recent judicial expression of a contrary view. It was by Judge
William Lochren of the United States Circuit Court at St. Paul,
in the case of habeas corpus proceedings against Reeve, warden of
the Minnesota State Prison at Stillwater, for the release of a
Porto Rican named Ortiz. He was held for the murder of a private
soldier of the United States, sentenced to death by a Military
Commission at San Juan, and, on commutation of the sentence by
the President of the United States, sent to this State Prison for
life. Judge Lochren denied the writ on the ground that the
conviction took place before the Treaty of Paris, by which Spain
ceded sovereignty in Porto Rico to the United States, had been
ratified by the Senate. The Judge went on, however, to argue that
Ortiz could not have been lawfully tried before the Military
Commission after the ratification of the treaty, because the
island of Porto Rico thereby became an integral part of the
United States, subject to the Constitution and privileged and
bound by its provisions. As this point was not involved in the
case he was deciding, this is, of course, merely a dictum--the
expression of opinion on an outside matter by a Democratic judge
who was recently transferred by Mr. Cleveland from a Washington
bureau to the bench. It clearly shows, however, what would be his
decision whenever the case might come before him. His argument
followed closely the lines taken by Mr. Calhoun in the Senate and
Mr. Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott decision.
On these points I make bold to repeat what I felt warranted in saying a
fortnight ago within sight of Bunker Hill--that there is every evidence
that the American people have distinctly and definitely made up their
minds. They have not been persuaded and they cannot be persuaded that
this is an inferior government, incapable of any duty Providence may
send its way--duties which other nations could discharge, but we
cannot. So I venture to affirm the impossibility that any party in
power, whether the present one or its opponent, could soon, if ever,
abandon one foot of the territory gained in the late war.
We are gathered on another old Spanish territory taken by our country
in war. It shows what Americans do with such acquisitions. Before you
expect to see Porto Rico given back to Spain or the Philippines
abandoned to Aguinaldo, wait till we are ready to declare, as Daniel
Webster did in the Senate, that this California of your pride and glory
is "not worth a dollar," and throw back the worthless thing on the
hands of unoffending Mexico. Till then, let us as practical and
sensible men recognize that what is past is settled.
[Sidenote: Duty First; but then Interest also.]
Thus far have we come in these strange courses and to these unexpected
and unwelcome tasks by following, at each succeeding emergency, the
path of clear, absolute, and unavoidable duty. The only point in the
whole national line of conduct, from the spring of 1898 on to this
March morning of 1900, at which our Government could have stopped with
honor, was at the outset. I, for one, would gladly have stopped there.
How was it then with some at the West who are discontented now? Shake
not your gory locks at me or at my fellow-citizens in the East. You
cannot say we did it. In 1898, just as a few years earlier in the
debate about Venezuela, the loudest calls for a belligerent policy came
not from the East, "the cowardly, commercial East," as we were
sometimes described, but from the patriotic and warlike West. The
farther West you came, the louder the cry for war, till it reached its
very climax on what we used to call the frontier, and was sent
thundering Eastward upon the National Capital in rolling reverberations
from the Sierras and the Rockies which few public men cared to defy. At
that moment, perhaps, if this popular and congressional demand had not
pushed us forward, we might have stopped with honor--certainly not
later. From the day war was flagrant down to this hour there has been
no forward step which a peremptory national or international obligation
did not require. To the mandate alone of Duty, stern daughter of the
voice of God, the American people have bowed, as, let us hope, they
always will. It is not true that, in the final decision as to any one
step in the great movement hitherto, our interests have been first or
chiefly considered.
But in all these constitutional discussions to which we have referred,
one clause in the Constitution has been curiously thrust aside. The
framers placed it on the very forefront of the edifice they were
rearing, and there declared for our instruction and guidance that "the
people do ordain and establish this Constitution ... to promote the
general welfare." By what right do statesmen now venture to think that
they can leave our national interests out of the account? Who and where
is the sentimentalist who arraigns us for descending to too sordid a
level when we recognize our interest to hold what the discharge of duty
has placed in our hand? Since when has it been statesmanship to shut
our eyes to the interests of our own country, and patriotism to
consider only the interests or the wishes of others? For my own part, I
confess to a belief in standing up first for my own, and find it
difficult to cherish much respect for the man who won't: first for my
own family rather than some other man's; first for my own city and
State rather than for somebody else's; first for my own country--first,
please God! for the United States of America. And so, having in the
past, too fully, perhaps, and more than once, considered the question
of our new possessions in the light of our duty, I propose now to look
at them further, and unblushingly, in the light of our interests.
