respon- 
 sibility, and for avowing for myself that I 
 declared my belief in the duty and policy of 
 holding the whole Philippine Archipelago in 
 the very first conference of the Commission- 
 ers in the President's room at the White 
 House, in advance of any instructions of 
 any sort. If vindication for it be needed, I 
 confidently await the future." 
 
 This measure of responsibility for the 
 expansion policy upon which the country is 
 launched has necessarily given special inter- 
 est to Ml-. Eeid's subsequent discussions of 
 the various problems it has raised. They 
 have been called for on important occasions 
 both abroad and in all parts of our own coun- 
 try. They have covered many phases of the 
 subject, but have preserved a singular uni- 
 formity of purpose and consistency of ideas 
 throughout. They appeared at times when 
 public men often seemed to be groping in 
 the dark on an unknown road, but it is now 
 
PEEFATOEY NOTE VU 
 
 evident that the road which has been taken is 
 substantially the road they marked out. As 
 a foreign critic said in comment on one of 
 the addresses : " The author is one man who 
 knows what he thinks about the new policy 
 required by the new situation in which his 
 country is placed, and has the courage and 
 candor to say it." 
 
 It has seemed desirable with each paper 
 and address to prefix a brief record of the 
 circumstances under which it was made. 
 A few memoranda which Mr. Reid had pre- 
 pared to elucidate the text are added, in 
 foot-notes and in the Appendices which in- 
 clude the Eesolutions of Congress as to 
 Cuba, the Protocol of Washington, and the 
 text of the Peace of Paris. 
 
 C. C. BUEL. 
 New Rochelle, New York, 
 May 25, 1900. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The Territory with which We are 
 Threatened 1 
 
 In " The Century," September, 1898. 
 
 II. Was It too Good a Treaty? ... 25 
 
 At the Lotos Club, New York, February 11, 1899. 
 
 III. Purport of the Treaty 35 
 
 At the Marquette Club, Chicago, February 13, 1899. 
 
 rv. The Duties of Peace 53 
 
 At the Ohio Society dinner, New York, February 25, 
 1899. 
 
 V. The Open Door 65 
 
 At the dinner of the American- Asiatic Association, 
 New York, February 23, 1899. 
 
 VI. Some Consequences of the Treaty 
 
 OF Paris 71 
 
 From " The Anglo-Saxon Review," June, 1899. 
 
 VII. Our New Duties ., 109 
 
 Address at the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of Miami 
 University, June 15, 1899. 
 
 vni. Later Aspects of our New Duties 161 
 
 At Princeton University, on Commemoration Day, 
 October 21, 1899. 
 
 IX. A Continental Union 199 
 
 At the Massachusetts Club, Boston, March 3, 1900. 
 ix 
 
X CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 X. Our New Interests 221 
 
 At the University of California, on Charter Day, 
 March 23, 1900. 
 
 XI. "Unofficial Instructions" .... 259 
 
 At the Farewell Banquet to the Philippine Com- 
 mission, San Francisco, April 12, 1900. 
 
 APPENDICES 
 
 1. Power to Acquire and Govern Terri- 
 
 tory 271 
 
 2. The Tariff in United States Terri- 
 
 tory 277 
 
 3. The Resolutions of Congress as to 
 
 Cuba 280 
 
 4. The Protocol of Washington . . .282 
 
 5. The Peace of Paris 285 
 
THE TERRITORY WITH WHICH WE 
 ARE THREATENED 
 
This paper first appeared in " The Century Magazine" for 
 September, 1898, for which it was written some time before 
 the author's appointment as a member of the Paris Com- 
 mission to negotiate the terms of peace with Spain, and, in 
 fact, before hostilities had been suspended or the peace 
 protocol agreed upon in Washington. 
 
THE TEEEITOEY WITH WHICH WE 
 ARE THREATENED 
 
 MEN are everywhere asking what should 
 be our course about the territory con- 
 quered in this war. Some inquire merely 
 if it is good policy for the United States to 
 abandon its continental limitations, and ex- 
 tend its rule over semi-tropical countries 
 with mixed populations. Others ask if it 
 would not be the wisest policy to give them 
 away after conquering them, or abandon 
 them. They say it would be ruinous to 
 admit them as States to equal rights with 
 ourselves, and contrary to the Constitution 
 to hold them permanently as Territories. It 
 would be bad policy, they argue, to lower 
 the standard of our population by taking in 
 hordes of West Indians and Asiatics; bad 
 policy to run any chance of allowing these 
 people to become some day joint arbiters 
 with ourselves of the national destinies ; bad 
 policy to abandon the principles of Wash- 
 ington's Farewell Address, to which we have 
 adhered for a century, and involve our- 
 
2 PKOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 selves in the Eastern question, or in the 
 entanglements of European politics. 
 
 The men who raise these questions are 
 sincere and patriotic. They are now all 
 loyally supporting the Government in the 
 prosecution of the war which some of them 
 were active in bringing on, and others to the 
 last deprecated and resisted. Their doubts 
 and difficulties deserve the fairest considera- 
 tion, and are of pressing importance. 
 
 Duty First, BuT is there not another question, more 
 not Policy, impoi'tant, which first demands considera- 
 tion? Have we the right to decide whether 
 we shall hold or abandon the conquered ter- 
 ritory, solely or even mainly as a matter 
 of national policy! Are we not bound by 
 our own acts, and by the responsibility we 
 have voluntarily assumed before Spain, be- 
 fore Europe, and before the civilized world, 
 to consider it first in the light of national 
 duty! 
 
 For that consideration it is not needful 
 now to raise the question whether we were 
 in every particular justifiable for our share 
 in the transactions leading to the war. 
 However men's opinions on that point may 
 differ, the Nation is now at war for a good 
 cause, and has in a vigorous prosecution of 
 it the loyal and zealous support of all good 
 citizens. 
 
TEKRITOEY WE ARE THREATENED WITH 3 
 
 The President intervened, with our Army 
 and Navy, under the direct command of 
 Congress, to put down Spanish rule in 
 Cuba, on the distinct ground that it was 
 a rule too bad to be longer endured. Are 
 we not, then, bound in honor and morals to 
 see to it that the government which replaces 
 Spanish rule is better? Are we not morally 
 culpable and disgraced before the civilized 
 world if we leave it as bad or worse! Can 
 any consideration of mere policy, of our own 
 interests, or our own ease and comfort, free 
 us from that solemn responsibility which we 
 have voluntarily assumed, and for which we 
 have lavishly spilled American and Spanish 
 blood! 
 
 Most people now realize from what a mis- 
 take Congress was kept by the firm attitude 
 of the President in opposing a recognition of 
 the so-called Cuban Eepublic of Cubitas. 
 It is now generally understood that virtu- 
 ally there was no Cuban Eepublic, or any 
 Cuban government save that of wandering 
 bands of guerrilla insurgents, probably less 
 numerous and influential than had been 
 represented. There seems reason to believe 
 that however bad Spanish government may 
 have been, the rule of these people, where 
 they had the power, was as bad ; and still 
 greater reason to apprehend that if they had 
 full power, their sense of past wrongs and 
 
4 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 their unrestrained tropical thirst for ven- 
 geance might lead to something worse. Is 
 it for that pitiful result that a civilized and 
 Christian people is giving up its sons and 
 pouring out blood and treasure in Cuba? 
 
 In commanding the war, Congress pledged 
 us to continue our action until the pacifica- 
 tion of the island should be secured. When 
 that happy time has arrived, if it shall then 
 be found that the Cuban insurgents and 
 their late enemies are able to unite in main- 
 taining a settled and peaceable government 
 in Cuba, distinctly free from the faults which 
 now lead the United States to destroy the 
 old one, we shall have discharged our re- 
 sponsibility, and will be at liberty to end 
 our interference. But if not, the responsi- 
 bility of the United States continues. It is 
 morally bound to secure to Cuba such a 
 government, even if forced by circumstances 
 to furnish it itself. 
 
 The Pledge At this point, however, we are checked by 
 of Congress, g^ reminder of the further action of Congress, 
 " asserting its determination, when the paci- 
 fication of Cuba has been accomplished, to 
 leave the government and control of the 
 island to its people." 
 
 Now, the secondary provisions of any great 
 measure must be construed in the light of 
 its main purpose ; and where they conflict. 
 
TEKRITOEY WE ARE THREATENED WITH 5 
 
 we are led to presume that they would not 
 have been adopted but for ignorance of the 
 actual conditions. Is it not evident that 
 such was the case here? We now know 
 how far Congress was misled as to the 
 organization and power of the alleged Cuban 
 government, the strength of the revolt, and 
 the character of the war the insurgents were 
 waging. We have seen how little depen- 
 dence could be placed upon the lavish 
 promises of support from great armies of 
 insurgents in the war we have undertaken ; 
 and we are beginning to realize the difference 
 between our idea of a humane and civilized 
 "pacification" and that apparently enter- 
 tained up to this time by the insurgents. It 
 is certainly true that when the war began 
 neither Congress nor the people of the United 
 States cherished an intention to hold Cuba 
 permanently, or had any further thought 
 than to pacify it and turn it over to its own 
 people. But they must pacify it before they 
 turn it over; and, from present indications, 
 to do that thoroughly may be the work of 
 years. Even then they are still responsible 
 to the world for the establishment of a 
 better government than the one they de- 
 stroy. If the last state of that island should 
 be worse than the first, the fault and the 
 crime must be solely that of the United 
 States. We were not actually forced to 
 
6 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 involve ourselves ; we might have passed by 
 on the other side. When, instead, we in- 
 sisted on interfering, we made ourselves re- 
 sponsible for improving the situation ; and, 
 no matter what Congress "disclaimed," or 
 what intention it " asserted," we cannot leave 
 Cuba till that is done without national dis- 
 honor and blood-guiltiness. 
 
 Egypt and The situation is curiously like that of 
 Ciii>«. England in Egypt. She intervened too, 
 
 under far less provocation, it must be ad- 
 mitted, and for a cause rather more com- 
 mercial than humanitarian. But when some 
 thought that her work was ended and that 
 it was time for her to go. Lord Granville, on 
 behalf of Mr. Gladstone's government, ad- 
 dressed the other great European Powers in a 
 note on the outcome of which Congress might 
 have reflected with profit before framing its 
 resolutions. " Although for the present," he 
 said, " a British force remains in Egypt for 
 the preservation of public tranquillity. Her 
 Majesty's government are desirous of with- 
 drawing it as soon as the state of the coun- 
 try and the organization of proper means 
 for the maintenance of the Khedive's au- 
 thority will admit of it. In the meantime 
 the position in which Her Majesty's govern- 
 ment are placed towards His Highness im- 
 poses upon them the duty of giving advice, 
 
TEERITOEY WE ARE THREATENED WITH 7 
 
 with the object of securing that the order of 
 things to be established shall be of a satis- 
 factory character and possess the elements 
 of stability and progress." As time went 
 on this declaration did not seem quite ex- 
 plicit enough; and accordingly, just a year 
 later, Lord Granville instructed the present 
 Lord Cromer, then Sir Evelyn Baring, that 
 it should be made clear to the Egyptian 
 ministers and governors of provinces that 
 " the responsibility which for the time rests 
 on England obliges Her Majesty ^s govern- 
 ment to insist on the adoption of the policy 
 which they recommend, and that it will be 
 necessary that those ministers and governors 
 who do not follow this course should cease 
 to hold their offices." 
 
 That was in 1884— a year after the defeat 
 of Arabi, and the " pacification." It is now 
 fourteen years later. The English are still 
 there, and the Egyptian ministers and gov- 
 ernors now understand quite well that they 
 must cease to hold their offices if they do 
 not adopt the policy recommended by the 
 British diplomatic agent. If it should be 
 found that we cannot with honor and self- 
 respect begin to abandon our self-imposed 
 task of Cuban "pacification" with any 
 greater speed, the impetuous congressmen, 
 as they read over their own inconsiderate 
 resohitions fourteen years hence, can hide 
 
8 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 their blushes behind a copy of Lord Gran- 
 ville's letter. They may explain, if they 
 like, with the classical excuse of Benedick, 
 " When I said I would die a bachelor, I did 
 not think I should live till I were married." 
 Or if this seems too frivolous for their serious 
 plight, let them recall the position of Mr. 
 Jefferson, who originally declared that the 
 purchase of foreign teriitory would make 
 waste paper of the Constitution, and subse- 
 quently appealed to Congress for the money 
 to pay for his purchase of Louisiana. When 
 he held such an acquisition unconstitutional, 
 he had not thought he would live to want 
 Louisiana. 
 
 As to Cuba, it may be fairly concluded 
 that only these points are actually clear: 
 
 (1) We had made ourselves in a sense re- 
 sponsible for Spain's rule in that island by 
 our consistent declaration, through three 
 quarters of a century, that no other Eu- 
 ropean nation should replace her— Daniel 
 Webster, as Secretary of State, even seeking 
 to guard her hold as against Great Britain. 
 
 (2) We are now at war because we say Span- 
 ish rule is intolerable ; and we cannot with- 
 draw our hand till it is replaced by a rule 
 for which we are willing to be responsible. 
 
 (3) We are also pledged to remain till the 
 pacification is complete. 
 
TEEKITOKY WE ARE THREATENED WITH 9 
 
 In the other territories in question the The 
 conditions are different. We are not taking Territories 
 possession of them, as we are of Cuba, with 
 the avowed purpose of giving them a better 
 government. We are conquering them be- 
 cause we are at war with Spain, which has 
 been holding and governing them very much 
 as she has Cuba; and we must strike Spain 
 wherever and as hard as we can. But it 
 must at once be recognized that as to Porto 
 Eico at least, to hold it would be the natural 
 course and what all the world would expect. 
 Both Cuba and Porto Rico, like Hawaii, 
 are within the acknowledged sphere of our 
 influence, and ours must necessarily be the 
 first voice in deciding their destiny. Our 
 national position with regard to them is 
 historic. It has been officially declared and 
 known to every civilized nation for three 
 quarters of a century. To abandon it now, 
 that we may refuse greatness through a 
 sudden craven fear of being great, would be 
 so astonishing a reversal of a policy stead- 
 fastly maintained by the whole line of our 
 responsible statesmen since 1823 as to be 
 grotesque. 
 
 John Quincy Adams, writing in April of 
 that year, as Secretary of State, to our Min- 
 ister to Spain, pointed out that the dominion 
 of Spain upon the American continents, 
 North and South, was irrevocably gone, but 
 
10 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 warned him that Cuba and Porto Rico still 
 remained nominally dependent upon her, and 
 that she might attempt to transfer them. 
 That could not be permitted, as they were 
 " natural appendages to the North American 
 continent." Subsequent statements turned 
 more upon what Mr. Adams called "the 
 transcendent importance of Cuba to the 
 United States " ; but from that day to this I 
 do not recall a line in our state papers to 
 show that the claim of the United States to 
 control the future of Porto Rico as well as 
 of Cuba was ever waived. As to Cuba, Mr. 
 Adams predicted that within half a century 
 its annexation would be indispensable. 
 "There are laws of political as well as of 
 physical gravitation," he said; and "Cuba, 
 forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural 
 connection with Spain, and incapable of self- 
 support, can gravitate only towards the 
 North American Union, which, by the same 
 law of nature, cannot cast her off from its 
 bosom." If Cuba is incapable of self-sup- 
 port, and could not therefore be left, in the 
 cheerful language of Congress, to her own 
 people, how much less could little Porto 
 Rico stand alone? 
 
 There remains the alternative of giving 
 Porto Rico back to Spain at the end of the 
 war. But if we are warranted now in mak- 
 ing war because the character of Spanish 
 
TEREITOEY WE AEE THEEATENED WITH 11 
 
 rule in Cuba was intolerable, how could we 
 justify ourselves in handing back Porto Rico 
 to the same rule, after having once emanci- 
 pated her from it 1 The subject need not be 
 pursued. To return Porto Eico to Spain, 
 after she is once in our possession, is as 
 much beyond the power of the President and 
 of Congress as it was to preserve the peace 
 with Spain after the destruction of the Maine 
 in the harbor of Havana. From that mo- 
 ment the American people resolved that the 
 flag under which this calamity was possible 
 should disappear forever from the Western 
 hemisphere, and they will sanction no peace 
 that permits it to remain. 
 
 The question of the Philippines is different 
 and more difficult. They are not within 
 what the diplomatists of the world would 
 recognize as the legitimate sphere of Ameri- 
 can influence. Our relation to them is 
 purely the accident of recent war. We are 
 not in honor bound to hold them, if we 
 can honorably dispose of them. But we 
 know that their grievances differ only in 
 kind, not in degree, from those of Cuba ; and 
 having once freed them from the Spanish 
 yoke, we cannot honorably require them to 
 go back under it again. That would be to 
 put us in an attitude of nauseating national 
 hypocrisy ; to give the lie to all our profes- 
 sions of humanity in our interference in 
 
12 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 Cuba, if not also to prove that our real 
 motive was conquest. What humanity for- 
 bade us to tolerate in the West Indies, it 
 would not justify us in reestablishing in the 
 Philippines. 
 
 What, then, can we do with them ? Shall 
 we trade them for something nearer home ? 
 Doubtless that would be permissible, if we 
 were sure of thus securing them a better 
 government than that of Spain, and if it 
 could be done without precipitating fresh in- 
 ternational difficulties. But we cannot give 
 them to our friend and their neighbor Japan 
 without instantly provoking the hostility of 
 Russia, which recently interfered to prevent 
 a far smaller Japanese aggrandizement. 
 We cannot give them to Russia without a 
 greater injustice to Japan ; or to Germany 
 or to France or to England without raising 
 far more trouble than we allay. England 
 would like us to keep them ; the Continental 
 nations would like that better than any other 
 control excepting Spain's or their own ; and 
 the Philippines would prefer it to anything 
 save the absolute independence which they 
 are incapable of maintaining. Having been 
 led into their possession by the course of a 
 war undertaken for the sake of humanity, 
 shall we draw a geographical limit to our 
 humanity, and say we cannot continue to be 
 governed by it in Asiatic waters because it 
 
TERKITOEY WE AEE THREATENED WITH 13 
 
 is too much trouble and is too disagreeable 
 —and, besides, there may be no profit in it 1 
 Both war and diplomacy have many sur- 
 prises; and it is quite possible that some 
 way out of our embarrassing possession may 
 yet be found. The fact is clear that many 
 of our people do not much want it; but if 
 a way of relinquishing it is proposed, the 
 one thing we are bound to insist on is that 
 it shall be consistent with our attitude in 
 the war, and with our honorable obligations 
 to the islands we have conquered and to 
 civilization. 
 
 The chief aversion to the vast accessions Fear of then? 
 of territory with which we are threatened *^ states, 
 springs from the fear that ultimately they 
 must be admitted into the Union as States. 
 No public duty is more urgent at this mo- 
 ment than to resist from the very outset the 
 concession of such a possibility. In no cir- 
 cumstances likely to exist within a century 
 should they be admitted as States of the 
 Union. The loose, disunited, and unrelated 
 federation of independent States to which 
 this would inevitably lead, stretching from 
 the Indian Archipelago to the Caribbean 
 Sea, embracing all climes, all religions, all 
 races,— black, yellow, white, and their mix- 
 tures,— all conditions, from pagan ignorance 
 and the verge of cannibalism to the best 
 
14 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 product of centuries of civilization, educa- 
 tion, and self-government, all with equal 
 rights in our Senate and representation ac- 
 cording to population in our House, with 
 an equal voice in shaping our national des- 
 tinies—that would, at least in this stage of 
 the world, be humanitarianism run mad, a 
 degeneration and degradation of the homo- 
 geneous, continental Republic of our pride 
 too preposterous for the contemplation of 
 serious and intelligent men. Quite as well 
 might Great Britain now invite the swarm- 
 ing millions of India to send rajas and mem- 
 bers of the lower House, in proportion to 
 population, to swamp the Lords and Com- 
 mons and rule the English people. If it had 
 been supposed that even Hawaii, with its 
 overwhelming preponderance of Kanakas 
 and Asiatics, would become a State, she 
 could not have been annexed. If the ter- 
 ritories we are conquering must become 
 States, we might better renounce them at 
 once and place them under the protectorate 
 of some humane and friendly European 
 Power with less nonsense in its blood. 
 
 This is not to deny them the freest and 
 most liberal institutions they are capable of 
 sustaining. The people of Sitka and the 
 Aleutian Islands enjoy the blessings of 
 ordered liberty and free institutions, but 
 nobody dreams of admitting them to State- 
 
TEERITOKY WE ABE l^HEEATENED WITH 15 
 
 hood. New Mexico has belonged to us for 
 half a century, not only without oppression, 
 but with all the local self-government for 
 which she was prepared ; yet, though an in- 
 tegral part of our continent, surrounded by 
 States, and with an adequate population, she 
 is still not admitted to Statehood. Why 
 should not the people on the island of Porto 
 Eico, or even of Cuba, prosper and be happy 
 for the next century under a rule similar in 
 the main to that under which their kinsmen 
 of New Mexico have prospered for the last 
 half-century ? 
 
 With some necessary modifications, the ter- 
 ritorial form of government which we have 
 tried so successfully from the beginning of 
 the Union is well adapted to the best of 
 such communities. It secures local self-gov- 
 ernment, equality before the law, upright 
 courts, ample power for order and defense, 
 and such control by Congress as gives se- 
 curity against the mistakes or excesses of 
 people new to the exercise of these rights. 
 
 But such a system, we are told, is contrary wiu the 
 to our Constitution and to the spirit of our Constitution 
 institutions. Why? We have had just that withiioiding 
 system ever since the Constitution was statehood? 
 framed. It is true that a large part of 
 the territory thus governed has now been 
 admitted into the Union in the form of new 
 
16 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 States. But it is not true that this was 
 recognized at the beginning as a right, or 
 even generally contemplated as a probabil- 
 ity; nor is it true that it has been the pur- 
 pose or expectation of those who annexed 
 foreign territory to the United States, like 
 the Louisiana or the Gadsden Purchase, that 
 it would all be carved into States. That 
 feature of the marvelous development of the 
 continent has come as a surprise to this 
 generation and the last, and would have 
 been absolutely incredible to the men of 
 Thomas Jefferson's time. Obviously, then, 
 it could not have been the purpose for which, 
 before that date, our territorial system was 
 devised. It is not clear that the founders 
 of the Government expected even all the 
 territory we possessed at the outset to be 
 made into States. Much of it was supposed 
 to be worthless and uninhabitable. But it 
 is certain that they planned for outside ac- 
 cessions. Even in the Articles of Confed- 
 eration they provided for the admission of 
 Canada and of British colonies which in- 
 cluded Jamaica as well as Nova Scotia. 
 Madison, in referring to this, construes it as 
 meaning that they contemplated only the 
 admission of these colonies as colonies, not 
 the eventual establishment of new States 
 (" Federalist," No. 43). About the same time 
 Hamilton was dwelling on the alarms of 
 
TEEEITORY WE ARE THREATENED WITH 17 
 
 those who thought the country already too 
 large, and arguing that great size was a 
 safeguard against ambitious rulers. 
 
 Nevertheless, the objectors still argue, the 
 Constitution gives no positive warrant for a 
 permanent territorial policy. But it does ! 
 Ordinarily it may be assumed that what the 
 framers of the Constitution immediately 
 proceeded to do under it was intended by 
 them to be warranted by it; and we have 
 seen that they immediately devised and 
 maintained a territorial system for the gov- 
 ernment of territory which they had no ex- 
 pectation of ever converting into States. 
 The case, however, is even plainer than that. 
 The sole reference in the Constitution to the 
 territories of the United States is in Article 
 IV, Section 3: ''The Congress shall have 
 power to dispose of and make all needful 
 rales and regulations respecting the terri- 
 tory or other property belonging to the 
 United States." Jefferson revised his first 
 views far enough to find warrant for acquir- 
 ing territory ; but here is explicit, unmistak- 
 able authority conferred for dealing with it, 
 and with other " property," precisely as Con- 
 gress chooses. The territory was not a pres- 
 ent or prospective party in interest in the 
 Union created under this organic act. It 
 was "property," to be disposed of or ruled 
 and regulated as Congress might determine. 
 
18 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 The inhabitants of the territory were not 
 consulted ; there was no provision that they 
 should even be guaranteed a republican fonn 
 of government like the States; they were 
 secured no right of representation and given 
 no vote. So, too, when it came to acquiring 
 new territory, there was no thought of con- 
 sulting the inhabitants. Mr. Jefferson did 
 not ask the citizens of Louisiana to consent 
 to their annexation, nor did Mr. Monroe 
 submit such a question to the Spaniards of 
 Florida, nor Mr. Polk to the Mexicans of 
 California, nor Mr. Pierce to the New Mexi- 
 cans, nor Mr. Johnson to the Eussians and 
 Aleuts of Alaska. The power of the Gov- 
 ernment to deal with territory, foreign or 
 domestic, precisely as it chooses was under- 
 stood from the beginning to be absolute; 
 and at no stage in our whole history have 
 we hesitated to exercise it. The question of 
 permanently holding the Philippines or any 
 other conquered territory as territory is not, 
 and cannot be made, one of constitutional 
 right ; it is one solely of national duty and 
 of national policy. 
 
 Does the As a last resort, it is maintained that even 
 Dortrine ^^ *^^ Constitution does not forbid, the Mon- 
 interfere? roe Doctrine does. But the famous declara- 
 tion of Mr. Monroe on which reliance is 
 placed does not warrant this conclusion. 
 
TEEEITOEY WE ARE THREATENED WITH 19 
 
 After holding that "the American conti- 
 nents, by the free and independent condition 
 which they have assumed and maintained, 
 are henceforth not to be considered as sub- 
 jects for future colonization by any Euro- 
 pean Power," Mr. Monroe continued : " We 
 should consider any attempt on their part 
 to extend their system to any part of this 
 hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and 
 safety. With the existing colonies or de- 
 pendencies of any European Power we have 
 not interfered, and shall not interfere." The 
 context makes it clear that this assurance 
 applies solely to the existing colonies and 
 dependencies they still had in this hemi- 
 sphere ; and that even this was qualified by 
 the previous warning that while we took no 
 part " in the wars of European Powers, in 
 matters relating to themselves," we resented 
 injuries and defended our rights. It will 
 thus be seen that Mr. Monroe gave no pledge 
 that we would never interfere with any de- 
 pendency or colony of European Powers 
 anywhere. He simply declared our general 
 policy not to interfere with existing colonies 
 still remaining to them on our coast, so long 
 as they left the countries alone which had 
 already gained their independence, and so 
 long as they did not injure us or invade our 
 rights. And even this statement of the 
 scope of Mr. Monroe's declaration must 
 
20 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 be construed in the light of the fact that the 
 same Administration which promulgated the 
 Monroe Doctrine had already issued from 
 the State Department Mr. Adams's predic- 
 tion, above referred to, that " the annexation 
 of Cuba will yet be found indispensable." 
 Perhaps Mr. Monroe's language might have 
 been properly understood as a general as- 
 surance that we would not meddle in Europe 
 so long as they gave us no further trouble 
 in America; but certainly it did not also 
 abandon to their exclusive jurisdiction Asia 
 and Afi-ica and the islands of the sea. 
 
 The The candid conclusions seem inevitable that, 
 
 Outcome? ^^* ^® ^ matter of policy, but as a neces- 
 sity of the position in which we find our- 
 selves and as a matter of national duty, we 
 must hold Cuba, at least for a time and till 
 a permanent government is well established 
 for which we can afford to be responsible; 
 we must hold Porto Rico ; and we may have 
 to hold the Philippines. 
 
 The war is a great sorrow, and to many 
 these results of it will seem still more mourn- 
 ful. They cannot be contemplated with un- 
 mixed confidence by any; and to all who 
 think, they must be a source of some grave 
 apprehensions. Plainly, this unwelcome 
 war is leading us by ways we have not trod 
 to an end we cannot surely forecast. On 
 
TEKKITOKY WE AKE THKEATENED WITH 21 
 
 the other hand, there are some good things 
 coming from it that we can ah-eady see. It 
 will make an end forever of Spain in this 
 hemisphere. It will certainly secure to Cuba 
 and Porto Rico better government. It will 
 furnish an enormous outlet for the energy of 
 our citizens, and give another example of the 
 rapid development to which our system leads. 
 It has already brought North and South to- 
 gether as nothing could but a foreign war in 
 which both offered their blood for the cause 
 of their reunited country— a result of incal- 
 culable advantage both at home and abroad. 
 It has brought England and the United 
 States together— another result of momen- 
 tous importance in the progress of civiliza- 
 tion and Christianity. Europe will know us 
 better henceforth ; even Spain will know us 
 better; and this knowledge should tend 
 powerfully hereafter to keep the peace of 
 the world. The war should abate the swag- 
 gering, swash-buckler tendency of many of 
 our public men, since it has shown our in- 
 credible unreadiness at the outset for meet- 
 ing even a third-rate Power; and it must 
 secure us henceforth an army and navy less 
 ridiculously inadequate to our exposure. It 
 insures us a mercantile marine. It insures 
 the Nicaragua Canal, a Pacific cable, great 
 development on our Pacific coast, and the 
 mercantile control of the Pacific Ocean. It 
 
22 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 imposes new and very serious business on 
 our public men, which ought to dignify and 
 elevate the public service. Finally, it has 
 shown such splendid courage and skill in the 
 Army and Navy, such sympathy at home for 
 our men at the front, and such devoted 
 eagerness, especially among women, to alle- 
 viate suffering and humanize the struggle, 
 as to thrill every patriotic heart and make 
 us all prouder than ever of our country and 
 its matchless people. 
 
II 
 
 WAS IT TOO GOOD A TREATY! 
 
 ¥ 
 
This speech was made at a dinner given in New York by 
 the Lotos Club in honor of Mr. Reid, who had been its pres- 
 ident for fourteen years prior to his first diplomatic service 
 abroad in 1889. It was the first public utterance by any 
 one of the Peace Commissioners after the ratification of the 
 Treaty of Paris. 
 
 Among the many letters of regret at the dinner, the fol- 
 lowing, from the Secretary of State and from his predeces- 
 sor, were given to the public : 
 
 Washington, D. C, February 9, 1899. 
 To John Elderkhif Lotos Club, Netc York : 
 
 I received your note in due time, and had hoped until now 
 to be able to come and join you in doing honor to my life- 
 long friend, the Hon. Whitelaw Reid ; but the pressure of 
 official engagements here has made it impossible for me to 
 do so. I shall be with you in spirit, and shall applaud to 
 the best that can be said in praise of one who, in a life of 
 remarkable variety of achievement, has honored every 
 position he has held. Faithfully yours, 
 
 John Hay. 
 
 Canton, Ohio, February 8, 1899. 
 To Chester S. Lord, Lotos Club, Xeic York : 
 
 I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your invitation to 
 attend the dinner to be given to the Hon. Whitelaw 
 Reid on the evening of the 11th inst. Nothing would 
 afford me more pleasure than to join the members of the 
 Lotos Club in doing honor to Mr. Reid. It is a source of 
 much regret that circumstances compel me to forego the 
 privilege. His high character and worth, leadei*ship in the 
 best journalism of the day, eminent services, and wide ex- 
 perience long since gave him an honorable place among 
 his contemporaries. The Commission to negotiate the 
 treaty concluded at Paris on December 10 had no more 
 valued member. His fellow-Commissioners were fortu- 
 nate in being able to %vail themselves of Mr. Reid's wide 
 acquaintance with the leading statesmen and diplomats 
 residing in Paris. His presence as a member of the Com- 
 mission rendered unnecessary any further introduction 
 to those who had known him as our Minister to France. 
 He gave to the work of the Commission in unstinted mea- 
 sure the benefit of his wisdom in council, judgment, and 
 skill in the preparation and presentation of the American 
 case at Paris. Permit me to join you in congratulations 
 and best wishes to Mr. Reid, and to express the hope that 
 there are in store for him many more years of useful- 
 ness and honor. Very truly yours, 
 
 William R. Day. 
 
WAS IT TOO GOOD A TREATY? 
 
 OBVIOUSLY the present occasion has 
 no narrow or merely personal mean- 
 ing. It comes to me only because I had the 
 good fortune, through the friendly partiality 
 of the President of the United States, to be 
 associated with a great work in which you 
 took a patriotic interest, and over the rati- 
 fication of which you use this means of 
 expressing your satisfaction. It was a 
 happy thing for us to be able to bring back 
 peace to our own land, and happier still to 
 find that our treaty is accepted by the 
 Senate and the people as one that guards 
 the honor and protects the interests of the 
 country. Only so should a nation like ours 
 make peace at all. 
 
 Come, Peace, not like a mourner bowed 
 For honor lost and dear ones wasted. 
 
 But proud, to meet a people proud, 
 With eyes that tell of triumph tasted. 
 
 I shall make no apology— now that the 
 Senate has unsealed our lips— for speaking 
 
 25 
 
26 PKOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 briefly of this work just happily com- 
 pleted. 
 
 The only complaint one hears about it is 
 that we did our duty too well— that, in fact, 
 we made peace on terms too favorable to our 
 own country. In all the pending discussion 
 there seems to be no other fault found. On 
 no other point is the treaty said by any one 
 to be seriously defective. 
 
 It loyally carried out the attitude of Con- 
 gress as to Cuba. It enforced the renuncia- 
 tion of Spanish sovereignty there, but, in 
 spite of the most earnest Spanish efforts, it 
 refused to accept American sovei*eignty. It 
 loaded neither ourselves nor the Cubans with 
 the so-called Cuban debts, incurred by Spain 
 in the efforts to subdue them. It involved 
 us in no complications, either in the West 
 Indies or in the East, as to contracts or 
 claims or religious establishments. It dealt 
 liberally with a fallen foe— giving him a gen- 
 erous lump sum that more than covered any 
 legitimate debts or expenditures for pacific 
 improvements ; assuming the burden of just 
 claims against him by our own people ; carry- 
 ing back the armies surrendered on the other 
 side of the world at oui* own cost ; returning 
 their arms ; even restoring them their artil- 
 lery, including heavy ordnance in field forti- 
 fications, munitions of war, and the very 
 cattle that dragged their caissons. It se- 
 
WAS IT TOO GOOD A TEEATY ? 27 
 
 cured alike for Cubans and Filipinos the 
 release of political prisoners. It scrupulously 
 reserved for Congress the power of deter- 
 mining the political status of the inhabitants 
 of our new possessions. It declared on be- 
 half of the most Protectionist country in the 
 world for the policy of the Open Door within 
 its Asiatic sphere of influence. 
 
 With all this the Senate and the country 
 seemed content. But the treaty refused to 
 return to Spanish rule one foot of territory 
 over which that rule had been broken by the 
 triumphs of our arms. 
 
 Were we to be reproached for that? 
 Should the Senate have told us : " You over- 
 did this business ; you looked after the in- 
 terests of your own country too thoroughly. 
 You ought to have abandoned the great 
 archipelago which the fortunes of war had 
 placed at your country's disposal. You are 
 not exactly unfaithful servants ; you are too 
 blindly, unswervingly faithful. You have n't 
 seized an opportunity to run away from some 
 distant results of the war into which Con- 
 gress plunged the country before dreaming 
 how far it might spread. You have n't dodged 
 for us the responsibilities we incurred." 
 
 That is true. When Admiral Dewey sank 
 the Spanish fleet, and General Merritt cap- 
 tured the Spanish army that alone main- 
 tained the Spanish hold on the Philippines, 
 
28 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 the Spanish power there was gone ; and the 
 civilization and* the common sense and the 
 Christianity of the world looked to the 
 power that succeeded it to accept its re- 
 sponsibilities. So we took the Philippines. 
 How could men representing this country, 
 jealous of its honor, or with an adequate 
 comprehension either of its duty or its 
 rights, do otherwise I 
 
 A nation at war oyer a disputed boundary 
 or some other material interest might prop- 
 erly stop when that interest was secured, 
 and give back to the enemy all else that had 
 been taken from him. But this was not a 
 war for any material interest. It was a war 
 to put down a rule over an alien people, 
 which we declared so barbarous that we 
 could no longer tolerate it. How could we 
 consent to secure peace, after we had broken 
 down this barbarous rule in two archipel- 
 agos, by agreeing that one of them should 
 be forced back under it I 
 
 There was certainly another alternative. 
 After destroying the only organized gov- 
 ernment in the archipelago, the only security 
 for life and property, native and foreign, in 
 great commercial centers like Manila, Iloilo, 
 and Cebu, against hordes of uncivilized 
 pagans and Mohammedan Malays, should we 
 then scuttle out and leave them to their fate ! 
 A band of old-time Norse pirates, used to 
 
WAS IT TOO GOOD A TREATY ? 29 
 
 swooping down on a capital, capturing its 
 rulers, seizing its treasure, burning the town, 
 abandoning the people to domestic dilorder 
 and foreign spoliation, and promptly sailing 
 off for another piratical foray— such a band 
 of pirates might, no doubt, have left Manila 
 to be sacked by the insurgents, while it fled 
 from the Philippines. We did not think a 
 self-respecting, civilized, responsible Chris- 
 tian Power could. 
 
 There was another side to it. In a con- indemnity, 
 flict to which fifty years of steadily increas- 
 ing provocation had driven us we had lost 
 266 sailors on the Maine ; had lost at Santi- 
 ago and elsewhere uncounted victims of 
 Spanish guns and tropical climates ; and had 
 spent in this war over $240,000,000, with- 
 out counting the pensions that must still 
 accrue under laws existing when it began. 
 Where was the indemnity that, under such 
 circumstances, it is the duty of the victorious 
 nation to exact, not only in its own interest, 
 but in the interest of a Christian civilization 
 and the tendencies of modern International 
 Law, which require that a nation provoking 
 unjust war shall smart for it, not merely 
 while it lasts, but by paying the cost when 
 it is ended! Spain had no money even to 
 pay her own soldiers. No indemnity was 
 possible, save in territory. Well, we once 
 
30 PK0BLEM8 OF EXPANSION 
 
 wanted to buy Cuba, before it had been 
 desolated by twelve years of war and deci- 
 mated by Weyler; yet our uttermost offer 
 for it, our highest valuation even then, was 
 $125,000,000— less than half the cost of our 
 war. But now we were precluded from tak- 
 ing Cuba. Porto Rico, immeasurably less 
 important to us, and eight hundred miles 
 farther away from our coast, is only one 
 twelfth the size of Cuba. Were the repre- 
 sentatives of the United States, charged with 
 the duty of protecting not only its honor, 
 but its interests, in arranging terms of peace, 
 to content themselves with little Porto Eico, 
 away off a third of the way to Spain, plus 
 the petty reef of Guam, in the middle of the 
 Pacific, as indemnity for an unprovoked war 
 that had cost and was to cost their country 
 $300,000,000? 
 
 The Trouble BuT, some One exclaims, the Philippines are 
 they Give- already giving us more trouble than they 
 Worth it? are worth ! It is natural to say so just now, 
 and it is partly true. What they are worth 
 and likely to be worth to this country in the 
 race for commercial supremacy on the Pacific 
 —that is to say, for supremacy in the great 
 development of trade in the Twentieth Cen- 
 tury—is a question too large to be so sum- 
 marily decided, or to be entered on at the 
 close of a dinner, and under the imtation of 
 
WAS IT TOO GOOD A TKEATY ? 31 
 
 a Malay half-breed's folly. But nobody ever 
 doubted that they would give us trouble. 
 That is the price nations must pay for going 
 to war, even in a just cause. I was not one 
 of those who were eager to begin this war 
 with Spain; but I protest against any at- 
 tempt to evade our just responsibility in the 
 position in which it has left us. We shall 
 have trouble in the Philippines. So we 
 shall have trouble in Cuba and in Porto 
 Eico. If we dawdle, and hesitate, and lead 
 them to think we fear them and fear trouble, 
 our trouble will be great. If, on the other 
 hand, we grasp this nettle danger, if we act 
 promptly, with inexorable vigor and with 
 justice, it may be slight. At any rate, the 
 more serious the crisis the plainer our path. 
 God give us the courage to purify our politics 
 and strengthen our Government to meet 
 these new and grave duties! 
 
Ill 
 
 PUEPORT OF THE TEEATY 
 
This speech was made, two days after the'preceding one, 
 on the invitation of the Marquette Club of Chicago, at the 
 dinner of six hundred which it gave in the Auditorium 
 Hotel, February 13, 1899, in honor of Lincoln's birthday. 
 
PURPOET OF THE TREATY 
 
 BEYOND the AUeghanies the American 
 voice rings clear and trne. It does not 
 sound, here in Chicago, as if you favored the 
 pursuit of partizan aims in great questions 
 of foreign policy, or division among our own 
 people in the face of insurgent guns turned 
 upon our soldiers on the distant fields to 
 which we sent them. We are all here, it 
 would seem, to stand by the peace that has 
 been secured, even if we have to fight for it. 
 Neither has any reproach come from Chi- 
 cago to the Peace Commissioners because, 
 when intrusted with your interests in a 
 great negotiation in a foreign capital, they 
 made a settlement on terms too favorable to 
 their own country— because in bringing 
 home peace with honor they also brought 
 home more property than some of our people 
 wanted! When that reproach has been 
 urged elsewhere, it has recalled the familiar 
 defense against a similar complaint in an ol(J 
 political contest. There might, it was said, 
 
 35 
 
36 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 be some serious disadvantages about a sur- 
 plus in the national Treasury ; but, at any 
 rate, it was easier to deal with a surplus than 
 with a deficit ! If we have brought back too 
 much, that is only a question for Congress 
 and our voters. If we had brought back 
 too little, it might have been again a ques- 
 tion for the Army and the Navy. 
 
