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,
beyond 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
control 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 doctrine like that, was, indeed, ingenuous--or audacious. The
American Commissioners pronounced it alike repugnant to common sense
and menacing to liberty and civilization. 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 successful revolt, at any recognition of loans
negotiated 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 increasing 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, therefore, 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.
[Sidenote: Ready to Pay Legitimate Colonial Debts.]
At the same time the American Commissioners made clear in another case
their sense of the duty to recognize any debt legitimately 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.[4] 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 indemnity for the Franco-Prussian War. The
war with Spain had already cost the United States far above
$300,000,000. When trying to buy Cuba from Spain, in the days of that
island's greatest prosperity, the highest valuation the United States
was ever willing to attach to it was $125,000,000. As an original
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 Government 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?
[4] It might, of course, have run away and left them to disorder.
That is what a pirate could have done, and would have compelled
the intervention of European governments for the protection of
their own citizens. Or it might have restored them to Spain.
Besides the desertion of natives whose aid against Manila had
been encouraged, that would have been to say that while the
United States went to war because the injustice and barbarity of
Spanish rule in the West Indies were such that they could no
longer be tolerated, it was now so eager to quit and get peace
that it was willing to reëstablish that same rule in the East
Indies!
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
instruction, 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
undertaking to assume this en bloc. But in their first statement of the
claim for cession of sovereignty in the Philippines, while intimating
their belief in their absolute right to enforce the demand on the
single ground of indemnity, they were careful to say that they were
ready to stipulate "for the assumption of any existing indebtedness of
Spain incurred for public works and improvements of a pacific character
in the Philippines." When they learned that this entire "Philippine
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 Commissioners abandoned the idea of assuming it. But even then
they resolved, in the final transfer, to fix an amount 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 Philippine debt, and no specific reason for
the payment was given in the ultimatum. The Commissioners merely
observed that they "now present a new proposition, embodying the
concessions which, for the sake of immediate peace, their Government
is, under the circumstances, willing to tender." What 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 payment in the case of the Philippines, as well as the
precise amount at which it was finally fixed.
[Sidenote: Privateering.]
Neither the Peace of Paris nor the conflict which it closed can be said
to have quite settled the status of private war at sea. "Privateering
is and remains abolished," 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 signature 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 dissenting nations to
announce that, for its part, it did not intend, under any
circumstances, to resort to privateering. The other gave no such
assurance, and was, in fact, expected (in accordance with frequent
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 opportunity. The moral effect of this
volunteer action of the United States, with no offset of any active
dissent by its opponent, becomes almost equivalent to completing that
custom and assent of the civilized world which create International
Law. Practically all governments may henceforth regard privateering 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 announcement 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.
[Sidenote: Exempt all Private Property.]
The refusal of the United States, in 1856, to join in the clause of the
Declaration of 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 entitled to
the same protection as on land--prizes and prize courts being thus
almost abolished, and no private property of the 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 merchant 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 Government 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, embodied the very extension of the Declaration of Paris for which
the United States contended. 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 committal of the
United States with Italy, and its subsequent action in the war with
Spain, may at last bring the world to the advanced ground it
recommended for the Declaration of Paris, and throw the safeguards of
civilization henceforth around all private property in time of war,
whether on land or sea?
[Sidenote: The Monroe Doctrine Stands.]
Here, then, are three great principles, important to the advancement of
civilization, 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 sometimes 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 International
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, 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 government in Europe. It
was believed that these monarchs meant not only to repress republican
tendencies in Europe, but to assist Spain in reducing again to
subjection American republics which had been established 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 asserting as a principle in
which the rights and interests of the United States are involved,
that the American continents, by the free and independent condition
which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be
considered as subjects for future colonization by any European
Powers.... Our policy 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 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 institutions 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 Europe out of the Western hemisphere and ourselves 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 continents have thus attained such an independent
condition that they are no longer fields for European colonization."
That fact remains. 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 Aleutian Islands, largely in the Asiatic system. It long
maintained a species of protectorate 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 disappearance from the Western world of the unfortunate
Power whose colonial experiences led to its original promulgation, the
circumstances have so changed that nobody is very likely to have either
interest or wish to interfere with it.
[Sidenote: Leaving the Continent.]
What has really been unsettled, if anything, by the Peace of Paris and
the preceding 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 support since the Civil War
for filibustering 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 Rico, 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? or, if not, how govern or get rid of
them? What place was there in the American system for territories that
were never to be States, for colonies, 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 Secessionist cavalry general.
But now two parties presently arose. One held that there was no
creditable escape from the consequences of the war; that the
Government, 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,
humanitarian, 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 Administration 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 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.
[Sidenote: Anti-Administration View of the Constitution.]
In the universal ferment of opinion and discussion that ensued, the
opponents of what is assumed to be the Administration policy on the new
possessions have seemed to rely chiefly on two provisions in the
Constitution of the United States and a phrase in the Declaration of
Independence. The constitutional provisions are:
The Congress shall have power to levy and collect taxes ... and
provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United
States; _but all duties, imposts, and excises shall be 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. Chief Justice Marshall of the Supreme Court
of the United States, is cited in favor of that contention. If
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 Guam) 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 consequent loss
of nearly sixty millions of annual revenue. Another would be the
destruction of the existing cane- and beet-sugar industries in the
United States. Another, apprehended by the laboring classes, who are
already suspicious from their experience with the Chinese, would be an
enormous influx, 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 Government for territories except for development into
Statehood; and, consequently, the required population being already
present, new States must be created out of Luzon, Mindanao, the
Visayas, Porto Rico, 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. Jefferson'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 marshaled in support of such views--Chancellor Kent,
Mr. John C. Calhoun, Mr. Chief Justice 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
transformation into an empire; as a revival of slavery in another form,
both because of government without representation, and because 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 repudiation of the
congressional declaration at the outbreak of the war, that it was not
waged for territorial aggrandizement; and finally 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 Administration, 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 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_."