Chapter IV: Section 3: in Article IV (1)

The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful
rules and regulations respecting 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 exercise 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 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 Constitution 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.

[Sidenote: Replies to Constitutional Objections.]

In dealing with the arguments against retention of the Philippines, based on the sections previously quoted from Articles I 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 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 question. 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 constitutional 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 constitutional provision previously cited about citizenship 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 Territory_ 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 the judicial rulings of the last half-century that seem to bear upon the present situation.

[Sidenote: The Outcome not Doubtful.]

It has been thought best, in an explanation to readers in another country of the perplexity arising in the American mind, in a sudden 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 Republic. 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 population, 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 governed 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 entanglements, 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 constitutional 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 constitutional 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 confronts 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 American Government 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 department 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 mistakes 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

OUR NEW DUTIES

This commencement address was delivered on the campus at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, at the celebration of its seventy-fifth anniversary, June 15, 1899.

OUR NEW DUTIES

Sons and Friends 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 George Washington approved, a foundation for this University. Seventy-five years ago it opened its doors. Now, si monumentum quæris, 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.[5] There are the longer lists of others to whom kinder fortune 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 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 sæcula sæculorum!"

[5] Much attention had been attracted, as the date for this
celebration approached, to the numerous sons of this small
college who had in one way or another become prominent; and the
newspapers printed long lists of them. Among the names thus
singled out in the press were Benjamin Harrison, of the class of
1852, President of the United States, 1889-93; William Dennison,
class of 1835, Governor of Ohio, 1859-63, and Postmaster-General
under Abraham Lincoln; Caleb B. Smith, 1826, Secretary of the
Interior in the same Administration; General Robert C. Schenck,
1827, Chairman Ways and Means Committee in House of
Representatives, Major-General in the Civil War, and United
States Minister to Brazil and to Great Britain; William S.
Groesbeck, 1834, Congressman, counsel for Andrew Johnson in the
impeachment proceedings, and United States delegate to the
International Monetary Congress, 1878; Samuel Shellabarger, 1841,
Congressman, member of the Crédit Mobilier Investigation, and of
the United States Civil Service Commission; Oliver P. Morton,
1845, War Governor of Indiana, and United States Senator; Charles
Anderson, 1833, Governor of Ohio; James Birney, 1836, Governor of
Michigan; Richard Yates, 1830, War Governor of Illinois, and
United States Senator; Milton Sayler, 1852, Speaker House of
Representatives; John S. Williams, 1838, the "Cerro Gordo
Williams" of the Mexican War, United States Senator from
Kentucky; George E. Pugh, 1840, United States Senator from Ohio;
James W. McDill, 1853, United States Senator from Iowa; General
Samuel F. Carey, 1835, Congressman from Ohio, and temperance
orator; Albert S. Berry, 1856, Congressman from Kentucky; Dr.
John S. Billings, U.S.A., 1857, head of New York Library; David
Swing, 1852, the Chicago clergyman; General A. C. McClurg, 1853,
the Chicago publisher; Henry M. MacCracken, 1857, Chancellor of
New York University; William M. Thomson, 1828, author of "The
Land and the Book"; Calvin S. Brice, 1863, railway-builder, and
United States Senator; etc.

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 assigning 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.

[Sidenote: New Duties; a New World.]

I shall speak of the new duties that are 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 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 Republic. At this moment our soldiers are facing a barbarous or semi-civilized foe, who treacherously attacked 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?[6]

[6] "MY DEAR SIR: I have received your letter of the 23d inst.,
notifying me of my election as a vice-president of the
Anti-Imperialist League. I recognize the compliment implied in
this election, and appreciate it the more by reason of my respect
for the gentlemen identified with the league, but I do not think
I can appropriately or consistently accept the position,
especially since I learn through the press that the league
adopted at its recent meeting certain resolutions to which I
cannot assent.... I may add that, while I fully recognize the
injustice and even absurdity of those charges of 'disloyalty'
which have been of late freely made against some members of the
league, and also that many honorable and patriotic men do not
feel as I do on this subject, I am personally unwilling to take
part in an agitation which may have some tendency to cause a
public enemy to persist in armed resistance, or may be, at least,
plausibly represented as having this tendency. There can be no
doubt that, as a matter of fact, the country is at war with
Aguinaldo and his followers. I profoundly regret this fact;...
but it is a fact, nevertheless, and, as such, must weigh in
determining my conduct as a citizen....