 No one of you has ever been heard to find 
 fault with an agent because in making a 
 difficult settlement he got all you wanted, 
 and a free option on something further that 
 everybody else wanted ! Do you know of 
 any other civilized nation of the first or even 
 of the second class that would n't jump at 
 that option on the Philippines 1 Ask Russia. 
 Ask Germany. Ask Japan. Ask England 
 or France. Ask little Belgium ! ^ And yet, 
 what one of them, unless it be Japan, has any 
 conceivable interest in the Philippines to be 
 compared with that of the mighty Republic 
 which now commands the one side of the 
 Pacific, and, unless this American genera- 
 tion is blinder to opportunity than any of 
 its predecessors, will soon command the 
 other! 
 
 1 At this time it was still a ippines to Belgium. But for 
 
 secret that among the many the perfectly correct attitude 
 
 intrigues afoot during the ne- of King Leopold, it might 
 
 gotiations at Paris was one have had a chance to succeed, 
 
 for the transfer of the Phil- or at least to make trouble. 
 
PUEPOKT OF THE TBEATY 37 
 
 Put yourselves for a moment in our place 
 on the Quai d'Orsay. Would you really have 
 had your representatives in Paris, the guar- 
 dians of your honor in negotiating peace 
 with your enemy, declare that while Spanish 
 rule in the West Indies was so barbarous 
 that it was our duty to destroy it, we were 
 now so eager for peace that for its sake we 
 were willing in the East to reestablish that 
 same barbarous rule? Or would you have 
 had your agents in Paris, the guardians also 
 of your material interests, throw away all 
 chance for indemnity for a war that began 
 with the loss of 266 American sailors on the 
 Maine, and had cost your Treasury during 
 the year over $240,000,000? Would you 
 have had them throw away a magnificent 
 foothold for the trade of the farther East, 
 which the fortune of war had placed in your 
 hand, throw away a whole archipelago of 
 boundless possibilities, economic and stra- 
 tegic, throw away the opportunity of centuries 
 for your country? Would you have had 
 them, on their own responsibility, then and 
 there decide this question for all time, and 
 absolutely refuse to reserve it for the deci- 
 sion of Congress and of the American people, 
 to whom that decision belongs, and who 
 have the right to an opportunity first for its 
 deliberate consideration ? 
 
38 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 Some Your toast is to the "Achievements of 
 
 Se Trwity? American Diplomacy." Not such were its 
 achievements under your earlier statesmen ; 
 not such has been its work under the in- 
 structions of your State Department, from 
 John Quincy Adams on down the honored 
 line ; and not such the work your represen- 
 tatives brought back to you from Paris. 
 
 They were dealing with a nation with 
 whom it has never been easy to make peace, 
 even when war was no longer possible ; but 
 they secured a peace treaty without a word 
 that compromises the honor or endangers 
 the interests of the country. 
 
 They scrupulously reserved for your own 
 decision, through your Congress or at the 
 polls, the question of political status and 
 civil rights for the inhabitants of your new 
 possessions. 
 
 They resisted adroit Spanish efforts for 
 special privileges and guaranties for their 
 established church, and pledged the United 
 States to absolute freedom in the exercise of 
 their religion for all these recent Spanish 
 subjects— pagan, Mohammedan, Confucian, 
 or Christian. 
 
 They maintained, in the face of the most 
 vehement opposition, not merely of Spain, 
 but of well-nigh all Europe, a principle vital 
 to oppressed people struggling for freedom— 
 a principle without which our own freedom 
 
PURPOET OF THE TREATY 39 
 
 could not have been established, and with- 
 out which any successful revolt against any- 
 unjust rule could be made practically impos- 
 sible. That principle is that, contrary to the 
 prevailing rule and practice in large trans- 
 fers of sovereignty, debts do not necessarily 
 follow the territory if incurred by the mother 
 country distinctly in efforts to enslave it. 
 Where so incurred, your representatives 
 persistently and successfully maintained that 
 no attempt by the mother country to mort- 
 gage to bondholders the revenues of custom- 
 houses or in any way to pledge the future 
 income of the territory could be recognized 
 as a valid or binding security— that the 
 moment the hand of the oppressor relaxed 
 its grasp, his claim on the future revenues of 
 the oppressed territory was gone. It is 
 a doctrine that raised an outcry in every 
 Continental bourse, and struck terror to 
 every gambling European investor in na- 
 tional loans, floated at usurious profits, to 
 raise funds for unjust wars. But it is right, 
 and one may be proud that the United States 
 stood like a rock, barring any road to peace 
 which led to loading either on the liberated 
 territory or on the people that had freed it 
 the debts incurred in the wars against it. 
 If this is not International Law now, it will 
 be ; and the United States will have made it. 
 But your representatives in Paris placed 
 
40 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 your country in no tricky attitude of en- 
 deavoring either to evade or repudiate just 
 obligations. They recognized the duty of 
 reimbursement for debts legitimately in- 
 curred for pacific improvements or otherwise, 
 for the real benefit of the transferred terri- 
 tory. Not till it began to appear that, of the 
 Philippine debt of forty millions Mexican, 
 or a little under twenty millions of our 
 money, a fourth had been transferred direct 
 to aid the war in Cuba, and the rest had 
 probably been spent mainly in the war in 
 Luzon, did your representatives hesitate at 
 its payment ; and even then they decided to 
 give a lump sum equal to it, which could 
 serve as a recognition of whatever debts 
 Spain might have incurred in the past for 
 expenditures in that archipelago for the 
 benefit of the people. 
 
 They protected what was gained in the 
 war from adroit efforts to put it all at risk 
 again, through an untimely appeal to the 
 noble principle of Arbitration. They held 
 —and I am sure the best friends of the prin- 
 ciple will thank them for holding— that an 
 honest resort to Arbitration must come be- 
 fore war, to avert its horrors, not after war, 
 to escape its consequences. 
 
 They were enabled to pledge the most Pro- 
 tectionist country in the world to the liberal 
 and wise policy of the Open Door in the East. 
 
PUKPOKT OF THE TKEATY 41 
 
 And finally they secured that diplomatic 
 novelty, a treaty in which the acntest sen- 
 atorial critics have not found a peg on which 
 inadmissible claims against the country 
 may be hung. 
 
 At the same time they neither neglected nor The Material 
 feared the duty of caring for the material Side of the 
 interests of their own country ; —the duty of 
 grasping the enormous possibilities upon 
 which we had stumbled, for sharing in the 
 awakening and development of the farther 
 East. That way lies now the best hope 
 of American commerce. There you may 
 command a natural rather than an artificial 
 trade— a trade which pushes itself instead of 
 needing to be pushed; a trade with people 
 who can send you things you want and can- 
 not produce, and take from you in return 
 things they want and cannot produce; in 
 other words, a trade largely between differ- 
 ent zones, and largely with less advanced 
 peoples, comprising nearly one fourth the 
 population of the globe, whose wants prom- 
 ise to be speedily and enormously developed. 
 The Atlantic Ocean carries mainly a dif- 
 ferent trade, with people as advanced as 
 ourselves, who could produce or procure 
 elsewhere much of what they buy from us, 
 while we could produce, if driven to it, most 
 of what we need to buy from them. It is 
 
42 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 more or less, therefore, an artificial trade, as 
 well as a trade in which we have lost the first 
 place and will find it difficult to regain. The 
 ocean carriage for the Atlantic is in the 
 hands of our rivals. 
 
 The Pacific Ocean, on the contrary, is in 
 our hands now. Practically we own more 
 than half the coast on this side, dominate the 
 rest, and have midway stations in the Sand- 
 wich and Aleutian Islands. To extend now 
 the authority of the United States over the 
 great Philippine Archipelago is to fence in 
 the China Sea and secure an almost equally 
 commanding position on the other side of 
 the Pacific— doubling our control of it and 
 of the fabulous trade the Twentieth Century 
 will see it bear. Rightly used, it enables the 
 United States to convert the Pacific Ocean 
 almost into an American lake. 
 
 Are we to lose all this through a mushy 
 sentimentality, characteristic neither of prac- 
 tical nor of responsible people— alike un- 
 American and un-Christian, since it would 
 humiliate us by showing lack of nerve to 
 hold what we are entitled to, and incrimi- 
 nate us by entailing endless bloodshed and 
 anarchy on a people whom we have already 
 stripped of the only government they have 
 known for three hundred years, and whom 
 we should thus abandon to civil war and 
 foreign spoliation! 
 
PUKPOKT OF THE TKEATY 43 
 
 Let us free our minds of some bugbears. Bugbears. 
 One of them is this notion that with the 
 retention of the Philippines our manufac- 
 turers will be crushed by the products of 
 cheap Eastern labor. But it does not abolish 
 our custom-houses, and we can still enforce 
 whatever protection we desire. 
 
 Another is that our American workmen 
 will be swamped under the immigration of 
 cheap Eastern labor. But tropical laborers 
 rarely emigrate to colder climates. Few 
 have ever come. If we need a law to keep 
 them out, we can make it. • 
 
 It is a bugbear that the Filipinos would 
 be citizens of the United States, and would 
 therefore have the same rights of free travel 
 and free entry of their own manufactures 
 with other citizens. The treaty did not 
 make them citizens of the United States at 
 all ; and they never will be, unless you neg- 
 lect your Congress. 
 
 It is a bugbear that anybody living on 
 territory or other property belonging to the 
 United States must be a citizen. The Con- 
 stitution says that " persons born or natural- 
 ized in the United States are citizens of the 
 United States"; while it adds in the same 
 sentence, "and of the State wherein they 
 reside," showing plainly that the provision 
 was not then meant to include territories. 
 
 It is equally a bugbear that the tariff 
 
44 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 must necessarily be the same over any of the 
 territory or other property of the United 
 States as it is in the Nation itself. The 
 Constitution requires that "all duties, im- 
 posts, and excises shall be the same through- 
 out the United States," and while there was 
 an incidental expression from the Supreme 
 Bench in 1820 to the effect that the name 
 United States as here used should include 
 the District of Columbia and other territory, 
 it was no part even then of the decision 
 actually rendered, and it would be absurd to 
 stretch this mere dictum of three quarters 
 of a century ago, relating then, at any rate, 
 to this continent alone, to carry the Dingley 
 tariff now across to the antipodes. 
 
 Duties of the BRUSHING aside, then, these bugbears, gentle- 
 Hoor. men, what are the obvious duties of the hour ? 
 
 First, hold what you are entitled to. If 
 you are ever to part with it, wait at least till 
 you have examined it and found out that 
 you have no use for it. Before yielding to 
 temporary difficulties at the outset, take time 
 to be quite sure you are ready now to aban- 
 don your chance for a commanding position 
 in the trade of China, in the commercial con- 
 trol of the Pacific Ocean, and in the richest 
 commercial development of the approaching 
 century. 
 Next, resist admission of any of our new 
 
PtJEPOET OF THE TREATY 45 
 
 possessions as States, or their organization 
 on a plan designed to prepare them for ad- 
 mission. Stand firm for the present Ameri- 
 can Union of sister States, undiluted by 
 anybody's archipelagos. 
 
 Make this fight easiest by making it at 
 the beginning. Eesist the first insidious 
 effort to change the character of this Union 
 by leaving the continent. The danger com- 
 mences with the first extra-continental State. 
 We want no Porto Ricans or Cubans to be 
 sending Senators and Representatives to 
 Washington to help govern the American 
 Continent, any more than we want Kanakas 
 or Tagals or Yisayans or Mohammedan 
 Malays. We will do them good and not 
 harm, if we may, all the days of our life; 
 but, please God, we will not divide this Re- 
 public, the heritage of our fathers, among 
 them. 
 
 Resist the crazy extension of the doctrine 
 that government derives its just powers 
 from the consent of the governed to an 
 extreme never imagined by the men who 
 framed it, and never for one moment acted 
 upon in their own practice. Why should 
 we force Jefferson's language to a meaning 
 Jefferson himself never gave it in dealing 
 with the people of Louisiana, or Andrew 
 Jackson in dealing with those of South Car- 
 olina, or Abraham Lincoln with the seceding 
 
46 PK0BLEM8 OF EXPANSION 
 
 States, or any responsible statesman of the 
 country at any period in its history in deal- 
 ing with Indians or New Mexicans or Cal- 
 ifornians or Russians? What have the 
 Tagals done for us that we should treat 
 them better and put them on a plane higher 
 than any of these ! 
 
 And next, resist alike either schemes for 
 purely military governments, or schemes for 
 territorial civil governments, with oflSces to 
 be filled up, according to the old custom, by 
 " carpet-baggers ^ from the United States, on 
 an allotment of increased patronage, fairly 
 divided among the " bosses " of the different 
 States. Egypt under Lord Cromer is an 
 object-lesson of what may be done in a more 
 excellent way by men of our race in dealing 
 with such a problem. Better still, and right 
 under our eyes, is the successful solution of 
 the identical problem that confronts us, in 
 the English organization and administration 
 of the federated Malay States on the Malacca 
 Peninsula. 
 
 The Opposi- I ^VISH to spcak with respect of the sincere 
 as*"webste*r ^^^ conscientious opposition to all these 
 conclusions, manifest chiefly in the East and 
 in the Senate ; and with especial respect of 
 the eminent statesman who has headed that 
 opposition. No man will question his abil- 
 ity, his moral elevation, or the courage with 
 
PUBPORT OF THE TREATY 47 
 
 which he follows his intellectual and moral 
 convictions. But I may be permitted to re- 
 mind you that the noble State he worthily 
 represents is not now counted for the first 
 time against the interest and the development 
 of the country. In February, 1848, Daniel 
 Webster, speaking for the same great State 
 and in the same high forum, conjured up 
 precisely the same visions of the destruction 
 of the Constitution, and proclaimed the same 
 hostility to new territory. Pardon me while 
 I read you half a dozen sentences, and note 
 how curiously they sound like an echo— or 
 a prophecy— of what we have lately been 
 hearing from the Senate: 
 
 Will you take peace without territory and pre- 
 serve the integrity of the Constitution of the coun- 
 try ? . . . I think I see a course adopted which is 
 likely to turn the Constitution of this land into a 
 deformed monster— into a curse rather than a 
 blessing. . . . There would not be two hundred 
 families of persons who would emigrate from the 
 United States to New Mexico for agricultural pur- 
 poses in fifty years. ... I have never heard of 
 anything, and I cannot conceive of anything, more 
 absurd and more affrontive of all sober judgment 
 than the cry that we are getting indemnity by the 
 acquisition of New Mexico and California. I hold 
 that they are not worth a dollar ! 
 
 It was merely that splendid empire in 
 
48 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 itself, stretching from Los Angeles and San 
 Francisco eastward to Denver, that was thus 
 despised and rejected of Massachusetts. 
 And it was only fifty years ago! With 
 all due respect, a gi*eat spokesman of Mas- 
 sachusetts is as liable to mistake in this 
 generation as in the last. 
 
 Lack of Faith It is fair, I think, to say that this whole 
 In the People, hesitation over the treaty of peace is abso- 
 lutely due to lack of faith in our own people, 
 distrust of the methods of administration 
 they may employ in the government of dis- 
 tant possessions, and distrust of tlieir ability 
 to resist the schemes of demagogues for pro- 
 moting the ultimate admission of Kanaka 
 and Malay and half-breed commonwealths 
 to help govern the continental Republic of 
 our pride, this homogeneous American Union 
 of sovereign States. If there is real reason 
 to fear that the American people cannot re- 
 strain themselves from throwing open the 
 doors of their Senate and House of Eepre- 
 sentatives to such sister States as Luzon, or 
 the Visayas, or the Sandwich Islands, or 
 Porto Eico, or even Cuba, then the sooner 
 we beg some civilized nation, with more 
 common sense and less sentimentality and 
 gush, to take them off our hands the better. 
 If we are unequal to a manly and intelligent 
 discharge of the responsibilities the war has 
 
PURPORT OF THE TREATY 49 
 
 entailed, then let us confess our unworthi- 
 ness, and beg Japan to assume the duties of 
 a civilized Christian state toward the Philip- 
 pines, while England can extend the same 
 relief to us in Cuba and Porto Eico. But 
 having thus ignominiously shirked the posi- 
 tion demanded by our belligerency and our 
 success, let us never again presume to take 
 a place among the self-respecting and re- 
 sponsible nations of the earth that can ever 
 lay us liable to another such task. If called 
 to it, let us at the outset admit our unfitness, 
 withdraw within our own borders, and leave 
 these larger duties of the world to less inca- 
 pable races or less craven rulers. 
 
 Far other and brighter are the hopes I 
 have ventured to cherish concerning the 
 course of the American people in this emer- 
 gency. I have thought there was encourage- 
 ment for nations as well as for individuals 
 in remembering the sobering and steadying 
 influence of great responsibilities suddenly 
 devolved. When Prince Hal comes to the 
 crown he is apt to abjure Falstaif. When 
 we come to the critical and dangerous ^ork 
 of controlling turbulent semi-tropical de- 
 pendencies, the agents we choose cannot be 
 the ward heelers of the local bosses. Now, 
 if ever, is the time to rally the brain and 
 conscience of the American people to a real 
 elevation and purification of their Civil Ser- 
 
50 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 vice, to the most exalted standards of public 
 duty, to the most strenuous and united effort 
 of all men of good will to make our Grov- 
 ernment worthy of the new and great re- 
 sponsibilities which the Providence of God 
 rather than any purpose of man has imposed 
 upon it. 
 
IV 
 
 THE DUTIES OF PEACE 
 
A speech made at the dinner given by the Ohio Society 
 in honor of the Peace Commissioners, in the Waldorf-Astoria 
 Hotel, New York, February 25, 1899. 
 
 I 
 
THE DUTIES OF PEACE 
 
 YOU call and I obey. Any call from 
 Ohio, wherever it finds me, is at once 
 a distinction and a duty. But it would be 
 easier to-night and more natural for me to 
 remain silent. I am one of yourselves, the 
 givers of the feast, and the occasion belongs 
 peculiarly to my colleagues on the Peace 
 Commission. I regret that more of them 
 are not here to tell you in person how pro- 
 foundly we all appreciate the compliment you 
 pay us. Judge Day, after an experience and 
 strain the like of which few Americans of 
 this generation have so suddenly and so 
 successfully met, is seeking to regain his 
 strength at the South ; Senator Frye, at the 
 close of an anxious session, finds his respon- 
 sible duties in Washington too exacting to 
 permit even a day's absence; and Senator 
 Davis, who could not leave the care of the 
 treaty to visit his State even when his own 
 reelection was pending, has at last snatched 
 the first moment of relief since he was sent 
 to Paris last summer, to go out to St. Paul 
 
 53 
 
54 PEOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 and meet the constituents who have in his 
 absence renewed to him the crown of a good 
 and faithful servant. 
 
 It is all the more fortunate, therefore, that 
 you are honored by the presence of the pa- 
 triotic member of the opposition who formed 
 the regulator and balance-wheel of the Com- 
 mission. When Senator Gray objected, we 
 all reexamined the processes of our reasoning. 
 When he assented, we knew at once we must 
 be on solid ground and went ahead. It was 
 an expected gratification to have with you 
 also the accomplished secretary and counsel 
 to the Commission, a man as modest and 
 unobtrusive as its president, and, like him, 
 equal to any summons. In his regretted 
 absence, we rejoice to find here the most 
 distinguished military aid ordered to report 
 to the Commission, and the most important 
 witness before it — the Conqueror of Manila. 
 
 So much you will permit me to say in my 
 capacity as one of the hosts, rather than as 
 a member of the body to which you pay this 
 gracious compliment. 
 
 It is not for me to speak of another figure 
 necessarily missing to-night, though often 
 with you heretofore at th^se meetings— the 
 member of the Ohio Society who sent us to 
 Paris ! A great and shining record already 
 speaks for him. He will be known in our 
 history as the President who freed America 
 
THE DUTIES OF PEACE 55 
 
 from the last trace of Spanish blight; who 
 realized the aspiration of our earlier states- 
 men, cherished by the leaders of either party 
 through three quarters of a century, for 
 planting the flag both on Cuba and on the 
 Sandwich Islands; more than this, as the 
 President who has carried that flag half- 
 way round the world and opened the road 
 for the trade of the Nation to follow it. 
 
 All this came from simply doing his duty 
 from day to day, as that duty was forced 
 upon him. No other man in the United 
 States held back from war as he did, risking 
 loss of popularity, risking the hostility of 
 Congress, risking the harsh judgment of 
 friends in agonizing for peace. It was no 
 doubt in the spirit of the Prince of Peace, 
 but it was also with the wisdom of Polonius : 
 " Beware of entrance to a quarrel ; but, being 
 in, bear it, that the opposer may beware of 
 thee ! " Never again will any nation imagine 
 that it can trespass indefinitely against the 
 United States with impunity. Never again 
 will an American war- ship run greater risks 
 in a peaceful harbor than in battle. The 
 world will never again be in doubt whether, 
 when driven to war, we will end it in a gush 
 of sentimentality or a shiver of unmanly 
 apprehension over untried responsibilities, 
 by fleeing from our plain duty, and hasten- 
 ing to give up what we are entitled to, be- 
 
56 PEOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 fore we have even taken an opportunity to 
 look at it. 
 
 Does Peace BuT it must be confessed that " looking at 
 Pacify? 'i-w during the past week has not been an 
 altogether cheerful occupation. While the 
 aspect of some of these new possessions re- 
 mains so frowning there are faint hearts 
 ready enough to say that the Peace Com- 
 mission is in no position to be receiving 
 compliments. Does protection protect! is 
 an old question that used to be thrown in 
 our faces — though I believe even the ques- 
 tioners finally made up their minds that it 
 did. Does peace pacify! is the question of 
 the hour. Well, as to our original antago- 
 nist, historic, courageous Spain, there seems 
 gi'ound to hope and believe and be glad that 
 it does— not merely toward us, but within 
 her own borders. When she jettisoned cargo 
 that had already shifted ruinously, there is 
 reason to think that she averted disaster and 
 saved the ship. Then, as to Porto Eico there 
 is no doubt of peace ; and as to Cuba very 
 little— although it would be too much to 
 hope that her twelve years of civil war could 
 be followed by an absolute calm, without 
 disorders. 
 
 As to other possessions in the farther 
 East, we may as well recognize at once that 
 we are dealing now with the same sort of 
 
THE DUTIES OF PEACE 57 
 
 clever barbarians as in the earlier days of the 
 Republic, when, on another ocean not then 
 less distant, we were compelled to encounter 
 the Algerine pirates. But there is this 
 difference. Then we merely chastised the 
 Algerines into letting us and our commerce 
 alone. The permanent policing of that coast 
 of the Mediterranean was not imposed upon 
 us by surrounding circumstances, or by any 
 act of ours; it belonged to nearer nations. 
 Now a war we made has broken down the 
 only authority that existed to protect the 
 commerce of the world in one of its greatest 
 Eastern thoroughfares, and to preserve the 
 lives and property of people of all nations 
 resorting to those marts. We broke it down, 
 and we cannot, dare not, display the cow- 
 ardice and selfishness of failing to replace it. 
 However men may differ as to our future 
 policy in those regions, there can be no 
 difference as to our present duty. It is as 
 plain as that of putting down a riot in Chi- 
 cago or New York— all the plainer because, 
 until recently, we have ourselves been tak- 
 ing the very course and doing the very 
 things to encourage the rioters. 
 
 A DISTINGUISHED and patriotic citizen said Why Take 
 to me the other day, in a Western city ; " You g^^^^y 
 might have avoided this trouble in the Sen- 
 ate by refusing title in the Philippines ex- 
 
68 PBOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 actly as in Cuba, and simply enforcing 
 renunciation of Spanish sovereignty. Why 
 did n't you do it ! " The question is impor- 
 tant, and the reason ought to be understood. 
 But at the outset it should be clearly real- 
 ized that the circumstances which made it 
 possible to take that course as to Cuba were 
 altogether exceptional. For three quarters 
 of a century we had asserted a special inter- 
 est and right of interference there as against 
 any other nation. The island is directly on 
 our coast, and no one doubted that at least 
 as much order as in the past would be pre- 
 served there, even if we had to do it our- 
 selves. There was also the positive action 
 of Congress, which, on the one hand, gave 
 us excuse for refusing a sovereignty 
 our highest legislative authority had dis- 
 claimed, and, on the other, formally cast 
 the shield of our responsibility over Cuba 
 when left without a government or a sov- 
 ereignty. Besides, there was a people 
 there, advanced enough, sufficiently com- 
 pact and homogeneous in religion, race, and 
 language, sufficiently used already to the 
 methods of government, to warrant our 
 republican claim that the sovereignty was 
 not being left in the air— that it was only 
 left where, in the last analysis, in a civilized 
 community, it must always reside, in the 
 people themselves. 
 
THE DUTIES OF PEACE 59 
 
 And yet, under all these conditions, the 
 most difficult task your Peace Commis- 
 sioners had at Paris was to maintain and 
 defend the demand for a renunciation of 
 sovereignty without anybody's acceptance 
 of the sovereignty thus renounced. Inter- 
 national Law has not been so understood 
 abroad; and it may be frankly confessed 
 that the Spanish arguments were learned, 
 acute, sustained by the general judgment of 
 Europe, and not easy to refute. 
 
 A similar demand concerning the Philip- 
 pines neither could nor ought to have been 
 acquiesced in by the civilized world. Here 
 were ten millions of people on a great high- 
 way of commerce, of numerous different 
 races, different languages, different reli- 
 gions, some semi-civilized, some barbarous, 
 others mere pagan savages, but without a 
 majority or even a respectable minority of 
 them accustomed to self-government or be- 
 lieved to be capable of it. Sovereignty over 
 such a conglomeration and in such a place 
 could not be left in the air. The civilized 
 world would not recognize its transfer, un- 
 less transferred to somebody. Renunciation 
 under such circumstances would have been 
 equivalent in International Law to abandon- 
 ment, and that would have been equivalent 
 to anarchy and a race for seizure among the 
 nations that could get there quickest. 
 
60 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 We could, of course, have refused to ac- 
 cept the obligations of a civilized, responsible 
 nation. After breaking down government 
 in those commercial centers, we could have 
 refused to set up anything in its stead, and 
 simply washed our hands of the whole busi- 
 ness; but to do that would have been to 
 show ourselves more insensible to moral 
 obligations than if we had restored them 
 outright to Spain. 
 
 How to Deal Well, if the elephant must be on our 
 PhiUppines. ^^^^^s, what are we going to do with it! I 
 venture to answer that first we must put 
 down the riot. The lives and property of 
 German and British merchants must be at 
 least as safe in Manila as they were under 
 Spanish rule before we are ready for any 
 other step whatever. 
 
 Next, ought we not to try to diagnose our 
 case before we turn every quack doctor 
 among us loose on it— understand what 
 the problem is before beginning heated par- 
 tizan discussions as to the easiest way of 
 solving it I And next, shall we not probably 
 fare best in the end if we try to profit some- 
 what by the experience others have had in 
 like cases ? 
 
 The widest experience has been had by 
 the gi^eat nation whose people and institu- 
 tions are nearest like our own. Illustrations 
 
THE DUTIES OF PEACE 61 
 
 of her successful methods may be found in 
 Egypt and in many British dependencies, 
 but, for our purposes, probably best of 
 all either on the Malay Peninsula or on the 
 north coast of Borneo, where she has had 
 the happiest results in dealing with intrac- 
 table types of the worst of these same races. 
 Some rules drawn from this experience 
 might be distasteful to people who look 
 upon new possessions as merely so much 
 more government patronage, and quite re- 
 pugnant to the noble army of office-seekers ; 
 but they surely mark the path of safety. 
 
 The first is to meddle at the outset as little 
 as possible with every native custom and in- 
 stitution and even prejudice ; the next is to 
 use every existing native agency you can; 
 and the next to employ in the government 
 service just as few Americans as you can, 
 and only of the best. Convince the natives of 
 your irresistible power and your inexorable 
 purpose, then of your desire to be absolutely 
 just, and after that— not before— be as kind 
 as you can. At the outset you will doubt- 
 less find your best agents among the trained 
 officers of the Navy and the Army, particu- 
 larly the former. On the retired list of both, 
 but again particularly of the Navy, ought to 
 be found just the experience in contact with 
 foreign races, the moderation, wide views, jus- 
 tice, rigid method, and inflexible integrity, 
 
62 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 you need. Later on should come a real civil 
 service, with such pure and efficient adminis- 
 tration abroad as might help us ultimately 
 to conclude that we ourselves deserve as 
 well as the heathen, and induce us to set up 
 similar standards for our own service at 
 home. Meantime, if we have taught the 
 heathen largely to govern themselves with- 
 out being a hindrance and menace to the 
 civilization and the commerce of the world, 
 so much the better. Heaven speed the day ! 
 If not, we must even continue to be respon- 
 sible for them ourselves— a duty we did not 
 seek, but should be ashamed to shirk. 
 
THE OPEN DOOR 
 
A speech made at the dinner given by the American- 
 Asiatic Association in honoi* of Rear- Admiral Lord Charles 
 Beresford, at Delmonieo's, New York, February 23, 1899. 
 
THE OPEN DOOE 
 
 njlHE hour is late, you have already en- 
 X joyed your intellectual feast, you have 
 heard the man you came to hear, and I shall 
 detain you for but a moment. The guest 
 whom we are all here to honor and applaud 
 is returning from a journey designed to 
 promote the safety and extension of his 
 country's trade in the Chinese Orient. He 
 has probably been accustomed to think of 
 us as the most extreme Protectionist nation 
 in the world ; and he may have heard at first 
 of our recent acquisition on the China Sea 
 with some apprehension on that very ac- 
 count. 
 
 Now, there are two facts that might be united states 
 somewhat suggestive to any who take that ^ '^''^5^°^'"***® 
 view. One is that, though we may be "en- 
 raged Protectionists," as our French friends 
 occasionally call us, we have rarely sought 
 to extend the protective system where we 
 had nothing and could develop nothing to 
 protect. The other is that we are also the 
 
 5 65 
 
66 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 greatest free-trade country in the world. 
 Nowhere else on the globe does absolute 
 free trade prevail over so wide, rich, and 
 continuous an expanse of territory, with sucli 
 variety and volume of production and man- 
 ufacture; and nowhere have its beneficent 
 results been more conspicuous. From the 
 Golden Gate your guest has crossed a conti- 
 nent teeming with population and manufac- 
 tures without encountering a custom-house. 
 If he had come back from China the other 
 way, from Suez to London, he would have 
 passed a dozen ! 
 
 When your Peace Commissioners were 
 brought face to face with the retention of 
 the Philippines, they were at liberty to con- 
 sider the question it raised for immediate 
 action in the light of both sides of the 
 national practice. Here was an archipelago 
 practically without manufactures to protect, 
 or need for protection to develop manufac- 
 tures ; and here were swanning populations 
 with whom trade was sure to increase and 
 ramify, in proportion to its freedom from 
 obstructions. Thus it came about that your 
 Commissioners were led to a view which to 
 many has seemed a new departure, and 
 were finally enabled to preface an offer to 
 Spain with the remark that it was the policy 
 of the United States to maintain in the 
 Philippines an open door to the world's 
 
Door. 
 
 THE OPEN DOOE 67 
 
 commerce. Great Protectionist leader as 
 the President is and long has been, he 
 sanctioned the declaration ; and Protection- 
 ist as is the Senate, it ratified the pledge. 
 
 Under treaty guaranty Spain is now en- The open 
 titled to the Open Door in the Philippines 
 for ten years. Under the most favored na- 
 tion clause, what is thus secured to Spain 
 would not be easily refused, even if any one 
 desired it, to any other nation ; and the door 
 that stands open there for the next ten years 
 will by that time have such a rising tide of 
 trade pouring through it from the awakening 
 East that no man thenceforward can ever 
 close it. 
 
 There are two ways of dealing with the 
 trade of a distant dependency. You may 
 give such advantage to your own people as 
 practically to exclude everybody else. That 
 was the Spanish way. That is the French 
 way. Neither nation has grown rich of late 
 on its colonial extensions. Again, you may 
 impose such import or export duties as will 
 raise the revenue needed for the government 
 of the territory, to be paid by all comers at 
 its ports on a basis of absolute equality. In 
 some places that is the British way. Hence- 
 forth, in the Philippines, that is the United 
 States way. The Dingley tariff is not to be 
 transferred to the antipodes. 
 
68 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 Protectionists or Free-traders, I believe 
 we may all rejoice in this as best for the 
 Philippines and best for ourselves. I ven- 
 ture to think that we may rejoice over it, 
 too, with your distinguished guest. It en- 
 ables Great Britain and the United States to 
 preserve a common interest and present a 
 common front in the enormous commercial 
 development in the East that must attend 
 the awakening of the Chinese Colossus ; and 
 whenever and wherever Great Britain and 
 the United States stand together, the peace 
 and the civilization of the world will be the 
 better for it. 
 
 I 
 
VI 
 
 SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE 
 TEEATY OP PAEIS 
 
This discussion of the advances in International Law and 
 changes in national policy traceable to the negotiations 
 that ended in the Peace of Paris, was written in March, for 
 the first number of "The Anglo-Saxon Review" (then an- 
 nounced for May), which appeared in June, 1899. 
 
I 
 
 SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE 
 TEEATY OF PARIS 
 
 N 1823 Thomas Jefferson, writing from 
 the retirement of Monticello to James 
 Monroe, then President of the United 
 States, said : 
 
 Great Britain is the nation which can do us the 
 most harm of any one on all the earth, and with 
 her on our side we need not fear the world. With 
 her, then, we should most sedulously cherish a 
 cordial friendship, and nothing would tend more 
 to knit our affections than to be fighting once 
 more, side by side, in the same cause. 
 
 As these lines are written,^ the thing 
 which Jefferson looked forward to has, in 
 a small way, come to pass. For the first 
 time under government orders since British 
 regulars and the militia of the American 
 colonies fought Indians on Lake Champlain 
 and the French in Canada, the Briton and 
 the American have been fighting side by 
 
 1 The request of the editor ter the British and American 
 for the preparation of this forces had their conflict with 
 article was received just af- the natives in Samoa. 
 71 
 
72 PBOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 side, and again against savages. In a larger 
 sense, too, they are at last embarked side by 
 side in the Eastern duty, devolved on each, 
 of "bearing the white man's burden." It 
 seems natural, now, to count on such a 
 friendly British interest in present Ameri- 
 can problems as may make welcome a brief 
 statement of some things that were settled 
 by the late Peace of Paris, and some that 
 were unsettled. 
 
 Whether treaties really settle Interna- 
 tional Law is itself an unsettled point. Eng- 
 lish and American writers incline to give 
 them less weight in that regard than is 
 the habit of the great Continental authori- 
 ties. But it is reasonable to think that 
 some of the points insisted upon by the 
 United States in the Treaty of Paris will be 
 precedents as weighty, henceforth, in inter- 
 national policy as they are now novel to in- 
 ternational practice. If not International 
 Law yet, they probably will be ; and it is con- 
 fidently assumed that they will command the 
 concurrence of the British government and 
 people, as well as of the most intelligent and 
 dispassionate judgment on the Continent. 
 
 WhenArbi- The distinct and prompt refusal by the 
 Inadmissible. American Commissioners to submit ques- 
 tions at issue between them and their Span- 
 ish colleagues to arbitration marks a limit 
 
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE TREATY 73 
 
 to the application of that principle in inter- 
 national controversy which even its friends 
 will be apt hereafter to welcome. No civi- 
 lized nation is more thoroughly committed 
 to the policy of international arbitration 
 than the United States. The Spanish Com- 
 missioners were able to reinforce their ap- 
 peal for it by striking citations from the 
 American record: the declaration of the 
 Senate of Massachusetts, as early as 1835, 
 in favor of an international court for the 
 peaceful settlement of all disputes between 
 nations; the action of the Senate of the 
 United States in 1853, favoring a clause in 
 all future treaties with foreign countries 
 whereby difficulties that could not be set- 
 tled by diplomacy should be referred to 
 arbitrators; the concurrence of the two 
 Houses, twenty years later, in reaffirming 
 this principle; and at last their joint reso- 
 lution, in 1888, requesting the President to 
 secure agreements to that end with all 
 nations with whom he maintained diplo- 
 matic intercourse. 
 
 But the American Commissioners at once 
 made it clear that the rational place for ar- 
 bitration is as a substitute for war, not as a 
 second remedy, to which the contestant may 
 still have a right to resort after having ex- 
 hausted the first. In the absence of the 
 desired obligation to arbitrate, the dissat- 
 
74 PKOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 isfied nation, according to the American 
 theory, may have, after diplomacy has com- 
 pletely failed, a choice of remedies, but not 
 a double remedy. It may choose arbitra- 
 tion, or it may choose war ; but the Ameri- 
 can Commissioners flatly refused to let it 
 choose war, and then, after defeat, claim 
 still the right to call in arbitrators and put 
 again at risk before them the verdict of war. 
 Arbitration comes before war, they insisted, 
 to avert its horrors ; not after war, to afford 
 the defeated party a chance yet to escape 
 its consequences. 
 
 The principle thus stated is thought self- 
 evidently sound and just. Americans were 
 surprised to find how completely it was over- 
 looked in the contemporaneous European 
 discussion— how general was the sympathy 
 with the Spanish request for arbitration, 
 and how naif the apparently genuine sur- 
 prise at the instant and unqualified refusal 
 to consider it. Even English voices joined 
 in the chorus of encouraging approval that, 
 from every quarter in Europe, greeted the 
 formal Spanish appeal for an opportunity 
 to try over in another forum the questions 
 they had already submitted to the arbitra- 
 ment of arms. The more clearly the Amer- 
 ican view is now recognized and accepted, 
 the greater must be the tendency in the fu- 
 ture to seek arbitration at the outset. To 
 
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE TREATY 75 
 
 refuse arbitration when only sought at the 
 end of war, and as a means of escaping its 
 consequences, is certainly to stimulate ef- 
 forts for averting war at the beginning of 
 difficulties by means of arbitration. The 
 refusal prevents such degradation of a noble 
 reform to an ignoble end as would make 
 arbitration the refuge, not of those who wish 
 to avoid war, but only of those who have 
 preferred war and been beaten at it. The 
 American precedent should thus become a 
 powerful influence for promoting the cause 
 of genuine international arbitration, and 
 so for the preservation of peace between 
 nations. 
 
 Equally unexpected and important to the Does Debt 
 development of ordered liberty and good grjigntyr' 
 government in the world was the American 
 refusal to accept any responsibility, for 
 themselves or for the Cubans, on account 
 of the so-called Cuban debt. The principle 
 asserted from the outset by the American 
 Commissioners, and finally maintained, in 
 negotiating the Peace of Paris, was that a 
 national debt incurred in efforts to subdue 
 a colony, even if called a colonial debt, or 
 secured by a pledge of colonial revenues, 
 cannot be attached in the nature of a mort- 
 gage to the territory of that colony, so that 
 when the colony gains its independence it 
 
76 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 may still be held for the cost of the un- 
 successful efforts to keep it in subjection. 
 
 The first intimations that no part of the 
 so-called Cuban debt would either be as- 
 sumed by the United States or transferred 
 with the territory to the Cubans, were met 
 with an outcry from every bourse in Europe. 
 Bankers, investors, and the financial world 
 in general had taken it for gi-anted that 
 bonds which had been regularly issued by 
 the Power exercising sovereignty over the 
 territory, and which specifically pledged the 
 revenues of custom-houses in that territory 
 for the payment of the interest and ulti- 
 mately of the principal, must be recognized. 
 Not to do it, they said, would be bald, 
 unblushing repudiation — a thing least 
 to be looked for or tolerated in a nation 
 of spotless credit and great wealth, which 
 in past times of trial had made many 
 sacrifices to preserve its financial honor 
 untarnished. 
 
 It must be admitted that modern pre- 
 cedents were not altogether in favor of the 
 American position. Treaties ceding ter- 
 ritory not infrequently provide for the 
 assumption by the new sovereign of a pro- 
 portional part of the general obligations of 
 the ceding state. This is usually true when 
 the territory ceded is so considerable as to 
 form an important portion of the dismem- 
 
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE TREATY 77 
 
 bered country. Even " the great conqueror 
 of this century," as the Spanish Commis- 
 sioners exclaimed in one of their arguments, 
 " never dared to violate this rule of eternal 
 justice in any of the treaties he concluded 
 with those sovereigns whose territories he 
 appropriated, in whole or in part, as a re- 
 ward for his victories." They cited his first 
 treaty of August 24, 1801, with Bavaria 
 providing that the debts of the duchy of 
 Deux-Ponts, and of that part of the Palati- 
 nate acquired by France, should follow the 
 countries, and challenged the production of 
 any treaty of Napoleon's or of any modern 
 treaty where the principle of such transfer 
 was violated. 
 
 They were able to base a stronger claim 
 on the precedents of the New World. They 
 were, indeed, betrayed into some curious 
 errors. One was that the thirteen original 
 States, at the close of the Eevolutionary 
 War, paid over to Great Britain fifteen mil- 
 lion pounds as their share of the public debt. 
 Another was that the payment of the Texas 
 debt by the United States must be a pre- 
 cedent now for its payment of the Cuban 
 debt — whereas the Texas debt was incurred 
 by the Texas insurgents in their successful 
 war for independence, while the Cuban debt 
 was incurred by the mother country in her 
 unsuccessful effort to put down the Cuban 
 
78 PROBLEMS OP EXPANSION 
 
 insurgents. But as to the Spanish- American 
 republics, th^y were more nearly on solid 
 ground. It was true, and was more to the 
 point than most of their other citations, that 
 every one of these Spanish- American repub- 
 lics assumed its debt, that most of them did 
 it before their independence was recognized, 
 and that they gave these debts contracted 
 by Spain the preference over later debts 
 contracted by themselves. The language in 
 the treaty with Bolivia was particularly 
 sweeping. It assumed as its own these debts 
 of every kind whatsoever, " including all in- 
 curred for pensions, salaries, supplies, ad- 
 vances, transportation, forced loans, deposits, 
 contracts, and any other debts incurred dur- 
 ing war-times or prior thereto, chargeable 
 to said treasuries ; provided they were con- 
 tracted by direct orders of the Spanish gov- 
 ernment or its constituted authorities in 
 said territories.'' The Argentine Republic 
 and Uruguay, in negotiating their treaties, 
 expressed the same idea more tersely : " Just 
 as it acquires the rights and privileges be- 
 longing to the crown of Spain, so it also as- 
 sumes all the duties and obligations of the 
 crown." 
 
