attributed to a gentleman highly honored by this University and by his
townsmen here. I gladly seize this opportunity, as a consistent
opponent during his whole political life, to add that his words carry
great 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? What planted us in the Philippines was the use of our
power in the most efficient naval and military defense 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 institutions, 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 Mohammedan, willing and unwilling
alike,--and promise him whatever aid might be necessary for that task.
Meantime, we should undertake to protect him against outside
interference from any European or Asiatic nation whose interests on
that oceanic highway and in those commercial capitals might be
imperiled![14] 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!
[14] The exact proposition made by General Carl Schurz in
addressing the Chicago Anti-Expansion Convention, October 17,
1899.
[Sidenote: Objections to Duty.]
If this fact be clearly perceived, if the choice between these three
courses be once recognized as the only choice the present situation
permits, our minds will be less disturbed by the confused cries of
perplexity and discontent 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 capacity, 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 liberty to rule others--the liberty
first to turn our own troops out of the city and harbor 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 immediate excuse for interference. What we are doing is in
the double line of preventing otherwise inevitable foreign seizure and
putting 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 unfortunate. 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 foreigners in Manila, and on their enemies in
the other tribes, that by following their instincts they may fit
themselves for freedom?
Again, "It will injure us to exert power over an unwilling people, just
as slavery injured the slaveholders themselves." Then a community is
injured by maintaining a police. Then a court is injured by rendering 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 strengthening a nation.
"Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed." "No man is good enough to govern another against his will."
Great truths, from men whose greatness and moral elevation the world
admires. But there is a higher authority 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 toward
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? For a hundred years the uniform policy which they began and
their sons continued has been acquisition, expansion, annexation,
reaching out to remote wildernesses 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? The
precedent was established before we were born. Why distress ourselves
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.
[Sidenote: Evasion by Embrace.]
That danger, in fact, can come only if we shirk our present duty by the
second of the two alternative methods of evasion I have mentioned--the
one favored by the exuberant patriot who wants to clasp Cuban, Kanaka,
and Tagal alike to his bosom as equal partners with ourselves in our
inheritance from the fathers, and take them all into the Union as
States.
We will be wise to open our eyes at once to the gravity 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
politicians 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 Rico 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 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, according to the principles of
the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights,
advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States." We made
almost identically the same stipulation when we bought Florida. When
one of the most respected in the long line of our able Secretaries of
State, Mr. William L. Marcy, negotiated a treaty in 1854 for the
annexation 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 feature 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 population 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.
The calamity of admitting them cannot be overrated. Even in the case of
the best of these islands, it would demoralize and degrade the national
suffrage almost incalculably below the point already reached. To the
Senate, unwieldy now, and greatly changed in character from the body
contemplated by the Constitution, it would be disastrous. 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 qualified, 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 Constitution for the
United States of _America_."
There is the only safe ground--on the letter and the spirit of the
Constitution. It contemplated a Continental Union of sovereign States.
It limited that Union to the American Continent. The man that takes it
farther sounds its death-knell.
[Sidenote: The General Welfare.]
I have designedly left to the last any estimate 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, 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 profusion. 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 controlled by timid ideas and
short-sighted views, and so proved unequal to the duty and the
opportunity which unforeseen circumstances 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 commerce 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 off its
own 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.
[Sidenote: Have they any Value?]
Are we to be discouraged by the cry that the new 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 opportunities in the Orient, or at least
in the Philippines, are overrated? So it used to be said of the
Sandwich Islands. But what does our experience show? Before their
annexation 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, 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 competing with us,
and another part to a favorable system of reciprocity. Nevertheless,
nobody doubts the advantage our dealers have derived in the promotion
of trade from controlling 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 reckoning by mere distance, we still have the better of
any European rivals in the Philippines. 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 relations 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 considering!
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 foothold. 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 because some Malay and half-breed
insurgents said they wanted us away.
[Sidenote: The Future.]
Have you considered for whom we hold these advantages in trust? They
belong not merely to the seventy-five millions now within our borders,
but to all who are to extend the fortunes and preserve the virtues of
the Republic 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 nobody gives reasons why we
should not increase half as fast. Suppose we do actually increase only
one fourth as fast in the Twentieth 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 commerce? What demands on tropical productions 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 ocean
steamers, before telegraphs and ocean cables, before the enormous
development of our manufactures, and the training of executive and
organizing faculties in our people on a constantly increasing scale for
generations?
Does the prospect alarm? Is it said that our Nation is already too
great, that all its magnificent growth only adds to the conflicting
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, standing 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
training, to exert the greatest influence and accomplish the most good
by working intelligently 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 appointment of
any person to these new and strange duties beyond seas impossible save
for proved fitness, and his removal impossible save for cause. Rally
the colleges and the churches, and all they influence, the brain and
the conscience of the country, in a combined and irresistible demand
for a genuine, trained, and pure Civil Service in our new possessions,
that shall put to shame our detractors, and show to the world the
Americans of this generation, equal still to the work of civilization
and colonization, and leading the development 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 Massachusetts 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 Republic 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 George 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 concern 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. 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 cannot be
changed.
[Sidenote: Things that Cannot be Undone.]
Stare decisis. There are some things settled. 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 accept 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. He didn'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 immutable title which, whatever
some of our own people say, the whole civilized world recognizes 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.