[Sidenote: The Old Faith of Californians.]
Which way do your interests lie? Which way do the interests of
California and the city of San Francisco lie?
Three or four days ago, when your President honored me with the summons
I am now obeying, there came back to me a vague memory of the visions
cherished by the men you rate the highest in California, your
"Pioneers" and "Forty-Niners," as to the future of the empire they were
founding on this coast. There lingered in my mind the flavor at least
of an old response by a California public man to the compliment a
"tenderfoot" New-Yorker, in the innocence of his heart, had intended to
pay, when he said that with this splendid State, this glorious harbor,
and the Pacific Ocean, you have all the elements to build up here the
New York of the West. The substance of the Californian's reply was
that, through mere lack of knowledge of the country to which he
belonged, the well-meaning New-Yorker had greatly underrated the future
that awaited San Francisco--that long before Macaulay's New-Zealander
had transferred himself from the broken arches of London Bridge to
those of Brooklyn, it would be the pride and boast of the denizens of
those parts that New York had held its own so finely as still to be
fairly called the San Francisco of the East!
While the human memory is the most tenacious and nearest immortal of
all things known to us, it is also at times the most elusive. Even with
the suggestions of Mr. Hittell and the friendly files of the Mechanics'
Library, I did not succeed in finding that splendid example of San
Francisco faith which my memory had treasured. Yet I found some things
not very unlike it to show what manner of men they were that laid the
foundations of this commonwealth on the Pacific, what high hopes
sustained them, and what radiant future they confidently anticipated.
Here, for example, was Mr. William A. Howard, whom I found declaring,
not quite a third of a century ago, that San Francisco would yet be the
largest American city on the largest ocean in the world. At least, so
he is reported in "The Bulletin" and "The Call," though "The Alta" puts
it with an "if," its report reading: "If the development of commerce
require that the largest ocean shall have the largest city, then it
would follow that as the Atlantic is smaller than the Pacific, so in
the course of years New York will be smaller than San Francisco."
And here, again, was Mr. Delos Lake, maintaining that the "United
States is now on a level with the most favored nations; that its
geographical position, its line of palatial steamers established on the
Pacific Ocean by American enterprise, and soon to be followed by ocean
telegraphs, must before long render this continent the proper avenue of
commerce between Europe and Asia, and raise this metropolis of the
Pacific to the loftiest height of monetary power."
There was a reason, too, widely held by the great men of the day, whose
names have passed into history, for some such faith. Thus an old
Californian of high and happy fame, Major-General Henry W. Halleck,
speaking of San Francisco, said: "Standing here on the extreme Western
verge of the Republic, overlooking the coast of Asia and occupying the
future center of trade and commerce of the two worlds,... if that
civilization which so long has moved westward with the Star of Empire
is now, purified by the principles of true Christianity, to go on
around the world until it reaches the place of its origin and makes the
Orient blossom again with its benign influences, San Francisco must be
made the abutment, and International Law the bridge, by which it will
cross the Pacific Ocean. The enterprise of the merchants of California
has already laid the foundation of the abutments; diplomacy and steam
and telegraph companies are rapidly accumulating material for the
construction of the bridge." Thus far Halleck. But have the
Californians of this generation abandoned the bridge? Are we to believe
those men of to-day who tell us it is not worth crossing?
Here, again, was Eugene Casserly, speaking of right for the California
Democracy of that date. Writing with deliberation more than a quarter
of a century ago, he said: "We expect to stand on equal grounds with
the most favored of nations. We ask no more in the contest for that
Eastern trade which has always heretofore been thought to carry with it
the commercial supremacy of the globe. America asks only a fair field,
even as against her oldest and most formidable rivals. Nature, and our
position as the nearest neighbors to eastern Asia, separated from her
only by the great highways of the ocean, have placed in our hands all
the advantages that we need.... Favored by vicinity, by soil and
climate on our own territory, with a people inferior to none in
enterprise and vigor, without any serious rivals anywhere, all this
Pacific coast is ours or is our tributary.... We hold as ours the great
ocean that so lately rolled in solitary grandeur from the equator to
the pole. In the changes certain to be effected in the currents of
finance, of exchange, and of trade, by the telegraph and the railroads,
bringing the financial centers of Europe and of the United States by
way of San Francisco within a few weeks of the ports of China and of
the East, San Francisco must become at no distant day the banker, the
factor, and the carrier of the trade of eastern Asia and the Pacific,
to an extent to which it is difficult to assign limits." Are the people
now lacking in the enterprise and vigor which Mr. Casserly claimed for
them? Have the limits he scorned been since assigned, and do the
Californians of to-day assent to the restriction?