 The argument was certainly obvious, and 
 at first sight seemed fair, that what every 
 other revolted American colony of Spain 
 had done, on gaining its independence, the 
 
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE TKEATY 79 
 
 last of the long line should also do. But 
 an examination shows that in no case were 
 the circumstances such as to make it a fair 
 precedent for Cuba. In the other colonies 
 the debts were largely due to their own 
 people. To a considerable extent they had 
 been incurred for the prosecution of im- 
 provements of a pacific character, generally 
 for the public good and often at the public 
 desire. Another part had been spent in the 
 legitimate work of preserving public order 
 and extending the advantages of govern- 
 ment over wild regions and native tribes.^ 
 The rich, compact, populous island of Cuba 
 had called for no such loans up to the time 
 when Spain had already lost all of her 
 American colonies on the continent, and 
 had consequently no other dependency on 
 which to fasten her exacting governor- 
 generals and hosts of other official leeches. 
 There was no Cuban debt. Any honest 
 
 1 One of the author's col- can republics in the assump- 
 
 leagues at Paris, the Hon. tion of debts created by 
 
 Cushman K. Davis, chair- Spain. But some reflection 
 
 man of the Foreign Re- upon the subject has caused 
 
 lations Committee of the that action to lose, to me, 
 
 United States Senate, and much of its apparent rele- 
 
 among the most scholarly vancy. There was in none 
 
 students of International of those cases any funded 
 
 Law now in American public debt, in the sense of bond 
 
 life, says in a private letter : obligations, held in the mar- 
 kets of the world. There 
 
 " I was at first very much were two parties in the va- 
 
 struck by the unanimity of rious Spanish provinces of 
 
 action by the South Ameri- North and South America, 
 
80 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 administration had ample revenues for all 
 legitimate expenses, and a surplus ; and this 
 surplus seems not to have been used for the 
 benefit of the island, but sent home. Be- 
 tween 1856 and 1861 over $20,000,000 of 
 Cuban surplus were thus remitted to Ma- 
 drid. Next began a plan for using Cuban 
 credit as a means of raising money to re- 
 conquer the lost dominions ; and so "Cuban 
 bonds'' (with the guaranty of the Spanish 
 nation) were issued, first for the effort to 
 regain Santo Domingo, and then for the ex- 
 pedition to Mexico. By 1864 $3,000,000 had 
 been so issued; by 1868 $18,000,000— not at 
 the request or with the consent of the Cu- 
 bans, and not for their benefit. Then com- 
 menced the Cuban insurrection ; and from 
 that time on, all Spain could wring from 
 Cuba or borrow in European markets on 
 the pledge of Cuban revenues and her own 
 guaranty went in the effort to subdue 
 
 one of which supported Span- tries, and that these obliga- 
 ish ascendancy, and the other tions ran to a state church, 
 of which was revolutionary, which continued to be a state 
 The debts created by the ex- church after the colonies had 
 actions of Spain and of the achieved their independence, 
 revolutionary party alike As to the Napoleonic treaties 
 were, mainly if not entirely, cited by the Spanish Corn- 
 obligations due to the people missioners, they were mere 
 of the colonies themselves, matters of covenant in a 
 As to the continuance of pen- special case, and were not, 
 sions, endowments, etc., it in my judgment, the result 
 must be remembered that of any anterior national obli- 
 these were Catholic coun- gation." 
 
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE TREATY 81 
 
 a colony in revolt against her injustice and 
 bad government. The lenders knew the 
 facts and took the risk. Two years after 
 this first insurrection was temporarily put 
 down, these so-called Cuban debts had 
 amounted to over $170,000,000. They were 
 subsequently consolidated into other and 
 later issues; but whatever change of form 
 or date they underwent, they continued to 
 represent practically just three things : the 
 effort to conquer Santo Domingo, the expe- 
 dition to Mexico, and the efforts to subdue 
 Cuba. A movement to refund at a lower 
 rate of interest was begun in 1890, and for 
 this purpose an issue of $175,000,000 of 
 Spanish bonds was authorized, to be paid 
 out of the revenues of Cuba, but with the 
 guaranty of the Spanish nation. Before 
 many had been placed the insurrection had 
 again broken out. Thenceforward they 
 were used not to refund old bonds, but to 
 raise money for the prosecution of the new 
 war. Before its close this indebtedness had 
 been swollen to over double the figure named 
 above, and a part of the money must have 
 been used directly in the war against the 
 United States. 
 
 In the negotiations Spain took high moral 
 ground with reference to these debts. She 
 utterly denied any right to inquire how the 
 
82 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 proceeds had been expended. She did not 
 insist for her own benefit on their recogni- 
 tion and transfer with the territory. She 
 was concerned, not for herself, but for in- 
 ternational morality and for the innocent 
 holders. Some, no doubt, were Spanish 
 citizens, but many others were French, or 
 Austrian, or of other foreign nationalities. 
 The bonds were freely dealt in on the Con- 
 tinental bourses. A failure to provide for 
 them would be a public scandal throughout 
 civilization; it would cause a wide-spread 
 and profound shock to the sense of security 
 in national obligations the world over, be- 
 sides incalculable injustice and individual 
 distress. 
 
 But the fact was that these were the bonds 
 of the Spanish nation, issued by the Span- 
 ish nation for its own purposes, guaranteed 
 in terms " by the faith of the Spanish na- 
 tion," and with another guaranty pledging 
 Spanish sovereignty and control over certain 
 colonial revenues. Spain failed to maintain 
 her title to the security she had pledged, but 
 the lenders knew the instability of that se- 
 curity when they risked their money on it. 
 All the later lenders and many of the early 
 ones knew, also, that it was pledged for 
 money to continue Spain's efforts to subdue 
 a people struggling to free themselves from 
 Spanish rule. They may have said the 
 
SOME CONSEQUENCES OP THE TEEATY 83 
 
 morality or justice of the use made of the 
 money was no concern of theirs. They may 
 have thought the security doubtful, and still 
 relied on the broad guaranty of the Spanish 
 nation. At any rate, caveat emptor ! The 
 one thing they ought not to have relied 
 upon was that the island they were fur- 
 nishing money to subdue, if it gained its 
 freedom, would turn around and insist on 
 reimbursing them! 
 
 The Spanish contention that it was in 
 their power, as absolute sovereign of the 
 struggling island, to fasten ineradicably upon 
 it, for their own hostile purposes, unlimited 
 claims to its future revenues, would lead to 
 extraordinary results. Under that doctrine, 
 any hard- pushed oppressor would have a 
 certain means of subduing the most righteous 
 revolt and condemning a colony to perpetual 
 subjugation. He would only have to load it 
 with bonds, issued for his own purposes, be- 
 yond any possible capacity it could ever 
 have for payment. Under that load it could 
 neither sustain itself independently, even if 
 successful in war, nor persuade any other 
 Power to accept responsibility for and con- 
 trol over it. It would be rendered impotent 
 either for freedom or for any change of 
 sovereignty. To ask the Nation sprung from 
 the successful revolt of the thirteen colonies 
 to acknowledge and act on an immoral doc- 
 
84 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 trine like that, was, indeed, ingenuous— or 
 audacious. The American Commissioners 
 pronounced it alike repugnant to common 
 sense and menacing to liberty and civiliza- 
 tion. The Spanish Commissioners resented 
 the characterization, but it is believed that 
 the considerate judgment of the world will 
 yet approve it. International practice will 
 certainly hesitate hereafter, in transfers of 
 sovereignty over territory after its success- 
 ful revolt, at any recognition of loans nego- 
 tiated by the ceding Power in its unsuccessful 
 effort to subdue the revolt— -no matter what 
 pledges it had assumed to give about the 
 future territorial revenues. Loans for the 
 prosecution of unjust wars will be more 
 sharply scrutinized in the money markets of 
 the world, and will find less ready takers, 
 however extravagant the rates. It may even 
 happen that oppressing nations, in the in- 
 creasing difficulty of floating such loans, 
 will find it easier to relax the rigors of their 
 rule and promote the orderly development 
 of more liberal institutions among their 
 subjects. 
 
 Far from being an encouragement, there- 
 fore, to repudiation, the American rejection 
 of the so-called Cuban debt was a distinct 
 contribution to international morality, and 
 will probably furnish an important addition 
 to International Law. 
 
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE TREATY 85 
 
 At the same time the American Commis- Ready to Pay 
 sioners made clear in another case their sense L^Jt't^pate 
 
 T , , . Colonial 
 
 of the duty to recognize any debt legiti- Debts, 
 mately attaching to ceded territory. There 
 was not the remotest thought of buying the 
 Philippines, when a money payment was 
 proposed, in that branch of the negotiations. 
 When the Spanish fleet was sunk and the 
 Spanish army captured at Manila, Spanish 
 control over the Philippines was gone, and the 
 Power that had destroyed it was compelled 
 to assume its responsibilities to the civilized 
 world at that commercial center and on that 
 oceanic highway. ^ If that was not enough 
 reason for the retention of the Philippines, 
 then, at any rate, the right of the United 
 States to them as indemnity for the war 
 could not be contested by the generation 
 which had witnessed the exaction of Alsace 
 and Lorraine plus $1,000,000,000 indem- 
 nity for the Franco-Prussian War. The 
 war with Spain had already cost the United 
 
 1 It might, of course, have that would have been to say 
 run away and left them to that while the United States 
 disorder. That is what a went to war because the in- 
 pirate could have done, and justice and barbarity of Span- 
 would have compelled the in- ish rule in the West Indies 
 tervention of European gov- were such that they could no 
 ernments for the protection longer be tolerated, it was 
 of their own citizens. Or it now so eager to quit and get 
 might have restored them to peace that it was willing to 
 Spain. Besides the desertion reestablish that same rule in 
 of natives whose aid against the East Indies ! 
 Manila had been encouraged, 
 
86 PKOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 States far above $300,000,000. When trying 
 to buy Cuba from Spain, in the days of that 
 island's greatest prosperity, the highest val- 
 uation the United States was ever willing 
 to attach to it was $125,000,000. As an ori- 
 ginal proposition, nobody dreams that the 
 American people would have consented to 
 buy the remote Philippines at that figure or 
 at the half of it. Who could think the Gov- 
 ernment exacting if it accepted them in lieu 
 of a cash indemnity (which Spain was wholly 
 incapable of paying) for a great deal more 
 than double the value it had put upon Cuba, 
 at its very doors ? 
 
 It was certain, then, that the Philippines 
 would be retained, unless the President and 
 his Commissioners so construed their duty 
 to protect their country's interests as to 
 throw away, in advance of popular instruc- 
 tion, all possible chance of indemnity for the 
 war. But there was an issue of Spanish 
 bonds, called a Philippine loan, amounting 
 to forty million dollars Mexican, or say a 
 little less than twenty millions of American 
 money. Warned by the results of inquiry 
 as to the origin of the Cuban debt, the 
 American Commissioners avoided undertak- 
 ing to assume this en bloc. But in their first 
 statement of the claim for cession of sover- 
 eignty in the Philippines, while intimating 
 their belief in their absolute right to enforce 
 
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE TREATY 87 
 
 the demand on the single ground of in- 
 demnity, they were careful to say that they 
 were ready to stipulate " for the assumption 
 of any existing indebtedness of Spain in- 
 curred for public works and improvements 
 of a pacific character in the Philippines." 
 When they learned that this entire " Philip- 
 pine debt " had only been issued in 1897, that 
 apparently a fourth had been transferred to 
 Cuba to carry on the war against the Cuban 
 insurgents, and finally against the United 
 States, and that much of what was left of 
 the remainder, after satisfying the demands 
 of officials for " costs of negotiation," must 
 have gone to the support of the government 
 while engaged in prosecuting the war against 
 the natives in Luzon, the American Commis- 
 sioners abandoned the idea of assuming it. 
 But even then they resolved, in the final 
 transfer, to fix an amgunt at least equal to 
 the face value of that debt, which could be 
 given to Spain. She could use it to pay 
 the Philippine bonds if she chose. Nothing 
 further was said to Spain about the Philip- 
 pine debt, and no specific reason for the pay- 
 ment was given in the ultimatum. The 
 Commissioners merely observed that they 
 " now present a new proposition, embodying 
 the concessions which, for the sake of im- 
 mediate peace, their Grovernment is, under 
 the circumstances, willing to tender." What 
 
88 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 had gone before showed plainly enough the 
 American view as to the sanctity of public 
 debt legitimately incurred in behalf of ceded 
 territory, and explained the money pay- 
 ment in the case of the Philippines, as well 
 as the precise amount at which it was finally 
 fixed. 
 
 Privateeriof. NEITHER the Peace of Paris nor the con- 
 flict which it closed can be said to have 
 quite settled the status of private war at 
 sea. "Privateering is and remains abol- 
 ished," not in International Law, but merely 
 between the Powers that signed that clause 
 in the Declaration of Paris in 1856. But 
 the greatest commercial nation, as well as 
 the most powerful, that withheld its signa- 
 ture was the United States. Obviously its 
 adhesion to the principle would bring more 
 weight to the general acceptance among 
 civilized nations, which is the essential for 
 admission in International Law, than that of 
 all the other dissenting nations. 
 
 Under these circumstances, the United 
 States took the occasion of an outbreak of 
 war between itself and another of the dis- 
 senting nations to announce that, for its 
 part, it did not intend, under any circum- 
 stances, to resort to privateering. The 
 other gave no such assurance, and was, in 
 fact, expected (in accordance with frequent 
 
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE TKEATY 89 
 
 semi-official outgivings from Madrid) to 
 commission privateers at an early day ; but 
 the disasters to its navy and the collapse of 
 its finances left it without a safe oppor- 
 tunity. The moral effect of this volunteer 
 action of the United States, with no offset 
 of any active dissent by its opponent, be- 
 comes almost equivalent to completing that 
 custom and assent of the civilized world 
 which create International Law. Practically 
 all governments may henceforth regard pri- 
 vateering as under international ban, and 
 no one of the states yet refraining from 
 assent— Spain, Mexico, Venezuela, or China 
 —is likely to defy the ban. The announce- 
 ment of the United States can probably be 
 accepted as marking the end of private war 
 at sea, and a genuine advance in the world's 
 civilization. 
 
 The refusal of the United States, in 1856, Exempt all 
 to join in the clause of the Declaration of p^jL**^ 
 Paris abolishing privateering was avowedly 
 based upon the ground that it did not go far 
 enough. The American claim was that not 
 only private seizure of enemy's goods at sea 
 should be prohibited, but that all private 
 property of the enemy at sea should be en- 
 titled to the same protection as on land— 
 prizes and prize courts being thus almost 
 abolished, and no private property of the 
 
90 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 enemy anywhere being liable to confiscation, 
 unless contraband of war. It was frankly 
 stated at the time that without this addition 
 the abolition of privateering was not in the 
 interest of Powers like the United States, 
 with a small navy, but a large and active mer- 
 chant fleet. This peculiar adaptability of 
 privateering at that time to the situation of 
 the United States might have warranted 
 the suspicion that its professions of a desire 
 to make the Declaration of Paris broader 
 than the other nations wished only masked 
 a desire to have things remain as they were. 
 But the subsequent action of its Govern- 
 ment in time of profound peace compelled a 
 worthier view of its attitude. A treaty with 
 Italy, negotiated by George P. Marsh, and 
 ratified by the United States in 1871, em- 
 bodied the very extension of the Declaration 
 of Paris for which the United States con- 
 tended. This treaty provides that " in the 
 event of a war between them (Italy and the 
 United States) the private property of their 
 respective citizens and subjects, with the 
 exception of contraband of war, shall be 
 exempt from capture or seizure, on the high 
 seas or elsewhere, by the armed vessels or 
 by the military forces of either party." Is 
 it too much to hope that this early commit- 
 tal of the United States with Italy, and its 
 subsequent action in the war with Spain, 
 
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE TKEATY 91 
 
 may at last bring the world to the advanced 
 ground it recommended for the Declaration 
 of Paris, and throw the safeguards of civili- 
 zation henceforth around all private property 
 in time of war, whether on land or sea ? 
 
 Heee, then, are three great principles, im- The Monroe 
 port ant to the advancement of civilization, cJf^J"* 
 which, if not established in International Law 
 by the Peace of Paris and the war it closed, 
 have at least been so powerfuly reinforced 
 that no nation is likely hereafter lightly or 
 safely to violate them. 
 
 But it has often been asked, and some- 
 times by eminent English writers, whether 
 the Americans have not, at the same time, 
 fatally unsettled the Monroe Doctrine, which 
 never, indeed, had the sanction of Interna- 
 tional Law, but to which they were known to 
 attach the greatest importance. A large and 
 influential body of American opinion at first 
 insisted that the acquisition of the West 
 Indian, Philippine, and Sandwich Islands 
 constituted an utter abandonment of that 
 Doctrine; and apparently most European 
 publicists have accepted this view. Only 
 slight inquiry is needed to show that the 
 facts give it little support. 
 
 The Monroe Doctrine sprang from the 
 union of certain absolute monarchs (not 
 claiming to rule by the will of the people. 
 
92 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 but by " divine right ") in a " Holy Alliance " 
 against that dangerous spread of democratic 
 ideas which, starting in the revolt of the 
 American colonies, had kindled the French 
 Revolution and more or less unsettled gov- 
 ernment in Europe. It was believed that 
 these monarchs meant not only to repress 
 republican tendencies in Europe, but to as- 
 sist Spain in reducing again to subjection 
 American republics which had been estab- 
 lished in former Spanish colonies, and had 
 been recognized as independent by the 
 United States. Under these circumstances, 
 James Monroe, then President, in his Annual 
 Message in 1823, formally announced the 
 famous " Doctrine " in these words : 
 
 The occasion has been deemed proper for as- 
 serting as a principle in which the rights and in- 
 terests of the United States are involved, that the 
 American continents, by the free and independent 
 condition which they have assumed and main- 
 tained, are henceforth not to be considered as 
 subjects for future colonization by any European 
 Powers. . . . Our poUcy in regard to Europe . . . 
 is not to interfere in the internal concerns of any 
 of its Powers. 
 
 That is the whole substance of it. There 
 was no pledge of abstention throughout the 
 future and under all circumstances from the 
 internal concerns of European Powers— only 
 
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE TEEATY 93 
 
 a statement of present practice. Far less 
 was there a pledge, as seems to have been 
 widely supposed, that if the Holy Alliance 
 would only refrain from aiding Spain to 
 force back the Mexican and South American 
 republics into Spanish colonies, the United 
 States would refrain from extending its in- 
 stitutions or its control over any region in 
 Asia or Africa or the islands of the sea. 
 Less yet was there any such talk as has 
 been sometimes quoted, about keeping Eu- 
 rope out of the Western hemisphere and our- 
 selves staying out of the Eastern hemisphere. 
 What Mr. Monroe really said, in essence, 
 was this: "The late Spanish colonies are 
 now American republics, which we have 
 recognized. They shall not be reduced to 
 colonies again; and the two American con- 
 tinents have thus attained such an indepen- 
 dent condition that they are no longer fields 
 for European colonization." That fact re- 
 mains. It does not seem probable that 
 anybody will try or wish to change it. 
 Furthermore, the United States has not 
 interfered in the internal concerns of any 
 European Powers. But it is under no direct 
 pledge for the future to that effect; and as 
 to Asia, Africa, and the islands of the sea, it 
 is and always has been as free as anybody 
 else. It encouraged and protected a colony 
 on the west coast of Africa. It acquired the 
 
04 PROBLEMS OP EXPANSION 
 
 Aleutian Islands, largely in the Asiatic sys- 
 tem. It long maintained a species of pro- 
 tectorate over the Sandwich Islands. It 
 acquired an interest in Samoa and joined 
 there in a protectorate. It has now taken 
 the Sandwich Islands and the Philippines. 
 Meanwhile the Monroe Doctrine remains 
 just where it always was. Nothing has 
 been done in contravention of it, and it 
 stands as firmly as ever, though with the 
 tragic end of the Franco- Austrian experiment 
 in Mexico, and now with the final disappear- 
 ance from the Western world of the unfor- 
 tunate Power whose colonial experiences led 
 to its oiiginal promulgation, the circum- 
 stances have so changed that nobody is very 
 likely to have either interest or wish to in- 
 terfere with it. 
 
 Leaving the What has really been unsettled, if any- 
 Continent, thing, by the Peace of Paris and the pre- 
 ceding war, has been the current American 
 idea as to the sphere of national activities, 
 and the power under the Constitution for 
 their extension. It is perfectly true that the 
 people did not wish for more territory, and 
 never dreamed of distant colonies. There 
 had always been a party that first opposed 
 and then belittled the acquisition of Alaska. 
 There was no considerable popular sup- 
 port since the Civil War for filibustering 
 
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE TREATY 95 
 
 expeditions of the old sort against Cuba. 
 There was genuine reluctance to take the 
 steps which recent circumstances and the 
 national committals for half a century made 
 almost unavoidable in the Sandwich Islands. 
 Now suddenly the United States found itself 
 in possession of Cuba, Porto Eico, Guam, 
 and the Philippines. The first impression 
 was one of great popular perplexity. What 
 was to be done with them? Must they be 
 developed through the territorial stage into 
 independent States in the Union I or, if not, 
 how govern or get rid of them ! What place 
 was there in the American system for terri- 
 tories that were never to be States, for col- 
 onies, or for the rule of distant subject races ? 
 
 Up to this time, from the outbreak of the 
 war, the Administration had found the 
 American people united in its support as 
 they had hardly been united for a century. 
 The South vied with the North, the West 
 forgot the growing jealousy of the East, the 
 poor the new antagonism to the rich, and 
 the wildest cow-boys from Arizona and New 
 Mexico marched fraternally beside scions of 
 the oldest and richest families from New 
 York, under the orders of a great Secession- 
 ist cavalry general. 
 
 But now two parties presently arose. One 
 held that there was no creditable escape from 
 the consequences of the war ; that the Gov- 
 
96 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 ernment, having broken down the existing 
 authority in the capital of the Philippines, 
 and practically throughout the archipelago, 
 could neither set up that authority again nor 
 shirk the duty of replacing it; that it was 
 as easy and as constitutional to apply some 
 modification of the existing territorial system 
 to the Philippines as it had been to Alaska 
 and the Aleutians ; and that, while the task 
 was no doubt disagreeable, difficult, and 
 dangerous, it could not be avoided with 
 honor, and would ultimately be attended 
 with great profit. On the other hand, some 
 prominent members of the Administration 
 party led off in protests against the retention 
 of the Philippines on constitutional, human- 
 itarian, and economic grounds, pronouncing 
 it a policy absolutely antagonistic to the 
 principles of the Republic and the precursor 
 of its downfall. In proportion as the Ad- 
 ministration itself inclined to the former 
 view, the opposition leaders fell away from 
 the support they had given during the war, 
 and began to align themselves with those 
 members of the Administration party who 
 had opposed the ratification of the treaty. 
 They were reinforced by a considerable body 
 of educated and conservative public opinion, 
 chiefly at the East, and by a number of 
 trades-union and labor leaders, who had been 
 brought to believe that the new policy meant 
 
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE TREATY 97 
 
 cheap labor and cheap manufactures in 
 competition with their own, together with 
 a large standing army, to which they have 
 manifested great repugnance ever since the 
 Chicago riots. 
 
 In the universal ferment of opinion and Anti-Admin- 
 discussion that ensued, the opponents of v/ew oHhe 
 what is assumed to be the Administration Constitution. 
 policy on the new possessions have seemed 
 to rely chiefly on two provisions in the Con- 
 stitution of the United States and a phrase 
 in the Declaration of Independence. The 
 constitutional provisions are : 
 
 The Congress shall have power to levy and col- 
 lect taxes . . . and provide for the common de- 
 fense and general welfare of the United States 5 
 hut all duties, imposts, and excises shall he uniform 
 throughout the United States.— Art. I, Sec. 8. 
 
 All persons born or naturalized in the United 
 States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are 
 citizens of the United States and of the State 
 wherein they reside.— Art. XIV, Sec. 1. 
 
 To serve the purpose for which these 
 clauses of the Constitution are invoked, it is 
 necessary to hold that any territory to which 
 the United States has a title is an integral 
 part of the United States; and perhaps the 
 greatest name in the history of American 
 constitutional interpretation, that of Mr. 
 
98 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 Chief Justice Marshall of the Supreme Court 
 of the United States, is cited in favor of that 
 contention. K accepted, it follows that when 
 the treaty ceding Spanish sovereignty in the 
 Philippines was ratified, that archipelago 
 became an integral part of the United 
 States. Then, under the first clause above 
 cited, the Dingley tariff must be immediately 
 extended over the Philippines (as well as 
 Porto Rico, the Sandwich Islands, and 
 Gruam) precisely as over New York; and, 
 under the second clause, every native of the 
 Philippines and the other new possessions 
 is a citizen of the United States, with all the 
 rights and privileges thereby accruing. The 
 first result would be the disorganization of 
 the present American revenue system by 
 the free admission into all American ports of 
 sugar and other tropical products from the 
 greatest sources of supply, and the conse- 
 quent loss of nearly sixty millions of annual 
 revenue. Another would be the destruction 
 of the existing cane- and beet-sugar indus- 
 tries in the United States. Another, appre- 
 hended by the laboring classes, who are 
 already suspicious from their experience 
 with the Chinese, would be an enormous in- 
 flux, either of cheap labor or of its products, 
 to beat down their wages. 
 
 Next, it is argued, there is no place in the 
 theory or practice of the American Govern- 
 
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE TBEATY 99 
 
 ment for territories except for development 
 into Statehood; and, consequently, the re- 
 quired population being already present, 
 new States must be created out of Luzon, 
 Mindanao, the Yisayas, Porto Eico, and the 
 Sandwich Islands. The right to hold them 
 permanently in the territorial form, or even 
 under a protectorate, is indignantly denied 
 as conflicting with Mr. Jeff erson^s phrase in 
 the Declaration of Independence, to the 
 effect that governments derive their just 
 powers from the consent of the governed. 
 Some great names can certainly be mar- 
 shaled in support of such views— Chancellor 
 Kent, Mr. John C. Calhoun, Mr. Chief Jus- 
 tice Taney, and others. Denial of this duty 
 to admit the new possessions as States is 
 denounced as a violation by the Republic 
 of the very law of its being, and its trans- 
 formation into an empire; as a revival of 
 slavery in another form, both because of 
 government without representation, and be- 
 cause of the belief that no tropical colony can 
 be successful without contract labor; as a 
 consequent and inevitable degradation of 
 American character; as a defiance of the 
 warnings in Washington's Farewell Address 
 against foreign entanglements ; as a repudi- 
 ation of the congressional declaration at the 
 outbreak of the war, that it was not waged 
 for territorial aggrandizement; and finally 
 
100 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 as placing Aguinaldo in the position of 
 fighting for freedom, independence, and the 
 principles of the fathers of the Republic, 
 while the Republic itself is in the position 
 of fighting to control and govern him and 
 his people in spite of their will. 
 
 On the other hand, the supporters of the 
 treaty and of the policy of the Administra- 
 tion, so far as it has been disclosed, begin 
 their argument with another provision of the 
 Constitution, the second part of Section 3 in 
 Article IV: 
 
 The Congress shall have power to dispose of 
 and make all needful rules and regulations re- 
 specting the territory or other property belonging 
 to the United States. 
 
 They claim that, under this. Congress has 
 absolute power to do what it will with the 
 Philippines, as with any other territory or 
 other property which the United States may 
 acquire. It is admitted that Congress is, of 
 course, under an implied obligation to exer- 
 cise this power in the general spirit of the 
 Constitution which creates it, and of the 
 Government of which it is a part. But it is 
 denied that Congress is under any obligation 
 to confer a republican form of government 
 upon a territory whose inhabitants are unfit 
 for it, or to adopt any form of government 
 
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE TKEATY 101 
 
 devised with reference to preparing it for 
 ultimate admission to the Union as a State. 
 It is further denied that Congress is under 
 any obligation, arising either from the Con- 
 stitution itself or from the precedents of the 
 Nation's action under it, to ask the consent 
 of the inhabitants in acquired territory to 
 the form of government which may be given 
 them. And still further, it is not only denied 
 that Congress is under .any obligations to 
 prepare these territories for Statehood or 
 admit them to it, but it is pointed out that, 
 at least as to the Philippines, that body is 
 prevented from doing so by the very terms, 
 of the preamble to the Constitution itself— 
 concluding with the words, " do ordain and 
 establish this Constitution for the United 
 States of America. ^^ There is no place here 
 for States of Asia. 
 
 In dealing with the arguments against Replies to 
 retention of the Philippines, based on the {J2'*"' 
 sections previously quoted from Articles I Objections. 
 and XIV of the Constitution, the friends of 
 the policy say that the apparent conflict in 
 these articles with the wide grant of powers 
 over territory to Congress which they find 
 in Article IV arises wholly from a failure to 
 recognize the different senses in which the 
 term "the United States" is used. As the 
 name of the Nation it is often employed to 
 
102 PROBLEMS OP EXPANSION 
 
 include all territory over which United States 
 sovereignty extends, whether originally the 
 property of the individual States and ceded 
 to the United States, or whether acquired 
 in treaties by the Nation itself. But such a 
 meaning is clearly inconsistent with its use 
 in certain clauses of the Constitution in ques- 
 tion. Thus Article XIII says: "Neither 
 slavery nor involuntary servitude . . . shall 
 exist within the United States or any place 
 subject to their jurisdiction,''^ 
 
 The latter clause was obviously the con- 
 stitutional way of conveying the idea about 
 the Territories which the opponents of the 
 Philippine policy are now trying to read into 
 the name "United States." The constitu- 
 tional provision previously cited about citi- 
 zenship illustrates the same point. It says 
 " all persons born," etc., " are citizens of the 
 United States and of the State wherein they 
 reside,''^ There is no possibility left here 
 that Territories are to be held as an integral 
 part of the United States, in the sense in 
 which the Constitution, in this clause, uses 
 the name. If they had been, the clause 
 would have read, " and of the State or Ter- 
 ritory in which they reside." For these 
 opinions high authorities are also cited, 
 including debates in the Senate, acts of 
 Congress, the constant practice of the 
 Executive, and most of th^ judicial rulings 
 
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE TREATY 103 
 
 of the last half -century that seem to bear 
 upon the present situation. 
 
 It has been thought best, in an explanation The Outcome 
 to readers in another country of the perplex- "o**^®"^*^"'- 
 ity arising in the American mind, in a sud- 
 den emergency, from these disputed points 
 in constitutional powers, to set forth with 
 impartial fairness and some precision the 
 views on either side. It is essential to a fair 
 judgment as to the apparent hesitation since 
 this problem began to develop, that the real 
 basis for the conflicting opinions should be 
 understood, and that full justice should be 
 done to the earnest repugnance with which 
 many conscientious citizens draw back from 
 sending American youth to distant tropical 
 regions to enforce with an armed hand the 
 submission of an unwilling people to the 
 absolute rule of the Eepublic. It should be 
 realized, too, how far the new departure does 
 unsettle the practice and policy of a century. 
 The old view that each new Territory is 
 merely another outlet for surplus popula- 
 tion, soon to be taken in as another State in 
 the Union, must be abandoned. The old 
 assumption that all inhabitants of territory 
 belonging to the United States are to be 
 regarded as citizens is gone. The idea that 
 government anywhere must derive its just 
 powers only from the consent of the gov- 
 
104 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 erned is unsettled, and thus, to some, the 
 very foundations of the Republic seem to 
 be shaken. Three generations, trained in 
 Washington's warnings against foreign en- 
 tanglements, find it difficult all at once to 
 realize that advice adapted to a people of 
 three millions, scattered along the border of 
 a continent, may need some modifications 
 when applied to a people of seventy-five 
 millions, occupying the continent, and 
 reaching out for the commerce of both the 
 oceans that wash its shores. 
 
 But whatever may be thought of the 
 weight of the argument, either as to con- 
 stitutional power or as to policy, there is 
 little doubt as to the result. The people 
 who found authority in their fundamental 
 law for treating paper currency as a legal 
 tender in time of war, in spite of the con- 
 stitutional requirement that no State should 
 " make anything but gold and silver coin a 
 tender in payment of debts," will find there 
 also all the power they need for dealing 
 with the difficult problem that now con- 
 fronts them. And when the constitutional 
 objections are surmounted, those as to policy 
 are not likely to lead the American people to 
 recall their soldiers from the fields on which 
 the Filipinos attacked them, or abandon the 
 sovereignty which Spain ceded. The Ameri- 
 
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE TKEATY 105 
 
 can Grovernment has the new territories, and 
 will hold and govern them. 
 
 A republic like the United States has 
 not been well adapted hitherto to that sort 
 of work. Congress is apt to be slow, if not 
 also changeable, and under the Constitution 
 the method of government for territories 
 must be prescribed by Congress. It has not 
 yet found time to deal with the Sandwich 
 Islands. Its harsher critics declare it has 
 never yet found time to deal fairly with 
 Alaska. No doubt. Executive action in 
 advance of Congress might be satisfactory ; 
 but a President is apt to wait for Congress 
 unless driven by irresistible necessities. He 
 can only take the initiative through some 
 form of military government. For this the 
 War Department is not yet well organized. 
 Possibly the easiest solution for the moment 
 would be in the organization of another de- 
 partment for war and government beyond 
 the seas, or the development of a measurably 
 independent bureau for such work in the 
 present department. Whatever is done, it 
 would be unreasonable to expect unbroken 
 success or exemption from a learner's mis- 
 takes and discouragements. But whoever 
 supposes that these will result either in the 
 abandonment of the task or in a final failure 
 with it does not know the American people. 
 
VII 
 CUE NEW DUTIES 
 
This commencement address was delivered on the cam- 
 pus at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, at the celebration 
 of its seventy-fifth anniversary, June 15, 1899. 
 
OUR NEW DUTIES 
 
 SONS AND Fkiends of Miami : I join you 
 in saluting this venerable mother at a 
 notable waymark in her great life. One 
 hundred and seven years ago the Congress 
 voted, and G-eorge Washington approved, a 
 foundation for this University. Seventy- 
 five years ago it opened its doors. Now, si 
 monumentum quseris, circumspice. There 
 is the catalogue. There are the long lists 
 of men who so served the State or the 
 Church that their lives are your glory, their 
 names your inspiration.^ There are the 
 
 1 Much attention had been 1835, Governor of Ohio, 1859- 
 attracted, as the date for this 63, and Postmaster-General 
 celebration approached, to under Abraham Lincoln ; Ca- 
 the numerous sons of this leb B. Smith, 1826, Secretary 
 small college who had in of the Interior in the same 
 one way or another become Administration ; General 
 prominent; and the news- Robert C. Schenck, 1827, 
 papers printed long lists of Chairman Ways and Means 
 them. Among the names thus Committee in House of Rep- 
 singled out in the press were resentatives, Major-General 
 Benjamin Harrison, of the in the Civil War, and United 
 class of 1852, President of States Minister to Brazil and 
 the United States, 1889-93 ; to Great Britain ; William S. 
 William Dennison, class " of Groesbeck, 1834, Congress- 
 
 109 
 
110 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 longer lists of others to whom kinder for- 
 tune did not set duties in the eye of the 
 world; but Miami made of them citizens 
 who leavened the lump of that growing 
 West which was then a sprawling, irregular 
 line of pioneer settlements, and is now an 
 empire. Search through it, above and below 
 the Ohio, and beyond the Mississippi. So 
 often, where there are centers of good 
 work or right thinking and right living— 
 so often and so widely spread will you find 
 traces of Miami, left by her own sons or 
 coming from those secondary sources which 
 sprang from her example and influence, that 
 
 man, counsel for Andrew ator from Kentucky ; George 
 Johnson in the impeachment E. Pugh, 1840, United States 
 proceedings, and United Senator from Ohio ; James W. 
 States delegate to the Inter- McDill, 1853, United States 
 national Monetary Congress, Senator from Iowa ; General 
 1878 ; Samuel Shellabarger, Samuel F. Carey, 1835, Con- 
 184], Congressman, member gressman from Ohio, and tem- 
 of the Credit Mobilier Inves- perance orator ; Albert S. 
 ligation, and of the United Berry, 1856, Congressman 
 States Civil Service Commis- from Kentucky ; Dr. John S. 
 sion ; Oliver P. Morton, 1845, Billings, U. S. A., 1857, head 
 War Governor of Indiana, of New York Library ; David 
 and United States Senator; Swing, 1852, the Chicago 
 Charles Anderson, 1833, Gov- clergyman ; General A. C. 
 ernor of Ohio ; James Birney, McClurg, 1853, the Chicago 
 1836, Governor of Michigan ; publisher ; Henry M. Mae- 
 Richard Yates, 1830, War Gov- Cracken, 1857, Chancellor of 
 ernor of Illinois, and United New York University ; Wil- 
 States Senator; Milton Say- liam M. Thomson, 1828, au- 
 ler, 1852, Speaker House of thor of "The Land and the 
 Representatives; John S. Book"; Calvin S. Brice, 1863, 
 Williams, 1838, the "Cerro railway-builder, and United 
 Gordo Williams " of the Mex- States Senator ; etc. 
 ican War, United States Sen- 
 
OUR NEW DUTIES 111 
 
 you are led in grateful surprise to exclaim : 
 " If this be the work of a little college, God 
 bless and prolong the little college ! If, 
 half starved and generally neglected, she has 
 thus nourished good learning and its proper 
 result in good lives through the three 
 quarters of a century ended to-day, may the 
 days of her years be as the sands of the sea ; 
 may the Twentieth Century only introduce 
 the glorious prime of a career of which the 
 Nineteenth saw but modest beginnings, and 
 may good old Miami still flourish in ssecula 
 SBBCulorum ! " 
 
 But the celebration of her past and the 
 aspirations for her future belong to worthier 
 sons— here among these gentlemen of the 
 Board who have cared for her in her need. 
 I make them my profound acknowledgments 
 for the honor they have done me in assign- 
 ing me a share in the work of this day of 
 days, and shall best deserve their trust by 
 going with absolute candor straight to my 
 theme. 
 
 I SHALL speak of the new duties that are New Duties; 
 upon us and the new world that is opening ^^^ 
 to us with the new century— of the spirit in 
 which we should advance and the results we 
 have the right to ask. I shall speak of 
 public matters which it is the duty of 
 educated men to consider; and of matters 
 
112 PKOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 which may hereafter divide parties, but on 
 which we must refuse now to recognize 
 party distinctions. Partizanship stops at 
 the guard-line. " In the face of an enemy 
 we are all Frenchmen," said an eloquent 
 Imperialist once in my hearing, in rallying 
 his followers to support a foreign measure 
 of the French Eepublic. At this moment 
 our soldiers are facing a barbarous or 
 semi-civilized foe, who treacherously at- 
 tacked them in a distant land, where our 
 flag had been sent, in friendship with them, 
 for the defense of our own shores. Was it 
 creditable or seemly that it was lately left 
 to a Bonaparte on our own soil to teach 
 some American leaders that, at such a time, 
 patriotic men at home do not discourage 
 those soldiers or weaken the Government 
 that directs them f ^ 
 
 Neither shall I discuss, here and now, the 
 wisdom of all the steps that have led to the 
 present situation. For good or ill, the war 
 
 1 "My dear Sir : I have re- tently accept the position, es- 
 
 ceived your letter of the 23d pecially since I learn through 
 
 inst., notifying me of my elec- the press that the league 
 
 tion as a vice-president of adopted at its recent meeting 
 
 the Anti-Imperialist League, certain resolutions to which 
 
 I recognize the compliment I cannot assent. ... I may 
 
 implied in this election, and add that, while I fully recog- 
 
 appreeiate it the more by nize the injustice and even 
 
 reason of my respect for the absurdity of those charges 
 
 gentlemen identified with the of * disloyalty ' which have 
 
 league, but I do not think I been of late freely made 
 
 can appropriately or consis- against some members of the 
 
OUB NEW DUTIES 113 
 
 was fought. Its results are upon us. With 
 the ratification of the Peace of Paris, our 
 Continental Eepublic has stretched its wings 
 over the West Indies and the East. It is a 
 fact and not a theory that confronts us. 
 We are actually and now responsible, not 
 merely to the inhabitants and to our own 
 people, but, in International Law, to the com- 
 merce, the travel, the civilization of the 
 world, for the preservation of order and the 
 protection of life and property in Cuba, in 
 Porto Eico, in Guam, and in the Philippine 
 Archipelago, including that recent haunt of 
 piracy, the Sulus. Shall we quit ourselves 
 like men in the discharge of this immediate 
 duty; or shall we fall to quarreling with 
 each other like boys as to whether such a 
 duty is a good or a bad thing for the coun- 
 try, and as to who got it fastened upon us? 
 There may have been a time for disputes 
 about the wisdom of resisting the stamp 
 
 league, and also that many ing this tendency. There 
 
 honorable and patriotic men can be no doubt that, as a 
 
 do not feel as I do on this matter of fact, the country is 
 
 subject, I am personally un- at war with Aguinaldo and 
 
 willing to take part in an agi- his followers. I profoundly 
 
 tation which may have some regret this fact ; . . . but it 
 
 tendency to cause a public is a fact, nevertheless, and, 
 
 enemy to persist in armed re- as such, must weigh in deter- 
 
 sistance, or may be, at least, mining my conduct as a citi- 
 
 plausibly represented as hav- zen. . . . 
 