"CHARLES JEROME BONAPARTE.

"BALTIMORE,
"May 25, 1899."

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 was fought. Its results are upon us. With the ratification of the Peace of Paris, our Continental Republic 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 commerce, the travel, the civilization of the world, for the preservation of order and the protection of life and property in Cuba, in Porto Rico, 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 country, and as to who got it fastened upon us? There may have been a time for disputes about the wisdom of resisting the stamp 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 remember 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 position 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 citizenship--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 accomplished ex-Minister of the United States to a departing Peace Commissioner last autumn. "You cannot let go of him with either dignity or safety, and he will not be easy to tame."

[Sidenote: Policy for the New Possessions.]

But when the task is accomplished,--when the Stars and Stripes at last bring 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 dispassionate, 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 interest, which it is also a duty for our statesmen 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 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 necessarily the raw material for future States in the Union. Colonies and dependencies, it is now said, are essentially inconsistent with our system. But if any ever entertained the wild dream that the instrument 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 Continental Union of independent sovereign States our fathers planned. Whoever proposes 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 Republic. 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.

[Sidenote: The Constitutional Objection.]

Yet we must face the fact that able and conscientious men believe the United States has no constitutional power to hold territory that is not to be erected into States in the Union, or to govern people that are not to 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 government in the world if a constitutional objection 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 territory, 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 would be revolutionized by the free admission 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 meaning 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 American 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 requisite population, may demand admission next winter into the Union as free and independent States, with representatives in Senate and House, and may plausibly claim that they can show a better title to admission 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 government 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 sovereign, over colonies, absolute dependents, was not congenial to the free and independent spirit of American institutions." In 1848 John C. Calhoun declared that "the conquest and retention of Mexico as a province 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 inconsistent with the nature of our Government." 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 constitutional end, and there is therefore no constitutional warrant for acquiring and holding territory for that purpose."

[Sidenote: An Alleged Constitutional Inability.]

We have now, as is believed, presented with entire fairness a summary of the more important aspects in which the constitutional 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 general practice through a century. And yet I venture to think that no candid and competent 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 practice of their successors, without being absolutely 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 organic 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 perhaps wearisome detail of the proof.

The notion that the United States is an inferior sort of nation, constitutionally without 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 invested with all those inherent and implied powers which, 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 functions" (12 Wall. 554).

Every one recalls this constitutional provision: "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 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 section 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 constitutional than the men that wrote the Constitution!

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 during which we have already held Alaska is rounded out to a full century, that unorganized Territory will even then have any greater prospect than at present of admission as a State? or who believes our grandchildren will be violating the Constitution 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 majority 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 Constitution, but to the precise construction of the constitutional language as to the Territories by the highest authority, in the light of long previous practice, is to be found in another part of the instrument itself, deliberately 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 additional words, "or any place subject to their jurisdiction"? Is it not too plain for argument 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?

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, before the same eminent jurist, came a constitutional 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 anything--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?

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 action. 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 establishes, with not only a right of debate and a right to vote in both houses of Congress, but a right to partake in the choice of President and Vice-President?... 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 intended as general securities for public liberty. But they do not exist in territories till introduced 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 circumstances, by every proceeding of Congress on the subject and by all judicature on the subject, it has been held that territories belonging 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 exercised in passing laws for the United States itself." Mr. Calhoun, in the course of this debate, asked Mr. Webster for judicial opinion 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 supreme, 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 _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 February, 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 Congress. They are not organized under the Constitution nor subject to its complex distribution of the powers of government. The United States, having rightfully acquired the Territories, and being the only Government which can impose laws upon them, has the entire dominion and sovereignty, national and municipal, Federal and State."

[Sidenote: More Recent Constitutional Objections.]