 " Charles Jerome Bonaparte. 
 " Baltimore, 
 "May 25, 1899." 
 
114 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 tax, but it was not just after Bunker Hill. 
 There may have been a time for hot debate 
 about some mistakes in the antislavery 
 agitation, but not just after Sumter and 
 Bull Run. Furthermore, it is as well to re- 
 member that you can never grind with the 
 water that has passed the mill. Nothing in 
 human power can ever restore the United 
 States to the position it occupied the day 
 before Congress plunged us into the war 
 with Spain, or enable us to escape what 
 that war entailed. No matter what we 
 wish, the old continental isolation is gone 
 forever. Whithersoever we turn now, we 
 must do it with the burden of our late acts 
 to carry, the responsibility of our new posi- 
 tion to assume. 
 
 When the sovereignty which Spain had 
 exercised with the assent of all nations over 
 vast and distant regions for three hundred 
 years was solemnly transferred under the 
 eye of the civilized world to the United 
 States, our first responsibility became the 
 restoration of order. Till that is secured, 
 any hindrance to the effort is bad citizen- 
 ship—as bad as resistance to the police ; as 
 much worse, in fact, as its consequences 
 may be more bloody and disastrous. " You 
 have a wolf by the ears," said an accom- 
 plished ex-Minister of the United States to 
 a departing Peace Commissioner last au- 
 
OUR NEW DUTIES 115 
 
 tumn. '^You cannot let go of Mm with 
 either dignity or safety, and he will not be 
 easy to tame." 
 
 But when the task is accomplished,— Policy for 
 when the Stars and Stripes at last bring jJlfs^eg^ions. 
 the order and peaceful security they typify, 
 instead of wanton disorder, with all the 
 concomitants of savage warfare over which 
 they now wave,— we shall then be confronted 
 with the necessity of a policy for the future 
 of these distant regions. It is a problem 
 that calls for our soberest, ' most dispas- 
 sionate, and most patriotic thought. The 
 colleges, and the educated classes generally, 
 should make it a matter of conscience— 
 painstakingly considered on all its sides, 
 with reference to International Law, the 
 burdens of sovereignty, the rights and the 
 interests of native tribes, and the legitimate 
 demands of civilization— to find first our 
 national duty and then our national in- 
 terest, which it is also a duty for our states- 
 men to protect. On such a subject we have 
 a right to look to our colleges for the help 
 they should be so well equipped to give. 
 From these still regions of cloistered thought 
 may well come the white light of pure 
 reason, not the wild, whirling words of the , 
 special pleader or of the partizan, giving 
 loose rein to his hasty first impressions. It 
 
116 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 would be an ill day for some colleges if 
 crude and hot-tempered incursions into 
 current public affairs, like a few unhappily 
 witnessed of late, should lead even their 
 friends to fear lest they have been so long 
 accustomed to dogmatize to boys that they 
 have lost the faculty of reasoning with men. 
 
 When the first duty is done, when order 
 is restored in those commercial centers and 
 on that commercial highway, somebody 
 must then be responsible for maintaining it 
 —either ourselves or some Power whom we 
 persuade to take them off our hands. Does 
 anybody doubt what the American people 
 in their present temper would say to the 
 latter alternative !— the same people who, a 
 fortnight ago, were ready to break off their 
 Joint Commission with Great Britain and 
 take the chances, rather than give up a few 
 square miles of worthless land and a harbor 
 of which a year ago they scarcely knew the 
 name, on the remote coast of Alaska. 
 Plainly it is idle now, in a government so 
 purely dependent on the popular will, to 
 scheme or hope for giving the Philippine 
 task over to other hands as soon as order is 
 restored. We must, then, be prepared with 
 a policy for maintaining it ourselves. 
 
 Of late years men have unthinkingly 
 assumed that new territory is, in the very 
 nature of our Government, merely and 
 
OUB NEW DUTIES 117 
 
 necessarily the raw material for future 
 States in the Union. Colonies and depen- 
 dencies, it is now said, are essentially in- 
 consistent with our system. But if any ever 
 entertained the wild dream that the in- 
 strument whose preamble says it is ordained 
 for the United States of America could be 
 stretched to the China Sea, the first Tagal 
 guns fired at friendly soldiers of the Union, 
 and the first mutilation of American dead 
 that ensued, ended the nightmare of States 
 from Asia admitted to the American Union. 
 For that relief, at least, we must thank the 
 uprising of the Tagals. It was a Con- 
 tinental Union of independent sovereign 
 States our fathers planned. Whoever pro- 
 poses to debase it with admixtures of States 
 made up from the islands of the sea, in any 
 archipelago. East or West, is a bad friend to 
 the Eepublic. We may guide, protect, 
 elevate them, and even teach them some 
 day to stand alone; but if we ever invite 
 them into our Senate and House, to help to 
 rule us, we are the most imbecile of all the 
 offspring of time. 
 
 Yet we must face the fact that able and The 
 conscientious men believe the United States {jJJaf*"' 
 has no constitutional power to hold territory Objection. 
 that is not to be erected into States in the 
 Union, or to govern people that are not to 
 
118 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 be made citizens. They are able to cite 
 great names in support of their contention ; 
 and it would be an ill omen for the freest 
 and most successful constitutional govern- 
 ment in the world if a constitutional objec- 
 tion thus fortified should be carelessly 
 considered or hastily overridden. This 
 objection rests mainly on the assumption 
 that the name " United States," as used in 
 the Constitution, necessarily includes all 
 territory the Nation owns, and on the 
 historic fact that large parts of this terri- 
 tory, on acquiring sufficient population, 
 have already been admitted as States, and 
 have generally considered such admission to 
 be a right. Now, Mr. Chief Justice Marshall 
 —than whom no constitutional authority 
 carries greater weight— certainly did declare 
 that the question what was designated by 
 the term " United States " in the clause of 
 the Constitution giving power to levy duties 
 on imposts "admitted of but one answer." 
 It "designated the whole of the American 
 empire, composed of States and Territories." 
 If that be accepted as final, then the tariff 
 must be applied in Manila precisely as in 
 New York, and goods from Manila must 
 enter the New York custom-house as freely 
 as goods from New Orleans. Sixty millions 
 would disappear instantly and annually 
 from the Treasury, and our revenue system 
 
OUB NEW DUTIES 119 
 
 would be revolutionized by the free admis- 
 sion of sugar and other tropical products 
 from the United States of Asia and the 
 Caribbean Sea; while, on the other hand, 
 the Philippines themselves would be fatally 
 handicapped by a tariff wholly unnatural to 
 their locality and circumstances. More. If 
 that be final, the term "United States" 
 should have the same comprehensive mean- 
 ing in the clause as to citizenship. Then 
 Aguinaldo is to-day a citizen of the United 
 States, and may yet run for the Presidency. 
 Still more. The Asiatics south of the China 
 Sea are given that free admission to the 
 country which we so strenuously deny to 
 Asiatics from the north side of the same sea. 
 Their goods, produced on wages of a few cents 
 a day, come into free competition in all our 
 home markets with the products of Ameri- 
 can labor, and the cheap laborers themselves 
 are free to follow if ever our higher wages 
 attract them. More yet. If that be final, 
 the Tagals and other tribes of Luzon, the 
 Visayans of Negros and Cebu, and the 
 Mohammedan Malays of Mindanao and the 
 Sulus, having each far more than the re- 
 quisite population, may demand admission 
 next winter into the Union as free and in- 
 dependent States, with representatives in 
 Senate and House, and may plausibly claim 
 that they can show a better title to admis- 
 
120 PKOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 sion than Nevada ever did, or Utah or 
 Idaho. 
 
 Nor does the great name of Marshall stand 
 alone in support of such conclusions. The 
 converse theory that these territories are 
 not necessarily included in the constitutional 
 term "the United States" makes them our 
 subject dependencies, and at once the figure 
 of Jefferson himself is evoked, with all the 
 signers of the immortal Declaration grouped 
 about him, renewing the old war-cry that 
 government derives its just powers from 
 the consent of the governed. At different 
 periods in our history eminent statesmen 
 have made protests on grounds of that sort. 
 Even the first bill for Mr. Jefferson's own 
 purchase of Louisiana was denounced by Mr. 
 Macon as " establishing a species of govern- 
 ment unknown to the United States"; by 
 Mr. Lucas as "establishing elementary 
 principles never previously introduced in 
 the government of any Territory of the 
 United States"; and by Mr. Campbell as 
 "really establishing a complete despotism." 
 In 1823 Chancellor Kent said, with reference 
 to Columbia River settlements, that "a 
 government by Congress as absolute sov- 
 ereign, over colonies, absolute dependents, 
 was not congenial to the free and in- 
 dependent spirit of American institutions." 
 In 1848 John C. Calhoun declared that " the 
 
OUR NEW DUTIES 121 
 
 conquest and retention of Mexico as a prov- 
 ince would be a departure from the settled 
 policy of the Government, in conflict with 
 its character and genius, and in the end 
 subversive of our free institutions." In 1857 
 Mr. Chief Justice Taney said that " a power 
 to rule territory without restriction as a 
 colony or dependent province would be in- 
 consistent with the nature of our Govern- 
 ment." And now, following warily in this 
 line, the eminent and trusted advocate of 
 similar opinions to-day, Mr. Senator Hoar 
 of Massachusetts, says : " The making of new 
 States and providing national defense are 
 constitutional ends, so that we may acquire 
 and hold territory for those purposes. The 
 governing of subject peoples is not a consti- 
 tutional end, and there is therefore no con- 
 stitutional warrant for acquiring and holding 
 territory for that purpose." 
 
 We have now, as is believed, presented with An Alleged 
 entire fairness a summary of the more im- Constitu= 
 portant aspects in which the constitutional inability, 
 objections mentioned have been urged. I 
 would not underrate by a hair's breadth the 
 authority of these great names, the weight 
 of these continuous reassertions of principle, 
 the sanction even of the precedent and gen- 
 eral practice through a century. And yet I 
 venture to think that no candid and compe- 
 
122 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 tent man can thoroughly investigate the 
 subject, in the light of the actual provisions 
 of the Constitution, the avowed purpose of 
 its framers, their own practice and the prac- 
 tice of their successors, without being abso- 
 lutely convinced that this whole fabric of 
 opposition on constitutional grounds is as 
 flimsy as a cobweb. This country of our 
 love and pride is no malformed, congenital 
 cripple of a nation, incapable of undertaking 
 duties that have been found within the 
 powers of every other nation that ever 
 existed since governments among civilized 
 men began. Neither by chains forged in the 
 Constitution nor by chains of precedent, 
 neither by the dead hand we all revere, that 
 of the Father of his Country, nor under the 
 most authoritative exponents of our oi-ganic 
 act and of our history, are we so bound that 
 we cannot undertake any duty that devolves 
 or exercise any power which the emergency 
 demands. Our Constitution has entrapped 
 us in no impasse, where retreat is disgrace 
 and advance is impossible. The duty which 
 the hand of Providence, rather than any 
 purpose of man, has laid upon us, is within 
 our constitutional powers. Let me invoke 
 your patience for a rather minute and per- 
 haps wearisome detail of the proof. 
 
 The notion that the United States is an 
 inferior sort of nation, constitutionally with- 
 
OUR NEW DUTIES 123 
 
 out power for such public duties as other 
 nations habitually assume, may perhaps be 
 dismissed with a single citation from the 
 Supreme Court. Said Mr. Justice Bradley, 
 in the Legal Tender Cases : "As a government 
 it [the United States] was invested with all 
 
 the attributes of sovereignty It seems to 
 
 be a self-evident proposition that it is in- 
 vested with all those inherent and implied 
 powers w^hich, at the time of adopting the 
 Constitution, were generally considered to 
 belong to every government as such, and as 
 being essential to the exercise of its func- 
 tions" (12 Wall. 554). 
 
 Every one recalls this constitutional pro- 
 vision : " The Congress shall have power to 
 dispose of and make all needful rules and 
 regulations respecting the territory or other 
 property of the United States." That grant 
 is absolute, and the only qualification is the 
 one to be drawn from the general spirit of 
 the Government the Constitution was framed 
 to organize. Is it consistent with that spirit 
 to hold territory permanently, or for long 
 periods of time, without admitting it to the 
 Union! Let the man who wrote the very 
 clause in question answer. That man was 
 Gouverneur Morris of New York, and you 
 will find his answer on page 192 of the third 
 volume of his writings, given only fifteen 
 years after, in reply to a direct question as 
 
124 PKOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 to the exact meaning of the clause : " I always 
 thought, when we should acquire Canada 
 and Louisiana, it would be proper to govern 
 them as provinces, and allow them no voice 
 in our councils. In wording the third sec- 
 tion of the fourth article, I went as far as 
 circumstances would permit to establish the 
 exclusion.'' This framer of the Constitution 
 desired then, and intended definitely and 
 permanently, to keep Louisiana out! And 
 yet there are men who tell us the provision 
 he drew would not even permit us to keep 
 the Philippines out! To be more papist 
 than the Pope will cease to be a thing 
 exciting wonder if every day modern men, 
 in the consideration of practical and pressing 
 problems, are to be more narrowly constitu- 
 tional than the men that wrote the Consti- 
 tution ! 
 
 Is it said that, at any rate, our practice 
 under this clause of the Constitution has 
 been against the view of the man that wrote 
 it, and in favor of that quoted from Mr. Chief 
 Justice Marshall! Does anybody seriously 
 think, then, that though we have held New 
 Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma as territory 
 organized or unorganized, part of it nearly 
 a century and all of it half a century, our 
 representatives believed all the while they 
 had no constitutional right to do so? Who 
 imagines that when the third of a century 
 
OUR NEW DUTIES 125 
 
 during which we have already held Alaska 
 is rounded out to a full century, that unor- 
 ganized Territory will even then have any 
 greater prospect than at present of ad- 
 mission as a State? or who believes our 
 grandchildren will be violating the Consti- 
 tution in keeping it out? Who imagines 
 that under the Constitution ordained on this 
 continent specifically " for the United States 
 of America,^^ we will ever permit the Kanakas, 
 Chinese, and Japanese, who make up a ma- 
 jority of the population in the Sandwich 
 Islands, to set up a government of their 
 own and claim admission as an independent 
 and sovereign State of our American Union ? 
 Finally, let me add that conclusive proof 
 relating not only to practice under the Con- 
 stitution, but to the precise construction of 
 the constitutional language as to the Terri- 
 tories by the highest authority, in the light 
 of long previous practice, is to be found in 
 another part of the instrument itself, delib- 
 erately added three quarters of a century 
 later. Article XIII provides that " neither 
 slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist 
 within the United States, or any place subject 
 to their jurisdiction!''' If the term " the United 
 States," as used in the Constitution, really 
 includes the Territories as an integral part, 
 as Mr. Chief Justice Marshall said, what, 
 then, does the Constitution mean by the ad- 
 
126 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 ditional words, " or any place subject to their 
 jurisdiction"! Is it not too plain for argu- 
 ment that the Constitution here refers to 
 territory not a part of the United States, 
 but subject to its jurisdiction— territory, for 
 example, like the Sandwich Islands or the 
 Philippines I 
 
 What, then, shall we say to the opinion of 
 the great Chief Justice !— for, after all, his is 
 not a name to be dealt with lightly. Well, 
 first, it was a dictum, not a decision of the 
 court. Next, in another and later case, be- 
 fore the same eminent jurist, came a con- 
 stitutional expounder as eminent and as 
 generally accepted,— none other than Daniel 
 Webster,— who took precisely the opposite 
 view. He was discussing the condition of 
 certain territory on this continent which we 
 had recently acquired. Said Mr. Webster: 
 "What is Florida! It is no part of the 
 United States. How can it be ! Florida is 
 to be governed by Congress as it thinks 
 proper. Congress might have done any- 
 thing—might have refused a trial by jury, 
 and refused a legislature.'' After this flat 
 contradiction of the court's former dictum, 
 what happened ! Mr. Webster won his case, 
 and the Chief Justice made not the slightest 
 reference to his own previous and directly 
 conflicting opinion ! Need we give it more 
 attention now than Marshall did then ! 
 
OUR NEW DUTIES 127 
 
 Mr. Webster maintained the same position 
 long afterward, in the Senate of the United 
 States, in opposition to Mr. John C. Calhoun, 
 and his view has been continuously sustained 
 since by the courts and by congressional ac- 
 tion. In the debate with Mr. Calhoun in 
 February, 1849, Mr. Webster said: "What 
 is the Constitution of the United States ? Is 
 not its very first principle that all within 
 its influence and comprehension shall be 
 represented in the Legislature which it es- 
 tablishes, with not only a right of debate 
 and a right to vote in both houses of Con- 
 gress, but a right to partake in the choice 
 of President and Vice-President I . . . The 
 President of the United States shall govern 
 this territory as he sees fit till Congress 
 makes further provision. . . . We have 
 never had a territory governed as the 
 United States is governed. ... I do not 
 say that while we sit here to make laws for 
 these territories, we are not bound by every 
 one of those great principles which are in- 
 tended as general securities for public liberty. 
 But they do not exist in territories till intro- 
 duced by the authority of Congress. . . . 
 Our history is uniform in its course. It 
 began with the acquisition of Louisiana. 
 It went on after Florida became a part of 
 the Union. In all cases, under all circum- 
 stances, by every proceeding of Congress on 
 
128 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 the subject and by all judicature on the sub- 
 ject, it has been held that territories belong- 
 ing to the United States were to be governed 
 by a constitution of their own, . . . and in 
 approving that constitution the legislation 
 of Congress was not necessarily confined to 
 those principles that bind it when it is exer- 
 cised in passing laws for the United States 
 itself." Mr. Calhoun, in the course of this 
 debate, asked Mr. Webster for judicial opin- 
 ion sustaining these views, and Mr. Webster 
 said that " the same thing has been decided 
 by the United States courts over and over 
 again for the last thirty years." 
 
 I may add that it has been so held over 
 and over again during the subsequent fifty. 
 Mr. Chief Justice Waite, giving the opinion 
 of the Supreme Court of the United States 
 (in National Bank v. County of Yankton, 
 101 U. S. 129-132), said: "It is certainly 
 now too late to doubt the power of Congress 
 to govern the Territories. Congress is su- 
 preme, and, for all the purposes of this 
 department, has all the powers of the people 
 of the United States, except such as have 
 been expressly or by implication reserved in 
 the prohibitions of the Constitution." 
 
 Mr. Justice Stanley Matthews of the 
 United States Supreme Court stated the 
 same view with even greater clearness in 
 one of the Utah polygamy cases (Murphy 
 
OUR NEW DUTIES 129 
 
 V, Ramsey, 114 U. S. 44, 45) : " It rests with 
 Congress to say whether in a given case 
 any of the people resident in the Territory 
 shall participate in the election of its officers 
 or the making of its laws. It may take from 
 them any right of suffrage it may previously 
 have conferred, or at any time modify or 
 abridge it, as it may deem expedient. . . . 
 Their political rights are franchises which 
 they hold as privileges, in the legislative 
 discretion of the United States." 
 
 The very latest judicial utterance on the 
 subject is in harmony with all the rest. Mr. 
 Justice Morrow of the United States Court 
 of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in Febru- 
 ary, 1898, held (57 U. S. Appeals 6): "The 
 now well-established doctrine [is] that the 
 Territories of the United States are entirely 
 subject to the legislative authority of Con- 
 gress. They are not organized under the 
 Constitution nor subject to its complex dis- 
 tribution of the powers of government. The 
 United States, having rightfully acquired 
 the Territories, and being the only Govern- 
 ment which can impose laws upon them, has 
 the entire dominion and sovereignty, na- 
 tional and municipal. Federal and State." 
 
 In the light of such expositions of our con- More Recent 
 stitutional power and our uniform national {jJna*/*""' 
 practice, it is difficult to deal patiently with Objections. 
 
130 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 the remaining objections to the acquisition 
 of territory, purporting to be based on con- 
 stitutional grounds. One is that to govern 
 the Philippines without their consent or 
 against the opposition of Aguinaldo is to 
 violate the principle— only formulated, to be 
 sure, in the Declaration of Independence, 
 but, as they say, underlying the whole Con- 
 stitution—that government derives its just 
 powers from the consent of the governed. 
 In the Sulu group piracy prevailed for cen- 
 turies. How could a government that 
 put it down rest on the consent of Sulu? 
 Would it be without just powers because the 
 pirates did not vote in its favor I In other 
 parts of the archipelago what has been stig- 
 matized as a species of slavery prevails. 
 Would a government that stopped that be 
 without just powers till the slaveholders had 
 conferred them at a popular election? In 
 another part head- hunting is, at certain sea- 
 sons of the year, a recognized tribal custom. 
 Would a government that interfered with 
 that practice be open to denunciation as an 
 usurpation, without just powers, and fla- 
 grantly violating the Constitution of the 
 United States, unless it waited at the polls 
 for the consent of the head-hunters? The 
 truth is, all intelligent men know— and few 
 even in America, except obvious dema- 
 gogues, hesitate to admit— that there are 
 
OUK NEW DUTIES 131 
 
 cases where a good government does not 
 and ought not to rest on the consent of the 
 governed. If men will not govern them- 
 selves with respect for civilization and its 
 agencies, then when they get in the way 
 they must be governed— always have been, 
 whenever the world was not retrograding, 
 and always will be. The notion that such 
 government is a revival of slavery, and that 
 the United States by doing its share of such 
 work in behalf of civilization would therefore 
 become infamous, though put forward with 
 apparent gravity in some eminently respec- 
 table quarters, is too fantastic for serious 
 consideration. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson may be supposed to have 
 known the meaning of the words he wrote. 
 Instead of vindicating a righteous rebellion 
 in the Declaration, he was called, after a time, 
 to exercise a righteous government under the 
 Constitution. Did he himself, then, carry his 
 own words to such extremes as these pro- 
 fessed disciples now demand f Was he guilty 
 of subverting the principles of the Govern- 
 ment in buying some hundreds of thousands 
 of Spaniards, Frenchmen, Creoles, and In- 
 dians, " like sheep in the shambles," as the 
 critics untruthfully say we did in the Philip- 
 pines 1 We bought nobody there. We held the 
 Philippines first by the same right by which 
 we held our own original thirteen States,— 
 
132 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 the oldest and firmest of all rights, the right 
 by which nearly every great nation holds 
 the bulk of its territory,— the right of con- 
 quest. We held them again as a rightful 
 indemnity, and a low one, for a war in which 
 the vanquished could give no other. We 
 bought nothing; and the twenty millions 
 that accompanied the transfer just balanced 
 the Philippine debt. 
 
 But Jefferson did, if you choose to accept 
 the hypercritical interpretation of these 
 latter-day Jeff ersonians— Jefferson did buy 
 the Louisianians, even "like sheep in the 
 shambles," if you care so to describe it ; and 
 did proceed to govern them without the con- 
 sent of the governed. Monroe bought the 
 Floridians without their consent. Polk con- 
 quered the Californians, and Pierce bought 
 the New Mexicans. Seward bought the 
 Russians and Alaskans, and we have gov- 
 erned them ever since, without their con- 
 sent. Is it easy, in the face of such facts, 
 to preserve your respect for an objection so 
 obviously captious as that based on the 
 phrase from the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence ? 
 
 Nor is the turn Senator Hoar gives the 
 constitutional objection much more weighty. 
 He wishes to take account of motives, and 
 pry into the purpose of those concerned in 
 any acquisition of territory, before the 
 
OUR NEW DUTIES 133 
 
 tribunals can decide whether it is consti- 
 tutional or not. If acquired either for the 
 national defense or to be made a State, the 
 act is constitutional; otherwise not. If, 
 then, Jefferson intended to make a State 
 out of Idaho, his act in acquiring that part 
 of the Louisiana Purchase was all right. 
 Otherwise he violated the Constitution he 
 had helped to make and sworn to uphold. 
 And yet, poor man, he hardly knew of the 
 existence of that part of the territory, and 
 certainly never dreamed that it would ever 
 become a State, any more than Daniel 
 Webster dreamed, to quote his own lan- 
 guage in the Senate, that " California would 
 ever be worth a doUar." Is Gouverneur 
 Morris to be arraigned as false to the Con- 
 stitution he helped to frame because he 
 wanted to acquire Louisiana and Canada, 
 and keep them both out of the Union ? Did 
 Mr. Seward betray the Constitution and 
 violate his oath in buying Alaska without 
 the purpose of making it a State ! It seems — 
 let it be said with all respect— that we have 
 reached the reductio ad absurdum, and that 
 the constitutional argument in any of its 
 phases need not be further pursued. 
 
 If I have wearied you with these detailed The Little 
 proofs of a doctrine which Mr. Justice Mor- Americans, 
 row rightly says is now well established, and 
 
134 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 these replies to its assailants, the apology 
 must be found in the persistence with which 
 the utter lack of constitutional power to deal 
 with our new possessions has been vocifer- 
 ously urged from the outset by the large 
 class of our people whom I venture to des- 
 ignate as the Little Americans, using that 
 teim not in the least in disparagement, but 
 solely as distinctive and convenient. From 
 the beginning of the century, at every epoch 
 in our history we have had these Little 
 Americans. They opposed Jefferson as to 
 getting Louisiana. They opposed Monroe 
 as to Florida. They were vehement against 
 Texas, against California, against organizing 
 Oregon and Washington, against the Gads- 
 den Purchase, against Alaska, and against 
 the Sandwich Islands. At nearly every 
 stage in that long story of expansion the 
 Little Americans have either denied the 
 constitutional authority to acquire and 
 govern, or denounced the acquisitions as 
 worthless and dangerous. At one stage, 
 indeed, they went further. When State 
 after State was passing ordinances of seces- 
 sion, they raised the cry,— erroneously at- 
 tributed to my distinguished predecessor 
 and friend, Horace Greeley, but really ut- 
 tered by Winfield Scott,— "Wayward Sisters, 
 depart in peace ! " Happily, this form, too, 
 of Little Americanism failed. We are all 
 
OUE NEW DUTIES 135 
 
 glad now,— my distinguislied classmate here,^ 
 who wore the gray and invaded Ohio with 
 Morgan, as glad as myself,— we all rejoice 
 that these doctrines were then opposed and 
 overborne. It was seen then, and I venture 
 to think it may be seen now, that it is a 
 fundamental principle with the American 
 people, and a duty imposed upon all who 
 represent them, to maintain the Continental 
 Union of American Independent States in 
 all the purity of the fathers' conception ; to 
 hold what belongs to it,, and get what it is 
 entitled to; and, finally, that wherever its 
 flag has been rightfully advanced, there it is 
 to be kept. If that be Imperialism, make 
 the most of it ! 
 
 It was no vulgar lust of power that inspired The Plain 
 the statesmen and soldiers of the Eepublic P**h»*^"*y- 
 when they resisted the halting counsel of the 
 Little Americans in the past. Nor is it now. 
 Far other is the spirit we invoke : 
 
 Stern daughter of the Voice of God, 
 
 O Duty ! If that name thou love- 
 in that name we beg for a study of what the 
 new situation that is upon us, the new world 
 opening around us, now demand at our 
 hands. 
 
 1 The Hon. Albert S. Berry, M. C, from the Covington, 
 Kentucky, District. 
 
136 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 The people of the United States will not 
 refuse an appeal in that name. They never 
 have. They had been so occupied, since 
 the Civil War, first in repairing its ravages, 
 and then in occupying and possessing their 
 own continent, they had been so little ac- 
 customed, in this generation or the last, to 
 even the thought of foreign war, that one 
 readily understands why at the outset they 
 hardly realized how absolute is the duty of 
 an honorable conqueror to accept and dis- 
 charge the responsibilities of his conquest. 
 But this is no longer a child-nation, irre- 
 sponsible in its nonage and incapable of 
 comprehending or assuming the responsibil- 
 ities of its acts. A child that breaks a pane 
 of glass or sets fire to a house may indeed 
 escape. Are we to plead the baby act, and 
 claim that we can flounce around the world, 
 breaking international china and burning 
 property, and yet repudiate the bill because 
 we have not come of age? Who dare say 
 that a self-respecting Power could have sailed 
 away from Manila and repudiated the re- 
 sponsibilities of its victorious belligerency? 
 After going into a war for humanity, were 
 we so craven that we should seek freedom 
 from further trouble at the expense of civi- 
 lization ? 
 
 If we did not want those responsibilities we 
 ought not to have gone to war, and I, for 
 
OUR NEW DUTIES 137 
 
 one, would have been content. But having 
 chosen to go to war, and having been speedily 
 and overwhelmingly successful, we should be 
 ashamed even to think of running away from 
 what inexorably followed. Mark what the 
 successive steps were, and how link by link 
 the chain that binds us now was forged. 
 
 The moment war was foreseen the fleet 
 we usually have in Chinese waters became 
 indispensable, not merely, as before, to pro- 
 tect our trade and our missionaries in China, 
 but to checkmate the Spanish fleet, which 
 otherwise held San Francisco and the whole 
 Pacific coast at its mercy. When war was 
 declared our fleet was necessarily ordered 
 out of neutral ports. Then it had to go to 
 Manila or go home. If it went home, it left 
 the whole Pacific coast unguarded, save at 
 the particular point it touched, and we should 
 have been at once in a fever of apprehension, 
 chartering hastily another fleet of the fastest 
 ocean-going steamers we could find in the 
 world, to patrol the Pacific from San Diego to 
 Sitka, as we did have to patrol the Atlantic 
 from Key West to Bar Harbor. Palpably this 
 was to go the longest way around to do a task 
 that had to be done in any event, as well as 
 to demoralize our forces at the opening of the 
 war with a manoeuver in which our Navy 
 has never been expert— that of avoiding a 
 contest and sailing away from the enemy ! 
 
138 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 The alternative was properly taken. Dewey 
 went to Manila and sank the Spanish fleet. 
 We thus broke down Spanish means for con- 
 trolling the' Philippines, and were left with 
 the Spanish responsibility for maintaining 
 order there— responsibility to all the world, 
 German, English, Japanese, Russian, and 
 the rest— in one of the great centers and 
 highways of the world's commerce. 
 
 But why not turn over that commercial 
 center and the island on which it is situated 
 to the Tagals I To be sure ! Under three 
 hundred years of Spanish rule barbarism on 
 Luzon had so far disappeared that this com- 
 mercial metropolis, as large as San Francisco 
 or Cincinnati, had sprung up and come to be 
 thronged by traders and travelers of all na- 
 tions. Now it is calmly suggested that we 
 might have turned it over to one semi-civi- 
 lized tribe, absolutely without experience in 
 governing even itself, much less a great com- 
 munity of foreigners, probably in a minor- 
 ity on the island, and at war with its other 
 inhabitants— a tribe which has given the 
 measure of its fitness for being charged with 
 the rights of foreigners and the care of a 
 commercial metropolis by the violation of 
 flags of truce, treachery to the living, and 
 mutilation of the dead which have marked its 
 recent wanton rising against the Power that 
 was trying to help it ! 
 
OUR NEW DUTIES 139 
 
 If running away from troublesome respon- 
 sibility and duty is our role, why did we not 
 long ago take the opportunity, in our early 
 feebleness, to turn over Tallahassee and St. 
 Augustine to the Seminoles, instead of send- 
 ing Andrew Jackson to protect the settle- 
 ments and subdue the savages? Why, at 
 the first Apache outbreak after the Gadsden 
 Purchase, did we not hasten to turn over 
 New Mexico and Arizona to their inhab- 
 itants? Or why, in years within the mem- 
 ory of most of you, when the Sioux and 
 Chippewas rose on our Northwestern fron- 
 tier, did we not invite them to retain pos- 
 session of St. Cloud, and even come down, if 
 they liked, to St. Paul and Minneapolis ? 
 
 Unless I am mistaken in regarding all 
 these suggestions as too unworthy to be 
 entertained by self-respecting citizens of a 
 powerful and self-respecting nation, we have 
 now reached two conclusions that ought to 
 clear the air and simplify the problem that 
 remains: First, we have ample constitu- 
 tional power to acquire and govern new 
 territory absolutely at will, according to 
 our sense of right and duty, whether as de- 
 pendencies, as colonies, or as a protectorate. 
 Secondly, as the legitimate and necessary 
 consequence of our own previous acts, it 
 has become our national and international 
 duty to do it. 
 
140 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 The Policy How shall we set about it ? What shall be 
 Dependen- ^^® policy with which, when order has been 
 des. inexorably restored, we begin our dealings 
 
 with the new wards of the Nation? Cer- 
 tainly we must mark our disapproval of the 
 treachery and barbarities of the present con- 
 test. As certainly the oppression of other 
 tribes by the Tagals must be ended, or the 
 oppression of any tribe by any other within 
 the sphere of our active control. Wars be- 
 tween the tribes must be discouraged and 
 prevented. We must seek to suppress crimes 
 of violence and private vengeance, secure 
 individual liberty, protect individual prop- 
 erty, and promote the study of the arts of 
 peace. Above all, we must give and enforce 
 justice; and for the rest, as far as possible, 
 leave them alone. By all means let us avoid 
 a fussy meddling with their customs, man- 
 ners, prejudices, and beliefs. Give them 
 order and justice, and trust to these to win 
 them in other regards to our ways. All this 
 points directly to utilizing existing agencies 
 as much as possible, developing native ini- 
 tiative and control in local matters as fast 
 and as far as we can, and ultimately giving 
 them the greatest degree of self-government 
 for which they prove themselves fitted. 
 
 Under any conditions that exist now, or 
 have existed for three hundred years, a 
 homogeneous native government over the 
 
OUE NEW DUTIES 141 
 
 whole archipelago is obviously impossible. 
 Its relations to the outside world must neces- 
 sarily be assumed by us. We must preserve 
 order in Philippine waters, regulate the har- 
 bors, fix and collect the duties, apportion 
 the revenue, and supervise the expenditure. 
 We must enforce sanitary measures. We 
 must retain such a control of the superior 
 courts as shall make justice certainly attain- 
 able, and such control of the police as shall 
 insure its enforcement. But in all this, after 
 the absolute authority has been established, 
 the further the natives can themselves be 
 used to carry out the details, the better. 
 
 Such a system might not be unwise even 
 for a colony to which we had reason to ex- 
 pect a considerable emigration of our own 
 people. If experience of a kindred nation 
 in dealing with similar problems counts for 
 anything, it is certainly wise for a distant 
 dependency, always to be populated mainly, 
 save in the great cities, by native races, and 
 little likely ever to be quite able to stand 
 alone, while, nevertheless, we wish to help 
 it just as much as possible to that end. 
 
 Cektainly this is no bed of flowery ease in The Duty of 
 the dreamy Orient to which we are led. No s"***a„ts 
 doubt these first glimpses of the task that 
 lies before us, as well as the warfare with 
 distant tribes into which we have been unex- 
 
142 PEOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 pectedly plunged, will provoke for the time 
 a certain discontent with our new posses- 
 sions. But on a far-reaching question of 
 national policy the wise public man is not 
 so greatly disturbed by what people say in 
 momentary discouragement under the first 
 temporary check. That which really con- 
 cerns him is what people at a later day, or 
 even in a later generation, might say of men 
 trusted with great duties for their country, 
 who proved unequal to their opportunities, 
 and through some short-sighted timidity of 
 the moment lost the chance of centuries. 
 
 It is quite true, as was recently reported 
 in what seemed an authoritative way from 
 Washington, that the Peace Commissioners 
 were not entirely of one mind at the outset, 
 and equally true that the final conclusion at 
 Washington was apparently reached on the 
 Commission's recommendation from Paris. 
 As the cold fit, in the language of one of our 
 censors, has followed the hot fit in the popu- 
 lar temper, I readily take the time which 
 hostile critics consider unfavorable, for ac- 
 cepting my own share of responsibility, and 
 for avowing for myself that I declared my 
 belief in the duty and policy of holding the 
 whole Philippine Archipelago in the very 
 first conference of the Commissioners in the 
 President's room at the White House, in 
 advance of any instructions of any sort. If 
 
OUR NEW DUTIES 143 
 
 vindication for it be needed, I confidently 
 await the future. 
 
 What is the duty of a public servant as to 
 profiting by opportunities to secure for his 
 country what all the rest of the world con- 
 siders material advantages? Even if he 
 could persuade himself that rejecting them 
 is morally and internationally admissible, 
 is he at liberty to commit his country ir- 
 revocably to their rejection, because they do 
 not wholly please his individual fancy ? At 
 a former negotiation of our own in Paris, the 
 great desire of the United States representa- 
 tive, as well as of his Government, had been 
 mainly to secure the settled or partly settled 
 country adjoining us on the south, stretch- 
 ing from the Floridas to the city of New 
 Orleans. The possession of the vast unset- 
 tled and unknown Louisiana Territory, west 
 of the Mississippi, was neither sought nor 
 thought of. Suddenly, on an eventful morn- 
 ing in April, 1803, Talleyrand astonished 
 Livingston by offering, on behalf of Napo- 
 leon, to sell to the United States, not the 
 Floridas at all, but merely Louisiana, " a raw 
 little semi-tropical frontier town and an un- 
 explored wilderness." 
 
 Suppose Livingston had rejected the offer ? 
 Or suppose Gadsden had not exceeded his 
 instructions in Mexico and boldly grasped 
 the opportunity that offered to rectify and 
 
144 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 make secure our Southwestern frontier? 
 Would this generation judge that they had 
 been equal to their opportunities or their 
 duties ? 
 
 The difficulties which at present discour- 
 age us are largely of our own creation. It 
 is not for any of us to think of attempting 
 to apportion the blame. The only thing we 
 are sure of is that it was for no lack of au- 
 thority that we hesitated and drifted till the 
 Tagals were convinced we were afraid of 
 them, and could be driven out before rein- 
 forcements arrived. That was the very 
 thing our officers had warned us against, — 
 the least sign of hesitation or uncertainty, — 
 the very danger every European with know- 
 ledge of the situation had dinned in our 
 ears. Everybody declared that difficulties 
 were sure to grow on our hands in geomet- 
 rical proportion to our delays; and it was 
 perfectly known to the respective branches 
 of our Government primarily concerned that 
 while the delay went on it was in neglect of 
 a duty we had voluntarily assumed. 
 
 For the American Commissioners, with 
 due authority, distinctly offered to assume 
 responsibility, pending the ratification of 
 the treaty, for the protection of life and 
 property and the preservation of order 
 throughout the whole archipelago. The 
 Spanish Commissioners, after consultation 
 
OUR NEW DUTIES 145 
 
 with their Government, refused this, but 
 agreed that each Power should be charged, 
 pending the ratification, with the mainte- 
 nance of order in the places where it was 
 established. The American assent to that 
 left absolutely no question as to the dimin- 
 ished but still grave responsibility thus de- 
 volved.^ That responsibility was avoided 
 from the hour the treaty was signed till the 
 hour when the Tagal chieftain, at the head 
 of an army he had been deliberately gather- 
 ing and organizing, took things in his own 
 hand and made the attack he had so long 
 threatened. Disorder, forced loans, impress- 
 ment, confiscation, seizure of waterworks, 
 contemptuous violations of our guard-lines, 
 and even the practical siege of the city of 
 Manila, had meantime been going on within 
 gunshot of troops held there inactive by the 
 Nation which had volunteered responsibility 
 for order throughout the archipelago, and 
 
 1 Protocol No. 19 of the of ratifications of the treaty 
 
 Paris Commission, Confer- of peace, stated that the an- 
 
 ence of December 5, 1898 : swer of his Government was 
 
 ''The President of the Span- that the authorities of each 
 
 ish Commission having of the two nations shall be 
 
 agreed, at the last session, to charged with the mainte- 
 
 consult his Government re- nance of order in the places 
 
 garding the proposal of the where they may be estab- 
 
 American Commissioners that lished, those authorities 
 
 the United States should agreeing among themselves 
 
 maintain public order over to this end whenever they 
 
 the whole Philippine Arehi- may deem it necessary." 
 pelago pending the exchange 
 
 10 
 
146 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 had been distinctly left with responsibility 
 for order in the island on which it was es- 
 tablished. If the bitterest enemy of the 
 United States had sought to bring upon it 
 in that quarter the greatest trouble in the 
 shortest time, he could have devised for that 
 end no policy more successful than the one 
 we actually pursued. There may have been 
 controlling reasons for it. An opposite 
 course might perhaps have cost more else- 
 where than it saved in Luzon. On that 
 point the public cannot now form even an 
 opinion. But as to the effect in Luzon there 
 is no doubt ; and because of it we have the 
 right to ask a delay in judgment about re- 
 sults there until the present evil can be un- 
   done. 
 
 The Carnival MEANTIME, in accordance with a well-known 
 
 Objwtionr ^^^ probably unchangeable law of human 
 
 nature, this is the carnival and very heyday 
 
 of the objectors. The air is filled with their 
 
 discouragement. 
 
 Some exclaim that Americans are incapa- 
 ble of colonizing or of managing colonies; 
 that there is something in our national 
 character or institutions that wholly dis- 
 qualifies us for the work. Yet the most 
 successful colonies in the whole world were 
 the thirteen original colonies on our Atlan- 
 tic coast ; and the most successful colonists 
 
OUR NEW DUTIES 147 
 
 were our own grandfathers ! Have the 
 grandsons so degenerated that they are in- 
 capable of colonizing at all, or of managing 
 colonies 1 Who says so ? Is it any one with 
 the glorious history of this continental col- 
 onization bred in his bone and leaping in his 
 blood ? Or is it some refugee from a foreign 
 country he was discontented with, who now 
 finds pleasure in disparaging the capacity 
 of the new country he came to, while he has 
 neither caught its spirit nor grasped the 
 meaning of its history 1 
 
 Some bewail the alleged fact that, at any 
 rate, our system has little adaptability to the 
 control of colonies or dependencies. Has 
 our system been found weaker, then, than 
 other forms of government, less adaptable to 
 emergencies, and with people less fit to cope 
 with them ? Is the difficulty inherent, or is 
 it possible that the emergency may show, as 
 emergencies have shown before, that what- 
 ever task intelligence, energy, and courage 
 can surmount the American people and 
 their Government can rise to ? 
 
 It is said the conditions in our new pos- 
 sessions are wholly different from any we 
 have previously encountered. This is true ; 
 and there is little doubt the new circum- 
 stances will bring great modifications in 
 methods. That is an excellent reason, 
 among others, for some doubt at the outset 
 
148 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 as to whether we know all about it, but not 
 for despairing of our capacity to learn. It 
 might be remembered that we have encoun- 
 tered some varieties of conditions already. 
 The work in Florida was different from that 
 at Plymouth Rock; Louisiana and Texas 
 showed again new sets of conditions ; Cali- 
 fornia others ; Puget Sound and Alaska still 
 others; and we did not always have un- 
 broken success and plain sailing from the 
 outset in any of them. 
 
 It is said we cannot colonize the tropics, 
 because our people cannot labor there. Per- 
 haps not, especially if they refuse to obey 
 the prudent precautions which centuries of 
 experience have enjoined upon others. But 
 what, then, are we going to do with Porto 
 Rico ? How soon are our people going to 
 flee from Arizona? And why is life im- 
 possible to Americans in Manila and Cebu 
 and Iloilo, but attractive to the throngs of 
 Europeans who have built up those cities ? 
 Can we mine all over the world, from South 
 Africa to the Klondike, but not in Palawan ? 
 Can we grow tobacco in Cuba, but not in 
 Cebu ; or rice in Louisiana, but not in Luzon ? 
 
 An alarm is raised that our laboring 
 classes are endangered by competition with 
 cheap tropical labor or its products. How I 
 The interpretation of the Constitution which 
 would permit that is the interpretation 
 
OUE NEW DUTIES 149 
 
 which has been repudiated in an unbroken 
 line of decisions for over half a century. Only 
 one possibility of danger to American labor 
 exists in our new possessions — the lunacy, 
 or worse, of the dreamers who want to pre- 
 pare for the admission of some of them as 
 States in the American Union. Till then 
 we can make any law we like to prevent the 
 immigration of their laborers, and any tariff 
 we like to regulate the admission of their 
 products. 
 
 It is said we are pursuing a fine method 
 for restoring order, by prolonging the war 
 we began for humanity in order to force 
 liberty and justice on an unwilling people 
 at the point of the bayonet. The sneer is 
 cheap. How else have these blessings been 
 generally diffused ? How often in the his- 
 tory of the world has barbarism been re- 
 placed by civilization without bloodshed? 
 How were our own liberty and justice es- 
 tablished and diffused on this continent? 
 Would the process have been less bloody if 
 a part of our own people had noisily taken 
 the side of the English, the Mexican, or the 
 savage, and protested against " extreme 
 measures " ? 
 
 Some say a war to extend freedom in 
 Cuba or elsewhere is right, and therefore a 
 duty ; but the war in the Philippines now is 
 purely selfish, and therefore a crime. The 
 
150 PEOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 premise is inaccurate ; it is a war we are in 
 duty bound to wage at any rate till order is 
 restored — but let that pass. Suppose it 
 to be merely a war in defense of our own 
 just rights and interests. Since when did 
 such a war become wrong ? Is our national 
 motto to be, " Quixotic on the one hand, 
 Chinese on the other"? 
 
 How much better it would have been, say 
 others, to mind our own business ! No doubt ; 
 but if we were to begin crying over spilt milk 
 in that way, the place to begin was where the 
 milk was spilled — in the Congress that re- 
 solved upon war with Spain. Since that con- 
 gressional action we have been minding what 
 it made our own business quite diligently, and 
 an essential part of our business now is the 
 responsibility for our own past acts, whether 
 in Havana or Manila. 
 
 Some say that since we began the war for 
 humanity, we are disgraced by coming out 
 of it with increased territory. Then a pen- 
 alty must always be imposed upon a victo- 
 rious nation for presuming to do a good act. 
 The only nation to be exempt from such a 
 penalty upon success is to be the nation that 
 was in the wrong ! It is to have a premium, 
 whether successful or not ; for it is thus re- 
 lieved, even in defeat, from the penalty 
 which modern practice in the interest of 
 civilization requires — the payment of an 
 
OUR NEW DUTIES 151 
 
 indemnity for the cost of an unjust war. 
 Furthermore, the representatives of the na- 
 tion that does a good act are thus bound to 
 reject any opportunity for lightening the 
 national load it entails. They must leave 
 the full burden upon their country, to be 
 dealt with in due time by the individual 
 taxpayer ! 
 
 j^.gain, we have superfine discussions of 
 what the United States "stands for." It 
 does not stand, we are told, for foreign con- 
 quest, or for colonies or dependencies, or 
 other extensions of its power and influence. 
 It stands solely for the development of the 
 individual man. There is a germ of a great 
 truth in this, but the development of the 
 truth is lost sight of. Individual initiative 
 is a good thing, and our institutions do de- 
 velop it — and its consequences ! There is 
 a species of individualism, too, about a bull- 
 dog. When he takes hold he holds on. It 
 may as well be noticed by the objectors that 
 that is a characteristic much appreciated by 
 American people. They, too, hold on. They 
 remember, besides, a pregnant phrase of their 
 fathers, who "ordained this Constitution," 
 among other things, " to promote the general 
 welfare." That is a thing for which "this 
 Government stands" also; and woe to the 
 public servant who rejects brilliant oppor- 
 tunities to promote it — on the Pacific Ocean 
 
152 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 no less than the Atlantic, by commerce no 
 less than by agriculture or manufactures. 
 
 It is said the Philippines are worthless — 
 have, in fact, already cost us more than the 
 value of their entire trade for many years to 
 come. So much the more, then, are we 
 bound to do our duty by them. But we 
 have also heard in turn, and from the same 
 quarters, that every one of our previous 
 acquisitions was worthless. 
 
 Again, it is said our continent is more 
 than enough for all our needs, and our ex- 
 tensions should stop at the Pacific. What 
 is this but proposing such a policy of self- 
 sufficient isolation as we are accustomed to 
 reprobate in China — planning now to de- 
 velop only on the soil on which we stand, 
 and expecting the rest of the world to pro- 
 tect our trade if we have any ? Can a nation 
 with safety set such limits to its develop- 
 ment I When a tree stops growing, our for- 
 esters tell us, it is ripe for the ax. When a 
 man stops in his physical and intellectual 
 growth he begins to decay. When a busi- 
 ness stops growing it is in danger of decline. 
 When a nation stops growing it has passed 
 the meridian of its course, and its shadows 
 fall eastward. 
 
 Is China to be our model, or Grreat Brit- 
 ain? Or, better still, are we to follow the 
 instincts of our own people ? The policy of 
 
OUR NEW DUTIES 153 
 
 isolating ourselves is a policy for the refusal 
 of both duties and opportunities — duties to 
 foreign nations and to civilization, which 
 cannot be respectably evaded; opportuni- 
 ties for the development of our power on 
 the Pacific in the Twentieth Century, which 
 it would be craven to abandon. There has 
 been a curious "about face," an absolute 
 reversal of attitude toward England, on the 
 part of our Little Americans, especially at 
 the East and among the more educated 
 classes. But yesterday nearly all of them 
 were pointing to England as a model. There 
 young men of education and position felt it 
 a duty to go into politics. There they had 
 built up a model civil service. There their 
 cities were better governed, their streets 
 cleaner, their mails more promptly deliv- 
 ered. There the responsibilities of their 
 colonial system had enforced the purification 
 of domestic politics, the relentless punish- 
 ment of corrupt practices, and the abolition 
 of bribery in elections, either by money or 
 by office. There they had foreign trade, 
 and a commercial marine, and a trained and 
 efficient foreign service, and to be an Eng- 
 lish citizen was to have a safeguard the 
 whole world round. Our young men were 
 commended to their example ; our legislators 
 were exhorted to study their practice and 
 its results. Suddenly these same teachers 
 
154 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 turn around. They warn us against the 
 infection of England's example. They tell 
 us her colonial system is a failure ; that she 
 would be stronger without her colonies than 
 with them ; that she is eaten up with " mili- 
 tarism ^ ; that to keep Cuba or the Philippines 
 is what a selfish, conquering, land-grabbing, 
 aristocratic government like England would 
 do, and that her policy and methods are 
 utterly incompatible with our institutions. 
 When a court thus reverses itself without 
 obvious reason (except a temporary partizan 
 purpose), our people are apt to put their 
 trust in other tribunals. 
 
 The Future. " I HAD thought," said Wendell Phillips, in 
 his noted apology for standing for the first 
 time in his antislavery Jife under the flag 
 of his country, and welcoming the tread of 
 Massachusetts men marshaled for war — " I 
 had thought Massachusetts wholly choked 
 with cotton-dust and cankered with gold." 
 If Little Americans have thought so of their 
 country in these stirring days, and have 
 fancied that initial reverses would induce 
 it to abandon its duty, its rights, and its 
 great permanent interests, they will live to 
 see their mistake. They will find it giving 
 a deaf ear to these unworthy complaints of 
 temporary trouble or present loss, and turn- 
 ing gladly from all this incoherent and 
 
OUR NEW DUTIES 155 
 
 resultless clamor to the new world opening 
 around us. Already it draws us out of our- 
 selves. The provincial isolation is gone; 
 and provincial habits of thought will go. 
 There is a larger interest in what other lands 
 have to show and teach ; a larger confidence 
 in our own ; a higher resolve that it shall do 
 its whole duty to mankind, moral as well as 
 material, international as well as national, 
 in such fashion as becomes time's latest off- 
 spring and its greatest. We are grown more 
 nearly citizens of the world. 
 
 This new knowledge, these new duties 
 and interests, must have two effects — they 
 must extend our power, influence, and trade, 
 and they must elevate the public service. 
 Every returning soldier or traveler tells the 
 same story — that the very name "American " 
 has taken a new significance throughout 
 the Orient. The shrewd Oriental no longer 
 regards us as a second- or third-class Power. 
 He has just seen the only signs he rec- 
 ognizes of a nation that knows its rights and 
 dare maintain them — a nation that has 
 come to stay, with an empire of its own in 
 the China Sea, and a Navy which, from what 
 he has seen, he believes wall be able to de- 
 fend it against the world. He straightway 
 concludes, after the Oriental fashion, that it 
 is a nation whose citizens must henceforth 
 be secure in all their rights, whose mission- 
 
156 PKOBLEMS OF EXPANSION" 
 
 aries must be endured with patience and 
 even protected, and whose friendship must 
 be sedulously cultivated. The national pres- 
 tige is enormously increased, and trade fol- 
 lows prestige — especially in the farther 
 East. Not within a century, not during our 
 whole history, has such a field opened for 
 our reaping. Planted directly in front of 
 the Chinese colossus, on a gi-eat territory of 
 om- own, we have the first and best chance 
 to profit by his awakening. Commanding 
 both sides of the Pacific, and the available 
 coal-supplies on each, we command the 
 ocean that, according to the old prediction, 
 is to bear the bulk of the world's commerce 
 in the Twentieth Century. Our remote but 
 glorious land between the Sierras and the 
 sea may then become as busy a hive as 
 New England itself, and the whole continent 
 must take fresh life from the generous blood 
 of this natural and necessary commerce be- 
 tween people of different climates and zones. 
 But these developments of power and 
 trade are the least of the advantages we 
 may hopefully expect. The faults in Amer- 
 ican character and life which the Little 
 Americans tell us prove the people unfit for 
 these duties are the very faults that will be 
 cured by them. The recklessness and heed- 
 less self-sufficiency of youth must disappear. 
 Great responsibilities, suddenly devolved. 
 
OUE NEW DUTIES 157 
 
 must sober and elevate now, as they have 
 always done in natures not originally bad, 
 throughout the whole history of the world. 
 
 The new interests abroad must compel an 
 improved foreign service. It has heretofore 
 been worse than we ever knew, and also bet- 
 ter. On great occasions and in great fields 
 our diplomatic record ranks with the best in 
 the world. No nation stands higher in those 
 new contributions to International Law 
 which form the high-water mark of civiliza- 
 tion from one generation to another. At 
 the same time, in fields less under the public 
 eye, our foreign service has been haphazard 
 at the best, and often bad beyond belief — 
 ludicrous and humiliating. The harm thus 
 wrought to our national good name and the 
 positive injury to our trade have been more 
 than we realized. We cannot escape realiz- 
 ing them now, and when the American peo- 
 ple wake up to a wrong they are apt to 
 right it. 
 
 More important still should be the im- 
 provement in the general public service at 
 home and in our new possessions. New du- 
 ties must bring new methods. Ward politics 
 were banished from India and Egypt as the 
 price of successful administration, and they 
 must be excluded from Porto Rico and Lu- 
 zon. The practical common sense of the 
 American people will soon see that any other 
 
158 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 course is disastrous. Gigantic business in- 
 terests must come to reinforce the theorists 
 in favor of a reform that shall really elevate 
 and purify the Civil Service. 
 
 Hand in hand with these benefits to our- 
 selves, which it is the duty of public servants 
 to secure, go benefits to our new wards and 
 benefits to mankind. There, then, is what 
 the United States is to " stand for " in all 
 the resplendent future: the rights and in- 
 terests of its own Government ; the general 
 welfare of its own people ; the extension of 
 ordered liberty in the dark places of the 
 earth; the spread of civilization and reli- 
 gion, and a consequent increase in the sum 
 of human happiness in the world. 
 
VIII 
 
 LATER ASPECTS OF OUR NEW 
 DUTIES 
 
This address was delivered on the invitation of the Board 
 of Trustees, at Princeton University, in Alexander Hall, 
 1899. 
 
LATER ASPECTS OF OUE 
 NEW DUTIES 
 
 THE invitation for to-day with which 
 Princeton honored me was accom- 
 panied with the hint that a discussion of 
 some phase of current public affairs would 
 not be unwelcome. That phase which has 
 for the past year or two most absorbed pub- 
 lic attention is now more absorbing than 
 ever. Elsewhere I have already spoken 
 upon it, more, perhaps, than enough. But 
 I cannot better obey the summons of this 
 honored and historic University, or better 
 deserve the attention of this company of 
 scholars, gentlemen, and patriots, than by 
 saying with absolute candor what its present 
 aspects prompt. 
 
 And first, the chaos of opinion into which Questions 
 the country was thrown by the outbreak of [eenml= 
 the Spanish- American War ceases to be posed of. 
 wholly without form and void. The discus- 
 sions of a year have clarified ideas ; and on 
 some points we may consider that the Ameri- 
 
 11 
 
 161 
 
162 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 can people have substantially reached defi- 
 nite conclusions. 
 
 There is no need, therefore, to debate 
 laboriously before you whether Dewey was 
 right in going to Manila. Everybody now 
 realizes that, once war was begun, absolutely 
 the most efficient means of making it speedily 
 and overwhelmingly victorious, as well as of 
 defending the most exposed half of our own 
 coast, was to go to Manila. " Find the Span- 
 ish fleet and destroy it ^ was as wise an order 
 as the President ever issued, and he was 
 equally wise in choosing the man to carry 
 it out. 
 
 So, also, there is no need to debate whether 
 Dewey was right in staying there. From 
 that come his most enduring laurels. The 
 American people admire him for the battle 
 which sank the Spanish navy; but they 
 trust and love him for the months of trial 
 and triumph that followed. The Admin- 
 istration that should have ordered him 
 to abandon the Eastern foothold he had 
 conquered for his country— to sail away like 
 a sated pirate from the port where his vic- 
 tory broke down all civilized authority but 
 our own, and his presence alone prevented 
 domestic anarchy and foreign spoliation- 
 would have deserved to be hooted out of 
 the capital. 
 
 So, again, there is no need to debate 
 
LATEE ASPECTS OF OUE NEW DUTIES 163 
 
 whether the Peace Commissioners should 
 have thrown away in Paris what Dewey 
 had won in Manila. The public servant 
 who, without instructions, should in a gush 
 of irresponsible sentimentality abandon 
 great possessions to which his country is 
 justly entitled, whether by conquest or as 
 indemnity for unjust war, would be not 
 only an unprofitable but a faithless ser- 
 vant. It was their obvious duty to hold 
 what Dewey had won, at least till the 
 American people had time to consider and 
 decide otherwise. 
 
 Is there any need to debate whether the 
 American people will abandon it now? 
 Those who have a fancy for that species of 
 dialectics may weigh the chances, and evolve 
 from circumstances of their own imagina- 
 tion, and canons of national and international 
 obligation of their own manufacture, con- 
 clusions to their own liking. I need not 
 consume much of your time in that unprof- 
 itable pursuit. We may as well, here and 
 now, keep our feet on solid ground, and deal 
 with facts as they are. The American people 
 are in lawful possession of the Philippines, 
 with the assent of all Christendom, with a 
 title as indisputable as the title to California ; 
 and, though the debate will linger for a 
 while, and perhaps drift unhappily into 
 partizan contention, the generation is yet un- 
 
164 PKOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 born that will see them abandoned to the pos- 
 session of any other Power. The Nation that 
 scatters principalities as a prodigal does his 
 inheritance is too sentimental and moon- 
 shiny for the Nineteenth Century or the Twen- 
 tieth, and too unpractical for Americans of 
 any period. It may flourish in Arcadia or 
 Altruria, but it does not among the sons of 
 the Pilgrims, or on the continent they sub- 
 dued by stern struggle to the uses of civili- 
 zation. 
 
 Nevertheless, our people did stop to con- 
 sider very carefully their constitutional 
 powers. I believe we have reached a point 
 also where the result of that consideration 
 may be safely assumed. The constitutional 
 arguments have been fully presented and 
 the expositions and decisions marshaled. It 
 is enough now to say that the preponderance 
 of constitutional authorities, with Gouver- 
 neur Morris, Daniel Webster, and Thomas H. 
 Benton at their head, and the unbroken ten- 
 dency of decisions by the courts of the United 
 States for at least the last fifty years, from 
 Mr. Chief Justice Waite and Mr. Justice 
 Miller and Mr. Justice Stanley Matthews, of 
 the Supreme Court, down to the very latest 
 utterance on the subject, that of Mr. Justice 
 Morrow of the Circuit Court of Appeals, 
 sustain the power to acquire "territory or 
 other property " anywhere, and govern it as 
 
LATEK ASPECTS OF OUR NEW DUTIES 165 
 
 we please.^ Inhabitants of such territory 
 (not obviously incapable) are secure in the 
 civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution ; 
 but they have no political rights under it, 
 save as Congress confers them. The evi- 
 dence in support of this view has been fully 
 set forth, examined, and weighed, and, un- 
 less I greatly mistake, a popular decision on 
 the subject has been reached. The consti- 
 tutional power is no longer seriously dis- 
 puted, and even those who raised the doubt 
 do not seem now to rely upon it. 
 
 In thus summarizing what has been al- Contributions 
 ready settled or disposed of in our dealings {U,„"f["^ 
 with the questions of the war, I may be per- and Morality, 
 mitted to pause for a moment on the Ameri- 
 can contributions it brought about to inter- 
 national morality and law. On the day on 
 which the American Peace Commissioners 
 to Paris sailed for home after the ceremonial 
 courtesy with which their labors were con- 
 cluded, the most authoritative journal in the 
 world published an interview with the emi- 
 nent President of the corresponding Spanish 
 Commission, then and for some time after- 
 ward President also of the Spanish Senate, 
 
 1 Some of these authorities suit a few additional ones, 
 
 have already been briefly pre- covering the main points 
 
 sented in the address at Mi- that have been disputed, 
 
 ami University, pp. 107-158. They are grouped for conve- 
 
 It may be desirable to con- nience in the Appendix. 
 
166 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 in which he was reported as saying : " We 
 knew in advance that we should have to deal 
 with an implacable conqueror, who would 
 in no way concern himself with any pre- 
 existing International Law, but whose sole 
 object was to reap from victory the largest 
 possible advantage. This conception of In- 
 ternational Law is absolutely new ; it is no 
 longer a case of might against right, but of 
 might without right. . . . The Americans 
 have acted as vainqueurs parvenus." ^ 
 
 Much may be pardoned to the anguish of 
 an old and trusted public servant over the 
 misfortunes of his native land. We may 
 even, in our sympathy, endeavor to forget 
 what country it was that proposed to defy 
 the agreements of the Conference of Paris and 
 the general judgment of nations by resorting 
 to privateering, or what country it was that 
 prefeiTed to risk becoming an asylum for the 
 criminals of a continent rather than revive, 
 even temporarily, that basic and elementary 
 implement of modern international justice, 
 an extradition treaty, which had been in 
 force with acceptable results for over twenty 
 years. But when Americans are stigmatized 
 as " vainqueurs parvenus," who by virtue of 
 mere strength violate International Law 
 against a prostrate foe, and when one of 
 the ablest of their American critics encour- 
 
 1 London ''Times," December 17, 1898. 
 
LATER ASPECTS OF OUE NEW DUTIES 167 
 
 ages the Spanish contention by talking of 
 our "bulldog diplomacy at Paris," it gives 
 us occasion to challenge the approval of the 
 world— as the facts amply warrant— for the 
 scrupulous conformity to existing Interna- 
 tional Law, and the important contributions 
 to its beneficent advancement that have dis- 
 tinguished the action of the United States 
 throughout these whole transactions. Hav- 
 ing already set these forth in some detail 
 before a foreign audience,^ I must not now 
 do more than offer the briefest summary. 
 
 The United States ended the toleration of 
 Privateering. It was perfectly free to com- 
 mission privateers on the day war was de- 
 clared. Spain was equally free, and it was 
 proclaimed from Madrid that the Atlantic 
 would soon swarm with them, sweeping 
 American commerce from the ocean. Under 
 these circumstances one of the very first and 
 noblest acts of the President was to an- 
 nounce that the United States would not 
 avail itself of the right to send out priva- 
 teers, reserved under the Declaration of 
 Paris. The fast- thickening disasters of 
 Spain prevented her from doing it, and thus 
 substantially completed the practice or ac- 
 quiescence of the civilized world, essential 
 to the acceptance of a principle in Interna- 
 tional Law. It is safe to assume that Chris- 
 
 1 See (pp. 70-105) article from " The Anglo-Saxon Review." 
 
168 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 tendom will henceforth treat Privateering 
 as under international ban. 
 
 The United States promoted the cause 
 of genuine International Arbitration by 
 promptly and emphatically rejecting an in- 
 sidious proposal for a spurious one. It 
 taught those who deliberately prefer War to 
 Arbitration, and, when beaten at it, seek 
 then to get the benefit of a second remedy, 
 that honest Arbitration must come before 
 War, to avert its horrors, not after War, to 
 evade its penalties. 
 
 The United States promoted peace among 
 nations, and so served humanity, by sternly 
 enforcing the rule that they who bring 
 on an unjust war must pay for it. For 
 years the overwhelming tendency of its 
 people had been against any territorial ag- 
 grandizement, even a peaceful one ; but it 
 unflinchingly exacted the easiest, if not the 
 only, payment Spain could make for a war 
 that cost us, at the lowest, from four to five 
 hundred million dollars, by taking Porto 
 Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. It re- 
 quires some courage to describe this as 
 either a violation of International Law, or a 
 display of unprecedented severity by an im- 
 placable conqueror, in the very city and 
 before the very generation that saw the 
 Franco-Prussian War concluded, not merely 
 by a partition of territory, but also by a 
 
LATER ASPECTS OF OUE NEW DUTIES 169 
 
 cash payment of a thousand millions in- 
 demnity. 
 
 The United States promoted the peaceful 
 liberalizing of oppressive rule over all sub- 
 ject peoples by making it more difficult to 
 negotiate loans in the markets of the world 
 to subdue their outbreaks. For it firmly 
 rejected in the Cuban adjustments the im- 
 moral doctrine that an ill-treated and revolt- 
 ing colony, after gaining its freedom, must 
 still submit to the extortion from it of the 
 cost of the parent country's unsuccessful 
 efforts to subdue it. We therefore left the 
 so-called Cuban bonds on the hands of the 
 Power that issued them, or of the reckless 
 lenders who advanced the money. At the 
 same time the United States strained a point 
 elsewhere in the direction of protecting any 
 legitimate debt, and of dealing generously 
 with a fallen foe, by a payment which the 
 most carping critic will some day be ashamed 
 to describe as "buying the inhabitants of 
 the Philippines at two dollars a head." ^ 
 
 1 There has been so much was sunk ; her army was 
 misconception and misrepre- cooped up in the capital, un- 
 sentation about this payment der the guns of the American 
 of twenty millions that the fleet, and its capture or sur- 
 following exact summary of render had only been delayed 
 the facts may be convenient, till the arrival of reinforce- 
 When Spain sued for peace ments for the American Army, 
 in the summer of 1898, she because of the fears ex- 
 had lost control of the Philip- pressed by foreigners and 
 pines, and any means for re- the principal residents of 
 gaining control. Her fleet Manila that the city might 
 
170 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 All these are acts distinctly in accord with 
 International Law so far as it exists and ap- 
 plies, and distinctly tending to promote its 
 humane and Christian extension. Let me 
 add, in a word, that the peace negotiations in 
 no way compromised or affected the Monroe 
 Doctrine, which stands as firm as ever, 
 though much less important with the disap- 
 pearance of any probable opposition to it; 
 and that the prestige they brought smoothed 
 the way for the one hopeful result of the 
 Czar's Conference at The Hague, a response 
 to the American proposal for a permanent 
 International Court of Arbitration. 
 
 A trifling but characteristic inaccuracy 
 concerning the Peace Commission may as 
 well be corrected before the subject is left. 
 
 be looted by natives unless further indemnity for the 
 
 American land forces were at war. 
 
 hand in strength ample to When the treaty came to 
 
 control them. The Spanish be negotiated, the United 
 
 army did so surrender, in States required the cession 
 
 fact, shortly after the arrival of the Philippines. Its Peace 
 
 of these reinforcements, be- Commissioners stated that 
 
 fore the news of the armistice their Government "felt amply 
 
 could reach them. supported in its right to de- 
 
 In the protocol granting an mand this cession, with or 
 
 armistice, the United States without concessions," added 
 
 exacted at once the cession that "this demand might be 
 
 of Porto Rico and an island limited to the single ground 
 
 in the Ladrones, but reserved of indemnity," and pointed 
 
 the decision as to the con- out that it was "not now 
 
 trol, disposition, and govern- putting forward any claim for 
 
 ment of the Philippines for pecuniary indemnity, to cover 
 
 the treaty of peace, apparent- the enormous cost of the 
 
 ly with a view to the possi- war." It accompanied this 
 
 bility of accepting them as demand for a transfer of 
 
LATEK ASPECTS OF OUE NEW DUTIES 171 
 
 This is the statement, apparently originating 
 from Malay sources, but promptly indorsed 
 in this country by unfriendly critics, to the 
 effect that the representative of Aguinaldo 
 was uncivilly refused a hearing in Paris. It 
 was repeated, inadvertently, no doubt, with 
 many other curious distortions of historic 
 facts, only the other day, by a distinguished 
 statesman in Chicago.^ As he put it, the 
 doors were slammed in their faces in Wash- 
 ington as well as in Paris. Now, whatever 
 might have happened, the door was certainly 
 never slammed in their faces in Paris, for 
 they never came to it. On the contrary, 
 every time Mr. Agoncillo approached any 
 member of the Commission on the subject, 
 
 sovereignty with a stipula- presented "a new proposi- 
 tion for assuming any exist- tion, embodying the conces- 
 ing indebtedness of Spain sions which, for the sake of 
 incurred for public works immediate peace, their Gov- 
 and improvements of a pa- ernment is, under the circum- 
 eific character in the Philip- stances, willing to tender." 
 pines. The United States But it was really the old 
 thus asserted its right to the proposition (with the "Open 
 archipelago for indemnity, Door" and "Mutual Relin- 
 and at the same time com- quishment of Claims " clauses 
 mitted itself to the principle added), with the mention for 
 of payment on account of the the first time of a specific sum 
 Philippine debt. for the payment, and without 
 When it became necessary any question of " pacific im- 
 to put the Philippine case provements." That sum just 
 into an ultimatum, the Peace balanced the Philippine debt 
 Commissioners did not fur- —40, 000, 000 Mexican, or, say, 
 ther refer to the debt or give 20,000,000 American dollars, 
 any specific reason either for i General Carl Schurz, at 
 a cession or for a payment, the Chicago Anti-Expansion 
 They simply said they now Convention, October, 1899, 
 
172 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 he was courteously invited to send the Com- 
 missioners a written request for a hearing, 
 which would, at any rate, receive immediate 
 consideration. No such request ever came, 
 and any Filipino who wrote for a hearing in 
 Paris was heard. 
 
 The Meanwhile we are now in the midst of 
 Jj5y^"* hostilities with a part of the native popula- 
 tion, originating in an unprovoked attack 
 upon our troops in the city they had wrested 
 from the Spaniards, before final action on 
 the treaty. It is easy to say that we ought 
 not to have got into this conflict, and to that 
 I might agree. " I tell you, they can't put 
 you in jail on that charge," said the learned 
 and disputatious counsel to the client who 
 had appealed from his cell for help. "But 
 I a7)i in," was the sufficient answer. The 
 question just then was not what might have 
 been done, but what can be done. I wish to 
 urge that we can only end this conflict by 
 manfully fighting through it. The talk one 
 hears that the present situation calls for 
 "diplomacy" seems to be mistimed. That 
 species of diplomacy which consists in the 
 tact of prompt action in the right line at the 
 right time might, quite possibly, have pre- 
 vented the present hostilities. Any diplo- 
 macy now would seem to our Tagal an- 
 tagonists the raising of the white flag— 
 
LATEK ASPECTS OF OtJB NEW DUTIES 173 
 
 the final proof that the American people do 
 not sustain their Army in the face of unpro- 
 voked attack. Every witness who came 
 before the American Peace Commission in 
 Paris, or sent it a written statement, English, 
 G-erman, Belgian, Malay, or American, said 
 the same thing. Absolutely the one essen- 
 tial for dealing with the Filipinos was to 
 convince them at the very outset that what 
 you began you stood to; that you did not 
 begin without consideration of right and 
 duty, or quail then before opposition; that 
 your purpose was inexorable and your power 
 irresistible, while submission to it would 
 always insure justice. On the contrary, 
 once let them suspect that protests would 
 dissuade and turbulence deter you, and all 
 the Oriental instinct for delay and bargain- 
 ing for better terms is aroused, along with 
 the special Malay genius for intrigue and 
 double-dealing, their profound belief that 
 every man has his price, and their childish 
 ignorance as to the extent to which stump 
 speeches here against any Administration 
 can cause American armies beyond the seas 
 to retreat. 
 
 No ; the toast which Henry Clay once gave 
 in honor of an early naval hero fits the pres- 
 ent situation like a glove. He proposed 
 " the policy which looks to peace as the end 
 of war, and war as the means of peace." In 
 
174 PEOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 that light I maintain that the conflict we are 
 prosecuting is in the line of national neces- 
 sity and duty; that we cannot turn back; 
 that the truest humanity condemns needless 
 delay or half-hearted action, and demands 
 overwhelming forces and irresistible onset. 
 
 Eliminate BuT in considering this duty, just as in 
 ofSouraee- estimating the Treaty of Paris, we have the 
 ments. right to eliminate all account of the trifling 
 success, so far, in the Philippines, or of the 
 great trouble and cost. What it was right 
 to do there, and what we are bound to do 
 now, must not be obscured by faults of hesi- 
 tation or insufficient preparation, for which 
 neither the Peace Commissioners nor the 
 people are responsible. I had occasion to 
 say before a college audience last June what 
 I now repeat with the additional emphasis 
 subsequent events have warranted— that the 
 difficulties which at present discourage us 
 are largely of our own making ; and I repeat 
 that it is still not for us, here and now, to ap- 
 portion the blame. We have not the know- 
 ledge to say just who, or whether any man or 
 body, is wholly at fault. What we do know 
 is that the course of hesitation and inaction 
 which the Nation pursued in face of an openly 
 maturing attack was precisely the policy 
 sure to give us the greatest trouble, and that 
 we are now paying the penalty. If the op- 
 
LATEE ASPECTS OF OUR NEW DUTIES 175 
 
 posite course had been taken at the outset— 
 unless all the testimony from foreign ob- 
 servers and from our own officers is at fault- 
 there would have been either no outbreak at 
 all, or only one easily controlled and settled 
 to the general satisfaction of most of the 
 civilized and semi- civilized inhabitants of 
 the island. 
 
 On the personal and partizan disputes al- 
 ready lamentably begun, as to senatorial 
 responsibility, congressional responsibility, 
 or the responsibility of this or that execu- 
 tive officer, we have no occasion here to 
 enter. What we have a right to insist on is 
 that our general policy in the Philippines 
 shall not be shaped now merely by the just 
 discontent with the bad start. The reports 
 of continual victories, that roll back on us 
 every week, like the stone of Sisyphus, and 
 need to be won over again next week, the 
 mistakes of a censorship that was absolutely 
 right as a military measure, but may have 
 been unintelligently, not to say childishly, 
 conducted— all these are beside the real 
 question. They must not obscure the duty 
 of restoring order in the regions where our 
 troops have been assailed, or prejudice our 
 subsequent course. 
 
 I VENTURE to say of that course that neither 
 our duty nor our interest will permit us to 
 
176 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 Pacification stop short of a pacification which can only 
 cSSrse o/** end in the establishment of such local self- 
 Organiza- government as the people are found capable 
 ^'®"* of conducting, and its extension just as far 
 
 and as fast as the people prove fit for it. 
 
 The natural development thus to be ex- 
 pected would probably proceed safely, along 
 the lines of least resistance, about in this 
 order : First, and till entirely clear that it is 
 no longer needed. Military Government. 
 Next, the rule of either Military or Civil 
 Governors (for a considerable time probably 
 the former), relying gradually more and more 
 on native agencies. Thirdly, the develop- 
 ment of Dependencies, with an American 
 Civil Governor, with their foreign relations 
 and their highest courts controlled by us, 
 and their financial system largely managed 
 by members of a rigidly organized and jeal- 
 ously protected American Civil Service, but 
 in most other respects steadily becoming 
 more self-governing. And, finally, autono- 
 mous governments, looking to us for little 
 save control of their foreign relations, prof- 
 iting by the stability and order the backing 
 of a powerful nation guarantees, cultivating 
 more and more intimate trade and personal 
 relations with that nation, and coming to 
 feel themselves participants of its fortunes 
 and renown. 
 
 Such a course Congress, after full investi- 
 
LATEB ASPECTS OF OUB NEW DUTIES 177 
 
 gation and deliberation, might perhaps 
 wisely formulate. Such a course, with 
 slight modifications to meet existing limita- 
 tions as to his powers, has already been 
 entered upon by the President, and can 
 doubtless be carried on indefinitely by him 
 until Congress acts. This action should 
 certainly not be precipitate. The system 
 demands most careful study, not only in the 
 light of what the English and Dutch, the 
 most successful holders of tropical countries, 
 have done, but also in the light of the pecu- 
 liar and varied circumstances that confront 
 us on these different and distant islands, and 
 among these widely differing races— circum- 
 stances to which no previous experience ex- 
 actly applies, and for which no uniform 
 system could be applicable. If Congress 
 should take as long a time before action to 
 study the problem as it has taken in the 
 Sandwich Islands, or even in Alaska, the 
 President's power would still be equal to 
 the emergency, and the policy, while flex- 
 ible, could still be made as continuous, cohe- 
 rent, and practical as his best information 
 and ability would permit. 
 
 Against such a conscientious and pains- Evasions of 
 taking course in dealing with the grave *^"*y* 
 responsibilities that are upon us in the East, 
 two lines of evasion are sure to threaten. 
 
 12 
 
178 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 The one is the policy of the upright but 
 short-sighted and strictly continental patriot 
 —the same which an illustrious statesman of 
 another country followed in the Sudan: 
 " Scuttle as quick as you can." 
 
 The other is the policy of the exuberant 
 patriot who believes in the universal adapta- 
 bility and immediate extension of American 
 institutions. He thinks all men everywhere 
 as fit to vote as himself, and wants them for 
 partners. He is eager to have them prepare 
 at once, in our new possessions, first in the 
 West Indies, then in the East, to send Sena- 
 tors and Eepresentatives to Congress, and his 
 policy is: "Make Territories of them now, 
 and States in the American Union as soon as 
 possible." I wish to speak with the utmost 
 respect of the sincere advocates of both 
 theories, but must say that the one seems to 
 me to fall short of a proper regard for either 
 our duty or our interest, and the other to be 
 national suicide. 
 
 Gentlemen in whose ability and patriotism 
 we all have confidence have lately put the 
 first of these policies for evading our duty 
 in the form of a protest "against the ex- 
 pansion and establishment of the dominion 
 of the United States, by conquest or other- 
 wise, over unwilling peoples in any part of 
 the globe." Of this it may be said, first, that 
 any application of it to the Philippines 
 
LATEE ASPECTS OF OUR NEW DUTIES 179 
 
 probably assumes a factional and temporary- 
 outbreak to represent a settled unwilling- 
 ness. New Orleans was as "unwilling," 
 when Mr. eJefferson annexed it, as Aguinaldo 
 has made Manila ; and Aaron Burr came near 
 making the whole Louisiana Territory far 
 worse. Mr. Lincoln, you remember, always 
 believed the people of North Carolina not 
 unwilling to remain in the Union, yet we 
 know what they did. But next, this protest 
 contemplates evading the present responsi- 
 bility by a reversal of our settled policy any 
 way. Mr. Lincoln probably never doubted 
 the unwillingness of South Carolina to re- 
 main in the Union, but that did not change 
 his course. Mr. Seward never inquired 
 whether the Alaskans were unwilling or 
 not. The historic position of the United 
 States, from the day when Jefferson braved 
 the envenomed anti-expansion sentiment of 
 his time and bought the territory west of the 
 Mississippi, on down, has been to consider, 
 not the willingness or unwillingness of any 
 inhabitants, whether aboriginal or colonists, 
 but solely our national opportunity, our own 
 duty, and our own interests. 
 
 Is it said that this is Imperialism ? That 
 implies usurpation of power, and there is 
 absolutely no ground for such a charge 
 against this Administration at any one stage 
 in these whole transactions. If any com- 
 
180 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 plaint here is to lie, it must relate to the 
 critical period when we were accepting re- 
 sponsibility for order at Manila, and must be 
 for the exercise of too little power, not too 
 mucho It is not Imperialism to take up 
 honestly the responsibility for order we in- 
 curred before the world, and continue under 
 it, even if that should lead us to extend the 
 civil rights of the American Constitution 
 over new regions and strange peoples. It 
 is not Imperialism when duty keeps us among 
 these chaotic, warring, distracted tribes, civi- 
 lized, semi-civilized, and barbarous, to help 
 them, as far as their several capacities will 
 permit, toward self-government, on the 
 basis of those civil rights. 
 
 A terser and more taking statement of 
 opposition has been recently attributed to 
 a gentleman highly honored by this Univer- 
 sity and by his townsmen here. I gladly 
 seize this opportunity, as a consistent op- 
 ponent during his whole political life, to add 
 that his words carry gi^eat weight throughout 
 the country by reason of the unquestioned 
 ability, courage, and patriotic devotion he 
 has brought to the public service. He is 
 reported as protesting simply against "the 
 use of power in the extension of American 
 institutions." But does not this, if applied 
 to the present situation, seem also to miss 
 an important distinction I What planted us 
 
LATER ASPECTS OF OUR NEW DUTIES 181 
 
 in the Philippines was the use of our power 
 in the most efficient naval and military de- 
 fense then available for our own institutions 
 where they already exist, against the attack 
 of Spain. If the responsibility entailed by 
 the result of these acts in our own defense 
 does involve some extension of our institu- 
 tions, shall we therefore run away from it? 
 If a guaranty to chaotic tribes of the civil 
 rights secured by the American Constitution 
 does prove to be an incident springing from 
 the discharge of the duty that has rested 
 upon us from the moment we drove Spain 
 out, is that a result so objectionable as to 
 warrant us in abandoning our duty ? 
 
 There is, it is true, one other alternative 
 —-the one which Aguinaldo himself is said 
 to have suggested, and which has certainly 
 been put forth in his behalf with the utmost 
 simplicity and sincerity by a conspicuous 
 statesman at Chicago. We might at once 
 solicit peace from Aguinaldo. We might 
 then encourage him to extend his rule over 
 the whole country,— Catholic, pagan, and Mo- 
 hammedan, willing and unwilling alike,— and 
 promise him whatever aid might be neces- 
 sary for that task. Meantime, we should 
 undertake to protect him against outside 
 interference from any European or Asiatic 
 nation whose interests on that oceanic high- 
 way and in those commercial capitals might 
 
182 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 be imperiled ! ^ I do not desire to discuss 
 that proposition. And I submit to candid 
 men that there are just those three courses, 
 and no more, now open to us— to run away, 
 to protect Aguinaldo, or to back up our own 
 army and firmly hold on ! 
 