In the light of such expositions of our constitutional power and our uniform national practice, it is difficult to deal patiently with the remaining objections to the acquisition of territory, purporting to be based on constitutional 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 Constitution--that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. In the Sulu group piracy prevailed for centuries. 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? In other parts of the archipelago what has been stigmatized 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 seasons 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 flagrantly 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 demagogues, hesitate to admit--that there are cases where a good government does not and ought not to rest on the consent of the governed. If men will not govern themselves 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 respectable 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 professed disciples now demand? Was he guilty of subverting the principles of the Government in buying some hundreds of thousands of Spaniards, Frenchmen, Creoles, and Indians, "like sheep in the shambles," as the critics untruthfully say we did in the Philippines? We bought nobody there. We held the Philippines first by the same right by which we held our own original thirteen States,--the oldest and firmest of all rights, the right by which nearly every great nation holds the bulk of its territory,--the right of conquest. 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 Jeffersonians--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 consent of the governed. Monroe bought the Floridians without their consent. Polk conquered the Californians, and Pierce bought the New Mexicans. Seward bought the Russians and Alaskans, and we have governed them ever since, without their consent. 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 Independence?

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 tribunals can decide whether it is constitutional 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 language in the Senate, that "California would ever be worth a dollar." Is Gouverneur Morris to be arraigned as false to the Constitution 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.

[Sidenote: The Little Americans.]

If I have wearied you with these detailed proofs of a doctrine which Mr. Justice Morrow rightly says is now well established, and 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 vociferously urged from the outset by the large class of our people whom I venture to designate as the Little Americans, using that term 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 Gadsden 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 secession, they raised the cry,--erroneously attributed to my distinguished predecessor and friend, Horace Greeley, but really uttered by Winfield Scott,--"Wayward Sisters, depart in peace!" Happily, this form, too, of Little Americanism failed. We are all glad now,--my distinguished classmate here,[7] 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!

[7] The Hon. Albert S. Berry, M.C., from the Covington,
Kentucky, District.

[Sidenote: The Plain Path of Duty.]

It was no vulgar lust of power that inspired the statesmen and soldiers of the Republic 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.

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 accustomed, 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 discharge the responsibilities of his conquest. But this is no longer a child-nation, irresponsible in its nonage and incapable of comprehending or assuming the responsibilities 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 responsibilities 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 civilization?

If we did not want those responsibilities we ought not to have gone to war, and I, for 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 protect 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! The alternative was properly taken. Dewey went to Manila and sank the Spanish fleet. We thus broke down Spanish means for controlling 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? To be sure! Under three hundred years of Spanish rule barbarism on Luzon had so far disappeared that this commercial metropolis, as large as San Francisco or Cincinnati, had sprung up and come to be thronged by traders and travelers of all nations. Now it is calmly suggested that we might have turned it over to one semi-civilized tribe, absolutely without experience in governing even itself, much less a great community of foreigners, probably in a minority 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!

If running away from troublesome responsibility and duty is our rôle, 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 sending Andrew Jackson to protect the settlements 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_ inhabitants? Or why, in years within the memory of most of you, when the Sioux and Chippewas rose on our Northwestern frontier, did we not invite them to retain possession 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 constitutional power to acquire and govern new territory absolutely at will, according to our sense of right and duty, whether as dependencies, 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.

[Sidenote: The Policy for our Dependencies]

How shall we set about it? What shall be the policy with which, when order has been inexorably restored, we begin our dealings with the new wards of the Nation? Certainly we must mark our disapproval of the treachery and barbarities of the present contest. 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 between the tribes must be discouraged and prevented. We must seek to suppress crimes of violence and private vengeance, secure individual liberty, protect individual property, 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, manners, 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 initiative 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 whole archipelago is obviously impossible. Its relations to the outside world must necessarily be assumed by us. We must preserve order in Philippine waters, regulate the harbors, 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 attainable, 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 expect 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.

[Sidenote: The Duty of Public Servants.]

Certainly this is no bed of flowery ease in the dreamy Orient to which we are led. No doubt these first glimpses of the task that lies before us, as well as the warfare with distant tribes into which we have been unexpectedly plunged, will provoke for the time a certain discontent with our new possessions. 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 concerns 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 popular temper, I readily take the time which hostile critics consider unfavorable, for accepting 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 vindication for it be needed, I confidently await the future.