 Objections to If this fact be clearly perceived, if the choice 
 '^"*^* between these three courses be once recog- 
 
 nized as the only choice the present situation 
 permits, our minds will be less disturbed by 
 the confused cries of perplexity and discon- 
 tent that still fill the air. Thus men often 
 say, " If you believe in liberty for yourself, 
 why refuse it to the Tagals ! " That is right ; 
 they should have, in the degree of their ca- 
 pacity, the only kind of liberty worth having 
 in the world, the only kind that is not a 
 curse to its possessors and to all in contact 
 with them— ordered liberty, under law, for 
 which the wisdom of man has not yet found 
 a better safeguard than the guaranties of 
 civil rights in the Constitution of the United 
 States. Who supposes that to be the liberty 
 for which Aguinaldo is fighting ! What his 
 people want, and what the statesman at 
 Chicago wishes us to use the Army and Navy 
 of the United States to help him get, is the 
 
 1 The exact proposition Anti-Expansion Convention, 
 made by General Carl Sehnrz October 17, 1899. 
 in addressing the Chicago 
 
LATER ASPECTS OF OUR NEW DUTIES 183 
 
 liberty to rule others— the liberty first to 
 turn our own troops out of the city and har- 
 bor we had in our own self-defense captured 
 from their enemies ; the liberty next to rule 
 that great commercial city, and the tribes of 
 the interior, instead of leaving us to exercise 
 the rule over them that events have forced 
 upon us, till it is fairly shown that they can 
 rule themselves. 
 
 Again it is said, " You are depriving them 
 of freedom." But they never had freedom, 
 and could not have it now. Even if they 
 could subdue the other tribes in Luzon, they 
 could not establish such order on the other 
 islands and in the waters of the archipelago 
 as to deprive foreign Powers of an immedi- 
 ate excuse for interference. What we are 
 doing is in the double line of preventing 
 otherwise inevitable foreign seizure and put- 
 ting a stop to domestic war. 
 
 "But you cannot fit people for freedom. 
 They must fit themselves, just as we must 
 do our own crawling and stumbling in order 
 to learn to walk." The illustration is un- 
 fortunate. Must the crawling baby, then, 
 be abandoned by its natural or accidental 
 guardian, and left to itself to grow strong 
 by struggling, or to perish, as may happen ? 
 Must we turn the Tagals loose on the for- 
 eigners in Manila, and on their enemies in 
 the other tribes, that by following their in- 
 
184 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 stincts they may fit themselves for free- 
 dom? 
 
 Again, "It will injure us to exert power 
 over an unwilling people, just as slavery in- 
 jured the slaveholders themselves." Then a 
 community is injured by maintaining a 
 police. Then a court is injured by render- 
 ing a just decree, and an officer by executing 
 it. Then it is a greater injury, for instance, 
 to stop piracy than to suffer from it. Then 
 the manly exercise of a just responsibility 
 enfeebles instead of developing and strength- 
 ening a nation. 
 
 "Governments derive their just powers 
 from the consent of the governed." "No 
 man is good enough to govern another 
 against his will." Grreat truths, from men 
 whose greatness and moral elevation the 
 world admires. But there is a higher au- 
 thority than Jefferson or Lincoln, Who said : 
 " If a man smite thee on thy right cheek, turn 
 to him the other also." Yet he who acted 
 literally on even that divine injunction to- 
 ward the Malays that attacked our Army in 
 Manila would be a congenital idiot to begin 
 with, and his corpse, while it lasted, would 
 remain an object-lesson of how not to deal 
 with the present stage of Malay civilization 
 and Christianity. 
 
 Why mourn over our present course as a 
 departure from the policy of the fathers? 
 
LATEK ASPECTS OF OUR NEW DUTIES 185 
 
 For a hundred years the uniform policy 
 which they began and their sons contin- 
 ued has been acquisition, expansion, an- 
 nexation, reaching out to remote wilder- 
 nesses far more distant and inaccessible 
 then than the Philippines are now — to 
 disconnected regions like Alaska, to island 
 regions like Midway, the Guano Islands, the 
 Aleutians, the Sandwich Islands, and even to 
 quasi-protectorates like Liberia and Samoa. 
 Why mourn because of the precedent we are 
 establishing 1 The precedent was established 
 before we were born. Why distress our- 
 selves with the thought that this is only the 
 beginning, that it opens the door to unlimited 
 expansion ? The door is wide open now, and 
 has been ever since Livingston in Paris 
 jumped at Talleyrand's offer to sell him the 
 wilderness west of the Mississippi instead of 
 'the settlements eastward to Florida, which 
 we had been trying to get; and Jefferson 
 eagerly sustained him. For the rest, the 
 task that is laid upon us now is not proving 
 so easy as to warrant this fear that we shall 
 soon be seeking unlimited repetitions of it. 
 
 That danger, in fact, can come only if we Evasion by 
 shirk our present duty by the second of the 
 two alternative methods of evasion I have 
 mentioned— the one favored by the exuber- 
 ant patriot who wants to clasp Cuban, 
 
 Embrace. 
 
186 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 Kanaka, and Tagal alike to his bosom as 
 equal partners with ourselves in our inheri- 
 tance from the fathers, and take them all into 
 the Union as States. 
 
 We will be wise to open our eyes at once 
 to the gi^avity and the insidious character 
 of this danger— the very worst that could 
 threaten the American Union. Once begun, 
 the rivalry of parties and the fears of politi- 
 cians would insure its continuance. With 
 Idaho and Wyoming admitted, they did not 
 dare prolong the exclusion even of Utah, and 
 so we have the shame of seeing an avowed 
 polygamist with a prima facie right to sit in 
 our Congress as a legislator not merely for 
 Utah, but for the whole Union. At this 
 moment scarcely a politician dares frankly 
 avow unalterable opposition to the admission 
 of Cuba, if she should seek it. Yet, bad as 
 that would be, it would necessarily lead to 
 worse. Others in the West Indies might 
 not linger long behind. In any event, with 
 Cuba a State, Porto Eico could not be kept 
 a Territory. No more could the Sandwich 
 Islands. And then, looming direct in our 
 path, like a volcano rising out of the mist on 
 the affrighted vision of mariners tempest- 
 tossed in tropic seas, is the specter of such 
 States as Luzon and the Visayas and Haiti. 
 
 They would have precedents, too, to quote, 
 and dangerous ones. When we bought 
 
LATEK ASPECTS OF OUK NEW DUTIES 187 
 
 Louisiana we stipulated in the treaty that 
 " the inhabitants of the ceded territory shall 
 be incorporated in the Union of the United 
 States and admitted as soon as possible, ac- 
 cording to the principles of the Federal 
 Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the 
 rights, advantages, and immunities of citi- 
 zens of the United States." We made almost 
 identically the same stipulation when we 
 bought Florida. When one of the most re- 
 spected in the long line of our able Secre- 
 taries of State, Mr. William L. Marcy, 
 negotiated a treaty in 1854 for the annexa- 
 tion of the Sandwich Islands, he provided 
 that they should be incorporated as a State, 
 with the same degree of sovereignty as other 
 States, and on perfect equality with them. 
 The schemes prior to 1861 for the purchase 
 or annexation of Cuba practically all looked 
 to the same result. Not till the annexation 
 of San Domingo was proposed did this fea- 
 ture disappear from our treaties. It is only 
 candid to add that the habit of regarding this 
 as the necessary destiny of any United States 
 Territory as soon as it has sufficient popula- 
 tion has been universal. It is no modern 
 vagary, but the practice, if not the theory, of 
 our whole national life, that would open the 
 doors of our Senate and House, and give a 
 share in the Government to these wild-eyed 
 newcomers from the islands of the sea. 
 
188 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 The calamity of admitting them cannot be 
 overrated. Even in the case of the best of 
 these islands, it would demoralize and de- 
 grade the national suffrage almost incal- 
 culably below the point already reached. 
 To the Senate, unwieldy now, and greatly 
 changed in character from the l3ody contem- 
 plated by the Constitution, it would be dis- 
 astrous. For the present States of the Union 
 it would be an act of folly like that of a 
 business firm which blindly steered for 
 bankruptcy by freely admitting to full 
 partnership new members, strangers, and 
 non-residents, not only otherwise ill quali- 
 fied, but with absolutely conflicting interests. 
 And it would be a distinct violation of the 
 clause in the preamble that " we, the people, 
 ... do ordain and establish this Constitu- 
 tion for the United States of America,^ 
 
 There is the only safe ground— on the letter 
 and the spirit of the Constitution. It con- 
 templated a Continental Union of sovereign 
 States. It limited that Union to the Ameri- 
 can Continent. The man that takes it farther 
 sounds its death-knell. 
 
 The General I HAVE designedly left to the last any esti- 
 
 Weifare. mate of the material interests we serve by 
 
 holding on in our present course. Whatever 
 
 these may be, they are only a subordinate 
 
 consideration. We are in the Philippines, 
 
LATER ASPECTS OF OUR NEW DUTIES 189 
 
 as we are in the West Indies, because duty 
 sent us; and we shall remain because we 
 have no right to run away from our duty, 
 even if it does involve far more trouble than 
 we foresaw when we plunged into the war 
 that entailed it. The call to duty, when once 
 plainly understood, is a call Americans never 
 fail to answer, while to calls of interest they 
 have often shown themselves incredulous or 
 contemptuous. 
 
 But the Constitution we revere was also 
 ordained " to promote the general welfare," 
 and he is untrue to its purpose who squanders 
 opportunities. Never before have they been 
 showered upon us in such bewildering pro- 
 fusion. Are the American people to rise to 
 the occasion ? Are they to be as great as their 
 country ? Or shall the historian record that 
 at this unexampled crisis they were con- 
 trolled by timid ideas and short-sighted 
 views, and so proved unequal to the duty 
 and the opportunity which unforeseen cir- 
 cumstances brought to their doors? The 
 two richest archipelagos in the world are 
 practically at our disposal. The greatest 
 ocean on the globe has been put in our 
 hands, the ocean that is to bear the com- 
 merce of the Twentieth Century. In the face 
 of this prospect, shall we prefer, with the 
 teeming population that century is to bring 
 us, to remain a "hibernating nation, living 
 
190 PKOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 off its owi^ fat— a hermit nation," as Mr. 
 Senator Davis has asked? For our first 
 Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Hill, was 
 right when he said that not to enter the Open 
 Door in Asia means the perpetual isolation 
 of this continent. 
 
 Have they Are we to be discouraged by the cry that 
 any Value? ^Yiq uew possessions are worthless! Not 
 while we remember how often and under 
 what circumstances we have heard that cry 
 before. Half the public men of the period 
 denounced Louisiana as worthless. Eminent 
 statesmen made merry in Congress over the 
 idea that Oregon or Washington could be of 
 any use. Daniel Webster, in the most solemn 
 and authoritative tones Massachusetts has 
 ever employed, assured his fellow- Senators 
 that, in his judgment, California was not 
 worth a dollar. 
 
 Is it said that the commercial opportu- 
 nities in the Orient, or at least in the Philip- 
 pines, are overrated ? So it used to be said 
 of the Sandwich Islands. But what does 
 our experience show I Before their annexa- 
 tion even, but after we had taken this little 
 archipelago under our protection and into 
 our commercial system, our ocean tonnage 
 in that trade became nearly double as heavy 
 as with Great Britain. Why? Because, 
 while we have lost the trade of the Atlantic, 
 
LATEE ASPECTS OF OUR NEW DUTIES 191 
 
 superior advantages make the Pacific ours. 
 Is it said that elsewhere on the Pacific we 
 can do as well without a controlling political 
 influence as with it ? Look again ! Mexico 
 buys our products at the rate of $1.95 for 
 each inhabitant ; South America at the rate 
 of 90 cents; Great Britain at the rate of 
 $13.42 ; Canada at the rate of $14 ; and the 
 Hawaiian Islands at the rate of $53.35 for 
 each inhabitant. Look at the trade of the 
 chief city on the Pacific coast. All Mexico 
 and Central America, all the western parts of 
 South America and of Canada, are as near to 
 it as is Honolulu ; and comparison of the little 
 Sandwich Islands in population with any of 
 them would be ridiculous. Yet none of them 
 bought as much salmon in San Francisco as 
 Hawaii, and no countries bought more save 
 England and Australia. No countries 
 bought as much barley, excepting Central 
 America; and even in the staff of life, the 
 California flour, which all the world buys, 
 only five countries outranked Hawaii in 
 purchases in San Francisco. 
 
 No doubt a part of this result is due to the 
 nearness of Hawaii to our markets, and her 
 distance from any others capable of compet- 
 ing with us, and another part to a favorable 
 system of reciprocity. Nevertheless, nobody 
 doubts the advantage our dealers have de- 
 rived in the promotion of trade from con- 
 
1Q2 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 trolling political relations and frequent 
 intercourse. There are those who deny- 
 that " trade follows the flag," but even they 
 admit that it leaves if the flag does. And, 
 independent of these advantages, and reck- 
 oning by mere distance, we still have the 
 better of any European rivals in the Philip- 
 pines. Now, assume that the Filipino would 
 have far fewer wants than the Kanaka or his 
 coolie laborer, and would do far less work 
 for the means to gratify them. Admit, too, 
 that, with the Open Door, our political re- 
 lations and frequent intercourse could have 
 barely a fifth or a sixth of the effect there 
 they have had in the Sandwich Islands. 
 Roughly cast up even that result, and say 
 whether it is a value which the United States 
 should throw away as not worth consider- 
 ing! 
 
 And the greatest remains behind. For the 
 trade in the Philippines will be but a drop 
 in the bucket compared to that of China, for 
 which they give us an unapproachable foot- 
 hold. But let it never be forgotten that the 
 confidence of Orientals goes only to those 
 whom they recognize as strong enough and 
 determined enough always to hold their own 
 and protect their rights ! The worst possible 
 introduction for the Asiatic trade would be 
 an irresolute abandonment of our foothold 
 because it was too much trouble to keep, or 
 
LATEE ASPECTS OF OUR NEW DUTIES 193 
 
 because some Malay and half-breed insur- 
 gents said they wanted us away. 
 
 Have you considered for whom we hold The Future. 
 these advantages in trust? They belong 
 not merely to the seventy- five millions now 
 within our borders, but to all who are to ex- 
 tend the fortunes and preserve the virtues 
 of the Eepublic in the coming century. Their 
 numbers cannot increase in the startling 
 ratio this century has shown. If they did the 
 population of the United States a hundred 
 years hence would be over twelve hundred 
 millions. That ratio is impossible, but no- 
 body gives reasons why we should not in- 
 crease half as fast. Suppose we do actually 
 increase only one fourth as fast in the Twen- 
 tieth Century as in the Nineteenth. To what 
 height would not the three hundred millions 
 of Americans whom even that ratio foretells 
 bear up the seething industrial activities of 
 the continent ! To what corner of the world 
 would they not need to carry their com- 
 merce I What demands on tropical produc- 
 tions would they not make? What outlets 
 for their adventurous youth would they not 
 require? With such a prospect before us, 
 who thinks that we should shrink from an 
 enlargement of our national sphere because 
 of the limitations that bound, or the dangers 
 that threatened, before railroads, before 
 
194 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 ocean steamers, before telegraphs and ocean 
 cables, before the enormous development of 
 our manufactures, and the training of exec- 
 utive and organizing faculties in our people 
 on a constantly increasing scale for genera- 
 tions I 
 
 Does the prospect alarm ! Is it said that 
 our Nation is already too great, that all its 
 magnificent gi'owth only adds to the conflict- 
 ing interests that must eventually tear it 
 asunder ! What cement, then, like that of a 
 great common interest beyond our borders, 
 that touches not merely the conscience but 
 the pocket and the pride of all alike, and 
 marshals us in the face of the world, stand- 
 ing for our own ! 
 
 What, then, is the conclusion of the whole 
 matter ? Hold fast ! Stand firm in the place 
 where Providence has put you, and do the 
 duty a just responsibility for your own past 
 acts imposes. Support the army you sent 
 there. Stop wasting valuable strength by 
 showing how things might be different if 
 something different had been done a year 
 and a half ago. Use the educated thought 
 of the country for shaping best its course 
 now, instead of chiefly finding fault with its 
 history. Bring the best hope of the future, 
 the colleges and the generation they are train- 
 ing, to exert the greatest influence and accom- 
 plish the most good by working intelligently 
 
LATER ASPECTS OF OUR NEW DUTIES 195 
 
 in line with the patriotic aspirations and the 
 inevitable tendencies of the American people, 
 rather than against them. Unite the efforts 
 of all men of good will to make the appoint- 
 ment of any person to these new and strange 
 duties beyond seas impossible save for proved 
 fitness, and his removal impossible save for 
 cause. Eally the colleges and the churches, 
 and all they influence, the brain and the con- 
 science of the country, in a combined and 
 irresistible demand for a genuine, trained, 
 and pure Civil Service in our new posses- 
 sions, that shall put to shame our detractors, 
 and show to the world the Americans of this 
 generation, equal still to the work of civili- 
 zation and colonization, and leading the de- 
 velopment of the coming century as bravely 
 as their fathers led it in the last. 
 
IX 
 A CONTINENTAL UNION 
 
This speech was delivered on the invitation of the Mas- 
 sachusetts Club, at their regular dinner in Boston, March 
 3, 1900. 
 
A CONTINENTAL UNION 
 
 A THIRD of a century ago I had the 
 honor to be a guest at this club, which 
 met then, as now, in Young's Hotel. It has 
 ever since been a pleasure to recall the men 
 of Boston who gathered about the board, 
 interested, as now, in the affairs of the Ee- 
 public to which they were at once ornament 
 and defense. Frank Bird sat at the head. 
 Near him was Henry Wilson. John M. 
 Forbes was here, and John A. Andrew, and 
 George S. Boutwell, and Greorge L. Stearns, 
 and many another, eager in those times of 
 trial to seek and know the best thing to be 
 done to serve this country of our pride and 
 love. They were practical business men, 
 true Yankees in the best sense; and they 
 spent no time then in quarreling over how 
 we got into our trouble. Their one con- 
 cern was how to get out to the greatest 
 advantage of the country. 
 
 Honored now by another opportunity to 
 meet with the club, I can do no better than 
 profit by this example of your earlier days. 
 
 199 
 
Undone. 
 
 200 PKOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 You have asked me to speak on some phase 
 of the Philippine question. I would like to 
 concentrate your attention upon the present 
 and practical phase, and to withdraw it for 
 the time from things that are past and can- 
 not be changed. 
 
 Things that Stake decisis. There are some things set- 
 ?,"""-i**^ tied. Have we not a better and more urgent 
 use for our time now than in showing why- 
 some of us would have liked them settled 
 differently? In my State there is a dictum 
 by an eminent judge of the Court of Appeals, 
 so familiar now as to be a commonplace, to 
 the effect that when that court has rendered 
 its decision, there are only two things left to 
 the disappointed advocate. One is to ac- 
 cept the result attained, and go to work 
 on it as best he can ; the other, to go down 
 to the tavern and " cuss " the court. I want 
 to suggest to those who dislike the past of 
 the Philippine question that there is more 
 important work pressing upon you at this 
 moment than to cuss the court. You cannot 
 change the past, but you may prevent some 
 threatened sequences which even in your 
 eyes would be far greater calamities. 
 
 There is no use bewailing the war with 
 Spain. Nothing can undo it, and its results 
 are upon us. There is no use arguing that 
 Dewey should have abandoned his conquest. 
 
A CONTINENTAL UNION 201 
 
 He did n't. There is no use regretting the 
 Peace of Paris. For good or for ill, it is a 
 part of the supreme law of the land. There 
 is no use begrudging the twenty millions. 
 They are paid. There is no use depreciating 
 the islands, East or West. They are the 
 property of the United States by an immu- 
 table title which, whatever some of our own 
 people say, the whole civilized world recog- 
 nizes and respects. There is no use talking 
 about getting rid of them— giving them 
 back to Spain, or turning them over to 
 Aguinaldo, or simply running away from 
 them. Whoever thinks that any one of 
 these things could be done, or is still open 
 to profitable debate, takes his observations 
 —will you pardon me the liberty of saying 
 it?— takes his observations too closely 
 within the horizon of Boston Bay to know 
 the American people. 
 
 They have not been persuaded and they 
 cannot be persuaded that this is an inferior 
 Government, incapable of any duty Provi- 
 dence (through the acts of a wicked Admin- 
 istration, if you choose) may send its way- 
 duties which other nations could discharge, 
 but we cannot. They do not and will not 
 believe that it was any such maimed, im- 
 perfect, misshapen cripple from birth for 
 which our forefathers made a place in the 
 family of nations. Nor are they misled by 
 
202 PBOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 the cry that, in a populous region, thronged 
 by the ships and traders of all countries, 
 where their own prosecution of a just war 
 broke down whatever guaranties for order 
 had previously existed, they are violating 
 the natural rights of man by enforcing or- 
 der. Just as little are they misled by the 
 other cry that they are violating the right 
 of self-government, and the Declaration of 
 Independence, and the Constitution of the 
 United States by preparing for the dis- 
 tracted, warring tribes of that region such 
 local government as they may be found ca- 
 pable of conducting, in their various stages 
 of development from pure barbarism toward 
 civilization. The American people know 
 they are thus proceeding to do just what 
 Jefferson did in the vast region he bought 
 from France— without the consent, by the 
 way, either of its sovereign or its inhabi- 
 tants. They know they are following in 
 the exact path of all the constructive states- 
 men of the Republic, from the days of the 
 man who wrote the Declaration, and of those 
 who made the Constitution, down to the 
 days of the men who conquered California, 
 bought Alaska, and denied the right of self- 
 government to Jefferson Davis. They sim- 
 ply do not believe that a new light has been 
 given to Mr. Bryan, or to the better men 
 who are aiding him, greater and purer than 
 
A CONTINENTAL UNION 203 
 
 was given to Washington, or to Jefferson, 
 or to Lincoln. 
 
 And so I venture to repeat, without quali- 
 fication or reserve, that what is past cannot 
 be changed. Candid and dispassionate 
 minds, knowing the American people of all 
 political shades and in all sections of the 
 country, can see no possibility that any 
 party in power, whether the present one or 
 its opponent, would or could, now or soon, if 
 ever, abandon or give back one foot of the 
 territory gained in the late war, and ours 
 now by the supreme law of the land and 
 with the assent of the civilized world. As 
 well may you look to see California, which 
 your own Daniel Webster, quite in a certain 
 modern Massachusetts style, once declared 
 in the Senate to be not worth a dollar, now 
 abandoned to Mexico. 
 
 It seems to me, then, idle to thresh over old No Abstrac- 
 straw when the grain is not only winnowed, **®"f ®r 
 
 AD0l0fi[i6s or 
 
 but gone to the mill. And so I am not here Attacks, 
 to discuss abstract questions: as, for ex- 
 ample, whether in the year 1898 the United 
 States was wise in going to war with Spain, 
 though on that I might not greatly disagree 
 with the malcontents; or as to the wisdom 
 of expansion; or as to the possibility of a 
 republic's maintaining its authority over a 
 people without their consent. Nor am I here 
 
204 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 to apologize for my part in making the na- 
 tion that was in the wrong and beaten in the 
 late war pay for it in territory. I have never 
 thought of denying or evading my own full 
 share of responsibility in that matter. Con- 
 scious of a duty done, I am happily inde- 
 pendent enough to be measurably indifferent 
 as to a mere present and temporary effect. 
 Whatever the verdict of the men of Massa- 
 chusetts to-day, I contentedly await the ver- 
 dict of their sons. 
 
 But, on the other hand, I am not here either 
 to launch charges of treason against any 
 opponent of these policies, who nevertheless 
 loves the institutions founded on these 
 shores by your ancestors, and wishes to per- 
 petuate what they created. Least of all 
 would it occur to me to utter a word in dis- 
 paragement of your senior Senator, of whom 
 it may be said with respectful and almost 
 affectionate regard that he bears a warrant 
 as authentic as that of the most distin- 
 guished of his predecessors to speak for the 
 conscience and the culture of Massachusetts. 
 Nor shall any reproach be uttered by me 
 against another eminent son of the com- 
 monwealth and servant of the Eepublic, 
 who was expected, as one of the officers of 
 your club told me, to make this occasion 
 distinguished by his presence. He has been 
 represented as resenting the unchangeable 
 
A CONTINENTAL UNION 205 
 
 past SO sternly that he now hopes to aid in 
 defeating the party he has helped to lead 
 through former trials to present glory. If 
 so, and if from the young and unremember- 
 ing reproach should come, be it ours, silent 
 and walking backward, merely to cast over 
 him the mantle of his own honored service. 
 
 No, no! Let us have a truce to profitless Common 
 disputes about what cannot be reversed. ^"^ *"<^ * 
 Censure us if you must. Even strike at Danger. 
 your old associates and your own party if 
 you will and when you can, without harm- 
 ing causes you hold dear. But for the duty 
 of this hour, consider if there is not a com- 
 mon meeting-ground and instant necessity 
 for union in a rational effort to avert present 
 perils. This, then, is my appeal. Disagree 
 as we may about the past, let us to-day at 
 least see straight— see things as they are. 
 Let us suspend disputes about what is done 
 and cannot be undone, long enough to rally 
 all the forces of good will, all the undoubted 
 courage and zeal and patriotism that are 
 now at odds, in a devoted effort to meet the 
 greater dangers that are upon us. 
 
 For the enemy is at the gates. More than 
 that, there is some reason to fear that, through 
 dissensions from within, he may gain the 
 citadel. In their eagerness to embarrass the 
 advocates of what has been done, and with 
 
206 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 the vain hope of in some way undoing it, 
 and so lifting this Nation of seventy-five 
 millions bodily backward two years on its 
 path, there are many who are still putting 
 forth all their energies in straining our Con- 
 stitution and defying our history, to show 
 that we have no possessions whose people 
 are not entitled to citizenship and ultimately 
 to Statehood. Grant that, and instead of 
 reversing engines safely in mid-career, as 
 they vainly hope, they must simply plunge 
 us over the precipice. The movement began 
 in the demand that our Dingley tariff— as a 
 matter of right, not of policy, for most of 
 these people denounce the tariff itself as 
 barbarous— that our Dingley tariff should 
 of necessity be extended over Porto Rico as 
 an integral part of the United States. Fol- 
 lowing an assent to this must have come in- 
 evitably all the other rights and privileges 
 belonging to citizenship, and then no power 
 could prevent the admission of the State of 
 Porto Rico. 
 
 Some may think that in itself would be 
 no great thing, though it is for you to say 
 how Massachusetts would relish having this 
 mixed population, a little more than half 
 colonial Spanish, the rest negro and half- 
 breed, illiterate, alien in language, alien in 
 ideas of right, interests, and government, 
 send in from the mid- Atlantic, nearly a third 
 
A CONTINENTAL UNION 207 
 
 of the way over to Africa, two Senators to bal- 
 ance the votes of Mr. Hoar and Mr. Lodge ; 
 for you to say how Massachusetts would re- 
 gard the spectacle of her senatorial vote 
 nullified, and one third of her representa- 
 tion in the House offset on questions, for 
 instance, of sectional and purely Northern 
 interest, in the government of this conti- 
 nent, and in the administration of this pre- 
 cious heritage of our fathers. 
 
 Or, suppose Massachusetts to be so little 
 Yankee (in the best sense still) that she 
 could bear all this without murmur or 
 objection— is it to be imagined that she 
 can lift other States in this generation to 
 her altruistic level I How would Kansas, 
 for example, enjoy being balanced in the 
 Senate, and nearly balanced in the House, 
 on questions relating to the irrigation of 
 her arid plains, or the protection of her beet- 
 root industry, or on any others affecting the 
 great central regions of this continent, by 
 these voices from the watery waste of the 
 ocean ? Or how would West Virginia or Ore- 
 gon or Connecticut, or half a dozen others 
 of similar population, regard it to be actu- 
 ally outvoted in their own home, on their 
 own continent, by this Spanish and negro 
 waif from the mid- Atlantic ? 
 
 All this, in itself, may seem to some un- 
 important, negligible, even trivial. At any 
 
208 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 rate, it would be inevitable ; since no one is 
 wild enough to believe that Porto Rico can 
 be turned back to Spain, or bartered away, 
 or abandoned by the generation that took 
 it. But make its people citizens now, and 
 you have already made it, potentially, a 
 State. Then behind Porto Rico stands 
 Cuba, and behind Cuba, in time, stand the 
 whole of the West Indies, on whom that law 
 of political gravitation which John Quincy 
 Adams described will be perpetually acting 
 with redoubled force. And behind them — 
 no, far ahead of them, abreast of Porto Rico 
 itself— stand the Philippines! The Con- 
 stitution which our fathers reverently or- 
 dained for the United States of America is 
 thus tortured by its professed friends into a 
 crazy-quilt, under whose dirty folds must 
 huddle the United States of America, of 
 the West Indies, of the East Indies, and of 
 Polynesia ; and Pandemonium is upon us. 
 
 TheDegrada- I IMPLORE you, as thinking men, pause long 
 R^" blic?^ enough to realize the degradation of the Re- 
 public thus calmly contemplated by those 
 who proclaim this to be our constitutional 
 duty toward our possessions. The republi- 
 can institutions I have been trained to be- 
 lieve in were institutions founded, like those 
 of New England, on the Church and the 
 school-house. They constitute a system 
 
A CONTINENTAL UNION 209 
 
 only likely to endure among a people of 
 high virtue and high intelligence. The re- 
 publican government built up on this conti- 
 nent, while the most successful in the history 
 of the world, is also the most complicated, 
 the most expensive, and often the slowest. 
 Such are its complications and checks and 
 balances and interdependencies, which tax 
 the intelligence, the patience, and the virtue 
 of the highest Caucasian development, that 
 it is a system absolutely unworkable by a 
 group of Oriental and tropical races, more 
 or less hostile to each other, whose highest 
 type is a Chinese and Malay half-breed, 
 and am.ong whom millions, a majority pos- 
 sibly, are far below the level of the pure 
 Malay. 
 
 What holds a nation together, unless it 
 be community of interests, character, and 
 language, and contiguous territory ? What 
 would more thoroughly insure its speedily 
 flying to pieces than the lack of every one 
 of these requisites! Over and over, the 
 clearest-eyed students of history have pre- 
 dicted our own downfall even as a conti- 
 nental republic, in spite of our measurable 
 enjoyment of all of them. How near we all 
 believed we came to it once or twice ! How 
 manifestly, under the incongruous hodge- 
 podge of additions to the Union thus pro- 
 posed, we should be organizing with Satanic 
 
210 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 skill the exact conditions which have inva- 
 riably led to such downfalls elsewhere ! 
 
 Before the advent of the United States, 
 the history of the world's efforts at repub- 
 licanism was a monotonous record of failure. 
 Your very school-boys are taught the reason. 
 It was because the average of intelligence 
 and morality was too low; because they 
 lacked the self-restrained, self-governing 
 quality developed in the Anglo-Saxon bone 
 and fiber through all the centuries since 
 Eunnymede; because they grew unwieldy 
 and lost cohesion by reason of unrelated 
 territory, alien races and languages, and 
 inevitable territorial and climatic conflicts 
 of interest. 
 
 On questions vitally affecting the welfare 
 of this continent it is inconceivable, un- 
 thinkable, that even altruistic Massachusetts 
 should tolerate having her two Senators and 
 thirteen Eepresentatives neutralized by as 
 many from Mindanao. Yet Mindanao has 
 a greater population than Massachusetts, 
 and its Mohammedan Malays are as keen for 
 the conduct of public affairs, can talk as 
 much, and look as shrewdly for the profit 
 of it. 
 
 There are cheerful, happy-go-lucky public 
 men who assure us that the national diges- 
 tion has been proved equal to anything. 
 Has it I Are we content, for example, with 
 
A CONTINENTAL UNION 211 
 
 the way we have dealt with the negro prob- 
 lem in the Southern States ? Do we think 
 the suffrage question there is now on a 
 permanent basis which either we or our 
 Southern friends can be proud of, while we 
 lack the courage either honestly to enforce 
 the rule of the majority, or honestly to sanc- 
 tion a limitation of suffrage within lines of 
 intelligence and thrift? How well would 
 our famous national digestion probably ad- 
 vance if we filled up our Senate with twelve 
 or fourteen more Senators, representing 
 conditions incomparably worse ? 
 
 Is it said this danger is imaginary? At 
 this moment some of the purest and most 
 patriotic men in Massachusetts, along with 
 a great many of the very worst in the whole 
 country, are vehemently declaring that our 
 new possessions are already a part of the 
 United States; that in spite of the treaty 
 which reserved the question of citizenship 
 and political status for Congress, their peo- 
 ple are already citizens of the United States ; 
 and that no part of the United States can 
 be arbitrarily and permanently excluded 
 from Statehood. 
 
 The immediate contention, to be sure, is 
 only about Porto Eico, and it is only a very 
 little island. But who believes he can stop 
 the avalanche ? What wise man, at least, 
 will take the risk of starting it ? Who ima- 
 
212 PKOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 gines that we can take in Porto Rico and 
 keep out nearer islands when they come! 
 Powerful elements are already pushing 
 Cuba. Practically everybody recognizes 
 now that we must retain control of Cuba's 
 foreign relations. But beyond that, the 
 same influences that came so near hurrying 
 us into a recognition of the Cuban Republic 
 and the Cuban debt are now sure that Cuba 
 will very shortly be so " Americanized " 
 (that is, overrun with American specula- 
 tors) that it cannot be denied admission— 
 that, in fact, it will be as American as 
 Florida! And, after Cuba, the deluge! 
 Who fancies that we could then keep San 
 Domingo and Haiti out, or any West India 
 island that applied, or our friends the Ka- 
 nakas 1 Or who fancies that after the baser 
 sort have once tasted blood, in the form of 
 such rotten-borough States, and have learned 
 to form their larger combinations with them, 
 we shall still be able to admit as a matter of 
 right a part of the territory exacted from 
 Spain, and yet deny admission as a matter 
 of right to the rest ? 
 
 The Nation has lately been renewing its 
 affectionate memories of a man who died in 
 his effort to hold on, with or without their 
 consent, to the States we already have on 
 this continent, but who never dreamed of 
 casting a drag-net over the world's archi- 
 
A CONTINENTAL UNION 213 
 
 pelages for more. Do we remember his 
 birthday and forget his words ? " This Gov- 
 ernment "—meaning that under the Con- 
 stitution ordained for the United States of 
 ^mmm— "this Government cannot perma- 
 nently endure, half slave, half free." Who 
 disputes it now ? Well, then, can it endure 
 half civilized and enlightened, half barba- 
 rous and pagan; half white, half black, 
 brown, yellow, and mixed ; half Northern 
 and Western, half tropical and Oriental; 
 one half a homogeneous continent, the rest 
 in myriads of islands scattered half-way 
 around the globe, but all eager to partici- 
 pate in ruling this continent which our 
 fathers with fire and sword redeemed from 
 barbarism and subdued to the uses of the 
 highest civilization ? 
 
 I WILL not insult your intelligence or your ciamor that 
 patriotism by imagining it possible that in tJf®.^ "®* 
 
 • xf r. ' 1 ±^ 11 Disturb. 
 
 View 01 such considerations you could con- 
 sent to the madman's policy of taking these 
 islands we control into full partnership with 
 the States of this Union. Nor need you be 
 much disturbed by the interested outcries as 
 to the injustice you do by refusing to admit 
 them. 
 
 When it is said you are denying the nat- 
 ural rights Mr. Jefferson proclaimed, you 
 can answer that you are giving these peo- 
 
214 PBOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 pie, in their distant islands, the identical 
 form of government Mr. Jefferson himself 
 gave to the territories on this continent 
 which he bought. When it is said you are 
 denying our own cardinal doctrine of self- 
 government, you can point to the arrange- 
 ments for establishing every particle of 
 self-government with which these widely 
 different tribes can be safely trusted, con- 
 sistently with your responsibility for the 
 preservation of order and the protection of 
 life and property in that archipelago, and 
 the pledge of more the moment they are 
 found capable of it. "When you are asked, 
 as a leading champion^ asked the other 
 night at Philadelphia, " Does your liberation 
 of one people give you the right to subju- 
 gate another ? " you can answer him, " No ; 
 nor to allow and aid Aguinaldo to subju- 
 gate them, either, as you proposed." When 
 the idle quibble that after Dewey's victory 
 Spain had no sovereignty to cede is re- 
 peated, it may be asked, " Why acknowledge, 
 then, that she did cede it in Porto Rico and 
 relinquish it in Cuba, yet deny that she 
 could cede it in the Philippines I " Finally, 
 when they tell you in mock heroics, appro- 
 priated from the great days of the anti- 
 slavery struggle for the cause now of a 
 
 1 General Carl Schurz, at the Philadelphia Anti-Imperial- 
 ist Convention, February 22, 1900. 
 
A CONTINENTAL UNION 215 
 
 pinchbeck Washington, that no results of 
 the irrevocable past two years are settled, 
 that not even the title to our new posses- 
 sions is settled, and never will be until it is 
 settled according to their notions, you can 
 answer that then the title to Massachusetts 
 is not settled, nor the title to a square mile 
 of land in most of the States from ocean to 
 ocean. Over practically none of it did we 
 assume sovereignty by the consent of the 
 inhabitants. 
 
 Quite possibly these controversies may Where is 
 embarrass the Government and threaten the 1^^^^^^^ 
 security of the party in power. New and 
 perplexing responsibilities often do that. 
 But is it to the interest of the sincere and 
 patriotic among the discontented to produce 
 either result? The one thing sure is that 
 no party in power in this country will dare 
 abandon these new possessions. That being 
 so, do those of you who regret it prefer to 
 lose all influence over the outcome ! While 
 you are repining over what is beyond recall, 
 events are moving on. If you do not help 
 shape them, others, without your high princi- 
 ple and purity of motive, may. Can you won- 
 der if, while you are harassing the Adminis- 
 tration with impracticable demands for an 
 abandonment of territory which the Amer- 
 ican people will not let go, less unselfish in- 
 
216 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 fluences are busy presenting candidates for 
 all the offices in its organization I If the 
 friends of a proper civil service persist in 
 chasing the ignis fatuus of persuading Amer- 
 icans to throw away territory, while the 
 politicians are busy crowding their favorites 
 into the territorial offices, who will feel free 
 from self-reproach at the results? Grant 
 that the situation is bad. Can there be a 
 doubt of the duty to make the best of it? 
 Do you ask how? By being an active 
 patriot, not a passive one. By exerting, and 
 exerting now when it is needed, every form 
 of influence, personal, social, political, moral, 
 —the influence of the clubs, the Chambers 
 of Commerce, the manufactories, the colleges, 
 and the churches,— in favor of the purest, 
 the ablest, the most scientific, the most dis- 
 interested—in a word, the best possible civil 
 service for the new possessions that the 
 conscience and the capacity of America can 
 produce, with the most liberal use of all the 
 material available from native sources. 
 
 I HAVE done. I have no wish to argue, to 
 defend, or to attack. I have sought only to 
 point out what I conceive to be the present 
 danger and the present duty. It is not to 
 be doubted that all such considerations will 
 summon you to the high resolve that you 
 will neither shame the Republic by shirking 
 
A CONTINENTAL UNION 217 
 
 the task its own victory entails, nor despoil 
 the Republic by abandoning its rightful pos- 
 sessions, nor degrade the Republic by ad- 
 missions of unfit elements to its Union ; but 
 that you will honor it, enrich it, ennoble it, 
 by doing your utmost to make the adminis- 
 tration of these possessions worthy of the 
 Nation that Washington founded and. Lin- 
 coln preserved. My last word is an appeal 
 to stand firm and stand all together for the 
 Continental Union and for a pure civil 
 service for the Islands. 
 
OUE NEW INTERESTS 
 
This address was delivered on Charter Day at the Uni- 
 versity of California, on March 23, 1900. 
 
OUR NEW INTERESTS 
 
 MY subject lias been variously stated in 
 your different newspapers as " Current 
 National Questions," or " The Present Na- 
 tional Question," or " General Expositions ; 
 Not on Anything in Particular." When your 
 President honored me with his invitation to 
 a duty so high and so sudden that it might 
 almost be dignified by the name of a draft, 
 he gave me nearly equal license. I was to 
 speak " on anything growing out of the late 
 war with Spain." 
 
 How that war resembles the grippe ! You 
 remember the medical definition by an 
 authority no less high than our present 
 distinguished Secretary of State. "The 
 grippe," said Colonel Hay, " is that disease 
 in which, after you have been cured, you 
 get steadily worse every day of your con- 
 valescence"! There are people of so little 
 faith as to say that this exactly describes 
 the late war with Spain. 
 
 If one is to speak at all of its present 
 aspects, on this high-day of your University 
 
 221 
 
222 PBOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 year, he should do so only as a patriot, not 
 as a partizan. But he cannot avoid tread- 
 ing on ground where the ashes are yet warm, 
 and discussing questions which, in spite of 
 the present intermingling of party lines and 
 confusion of party ideas, will presently be 
 found the very battle-ground of campaign 
 oratory and hostile hosts. You will credit 
 me, I hope, with sufficient respect for the 
 proprieties of this platform to avoid partizan 
 arguments, under the warrant of your dis- 
 tinguished President to discuss national 
 questions from any point of view that a 
 patriot can take. It is profoundly to be 
 regretted that on these questions, which 
 pure patriotism alone should weigh and 
 decide, mere partizanship is already grasp- 
 ing the scales. One thing at least I may 
 venture to promise before this audience of 
 scholars and gentlemen on this Charter Day 
 of your great University: I shall ask the 
 Democrat of the present day to agree with 
 me no farther than Thomas Jefferson went, 
 and the Eepublican of the day no farther 
 than Abraham Lincoln went. To adapt 
 from a kindred situation a phrase by the 
 greatest popular orator of my native State, 
 and, I still like to think, one of the greatest 
 of the country in this century, — a phrase 
 applied by him to the compromise measures 
 of 1848, but equally fitting to-day, — "If we are 
 
OUB NEW INTEBESTS 223 
 
 forced to part company with, some here 
 whom it has been our pleasure and pride to 
 follow in the past, let us console ourselves 
 by the reflection that we are following in 
 the footsteps of the fathers and saviors of 
 the Eepublic, their garments dyed with the 
 blood' of the Red Sea, through which they 
 led us out of the land of bondage, their locks 
 still moist with the mists of the Jordan, 
 across which they brought us to this land 
 of liberty."! 
 
 Yet, even with those from whom we must To be Taken 
 thus part company there are elemental now?*^*"*^ 
 truths of the situation on which we must 
 still agree. Some things reasonable men may 
 take for granted — some that surely have 
 been settled in the conflict of arms, of diplo- 
 macy, and of debate since the spring of 1898. 
 Regret them if you choose, but do not, like 
 children, seek to make them as though they 
 were not, by shutting your eyes to them. 
 
 The new territories in the West Indies 
 and the East are ours, to have and to hold, 
 by the supreme law of the land, and by a 
 title which the whole civilized world recog- 
 nizes and respects. We shall not speedily 
 get rid of them — whoever may desire it. 
 The American people are in no mood to give 
 them back to Spain, or to sell them, or to 
 
 1 Thomas Corwin of Ohio, in United States Senate, 1848. 
 
224 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 abandon them. We have all the power we 
 need to acquire and to govern them. What- 
 ever theories men may quote from Mr. Cal- 
 houn or from Mr. Chief Justice Taney, the 
 uniform conduct of the National Adminis- 
 tration throughout a century, under what- 
 ever party, justifies the triumphant declara- 
 tion of Daniel Webster to Mr. Calhoun, 
 over half a century ago, and the consenting 
 opinions of the courts for a long term since, 
 down to the very latest in the line, by 
 your own Judge Morrow, to the effect, in a 
 word, that this Government, like every other 
 one in the world, has power to acquire " ter- 
 ritory and other property " anywhere, and 
 govern it as it pleases.^ 
 
 1 Over a month after the State Prison for life. Judge 
 above was delivered came the Loehren denied the writ on 
 first recent judicial expres- the ground that the eonvic- 
 sion of a contrary view. It tion took place before the 
 was by Judge William Loch- Treaty of Paris, by which 
 ren of the United States Cir- Spain ceded sovereignty in 
 cuit Court at St. Paul, in the Porto Rico to the United 
 case of habeas corpus pro- States, had been ratified by 
 ceedings against Reeve, war- the Senate. The Judge went 
 den of the Minnesota State on, however, to argue that 
 Prison at Stillwater, for the Ortiz could not have been 
 release of a Porto Rican lawfully tried before the Mili- 
 named Ortiz. He was held tary Commission after the 
 for the murder of a private ratification of the treaty, 
 soldier of the United States, because the island of Porto 
 sentenced to death by a Mill- Rico thereby became an in- 
 tary Commission at San Juan, tegral part of the United 
 and, on commutation of the States, subject to the Consti- 
 sentence by the President of tution and privileged and 
 the United States, sent to this bound by its provisions. As 
 
OUK NEW INTEEESTS 225 
 
 On these points I make bold to repeat 
 what I felt warranted in saying a fortnight 
 ago within sight of Bunker Hill — that there 
 is every evidence that the American people 
 have distinctly and definitely made up their 
 minds. They have not been persuaded and 
 they cannot be persuaded that this is an 
 inferior government, incapable of any duty 
 Providence may send its way — duties which 
 other nations could discharge, but we cannot. 
 So I venture to affirm the impossibility that 
 any party in power, whether the present one 
 or its opponent, could soon, if ever, abandon 
 one foot of the territory gained in the late 
 war. 
 
 We are gathered on another old Spanish 
 territory taken by our country in war. It 
 shows what Americans do with such acqui- 
 sitions. Before you expect to see Porto 
 Rico given back to Spain or the Philippines 
 abandoned to Aguinaldo, wait till we are 
 ready to declare, as Daniel Webster did in 
 the Senate, that this California of your pride 
 and glory is " not worth a dollar," and throw 
 
 this point was not involved It clearly shows, however, 
 
 in the case he was deciding, what would he his decision 
 
 this is, of course, merely a whenever the case might 
 
 dictum — the expression of come before him. His argu- 
 
 opinion on an outside matter ment followed closely the 
 
 by a Democratic judge who lines taken by Mr. Calhoun 
 
 was recently transferred by in the Senate and Mr. Chief 
 
 Mr. Cleveland from a Wash- Justice Taney in the Dred 
 
 ington bureau to the bench. Scott decision. 
 
 15 
 
220 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 back the worthless thing on the hands of 
 unoffending Mexico. Till then, let us as 
 practical and sensible men recognize that 
 what is past is settled. 
 
 Duty First; Thus far have we come in these strange 
 terUt^iUso"" c^^^ses and to these unexpected and unwel- 
 come tasks by following, at each succeeding 
 emergency, the path of clear, absolute, and 
 unavoidable duty. The only point in the 
 whole national line of conduct, from the 
 spring of 1898 on to this March morning of 
 1900, at which our Government could have 
 stopped with honor, was at the outset. I, 
 for one, would gladly have stopped there. 
 How was it then with some at the West 
 who are discontented now? Shake not 
 your gory locks at me or at my fellow-citi- 
 zens in the East. You cannot say we did 
 it. In 1898, just as a few years earlier in the 
 debate about Venezuela, the loudest calls 
 for a belligerent policy came not from the 
 East, "the cowardly, commercial East," as 
 we were sometimes described, but from the 
 patriotic and warlike West. The farther 
 West you came, the louder the cry for war, 
 till it reached its very climax on what we 
 used to call the frontier, and was sent thun- 
 dering Eastward upon the National Capital 
 in rolling reverberations from the Sierras 
 and the Rockies which few public men cared 
 
OUR NEW INTERESTS 227 
 
 to defy. At that moment, perhaps, if this 
 popular and congressional demand had not 
 pushed us forward, we might have stopped 
 with honor — certainly not later. From 
 the day war was flagrant down to this hour 
 there has been no forward step which a 
 peremptory national or international obli- 
 gation did not require. To the mandate 
 alone of Duty, stern daughter of the voice 
 of God, the American people have bowed, 
 as, let us hope, they always will. It is not 
 true that, in the final decision as to any one 
 step in the great movement hitherto, our in- 
 terests have been first or chiefly considered. 
 But in all these constitutional discussions 
 to which we have referred, one clause in the 
 Constitution has been curiously thrust aside. 
 The framers placed it on the very forefront 
 of the edifice they were rearing, and there 
 declared for our instruction and guidance 
 that "the people do ordain and establish 
 this Constitution ... to promote the gen- 
 eral welfare." By what right do statesmen 
 now venture to think that they can leave 
 our national interests out of the account? 
 Who and where is the sentimentalist who 
 arraigns us for descending to too sordid a 
 level when we recognize our interest to 
 hold what the discharge of duty has placed 
 in our hand 1 Since when has it been states- 
 manship to shut our eyes to the interests of 
 
928 PKOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 our own country, and patriotism to consider 
 only the interests or the wishes of others ? 
 For my own part, I confess to a belief in stand- 
 ing up first for my own, and find it difficult 
 to cherish much respect for the man who 
 won't: first for my own family rather than 
 some other man's ; first for my own city and 
 State rather than for somebody else's ; first 
 for my own country — first, please God ! for 
 the United States of America. And so, hav- 
 ing in the past, too fully, perhaps, and more 
 than once, considered the question of our new 
 possessions in the light of our duty, I propose 
 now to look at them further, and unblush- 
 ingly, in the light of our interests. 
 
 TheOidFaith Which way do your interests lie 1 Which 
 nians"***'" ^^J ^^ ^^® interests of California and the 
 city of San Francisco lie ? 
 
 Three or four days ago, when your Presi- 
 dent honored me with the summons I am 
 now obeying, there came back to me a vague 
 memory of the visions cherished by the men 
 you rate the highest in California, your 
 " Pioneers " and " Forty-Niners," as to the 
 future of the empire they were founding on 
 this coast. There lingered in my mind the 
 flavor at least of an old response by a Cali- 
 fornia public man to the compliment a " ten- 
 derfoot" New-Yorker, in the innocence of 
 his heart, had intended to pay, when he said 
 
OUR NEW INTERESTS 229 
 
 that with this splendid State, this glorious 
 harbor, and the Pacific Ocean, you have all 
 the elements to build up here the New York 
 of the West. The substance of the Cali- 
 fornian's reply was that, through mere lack 
 of knowledge of the country to which he be- 
 longed, the well-meaning New-Yorker had 
 greatly underrated the future that awaited 
 San Francisco — that long before Macaulay's 
 New-Zealander had transferred himself from 
 the broken arches of London Bridge to those 
 of Brooklyn, it would be the pride and boast 
 of the denizens of those parts that New York 
 had held its own so finely as still to be fairly 
 called the San Francisco of the East ! 
 
 While the human memory is the most 
 tenacious and nearest immortal of all things 
 known to us, it is also at times the most 
 elusive. Even with the suggestions of Mr. 
 Hittell and the friendly files of the Mechan- 
 ics' Library, I did not succeed in finding that 
 splendid example of San Francisco faith 
 which my memory had treasured. Yet I 
 found some things not very unlike it to show 
 what manner of men they were that laid the 
 foundations of this commonwealth on the 
 Pacific, what high hopes sustained them, 
 and what radiant future they confidently 
 anticipated. 
 
 Here, for example, was Mr. William A. 
 Howard, whom I found declaring, not quite 
 
230 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 a third of a century ago, that San Francisco 
 would yet be the largest American city on the 
 largest ocean in the world. At least, so he is 
 reported in " The Bulletin »» and " The Call," 
 though "The Alta" puts it with an "if,'^ its 
 report reading : " If the development of com- 
 merce require that the largest ocean shall 
 have the largest city, then it would follow 
 that as the Atlantic is smaller than the Pa- 
 cific, so in the course of years New York will 
 be smaller than San Francisco." 
 
 And here, again, was Mr. Delos Lake, main- 
 taining that the " United States is now on a 
 level with the most favored nations; that 
 its geographical position, its line of palatial 
 steamers established on the Pacific Ocean by 
 American enterprise, and soon to be followed 
 by ocean telegraphs, must before long render 
 this continent the proper avenue of com- 
 merce between Europe and Asia, and raise 
 this metropolis of the Pacific to the loftiest 
 height of monetary power." 
 
 There was a reason, too, widely held by 
 the great men of the day, whose names have 
 passed into history, for some such faith. 
 Thus an old Californian of high and happy 
 fame, Major-General Henry W. Halleck, 
 speaking of San Francisco, said : " Standing 
 here on the extreme Western verge of the 
 Republic, overlooking the coast of Asia and 
 occupying the future center of trade and 
 
OUR NEW INTERESTS 231 
 
 commerce of the two worlds, ... if that 
 civilization which so long has moved west- 
 ward with the Star of Empire is now, puri- 
 fied by the principles of true Christianity, to 
 go on around the world until it reaches the 
 place of its origin and makes the Orient 
 blossom again with its benign influences, 
 San Francisco must be made the abutment, 
 and International Law the bridge, by which 
 it will cross the Pacific Ocean. The enter- 
 prise of the merchants of California has 
 already laid the foundation of the abut- 
 ments ; diplomacy and steam and telegraph 
 companies are rapidly accumulating material 
 for the construction of the bridge." Thus 
 far Halleck. But have the Californians of 
 this generation abandoned the bridge ? Are 
 we to believe those men of to-day who tell 
 us it is not worth crossing I 
 
 Here, again, was Eugene Casserly, speak- 
 ing of right for the California Democracy of 
 that date. Writing with deliberation more 
 than a quarter of a century ago, he said: 
 " We expect to stand on equal grounds with 
 the most favored of nations. We ask no 
 more in the contest for that Eastern trade 
 which has always heretofore been thought 
 to carry with it the commercial supremacy 
 of the globe. America asks only a fair field, 
 even as against her oldest and most formi- 
 dable rivals. Nature, and our position as the 
 
232 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 nearest neighbors to eastern Asia, separated 
 from her only by the great highways of the 
 ocean, have placed in our hands all the ad- 
 vantages that we need. . . . Favored by 
 vicinity, by soil and climate on our own ter- 
 ritory, with a people inferior to none in en- 
 terprise and vigor, without any serious rivals 
 anywhere, all this Pacific coast is ours or is 
 our tributary. . . . We hold as ours the 
 great ocean that so lately rolled in solitary 
 grandeur from the equator to the pole. In 
 the changes certain to be effected in the cur- 
 rents of finance, of exchange, and of trade, 
 by the telegraph and the railroads, bringing 
 the financial centers of Europe and of the 
 United States by way of San Francisco 
 within a few weeks of the ports of China anS 
 of the East, San Francisco must become at 
 no distant day the banker, the factor, and 
 the carrier of the trade of eastern Asia and 
 the Pacific, to an extent to which it is diffi- 
 cult to assign limits." Are the people now 
 lacking in the enterprise and vigor which 
 Mr. Casserly claimed for them? Have the 
 limits he scorned been since assigned, and 
 do the Californians of to-day assent to the 
 restriction ? 
 
 Take yet another name, treasured, I 
 know, on the roll of California's most wor- 
 thy servants, another Democrat. Grovernor 
 Haight, only a third of a century ago, said : 
 
OUE NEW INTERESTS 233 
 
 " I see in the near future a vast com- 
 merce springing up between the Chinese 
 Empire and the nations of the West ; an in- 
 terchange of products and manufactures 
 mutually beneficial ; the watchword of prog- 
 ress and the precepts of a pure religion ut- 
 tered to the ears of a third of the human 
 race." And addressing some representatives 
 of that vast region, he added, with a burst 
 of fine confidence in the supremacy of San 
 Francisco's position : " As Chief Magistrate 
 of this Western State of the Nation, I wel- 
 come you to the territory of the Eepublic, 
 ... in no selfish or narrow spirit, either of 
 personal advantage or seeking exclusive 
 privileges for our own over the other na- 
 tions ; and so, in the name of commerce, of 
 civilization, of progress, of humanity, and 
 of religion, on behalf not merely of Califor- 
 nia or America, but of Europe and of man- 
 kind, I bid you and your associates welcome 
 and God-speed." 
 
 Perhaps this may be thought merely an 
 exuberant hospitality. Let me quote, then, 
 from the same man, speaking again as the 
 Governor of the State, at the Capitol of the 
 State, in the most careful oration of his life : 
 " What shall be said of the future of Califor- 
 nia ? Lift your eyes and expand your con- 
 ceptions to take in the magnitude of her 
 destiny. An empire in area, presenting ad- 
 
234 PKOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 vantages and attractions to the people of the 
 Eastern States and Europe far beyond those 
 presented by any other State or Territory — 
 who shall set limits to her progress, or paint 
 in fitting colors the splendor of her future ? 
 . . . Mismanagement may at times retard 
 her progress, but if the people of California 
 are true to themselves, this State is destined 
 to a high position, not only among her sister 
 States, but among the commonwealths of 
 the world, . . . when her ships visit every 
 shore, and her merchant princes control the 
 commerce of the great ocean and the popu- 
 lous countries upon its borders/' 
 
 Was Governor Haight alone, or was he in 
 advance of his time ! Go yet farther back, 
 to the day when Judge Nathaniel Bennett 
 was assigned by the people of San Francisco 
 to the task of delivering the oration when 
 ' they celebrated the admission of California 
 into the Union, on October 29, 1850 : " Judg- 
 ing from the past, what have we not a right 
 to expect in the future? The world has 
 never witnessed anything equal or similar 
 to our career hitherto. . . . Our State is a 
 marvel to ourselves, and a miracle to the 
 rest of the world. Nor is the influence of 
 California confined within her own borders. 
 . . . The islands nestled in the embrace of 
 the Pacific have felt the quickening breath of 
 her enterprise. . , . She has caused the hum 
 
OUR NEW INTERESTS 235 
 
 of busy life to be heard in the wilderness 
 where rolls the Oregon, and where until re- 
 cently was heard no sound save his own 
 dashings. Even the wall of Chinese exclu- 
 siveness has been broken down, and the 
 children of the Sun have come forth to view 
 the splendors of her achievements. ... It 
 is all but a foretaste of the future. . . . The 
 world's trade is destined soon to be changed. 
 . . . The commerce of Asia and the islands 
 of the Pacific, instead of pursuing the ocean 
 track by the way of Cape Horn or the Cape 
 of Good Hope, or even taking the shorter 
 route of the Isthmus of Darien or the Isth- 
 mus of Tehuantepec, will enter the Golden 
 Gate of California and deposit its riches in 
 the lap of our city. . . . New York will then 
 become what London now is — the great 
 central point of exchange, the heart of 
 trade, the force of whose contraction and* 
 expansion will be felt throughout every 
 artery of the commercial world; and San 
 Francisco will then stand the second city of 
 America. . . . The responsibility rests upon 
 us whether this first American State of the 
 Pacific shall in youth and ripe manhood 
 realize the promise of infancy. We may 
 cramp her energies and distort her form, or 
 we may make her a rival even of the Empire 
 State of the Atlantic. The best wishes of 
 Americans are with us. They expect that 
 
236 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 the Herculean youth will grow to a Titan in 
 his manhood." 
 
 Nor was even Judge Bennett the pioneer 
 of such ideas. Long before he spoke, or be- 
 fore the Stars and Stripes had been raised 
 over Yerbabuena, as far back as in 1835, 
 the English people and the British Govern- 
 ment had been advised by Alexander Forbes 
 that " The situation of California for inter- 
 course with other countries and its capacity 
 for commerce — should it ever be possessed 
 by a numerous and industrious population 
 — are most favorable. The port of San 
 Francisco for size and safety is hardly sur- 
 passed by any in the world ; it is so situated 
 as to be made the center of the commercial 
 relations which may take place between Asia 
 and the western coast of America. . . . The 
 vessels of the Spanish Philippines Company 
 on their passage from Manila to San Bias and 
 Acapulco generally called at Monterey for re- 
 freshments and orders. . . . Thus it appears as 
 if California was designed by nature to be the 
 medium of connecting commercially Asia 
 with America, and as the depot of the trade 
 between these two vast continents, which 
 possess the elements of unbounded commer- 
 cial interchange ; the one overflowing with 
 all the rich and luxurious commodities al- 
 ways characteristic of the East, the other 
 possessing a superabundance of the precious 
 
OUK NEW INTEEESTS 237 
 
 metals and other valuable products to give 
 in exchange. ... If ever a route across the 
 Isthmus shall be opened, California will then 
 be one of the most interesting commercial sit- 
 uations in the world ; it would in that case 
 be the rendezvous for all vessels engaged in 
 the trade between Europe and Asia by that 
 route. It is nearly mid-voyage between 
 these two countries, and would furnish pro- 
 visions and all naval supplies in the most 
 ample abundance, and most probably would 
 become a mart for the interchaoge of the 
 commodities of the three continents." 
 
 Let no man fancy that these sometimes ex- Has the 
 uberant expressions of a noble and far-seeing ^eart and* 
 faith by your own predecessors and by a Shriveled? 
 prescient foreigner have been revived in de- 
 rision or even in doubt. Those were the 
 days when, if some were for a party, at any 
 rate all were for the State. These were great 
 men, far-seeing, courageous, patriotic, the 
 men of Forty-nine, who in such lofty spirit 
 and with such high hope laid the foundation 
 of this empire on the Pacific. Distance did 
 not disturb them, nor difficulties discourage. 
 There sits on your platform to-day a man 
 who started from New York to California by 
 what he thought the quickest route in De- 
 cember, 1848 ; went south from the Isthmus 
 as the only means of catching a ship for the 
 
238 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 north, and finally entered this harbor, by the 
 way of Chile, in June, 1849. He could go 
 now to Manila thrice over and back in less 
 time. And yet there are Californians of this 
 day who profess to shrink in alarm from the 
 remoteness and inaccessibility of our new 
 possessions ! Has the race shriveled under 
 these summer skies ? Has it grown old be- 
 fore its time ; is its natural strength abated ? 
 Are the old energy and the old courage 
 gone ? Has the soul of this people shrunk 
 within them I Or is it only that there are 
 strident voices from California, sounding 
 across the Sierras and the Rockies, that mis- 
 represent and shame a State whose sons are 
 not unworthy of their fathers ? 
 
 The arm of the Californian has not been 
 shortened, that he cannot reach out. The 
 salt has not left him, that he cannot occupy 
 and possess the great ocean that the Lord 
 has given him. Nor has he forgotten the 
 lesson taught by the history of his own race 
 (and of the greatest nations of the world), 
 that oceans no longer separate — they unite. 
 There are no protracted and painful strug- 
 gles to build a Pacific railroad for your next 
 great step. The right of way is assured, the 
 grading is done, the rails are laid. You 
 have but to buy your rolling-stock at the 
 Union Iron Works, draw up your time-table, 
 and begin business. Or do you think it 
 
OUE NEW INTERESTS 239 
 
 better that your Pacific railroad should end 
 in the air ? Is a six-thousand-mile extension 
 to a through line worthless! Can your 
 Scott shipyards only turn out men-of-war f 
 Can your Senator Perkins only run ships 
 that creep along the coast 1 Is the broad 
 ocean too deep for him or too wide 1 
 
 Contiguous land gives a nation cohesion; NewFieWs 
 but it is the water that brings other nations ?o"Ahem!^^** 
 near. The continent divides you from cus- 
 tomers beyond the mountains; but the 
 ocean unites you with the whole boundless, 
 mysterious Orient. There you find a popu- 
 lation of over six hundred millions of souls, 
 between one fourth and one third of the in- 
 habitants of the globe. You are not at a 
 disadvantage in trading with them because 
 they have the start of you in manufactures 
 or skill or capital, as you would be in the 
 countries to which the Atlantic leads. They 
 oifer you the best of all commerce — that with 
 people less advanced, exchanging the prod- 
 ucts of different zones, a people awakening 
 to the complex wants of a civilization that 
 is just stirring them to a new life. 
 
 Have you considered what urgent need 
 there will be for those new fields ! It is no 
 paltry question of an outlet for the surplus 
 products of a mere nation of seventy-five 
 millions that confronts you. Your mathe- 
 
240 PROBLEMS OP EXPANSION 
 
 matical professors will tell you that, at the 
 ratio of increase established in this Nation 
 by the census returns for the century just 
 closing, its population would amount during 
 the next century to the bewildering and in- 
 comprehensible figure of twelve hundred 
 millions. The ratio, of course, will not be 
 maintained, since the exceptional circum- 
 stances that caused it cannot continue. But 
 no one gives reasons why it should not be 
 half as great. Suppose it to turn out only 
 one fourth as great. Is it the part of states- 
 manship — is it even the part of every-day, 
 matter-of-fact common sense — to reject or 
 despise these Oriental openings for the prod- 
 ucts of this people of three hundred million 
 souls the Twentieth Century would need to 
 nourish within our borders ? Our total an- 
 nual trade with China now — with this cus- 
 tomer whom the friendly ocean is ready to 
 bring to your very doors — is barely twenty 
 millions. That would be a commerce of the 
 gross amount of six and two third cents for 
 each inhabitant of our country in the next 
 century, with that whole vast region adjoin- 
 ing you, wherein dwell one fourth of the 
 human race ! 
 
 Even the Spanish trade with the Philip- 
 pines was thirty millions. They are merely 
 our stepping-stone. But would a wise man 
 kick the stepping-stone away ! 
 
OUR NEW INTERESTS 241 
 
 San Francisco is exceptionally prosperous The New 
 now. So is the State of California. Why? «'««^ P^"* 
 Partly, no doubt, because you are sharing 
 the prosperity which blesses the whole coun- 
 try. But is that all ! What is this increase 
 in the shipping at your wharves? What 
 was the meaning of those crowded columns 
 of business statistics your newspapers 
 proudly printed last New Year's ? — what the 
 significance of the increase in exports and 
 imports, far beyond mere army require- 
 ments ? Why is every room taken in your 
 big buildings? What has crowded your 
 docks, filled your streets, quickened your 
 markets, rented your stores and dwellings, 
 sent all this new blood pulsing through 
 your veins — made you like the worn Eiche- 
 lieu when, in that moment, there entered 
 his spent veins the might of France ? 
 
 Was it the rage you have witnessed among 
 some of your own leaders against everything 
 that has been done during the past two 
 years — the warning against everything that 
 is about to be done ? Was it the proof of 
 our un worthiness and misdeeds, to which we 
 all penitentially listened, as so eloquently 
 set forth from the high places of light and 
 leading — the long lamentation over how on 
 almost every field we had shown our inca- 
 pacity ; how unfit we were to govern cities, 
 unfit to govern territories, unfit to govern 
 
 16 
 
242 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 Indians, unfit to govern ourselves — how, in 
 good old theological phrase, we were from 
 head to foot a mass of national wounds and 
 bruises and putrefying sores, and there was 
 no health in us ? Was it the demonstration 
 that what we needed was to sit under the 
 live-oaks and " develop the individual man," 
 nor dare to look beyond ? Was it the f orget- 
 fulness that muscles grow strong only with 
 exercise; that it is the duties of manhood 
 that take the acrid humors out of a youth's 
 blood ; that it is great responsibility, man- 
 fully met, not cowardly evaded, that sobers 
 and steadies and ennobles ? 
 
 Some one has lately been quoting Lincoln's 
 phrase, " We cannot escape history." It is a 
 noble and inspiring thought. Most of us dare 
 not look for a separate appearance at that 
 greatest of human bars — may hope only to 
 be reckoned in bulk with the multitude. 
 But even so, however it may be with others 
 on this coast, I, for one, want to be counted 
 with those who had faith in my country- 
 men ; who did not think them incapable of 
 tasks which duty imposed and to which other 
 nations had been equal; who did not dis- 
 parage their powers or distrust their honest 
 intentions or urge them to refuse their op- 
 portunities ; to be counted with those who at 
 least had open eyes when they stood in the 
 Golden Gate ! 
 
OUB NEW INTERESTS 243 
 
 I DO not doubt — you do not doubt — they Wards or 
 are the majority. They will prevail. What partners. 
 Duty requires us to take, an enlightened re- 
 gard for our own interests will require us to 
 hold. The islands will not be thrown away. 
 The American people have made up their 
 minds on that point, if on nothing else. 
 
 Well, then, how shall the islands be 
 treated ! Are they to be our wards, objects 
 of our duty and our care ; or are they to be 
 our full partners ? We may as well look that 
 question straight in the face. There is no 
 way around it, or over or under or out of 
 it ; and no way of aimlessly and helplessly 
 shuffling it off on the future, for it presses in 
 the legislation of Congress to-day. Wards, 
 flung on our hands by the shipwreck of 
 Spain, helpless, needy, to be cared for and 
 brought up and taught to stand alone as far 
 as they can ; or full partners with us in the 
 government and administration of the price- 
 less heritage of our fathers, the peerless Re- 
 public of the world and of all the centuries 
 — that is the question ! 
 
 Men often say — I have even heard it 
 within a week on this coast — that all this is 
 purely imaginary ; that nobody favors their 
 admission as States. Let us see. An ounce 
 of fact in a matter of such moment is worth 
 tons of random denial. Within the month a 
 distinguished and experienced United States 
 
244 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 Senator from the North has announced that 
 he sees no reason why Porto Rico should not 
 be a State. Within the same period one of 
 the leading religious journals of the conti- 
 nent has declared that it would be a selfish 
 and brutal tyranny that would exclude Porto 
 Rico from Statehood. Only a few weeks 
 earlier one of our ablest generals, now com- 
 manding a department in one of our depen- 
 dencies, a laureled hero of two wars, has 
 officially reported to the Government in 
 favor of steps for the admission of Cuba as a 
 State. On every hand rise cries that in any 
 event they cannot and must not be depen- 
 dencies. Some of these are apparently for 
 mere partizan effect, but others are the 
 obvious promptings of a sincere and high- 
 minded, however mistaken, conviction. 
 
 I shall venture, then, to consider it as a 
 real and not an abstract question, — "aca- 
 demic," I think it is the fad of these later 
 days to say, — and I propose again (and 
 again unblushingly) to consider it from what 
 has been called a low and sordid point of 
 view — so low, in fact, so unworthy the re- 
 spect of latter-day altruistic philosophers, 
 that it merely concerns the interests of our 
 country ! 
 
 For I take it that if there is one subject 
 on which this Union has a right to consult 
 its own interests and inclinations, it is on 
 
OUR NEW INTERESTS 245 
 
 the question of admitting new States, or of 
 putting territory in a position where it can 
 ever claim or expect admission ; just as the 
 one subject on which nobody disputes the 
 right of a mercantile firm to follow its own 
 inclinations is on that of taking in some un- 
 fortunate business man as a partner ; or the 
 right of an individual to follow his own in- 
 clinations about marrying some needy spin- 
 ster he may have felt it a duty to befriend. 
 Because they are helpless and needy and on 
 our hands, must we take them into partner- 
 ship ? Because we are going to help them, 
 are we bound to marry them ? 
 
 Partly through mere inadvertence, but The 
 partly also through crafty design, the wave oJ^g^tion *" 
 of generous sympathy for the suffering little 
 island of Porto Eico which has been sweep- 
 ing over the country has come very near 
 being perverted into the means of turning 
 awry the policy and permanent course of 
 a great Nation. To relieve the temporary 
 distress by recognizing the Porto Eicans as 
 citizens, and by an extension of the Dingley 
 tariff to Porto Eico as a matter of constitu- 
 tional right, foreclosed the whole question. 
 
 I know it is said, plausibly enough, in 
 some quarters, that Congress cannot fore- 
 close the question, — has nothing to do with 
 it, in fact, — but that it is a matter to be set- 
 
246 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 tied only by the Supreme Law of the land, 
 of which Congress is merely the servant. 
 The point need not be disputed. But it is 
 an unquestioned part of the Supreme Law 
 of the land, as authoritative within its sphere 
 and as binding as any clause in the Consti- 
 tution itself, which declares, in the duly 
 ratified Treaty of Paris, that the whole 
 question of the civil rights and political 
 status of the inhabitants in this newly ac- 
 quired property of ours shall be reserved for 
 the decision of Congress! Let those who 
 invoke the Supreme Law of the land learn 
 and bow to it. 
 
 As to the mere duty of prompt and ample 
 relief for the distress in Porto Eico, there is 
 happily not a shade of difference of opinion 
 among the seventy-five millions of our in- 
 habitants. Nor was the free-trade remedy, 
 so vehemently recommended, important 
 enough in itself to provoke serious objection 
 or delay. Cynical observers might find, in- 
 deed, a gentle amusement in noting how in 
 the name of humanity the blessings of free 
 trade were invoked by means of the demand 
 for an immediate application of the highest 
 protective tariff known to the history of 
 economics ! The very men who denounce 
 this tariff as a Chinese wall are the men who 
 demand its application. They say, "Grive 
 Porto Rico free trade," but what their pro- 
 
OUE NEW INTERESTS 247 
 
 posal means is, " Deprive Porto Eico of free 
 trade, and put her within the barbarous 
 Chinese wall." Their words sound like of- 
 fering her the liberty of trade with all the 
 world, but mean forbidding her to trade 
 with anybody except the United States. 
 
 The importance of the question from an importance 
 economic point of view has been ludicrously QuggJion. 
 exaggerated on both sides. The original 
 prosposal would have in itself done far less 
 harm than its opponents imagined and far 
 less good than its supporters hoped. Yet to 
 the extent of its influence it would have been 
 a step backward. It would have been the 
 rejection of the modern and scientific colo- 
 nial method, and the adoption instead of 
 the method which has resulted in the most 
 backward, the least productive, and the 
 least prosperous colonies in the world — the 
 method, in a word, of Spain herself. For 
 the Spanish tariff, in fact, made with some 
 little reference to colonial interests, we 
 should merely have substituted our own 
 tariff, made with sole reference to our own 
 interests. A more distinct piece of black- 
 smith work in economic legislation for a 
 helpless, lonely little island in the mid- At- 
 lantic could not well be imagined. What 
 had poor Porto Rico done, that she should 
 be fenced in from all the Old World by an 
 
248 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 elaborate and highly complicated system of 
 duties upon imports, calculated to protect 
 the myriad varying manufactures and main- 
 tain the high wages of this vast new con- 
 tinent, and as little adapted to Porto Rico's 
 simple needs as is a Jorgensen repeater for 
 the uses of a kitchen clock? Why at the 
 same stroke must she be crushed, as she 
 would have been if the Constitution were 
 extended to her, by a system of internal 
 taxation, which we ourselves prefer to regard 
 as highly exceptional, on tobacco, on tobacco- 
 dealers, on bank-checks, on telegraph and 
 telephone messages, on bills of lading, bills 
 of exchange, leases, mortgages, life-insurance, 
 passenger tickets, medicines, legacies, inheri- 
 tances, mixed flour, and so on and so on, 
 ad infinitum, ad nauseam ? Did she deserve 
 so badly of us that, even in a hurry, we 
 should do this thing to her in the name of 
 humanity ? 
 
 All the English-speaking world, outside 
 some members of the United States Congress 
 perhaps, long since found a more excellent 
 way. It is simplicity itself. It legislates 
 for a community like Porto Rico with refer- 
 ence to the situation and wants of that com- 
 munity — not with reference to somebody 
 else. It applies to Porto Rico a system de- 
 vised for Porto Rico — not one devised for 
 a distant and vastly larger country, with 
 
OUR NEW INTERESTS 249 
 
 totally different situation and wants. It 
 makes no effort to exploit Porto Eico for 
 the benefit of another country. It does 
 make a studied and scientific effort from the 
 Porto E/ico point of view (not from that of 
 temporary Spanish holders of the present 
 stocks of Porto Rican products) to see what 
 system will impose the lightest burdens and 
 bring the greatest benefits on Porto Rico 
 herself. The result of that conscientious 
 inquiry may be the discovery that the very 
 best thing to provide for the wants and pro- 
 mote the prosperity of that little community 
 out in the Atlantic Ocean is to bestow upon 
 them the unmixed boon of the high protec- 
 tive Dingley tariff devised for the United 
 States of America. If so, give them the 
 Dingley tariff, and give it straight. If, on 
 the other hand, it should be found that a 
 lower and simpler revenue system, better 
 adapted to a community which has practi- 
 cally no manufactures to protect, with free- 
 dom to trade on equal terms with all the 
 world, would impose upon them lighter bur- 
 dens and bring them greater benefits, then 
 give them that. If it should be further 
 found that, following this, such a system of 
 reciprocal rebates as both Cuba and the 
 United States thought mutually advanta- 
 geous in the late years of Spanish rule, 
 would be useful to Porto Rico, then give 
 
250 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 them that. But, in any case, the starting- 
 point should be the needs of Porto Rico her- 
 self, intelligently studied and conscientiously 
 met — not the blacksmith's offhand attempt 
 to fit on her head, like a rusty iron pot, an 
 old system made for other needs, other in- 
 dustries, a distant land, and another people. 
 And beyond and above all, give her the 
 best system for her situation and wants, 
 whether it be our Dingley tariff or some 
 other, because it is the best for her and is 
 therefore our duty — not because it is ours, 
 and therefore, under the Constitution of the 
 United States, her right and her fate. The 
 admission of that ill-omened and unfounded 
 claim would be, at the bar of politics, a 
 colossal blunder ; at the bar of patriotism, a 
 colossal crime. 
 
 Political The politics of it need not greatly concern 
 Constftu-***^ this audience or long detain you. 
 tiooai Claim. But the facts are interesting. If Porto 
 Rico, instead of belonging to us, is a part of 
 us, so are the Philippines. Our title to each 
 is exactly the same. So are Guam and the 
 Sandwich Islands, if not also Samoa ; and 
 so will be Cuba if she comes, or any other 
 West India Island. 
 
 First, then, you are proposing to open the 
 ports of the United States directly to the 
 tropical products of the two greatest archi- 
 
OUE NEW INTEEESTS 251 
 
 pelagos of the world, and indirectly, 
 through the Open Door we have pledged in 
 the Philippines, to all the products of all 
 the world! You guarantee directly to the 
 cheap labor of these tropical regions, and 
 indirectly, but none the less bindingly, to the 
 cheap labor of the world, free admission of 
 their products to this continent, in unre- 
 stricted competition with our own higher- 
 paid labor. And as your whole tariff system 
 is thus plucked up by the roots, you must 
 resort to direct taxation for the expenses of 
 the General Government. 
 
 Secondly, as if this were not enough, you 
 have made these tropical laborers citizens, — 
 Chinese, half-breeds, pagans, and all, — and 
 have given them the unquestionable and in- 
 alienable right to follow their products across 
 the ocean if they like, flood our labor mar- 
 ket, and compete in person on our own soil • 
 with our own workmen. 
 
 Is that the feast to be set before the labor- 
 *ing men of this country? Is that the real 
 inwardness of the Trojan horse pushed for- 
 ward against our tariff wall, in the name of 
 humanity, to suffering Porto Rico f What 
 a programme for the wise humanitarians 
 who have been bewitching the world with 
 noble statesmanship at Washington to pro- 
 pose laying before the organized labor of 
 this country as their chosen platform for 
 
252 PEOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 the approaching Presidential campaign! 
 They need have no fear the intelligent 
 workingmen of America will fail to appre- 
 ciate the sweet boon they offer. 
 
 The Patriotic BuT if the question thus raised at the bar 
 Aspect of it ^£ politics may seem to some only food for 
 laughter, that at the bar of patriotism is 
 matter for tears. If the islanders are already 
 citizens, then they are entitled to the future 
 of citizens. If the territory is already an 
 integral part of the United States, then by 
 all our practice and traditions it has the 
 right to admission in States of suitable size 
 and population. Is it said we could keep 
 them out as we have kept out sparsely 
 settled New Mexico? How long do you 
 expect to keep New Mexico out, or Okla- 
 homa, or Ai^zona ! What luck did you have 
 in keeping out others — even Utah, with its 
 bar sinister of the twin relic of barbarism f 
 How long would it take your politicians of 
 the baser sort to combine for the admission 
 of the islands whose electoral votes they had 
 reason to think they could control ? 
 
 But it is said that Porto Rico deserves 
 admission anyway, because we are bound 
 •by the volunteered assurance of General 
 Miles that they should have the rights of 
 American citizens. Perhaps ; though there 
 is no evidence that he meant more, or that 
 
OUE NEW INTEEESTS 253 
 
 they thought he meant more, than such 
 rights as American citizens everywhere en- 
 joy, even in the District of Columbia — equal 
 laws, security of life and property, freedom 
 from arbitrary arrests, local self-government, 
 in a word, the civil rights which the genius 
 of our Grovemment secures to all under our 
 control who are capable of exercising them. 
 If he did mean more, or if they thought he 
 meant more, did that entitle him to antici- 
 pate his chief and override in casual military 
 proclamation the Supreme Law of the land 
 whose commission he bore ! Or did it en- 
 title them to suppose that he could ? 
 
 But Porto Rico received the irresistible 
 army of General Miles so handsomely, and 
 is so unfortunate and so little ! Eeasons all 
 for consideration, certainly, for care, for 
 generosity — but not for starting the ava- 
 lanche, on the theory that after it has got 
 under only a little headway we can still stop 
 it if we want to. Who thinks he can lay his 
 hand on the rugged edge of the Muir Griacier 
 and compel it to advance no farther ? Who 
 believes that we can admit this little island 
 from the mid- Atlantic, a third of the way 
 over to Africa, and then reject nearer and 
 more valuable islands when they come? 
 The famous law of political gravitation 
 which John Quincy Adams prophetically 
 announced three quarters of a century ago 
 
254 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 will then be acting with ever-increasing force. 
 And, at any rate, beside Porto Rico, and with 
 the same title, stand the Philippines ! 
 
 Eegard, I beg of you, in the calm white 
 light that befits these cloistered retreats of 
 sober thought, the degradation of the Ee- 
 public thus coolly anticipated by the men 
 that assure us we have no possessions whose 
 people are not entitled under our Constitu- 
 tion to citizenship and ultimately to State- 
 hood I Surely to an audience of scholars 
 and patriots like this not one word need be 
 added. Emboldened by the approval you 
 have so generously expressed, I venture to 
 close by assuming without hesitation that 
 you will not dishonor your Government by 
 evading its duty, nor betray it by forcing 
 unfit partners upon it, nor rob it by blind 
 and perverse neglect of its interests. 
 
 May I not go further, and vouch for you, 
 as Californians, that the faith of the fathers 
 has not forsaken the sons — that you still 
 believe in the possibilities of the good land 
 the Lord has given you, and mean to work 
 them out; that you know what hour the 
 national clock has struck, and are not mis- 
 taking this for the Eighteenth Century ; that 
 you will bid the men who have made that 
 mistake, the men of little faith, the shirkers, 
 the doubters, the carpers, the grumblers, be- 
 gone, like Diogenes, to their tubs — aye, bet- 
 
OUB NEW INTERESTS 255 
 
 ter his instruction and require these his fol- 
 lowers to get out of your light I For, lo ! yet 
 another century is upon you, before which 
 even the marvels of the Nineteenth are to 
 grow pale. As of old, light breaks from the 
 east, but now also, for you, from the farther 
 East. It circles the world in both directions, 
 like the flag it is newly gilding now with its 
 tropic beams. The dawn of the Twentieth 
 Century bursts upon you without needing to 
 cross the Sierras, and bathes at once in its 
 golden splendors, with simultaneous efful- 
 gence, the Narrows of Sandy Hook and the 
 peerless portals of the Golden Gate. 
 
XI 
 " UNOFFICIAL INSTRUCTIONS " 
 
 17 
 
This speech was delivered at the Farewell Banquet given 
 by over four hundred citizens of San Francisco to the 
 second Philippine Commission, on the eve of their sailing 
 for Manila, at the Palace Hotel, April 12, 1900. The title is 
 adopted from the phrase used by the President of the Com- 
 mission in his response ; to which a leading journal of the 
 Pacific coast, *'The Seattle Post-Intelligencer," promptly 
 added that the address " spoke for the whole people of the 
 United States," and was '' the concrete expression of a de- 
 sire that animates nine tenths of all our citizens." Judge 
 Taft frankly stated his concurrence in the views expressed 
 (though he held some legal doubts as to whether the Con- 
 stitution of the United States did not extend, ex proprio 
 vigore, to the new possessions), and he pledged the Commis- 
 sion against the influence of political considerations. 
 
"UNOFFICIAL INSTRUCTIONS" 
 
 THE kindness of your call shall not be 
 misinterpreted or taken advantage of. 
 Quite enough of my voice has been heard in 
 the land, and that very recently, as some 
 of you can testify to your cost. There are 
 others here with far greater claims upon 
 your attention, and I promise to be as brief 
 as heretofore I have been prolix. 
 
 The occasion is understood to be pri- 
 marily one of congratulation and personal 
 good will. It is evident that San Francisco ^ 
 thinks well of the Pacific coast member of 
 this Commission, and none the worse be- 
 cause he seems to have been chosen for the 
 post merely on account of his being pecu- 
 liarly fit for it. The city gladly takes the 
 rest of you on faith, believing that the same 
 rule of selection must have been applied in 
 the cases with which it has not the happi- 
 ness to be quite so familiar. 
 
 But it is an occasion, I am authoritatively 
 assured, of no political significance what- 
 
 259 
 
260 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 ever. It embraces in its comprehensive im- 
 pulse of greeting and good wishes Eepub- 
 licans and Democrats and Dewey men; 
 men who hold the offices, men who want the 
 offices, and men who say, " A plague on both 
 your houses ! " — men who indorse the course 
 of the Administration, and men who believe 
 the acquisition of the Philippines a mistake. 
 I shall not attempt to disguise from you the 
 fact that this last is not an opinion that I 
 individually hold. Still, I can respect the 
 convictions of those who do. 
 
 But evidently we can have no concurrence 
 to-night on our extra-continental policy, 
 since the differences are so wide on vital 
 points. Yet the organizers of this testimo- 
 nial made no mistake. There is a common 
 ground for our meeting. We are all citi- 
 zens of the Eepublic, grateful for our high 
 privilege and solicitous that the Republic 
 shall take no harm — all Americans, proud 
 of the name and eager that it shall never be 
 stained by base or unworthy acts. There is 
 no one here, of whatever political faith or 
 lack of faith, who is not a patriot, anxious 
 for our country on these new and untried 
 paths it must walk — most desirous that all 
 its ways may prove ways of pleasantness 
 and all its paths lead to honorable peace. 
 
 Well, then, gentlemen, what is it that a 
 company thus divided in opinion, and united 
 
"unofficial instructions" 261 
 
 only in patriotic aspirations, can agree in 
 looking to this Comniission for ? What do 
 the American people in general, and without 
 distinction of party, look to them for ! 
 
 Did I hear a public opponent but personal 
 friend over there murmur as his reply, " Not 
 much of anything " 1 Alas ! we may as well 
 recognize that there are political augurs who 
 are ready to give just that as their horo- 
 scope, and even point to their useful prede- 
 cessor, the last Commission, for presumptive 
 proof ! In fact, there are occasional grum- 
 blers who would look for more from them 
 if they were fewer. These skeptical critics 
 recognize that sometimes in a multitude of 
 counselors there may be safety, but also recall 
 the maxim that councils of war never fight. 
 If the truth must be whispered in the ear of 
 the Commissioners, there are here and there 
 very sincere, capable people who are grow- 
 ing a bit weary of a multiplicity of commis- 
 sions. They say — so cynical are they — 
 that, in all ages and countries, the easiest 
 method of evading or postponing a difficult 
 problem has been to appoint a commission 
 on it and thus prolong the circumlocution. 
 
 For a first thing, then, on which we are 
 all united, we look hopefully to our guests 
 to redeem the character of this mode of gov- 
 ernment by commission. For we assume 
 that they are sent out to the archipelago to 
 
262 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 govern ; and just at present we don't know 
 of any part of the country's possessions that 
 seems more in need of government. 
 
 We all unite in regarding them as setting 
 sail, not only charged with the national in- 
 terests, but dignified and ennobled by a 
 guardianship of the national honor. Thus 
 we are trying to put ourselves in Emerson's 
 state of mind about a certain notable young 
 poet, and unite in hoping that, to use his 
 well-known phrase, we greet them at the 
 beginning of a great career. 
 
 We certainly unite in earnestly wishing 
 that they may make the best of a situation 
 which none of us wholly like, and many dis- 
 like with all their hearts : the best of it for 
 the country which, by good management or 
 bad, rightfully or wrongfully, is at any rate 
 clearly and in the eyes of the whole world 
 now responsible for the outcome; and the 
 best of it, no less, for the distracted people 
 thrown upon our hands. 
 
 We cannot well help uniting in the further 
 hope that their first success will be the re- 
 establishment of order throughout regions 
 lately filled with violence and bloodshed; 
 and that they can then bring about a sys- 
 tem of just and swift punishment for future 
 crimes of disorder, since all experience in 
 those regions and among those people shows 
 that the neglect to enforce such punish- 
 
"unofficial INSTKUCTIONS " 263 
 
 ment is itself the gravest and cruelest of 
 crimes. 
 
 Nor can any one here help uniting in the 
 hope that their next and crowning success 
 will some way be attained in the preserva- 
 tion and extension of those great civil rights 
 whose growth is the distinction, the world 
 over, of Anglo-Saxon civilization; whose 
 consummate flower and fruitage are tha 
 glory of our own Government. 
 
 I am even bold enough to believe that, 
 however it might have been twelve months 
 ago, or but six months ago, there is no one 
 here to-night, recognizing the changed cir- 
 cumstances now, who would think they could 
 best secure those rights to all the people by 
 calling back the leader who is in hiding, and 
 his forces, which are scattered and disorgan- 
 ized, and by now abandoning to such revenge- 
 ful rule the great majority of the islanders 
 who have remained peaceful and orderly 
 during our occupation. For the present, at 
 least, we unite in recognizing that they are 
 forced to retain that care themselves ; forced 
 to act in the common interest of all the peo- 
 ple there, not in the sole interest of a war- 
 ring faction in a single tribe — in the interest 
 of all the islands for which we have accepted 
 responsibility, not simply of the one, or of 
 a part of the population on the one, that has 
 made the most trouble. 
 
264 PKOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 There can be little disagreement in this 
 company on the further proposition that, in 
 like manner, they must act in the interest 
 of all the people here. In the interest of 
 the islanders, they will soon seek to raise the 
 needed revenue in the way least burden- 
 some and most beneficial to the islands; 
 but in the interest of their country, we can- 
 not expect them to begin by assuming that 
 the only way to help the islanders is to 
 throw products of tropic cheap labor into 
 unrestricted competition with similar prod- 
 ucts of our highly paid labor. In the in- 
 terest of the islanders, they will secure and 
 guarantee the civil rights which belong to 
 the very genius of American institutions; 
 but in the interest of their country, they 
 will not make haste to extend the privilege 
 of American citizenship, and so, on the one 
 hand, enable those peoples of the China Sea, 
 Chinese or half-breed or what not, to flood 
 our labor market in advance of any readi- 
 ness at home to change our present laws of 
 exclusion, while, on the other hand, opening 
 the door to them as States in the Union to 
 take part in the government of this conti- 
 nent. If, in the Providence of God, and in 
 contempt of past judicial rulings, the Su- 
 preme Cornet should finally command it, this 
 Commission, like every other branch of the 
 Government, will obey. Till then we may 
 
"unofficial instructions" 265 
 
 be sure it will not, in sheer eagerness and joy- 
 fulness of heart, anticipate, or, as Wall Street 
 speculators say, "discount,'^ such a decree 
 for national degradation. But in their own 
 land, and, as far as may be, in accordance 
 with their old customs and laws, the Com- 
 mission will secure to them, if it is to win 
 the success we all wish it, first every civil 
 right we enjoy, and next the fullest measure 
 of political rights and local self-government 
 they are found capable of sustaining, with 
 ordered liberty for all the people. 
 
 There, then, is the doom we have reason 
 to expect this Commission to inflict on these 
 temporarily turbulent wards of the Nation ! 
 First order; then justice; then American 
 civil rights, not for a class, or a tribe, or a 
 race, but for all the people; then local 
 self-government. 
 
 But if your guests begin this task with the 
 notion that they are the first ofiicials of a 
 free people ever given such work, and must 
 therefore, American fashion, discover from 
 the foundation for themselves, — if they fancy 
 nobody ever dealt with semi-civilized Ori- 
 entals till we stumbled on them in the Phil- 
 ippines, — they will waste precious time in 
 costly experiments, if not fail outright. It 
 is n't worth while thus to invent over again 
 everything down to the very alphabet of 
 work among^such people. We can afford to 
 
266 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 abate the self-suflSciency of the almighty- 
 Yankee Nation enough to profit a little by 
 the lessons other people have learned in 
 going over the road before us. 
 
 From such lessons they will be sure to 
 gather at once that if they now show a trace 
 of timidity or hesitation in their firm and 
 just course, because somebody has said some- 
 thing in Washington or on the stump, or be- 
 cause there is an election coming on, they 
 will fail. 
 
 In fact, if they do not know now, as well 
 as they know what soil they still stand on 
 and what countrymen are about them, and 
 if they do not act as if they knew, that, no 
 matter what the politicians or the platforms 
 say, and no matter what party comes into 
 power, the American people have at present 
 no notion of throwing these islands away, or 
 abandoning them, or neglecting the care of 
 them, they have not mastered the plainest 
 part of their problem, and must fail. 
 
 Above all, if there is a trace of politics in 
 their work, or of seeking for political effect 
 at home, they will fail, and deserve to fail. 
 In this most delicate and difficult task before 
 them there is no salvation but in the scrupu- 
 lous choice of the very best fitted agency 
 available, in each particular case, for the 
 particular work in hand. If they appoint 
 one man, or encourage or silently submit to 
 
"unofficial instructions" 267 
 
 the appointment of one man, to responsible 
 place in their service among these islanders, 
 merely because he has been useful in politics 
 at home, they will be organizing failure 
 and discredit in advance. 
 
 But they will do no such things. Not so 
 has this body of men been selected. Not 
 such is the high appreciation of the oppor- 
 tunity offered that has led you, Mr. President 
 of the Commission, to abandon your well- 
 earned and distinguished place at home to 
 begin a new career at the antipodes. Yet 
 more — I, at least, can certify to this company 
 that not such is the sense of public duty you 
 inherited from your honored father, and have 
 consistently illustrated throughout your own 
 career. You will not fail, because you know 
 the peril and the prize. You will not fail, 
 because you have civilization and law and 
 ordered freedom, the honor of your land and 
 the happiness of a new one, in your care — 
 because you know that, for uncounted 
 peoples, the hopes of future years hang 
 breathless on your fate. And so, gentlemen 
 of the Commission, good-by, and God-speed ! 
 
 In spite of rock and tempest's roar, 
 In spite of false lights on the shore, 
 Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! 
 
APPENDICES 
 
1. Power to Acquire and Govern Territory. 
 
 2. The Tariff in United States Territory. 
 
 3. The Resolutions of Congress as to Cuba. 
 
 4. The Protocol of Washington. 
 
 5. The Peace of Paris. 
 
POWER TO ACQUIRE AND aOYERN 
 TERRITORY 
 
 The United States has as much power as any other 
 Government. 
 
 " The Constitution of the United States estab- 
 lished a Government, and not a league, compact, 
 or partnership, ... As a Government it was in- 
 vested with all the attributes of sovereignty. . . . 
 It is not only a Government, but it is a National 
 Government," and the only Government in this 
 country that has the character of nationality. . . . 
 Such being the character of the General Govern- 
 ment, it seems to be a self-evident proposition 
 that it is invested with all those inherent and im- 
 plied powers which, at the time of adopting the 
 Constitution, were generally considered to belong 
 to every Government as such, and as being essen- 
 tial to the exercise of its functions." (Mr. Justice 
 Bradley, United States Supreme Court, Legal 
 Tender Cases, 12 Wall. 554.) 
 
 The United States can acquire territory hy conquest or 
 ly treaty, as a condition of peace or as indemnity. 
 
 " The United States . . . may extend its boun- 
 daries by conquest or treaty, and may demand the 
 cession of territory as the condition of peace, in 
 order to indemnify its citizens for the injuries they 
 have suffered, or to reimburse the Government 
 for the expenses of the war. But this can only 
 be done by the treaty-making power or the legis- 
 lative authority." (United States Supreme Court, 
 Fleming et al. v. Page, 9 How. 614.) 
 
 271 
 
272 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 The United States can have a valid title hy conquest 
 to territory not a part of the Union. 
 
 '' By the laws and usages of nations, conquest is 
 a valid title. ... As regarded by all other nations 
 it [Tampico] was a part of the tjnited States, and 
 belonged to them as exclusively as a Territory in- 
 cluded in our established boundaries, but yet it 
 was not a part of the Union." (United States 
 Supreme Court, Fleming et al. v. Page, 9 How. 
 603-615.) 
 
 A title so acquired hy the United States cannot he 
 questioned in its courts. 
 
 *' If those departments which are intrusted with 
 the foreign intercourse of the Nation . . . have 
 unequivocally asserted its rights of dominion 
 over a country of which it is in possession and 
 which it claims under a treaty, if the legisla- 
 ture has acted on the construction thus asserted, 
 it is not in its own courts that this construction 
 is to be denied. A question like this, respecting 
 the boundaries of a nation, is . . . more a political 
 than a legal question, and in its discussion the 
 courts of every country must respect the pro- 
 nounced will of the legislature." (Mr. Chief Jus- 
 tice Marshall, Foster et al. v. Neilson, 2 Peters 
 253, 309.) 
 
 Yet mcJi territory may he still outside the United 
 States (meaning thereby the American Union 
 organized by the Constitution— the Nation), 
 atid cannot get in mthout action hy the political 
 authmities. 
 
 " The boundaries of the United States, as they 
 existed when war was declared against Mexico, 
 were not extended by the conquest. . . . They 
 
APPENDICES 273 
 
 remained unchanged. And every place which 
 was out of the limits of the United States, as 
 previously established by the political authorities 
 of the Government, was still foreign." (Fleming 
 et al. V. Page, 9 How. 616.) 
 
 The United States can govern such territory as it 
 pleases. Thus it can withhold any power of local 
 legislation. 
 
 "Possessing the power to erect a Territorial 
 government for Alaska, they could confer upon it 
 such powers, judicial and executive, as they 
 deemed most suitable to the necessities of the in- 
 habitants. It was unquestionably within the 
 constitutional power of Congress to withhold 
 from the inhabitants of Alaska the power to leg- 
 islate and make laws. In the absence, then, of 
 any law-making power in the Territory, to what 
 source must the people look for the laws by which 
 they are to be governed ? This question can admit 
 of but one answer. Congress is the only law- 
 making power for Alaska." (United States v. 
 Nelson, 29 Fed. Rep. 202, 205, 206.) 
 
 Mr. Jefferson even held that the United States could 
 sell territory, hold it as a colony, or regulate its 
 commerce as it pleased, 
 
 "The Territory [Louisiana] was purchased by 
 the United States in their confederate capacity, 
 and may be disposed of by them at their plea- 
 sure. It is in the nature of a colony whose com- 
 merce may be regulated without any reference to 
 the Constitution." (And Louisiana was so gov- 
 erned for years after the purchase, with different 
 tariff requirements from those of the United 
 States, and without trial by jury in civil cases.) 
 
 18 
 
274 PKOBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 Again, the United States may even (as in the case of 
 Consular Courts) withhold the right of trial by 
 jury. 
 
 " By the Constitution a government is ordained 
 and established ' for the United States of America/ 
 and not for countries outside of their limits. 
 The guaranties it aifords against accusation of 
 capital or infamous crimes, except by indictment 
 or presentment by a grand jury, and for an im- 
 partial trial by a jury when thus accused, apply 
 only to citizens and others within the United 
 States, or who are brought there for trial for 
 alleged offenses committed elsewhere, and not to 
 residents or temporary sojourners abroad. The 
 Constitution can have no operation in another 
 country." [In re Ross, 140 U. S. 463, 465.) (In this 
 case the prisoner insisted that the refusal to allow 
 him a trial by jury was a fatal defect in the juris- 
 diction exercised by the court, and rendered its 
 judgment absolutely void.) 
 
 The United States can govern such territory though 
 Congress. 
 
 " At the time the Constitution was formed the 
 limits of the territory over which it was to oper- 
 ate were generally defined and recognized. 
 These States, this territory, and future States to 
 be admitted into the Union, are the sole objects of 
 the Constitution. There is no express provision 
 whatever made in the Constitution for the acqui- 
 sition or government of territories beyond those 
 limits. The right, therefore, of acquiring terri- 
 tory is altogether incidental to the treaty-making 
 power, and perhaps to the power of admitting 
 new States into the Union ; and the government 
 of such acquisitions is, of course, left to the legis- 
 
APPENDICES 275 
 
 lative power of the Union, as far as that power 
 is controlled by treaty." (Mr. Justice Johnson of 
 the Supreme Court, sitting in the Circuit, in Am. 
 Ins. Co. V. Canter, 1 Pet. 517.) 
 
 Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, affirming the above 
 decision, says : 
 
 " Perhaps the power of governing a Territory 
 belonging to the United States which has not, by 
 becoming a State, acquired the means of self- 
 government, may result necessarily from the facts 
 that it is not within the jurisdiction of any par- 
 ticular State, and is within the power and juris- 
 diction of the United States. The right to gov- 
 ern may be the inevitable consequence of the right 
 to acquire territory. Whichever may be the 
 source whence the power is derived, the posses- 
 sion of it is unquestioned." (1 Pet. 541, 542.) 
 
 The General Government exercises a sovereignty in- 
 dependent of the Constitution. 
 
 " Their people [in organized Territories] do not 
 constitute a sovereign power. All political au- 
 thority exercised therein is derived [not from the 
 Constitution, but] from the General Government." 
 (Snow V. United States, 18 Wall. 317, 320.) 
 
 The General Government is expected, however , to he 
 controlled as to personal and civil rights hy the 
 general principles of the Constitution. 
 
 '^ The personal and civil rights of the inhabi- 
 tants of the Territories are secured to them, as to 
 other citizens, by the principles of constitutional 
 liberty which restrain all the agencies of govern- 
 ment." (Murphy v. Ramsay, 114 U. S. 15, 44, 45.) 
 
276 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 " Doubtless Congress, in legislating for the Ter- 
 ritories, would be subject to those fundamental 
 limitations in favor of personal rights which are 
 formulated in the Constitution and its amend- 
 ments; but these Hmitations would exist rather 
 by inference and the general spirit of the Consti- 
 tution, from which Congress derives all its powers, 
 than by any express and direct application of its 
 provisions." (Mormon Church v. United States, 
 136 U. S. 1, 44 ; Thompson v. Utah, 170 U. S. 343, 
 349.) 
 
THE TARIFF IN UNITED STATES 
 TEREITORY 
 
 The one point at which the opponents of the 
 doctrine that Congress can govern the Territories 
 as it pleases are able to make a prima facie case 
 by quoting a decision of the Supreme Court, is as 
 to the application of the United States tariff to 
 the Territories. When California was acquired, 
 but before Congress had acted or a Collection Dis- 
 trict had been established, the Supreme Court sus- 
 tained the demand for duties under the United 
 States tariff on goods landed at California ports 
 (Cross V. Harrison, 16 How. 164). Mr. Justice 
 Wayne said : 
 
 "By the ratifications of the treaty California 
 became a part of the United States. And as there 
 is nothing differently stipulated in the treaty with 
 respect to commerce, it became instantly bound 
 and privileged by the laws which Congress had 
 passed to raise a revenue from duties on imports 
 and tonnage. . . . The right claimed to land 
 foreign goods within the United States at any 
 place out of a Collection District, if allowed, 
 would be a violation of that provision in the Con- 
 stitution which enjoins that all duties, imposts, 
 and excises shall be uniform throughout the 
 United States." 
 
 The court here bases its reasoning distinctly on 
 
 277 
 
278 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 the treaty by which California was acquired. 
 But that treaty gave the pledge that California 
 (an adjacent Territory) should be incorporated 
 into the American Union. The Treaty of Paris 
 gave no such pledge as to the Philippines (not adja- 
 cent territory, but nine thousand miles away), could 
 not in the nature of the case have given such a 
 pledge, and did provide, instead, that the whole 
 question of the civil rights and political status of 
 the native inhabitants should be determined by 
 the Congress. Recalling Mr. Justice Story^s 
 remark that in a Constitution " there ought to be 
 a capacity to provide for future contingencies as 
 they may happen, and as these are . . . illimitable 
 in their nature, so it is impossible safely to limit 
 that capacity," it would seem that there would 
 certainly be elasticity enough in the Constitution, 
 or common sense enough in its interpretation, to 
 permit the Supreme Court to perceive some differ- 
 ence between a requirement of uniform tariff on this 
 continent over a territory specifically acquired in 
 order to be made a State, and such a requirement 
 on the other side of the globe over territory not 
 so acquired. The case becomes stronger when 
 the treaty (also constitutionally a part of the 
 Supreme Law of the land) turns over the political 
 status of the latter territory entirely to Congress. 
 
 The Constitution makes the same or similar re- 
 quirements of uniformity throughout the United 
 States as to the tariff, internal taxes, courts, and 
 the right of trial by jury. But in every case the 
 early practice did not construe this to include the 
 Territories. 
 
 As to uniformity in tariff. It was not enforced 
 
APPENDICES 279 
 
 rigidly in Louisiana for years. So little, in fact, 
 was it then held that Louisiana, as soon as ac- 
 quired, became an integral part of the United 
 States (notwithstanding the treaty provision that 
 in time it should), that though the directors of the 
 United States Bank were empowered to establish 
 offices of discount and deposit '^ wheresoever they 
 shall think fit within the United States,'^ they did 
 not consider this a warrant for establishing one in 
 New Orleans, and actually secured from the Con- 
 gress for that purpose a bill, signed by Thomas 
 Jefferson on March 23, 1804, extending their au- 
 thority, under the terms of their original charter, 
 to ^' any part of the Territories or dependencies of 
 the United States." 
 
 As to uniformity in internal taxes. The very 
 first levied in the United States, that of March 3, 
 1791, omitted the Territories altogether, dividing 
 the United States into fourteen Collection Districts, 
 " each consisting of one State." It is not until 1798 
 that any trace can be found of a collection of inter- 
 nal revenue in the territory northwest of the Ohio. 
 
 As to the courts. The Constitution requires that 
 the judicial officers of the United States shall hold 
 office during good behavior. For a century the 
 judicial officers of Territories have been restricted 
 to fixed terms of office. 
 
 As to trial hy jury. The Constitution gives the 
 right to it to every criminal case in the United 
 States, and to every civil case involving over 
 twenty dollars. Under Mr. Jefferson's govern- 
 ment of Louisiana, trial by jury was limited to 
 capital cases in criminal prosecutions. It has 
 likewise been denied in Consular Courts. 
 
3 
 
 THE EESOLUTIONS OF CONGRESS 
 AS TO CUBA 
 
 Adopted by Congress, April 19, 1898 : by the Senate at 
 1 : 38 A.M., 42 to 35 ; by the House at 2 : 40 a.m., 311 to 6. 
 
 Whereas, The abhorrent conditions which 
 have existed for more than three years in the 
 island of Cuba, so near our own borders, have 
 shocked the moral sense of the people of the 
 United States, have been a disgrace to Christian 
 civilization, — culminating, as they have, in the 
 destruction of a United States battle-ship, with 
 two hundred and sixty of its officers and crew, 
 while on a friendly visit in the harbor of Havana, 
 — and cannot longer be endured, as has been set 
 forth by the President of the United States in his 
 message to Congress of April 11, 1898, upon 
 which the action of Congress was invited j there- 
 fore be it resolved, 
 
 Firsty That the people of the island of Cuba 
 are, and of right ought to be, free and inde- 
 pendent. 
 
 Second, That it is the duty of the United 
 States to demand, and the Government of the 
 United States does hereby demand, that the Gov- 
 ernment of Spain at once relinquish its authority 
 and government in the island of Cuba and with- 
 draw its land and naval forces from Cuba and 
 Cuban waters. 
 
 280 
 
 I 
 
APPENDICES 281 
 
 Third, That the President of the United States 
 be, and he hereby is, directed and empowered to 
 use the entire land and naval forces of the United 
 States, and to call into the actual service of the 
 United States the militia of the several States to 
 such an extent as may be necessary to carry these 
 resolutions into effect. 
 
 Fourth, That the United States hereby dis- 
 claims any disposition or intention to exercise 
 sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said 
 island, except for the pacification thereof, and 
 asserts its determination when that is accom- 
 plished to leave the government and control of 
 the island to its people. 
 
THE PEOTOCOL OF WASHINGTON 
 
 William R. Day, Secretary of State of the 
 United States, and His Excellency Jules Cambon, 
 Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary 
 of the Republic of France at Washington, re- 
 spectively possessing for this purpose full author- 
 ity from the Government of the United States 
 and the Government of Spain, have concluded 
 and signed the following articles, embodying the 
 terms on which the two Governments have agreed 
 in respect to the matters hereinafter set forth, 
 having in view the establishment of peace between 
 the two countries, that is to say : 
 
 Article I 
 
 Spain will relinquish all claim of sovereignty 
 over and title to Cuba. 
 
 Article H 
 
 Spain will cede to the United States the island 
 of Porto Rico and other islands now under Span- 
 ish sovereignty in the West Indies, and also an 
 island in the Ladrones to be selected by the United 
 States. 
 
 Article III 
 
 The United States will occupy and hold the 
 city, bay, and harbor of Manila, pending the con- 
 
APPENDICES 283 
 
 elusion of a treaty of peace which shall determine 
 the control, disposition, and government of the 
 Philippines. 
 
 Article IV 
 
 Spain will immediately evacuate Cuba, Porto 
 Rico, and other islands now under Spanish sover- 
 eignty in the West Indies ; and to this end each 
 Government will, within ten days after the sign- 
 ing of this protocol, appoint Commissioners, and 
 the Commissioners so appointed shall, within 
 thirty days after the signing of this protocol, meet 
 at Havana for the purpose of arranging and car- 
 rying out the details of the aforesaid evacuation 
 of Cuba and the adjacent Spanish islands ; and 
 each Government will, within ten days after the 
 signing of this protocol, also appoint other Com- 
 missioners, who shall, within thirty days after the 
 signing of this protocol, meet at San Juan, in 
 Porto Rico, for the purpose of arranging and car- 
 rying out the details of the aforesaid evacuation 
 of Porto Rico and other islands now under 
 Spanish sovereignty in the West Indies. 
 
 Article V 
 
 The United States and Spain will each appoint 
 not more than five Commissioners to treat of 
 peace, and the Commissioners so appointed shall 
 meet at Paris not later than October 1, 1898, and 
 proceed to the negotiation and conclusion of a 
 treaty of peace, which treaty shall be subject to 
 ratification according to the respective constitu- 
 tional forms of the two countries. 
 
284 PROBLEMS Of EXPANSION 
 
 Article VI 
 
 Upou the conclusion and signing of this proto- 
 col, hostilities between the two countries shall be 
 suspended, and notice to that effect shall be given 
 as soon as possible by each Government to the 
 commanders of its military and naval forces. 
 
 Done at Washington in duplicate, in English 
 and in French, by the undersigned, who have 
 hereunto set their hands and seals the twelfth day 
 of August, 1898. 
 
 (Seal) WiLLLUVi R. Day. 
 (Seal) Jules Cambon. 
 
THE PEACE OF PARIS 
 
 Negotiations begun in Paris, October 1, 1898. Treaty- 
 signed in Paris, 8:45 p.m., December 10. Delivered by- 
 United States Commissioners to the President, December 
 24 ; transmitted to the Senate with the official report of the 
 negotiations, January 4, 1899 ; ratified by Senate in execu- 
 tive session, February 6, by a vote of 57 against 27. Formal 
 exchange of ratifications at Washington, April 11. Twenty 
 millions paid through Jules Cambon, May 1. Treaty rati- 
 fied by Spanish Senate, July 3, 1899. 
 
 The United States of America and Her Majesty 
 the Queen Regent of Spain, in the name of her 
 august son, Don Alfonso XIH, desiring to end 
 the state of war now existing between the two 
 countries, have for that purpose appointed as 
 plenipotentiaries : 
 
 The President of the United States, 
 
 William R. Day, Cushman K. Davis, William 
 P. Frye, George Gray, and Whitelaw Reid, citi- 
 zens of the United States j 
 
 And Her Majesty the Queen Regent of Spain , 
 
 Don Eugenio Montero Rios, President of the 
 Senate ; Don Buenaventura de Abarzuza, Senator 
 of the Kingdom and ex-Minister of the Crown ; 
 Don Jose de Garnica, Deputy to the Cortes and 
 Associate Justice of the Supreme Court; Don 
 Wenceslao Ramirez de Villa Urrutia, Envoy Ex- 
 
 285 
 
286 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 traordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at Brus- 
 sels ; and Don Rafael Cerero, General of Division ; 
 
 Who, having assembled in Paris and having 
 exchanged their full powers, which were found 
 to be in due and proper form, have, after discus- 
 sion of the matters before them, agreed upon the 
 following articles : 
 
 Article I. Spain relinquishes all claim of sov- 
 ereignty over and title to Cuba. 
 
 And as the island is, upon its evacuation by 
 Spain, to be occupied by the United States, the 
 United States will, so long as such occupation 
 shall last, assume and discharge the obligations 
 that may under international law result from the 
 fact of its occupation for the protection of life 
 and property. 
 
 Article II. Spain cedes to the United States the 
 island of Porto Rico and other islands now under 
 Spanish sovereignty in the West Indies, and the 
 island of Guam, in the Marianas or Ladrones. 
 
 Ai*ticle III. Spain cedes to the United States 
 the archipelago known as the Philippine Islands, 
 and comprehending the islands lying within the 
 following lines : 
 
 A line running from west to east along or near 
 the twentieth parallel of north latitude, and 
 through the middle of the navigable channel of 
 Bachti, from the one hundred and eighteenth 
 (118th) to the one hundred and twenty-seventh 
 (127th) degree meridian of longitude east of 
 Greenwich, thence along the one hundred and 
 twenty-seventh (127th) degree meridian of longi- 
 tude east of Greenwich to the parallel of four de- 
 
APPENDICES 287 
 
 grees and forty-five minutes (4^ 45') north latitude, 
 thence along the parallel of four degrees and 
 forty-five minutes (4° 45^ north latitude to its in- 
 tersection with the meridian of longitude one hun- 
 dred and nineteen degrees and thirty-five minutes 
 (119° 35') east of Greenwich, thence along the me- 
 ridian of longitude one hundred and nineteen de- 
 grees and thirty-five minutes (119° 35') east of 
 Greenwich to the parallel of latitude seven de- 
 grees and forty minutes (7° 40') north, thence along 
 the parallel of latitude seven degrees and forty 
 minutes (7° 40') north to its intersection with the 
 one hundred and sixteenth (116th) degree merid- 
 ian of longitude east of Greenwich, thence by a 
 direct line to the intersection of the tenth (10th) 
 degree parallel of north latitude with the one 
 hundred and eighteenth (118th) degree meridian 
 of longitude east of Greenwich, and thence along 
 the one hundred and eighteenth (118th) degree 
 meridian of longitude east of Greenwich to the 
 point of beginning. 
 
 The United States will pay to Spain the sum of 
 twenty million dollars ($20,000,000) within three 
 months after the exchange of the ratifications of 
 the present treaty. 
 
 Article IV . The United States will for ten years 
 from the date of exchange of ratifications of the 
 present treaty admit Spanish ships and merchan- 
 dise to the ports of the Philippine Islands on the 
 same terms as ships and merchandise of the 
 United States. 
 
 Article V. The United States will, upon the sig- 
 nature of the present treaty, send back to Spain, 
 at its own cost, the Spanish soldiers taken as 
 
288 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 prisoners of war ou the capture of Manila by the 
 American forces. The arms of the soldiers in 
 question shall be restored to them. 
 
 Spain will, upon the exchange of the ratifica- 
 tions of the present treaty, proceed to evacuate 
 the Philippines, as well as the island of Guam, on 
 terms similar to those agreed upon by the Com- 
 missioners appointed to arrange for the evacua- 
 tion of Porto Rico and other islands in the West 
 Indies under the protocol of August 12, 1898, 
 which is to continue in force till its provisions 
 are completely executed. 
 
 The time within which the evacuation of the 
 Philippine Islands and Guam shall be completed 
 shall be fixed by the two Governments. Stands 
 of colors, uncaptured war-vessels, small arms, 
 guns of all calibers, with their carriages and ac- 
 cessories, powder, ammunition, live stock, and 
 materials and supplies of all kinds belonging to 
 the land and naval forces of Spain in the Philip- 
 pines and Guam remain the property of Spain. 
 Pieces of heavy ordnance, exclusive of field artil- 
 lery, in the fortifications and coast defenses, shall 
 remain in their emplacements for the term of six 
 months, to be reckoned from the exchange of rati- 
 fications of the treaty; and the United States 
 may in the meantime purchase such material 
 from Spain, if a satisfactory agreement between 
 the two Governments on the subject shall be 
 reached. 
 
 Article VI. Spain will, upon the signature of 
 the present treaty, release all prisoners of war 
 and aU persons detained or imprisoned for politi- 
 cal offenses in connection with the insurrections 
 
APPENDICES 289 
 
 in Cuba and the Philippines and the war with 
 the United States. 
 
 Reciprocally the United States will release all 
 persons made prisoners of war by the American 
 forces, and will undertake to obtain the release 
 of all Spanish prisoners in the hands of the insur- 
 gents in Cuba and the Philippines. 
 
 The Government of the United States will at 
 its own cost return to Spain, and the Government 
 of Spain will at its own cost return to the United 
 States, Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines, 
 according to the situation of their respective 
 homes, prisoners released or caused to be released 
 by them, respectively, under this article. 
 
 Article VII. The United States and Spain mu- 
 tually relinquish all claims for indemnity, national 
 and individual, of every kind, of either Govern- 
 ment, or of its citizens or subjects, against the 
 other Government, which may have arisen since 
 the beginning of the late insurrection in Cuba, 
 and prior to the exchange of ratifications of the 
 present treaty, including all claims for indemnity 
 for the cost of the war. The United States will 
 adjudicate and settle the claims of its citizens 
 against Spain relinquished in this article. 
 
 Article VIII. In conformity with the provisions 
 of Articles I, II, and III of this treaty, Spain re- 
 linquishes in Cuba and cedes in Porto Rico and 
 other islands in the West Indies, in the island of 
 Guam, and in the Philippine Archipelago all the 
 buildings, wharves, barracks, forts, structures, 
 public highways, and other immovable property 
 which in conformity with law belong to the public 
 domain and as such belong to the Crown of Spain. 
 
 19 
 
290 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 And it is hereby declared that the relinquish- 
 ment or cession, as the case may be, to which the 
 preceding paragraph refers, cannot in any respect 
 impair the property or rights which by law belong 
 to the peaceful possession of property of all kinds 
 of provinces, municipalities, public or private es- 
 tablishments, ecclesiastical or civic bodies or any 
 other associations having legal capacity to acquire 
 and possess property in the aforesaid territories 
 renounced or ceded, or of private individuals, of 
 whatsoever nationality such individuals may be. 
 
 The aforesaid relinquishment or cession, as the 
 case may be, includes all documents exclusively 
 referring to the sovereignty relinquished or ceded 
 that may exist in the archives of the Peninsula. 
 Where any document in such archives only in 
 part relates to said sovereignty a copy of such 
 part will be furnished whenever it shall be re- 
 quested. Like rules shall be reciprocally observed 
 in favor of Spain in respect of documents in the 
 archives of the islands above referred to. 
 
 In the aforesaid relinquishment or cession, as 
 the case may be, are also included such rights as 
 the Crown of Spain and its authorities possess in 
 respect of the official archives and records, execu- 
 tive as well as judicial, in the islands above re- 
 ferred to, which relate to said islands or the rights 
 and property of their inhabitants. Such archives 
 and records shall be carefully preserved, and pri- 
 vate persons shall, without distinction, have the 
 right to require, in accordance with the law, au- 
 thenticated copies of the contracts, wills, and other 
 instruments forming part of notarial protocols or 
 files, or which may be contained in the executive 
 
APPENDICES 291 
 
 or judicial archives, be the latter in Spain or in 
 the islands aforesaid. 
 
 Article IX. Spanish subjects, natives of the 
 Peninsula, residing in the territory over which 
 Spain by the present treaty relinquishes or cedes 
 her sovereignty, may remain in such territory or 
 may remove therefrom, retaining in either event 
 all their rights of property, including the right 
 to sell or dispose of such property or of its pro- 
 ceeds ; and they shall also have the right to carry 
 on their industry, commerce, and professions, be- 
 ing subject in respect thereof to such laws as are 
 applicable to other foreigners. In case they re- 
 main in the territory they may preserve their 
 allegiance to the Crown of Spain by making, be- 
 fore a court of record, within a year from the 
 date of the exchange of ratifications of this treaty, 
 a declaration of their decision to preserve such 
 allegiance; in default of which declaration they 
 shall be held to have renounced it and to have 
 adopted the nationality of the territory in which 
 they may reside. 
 
 The civil rights and political status of the native 
 inhabitants of the territories hereby ceded to 
 the United States shall be determined by the 
 Congress. 
 
 Article X. The inhabitants of the territories 
 over which Spain relinquishes or cedes her sov- 
 ereignty shaU be secured in the free exercise of 
 their religion. 
 
 Article XI. The Spaniards residing in the terri- 
 tories over which Spain by this treaty cedes or 
 relinquishes her sovereignty shall be subject in 
 matters civil as weU as criminal to the jurisdic- 
 
292 PKOBLEMS O*' EXPANSION 
 
 tion of the courts of the country wherein they re- 
 side, pursuant to the ordinary laws governing the 
 same ; and they shall have the right to appear be- 
 fore such courts and to pursue the same course as 
 citizens of the country to which the courts belong. 
 
 Article XII. Judicial proceedings pending at 
 the time of the exchange of ratifications of this 
 treaty in the territories over which Spain relin- 
 quishes or cedes her sovereignty shall be deter- 
 mined according to the following rules: 
 
 First. Judgments rendered either in civil suits 
 between private individuals or in criminal matters, 
 before the date mentioned, and with respect to 
 which there is no recourse or right of review un- 
 der the Spanish law, shall be deemed to be final, 
 and shall be executed in due form by competent 
 authority in the territory within which such 
 judgments should be carried out. 
 
 Second. Civil suits between private individuals 
 which may on the date mentioned be undetermined 
 shall be prosecuted to judgment before the court 
 in which they may then be pending, or in the 
 court that may be substituted therefor. 
 
 Third. Criminal actions pending on the date 
 mentioned before the Supreme Court of Spain 
 against citizens of the territory which by this 
 treaty ceases to be Spanish shall continue under 
 its jurisdiction until final judgment; but, such 
 judgment having been rendered, the execution 
 thereof shall be committed to the competent 
 authority of the place in which the case arose. 
 
 Article XIII. The rights of property secured 
 by copyrights and patents acquired by Spaniards 
 in the island of Cuba, and in Porto Rico, the Phil- 
 
APPENDICES 293 
 
 ippines, and other ceded territorieSj at the time of 
 the exchange of the ratifications of this treaty, 
 shall continue to be respected. Spanish scientific, 
 literary, and artistic works not subversive of public 
 order in tlie territories in question shall continue 
 to be admitted free of duty into such territories 
 for the period of ten years, to be reckoned from 
 the date of the exchange of the ratifications of 
 this treaty. 
 
 Article XIV. Spain shall have the power to 
 establish consular officers in the ports and places 
 of the territories the sovereignty over which has 
 either been relinquished or ceded by the present 
 treaty. 
 
 Article XV. The Government of each country 
 will, for the term of ten years, accord to the mer- 
 chant-vessels of the other country the same treat- 
 ment in respect to all port charges, including en- 
 trance and clearance dues, light dues and tonnage 
 duties, as it accords to its own merchant-vessels 
 not engaged in the coastwise trade. 
 
 This article may at any time be terminated on 
 six months' notice given by either Grovernment to 
 the other. 
 
 Article XVI. It is understood that any obliga- 
 tions assumed in this treaty by the United States 
 with respect to Cuba are limited to the time of its 
 occupancy thereof j but it will, upon the termina- 
 tion of such occupancy, advise any Grovernment 
 established in the island to assume the same 
 obligations. 
 
 Article XVII. The present treaty shall be rati- 
 fied by the President of the United States, by and 
 with the advice and consent of the Senate thereof, 
 
294 PROBLEMS OF EXPANSION 
 
 and by Her Majesty the Queen Regent of Spain ; 
 and the ratifications shall be exchanged at Wash- 
 ington within six months from the date hereof, or 
 earlier if possible. 
 
 In faith whereof we, the respective plenipoten- 
 tiaries, have signed this treaty and have hereunto 
 affixed our seals. 
 
 Done in duplicate at Paris, the tenth day of 
 December, in the year of our Lord one thousand 
 eight hundred and ninety-eight. 
 
 (Seal) William R. Day. 
 
 (Seal) CusHMAN K. Davis. 
 
 (Seal) William P. Frye. 
 
 (Seal) George Gray. 
 
 (Seal) Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 (Seal) EuGENio Montero Rios. 
 
 (Seal) B. de Abarzuza. 
 
 (Seal) J. DE Garnica. 
 
 (Seal) W. R. de Villa Urrutia. 
 
 (Seal) Rafael Cerebo. 
 
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