Take yet another name, treasured, I know, on the roll of California's
most worthy servants, another Democrat. Governor Haight, only a third
of a century ago, said: "I see in the near future a vast commerce
springing up between the Chinese Empire and the nations of the West; an
interchange of products and manufactures mutually beneficial; the
watchword of progress and the precepts of a pure religion uttered to
the ears of a third of the human race." And addressing some
representatives of that vast region, he added, with a burst of fine
confidence in the supremacy of San Francisco's position: "As Chief
Magistrate of this Western State of the Nation, I welcome you to the
territory of the Republic,... in no selfish or narrow spirit, either of
personal advantage or seeking exclusive privileges for our own over the
other nations; and so, in the name of commerce, of civilization, of
progress, of humanity, and of religion, on behalf not merely of
California or America, but of Europe and of mankind, I bid you and your
associates welcome and God-speed."
Perhaps this may be thought merely an exuberant hospitality. Let me
quote, then, from the same man, speaking again as the Governor of the
State, at the Capitol of the State, in the most careful oration of his
life: "What shall be said of the future of California? Lift your eyes
and expand your conceptions to take in the magnitude of her destiny. An
empire in area, presenting advantages and attractions to the people of
the Eastern States and Europe far beyond those presented by any other
State or Territory--who shall set limits to her progress, or paint in
fitting colors the splendor of her future?... Mismanagement may at
times retard her progress, but if the people of California are true to
themselves, this State is destined to a high position, not only among
her sister States, but among the commonwealths of the world,... when
her ships visit every shore, and her merchant princes control the
commerce of the great ocean and the populous countries upon its
borders."
Was Governor Haight alone, or was he in advance of his time? Go yet
farther back, to the day when Judge Nathaniel Bennett was assigned by
the people of San Francisco to the task of delivering the oration when
they celebrated the admission of California into the Union, on October
29, 1850: "Judging from the past, what have we not a right to expect in
the future? The world has never witnessed anything equal or similar to
our career hitherto.... Our State is a marvel to ourselves, and a
miracle to the rest of the world. Nor is the influence of California
confined within her own borders.... The islands nestled in the embrace
of the Pacific have felt the quickening breath of her enterprise....
She has caused the hum of busy life to be heard in the wilderness where
rolls the Oregon, and where until recently was heard no sound save his
own dashings. Even the wall of Chinese exclusiveness has been broken
down, and the children of the Sun have come forth to view the splendors
of her achievements.... It is all but a foretaste of the future.... The
world's trade is destined soon to be changed.... The commerce of Asia
and the islands of the Pacific, instead of pursuing the ocean track by
the way of Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope, or even taking the
shorter route of the Isthmus of Darien or the Isthmus of Tehuantepec,
will enter the Golden Gate of California and deposit its riches in the
lap of our city.... New York will then become what London now is--the
great central point of exchange, the heart of trade, the force of whose
contraction and expansion will be felt throughout every artery of the
commercial world; and San Francisco will then stand the second city of
America.... The responsibility rests upon us whether this first
American State of the Pacific shall in youth and ripe manhood realize
the promise of infancy. We may cramp her energies and distort her form,
or we may make her a rival even of the Empire State of the Atlantic.
The best wishes of Americans are with us. They expect that the
Herculean youth will grow to a Titan in his manhood."
Nor was even Judge Bennett the pioneer of such ideas. Long before he
spoke, or before the Stars and Stripes had been raised over Yerbabuena,
as far back as in 1835, the English people and the British Government
had been advised by Alexander Forbes that "The situation of California
for intercourse with other countries and its capacity for
commerce--should it ever be possessed by a numerous and industrious
population--are most favorable. The port of San Francisco for size and
safety is hardly surpassed by any in the world; it is so situated as to
be made the center of the commercial relations which may take place
between Asia and the western coast of America.... The vessels of the
Spanish Philippines Company on their passage from Manila to San Blas
and Acapulco generally called at Monterey for refreshments and
orders.... Thus it appears as if California was designed by nature to
be the medium of connecting commercially Asia with America, and as the
depot of the trade between these two vast continents, which possess the
elements of unbounded commercial interchange; the one overflowing with
all the rich and luxurious commodities always characteristic of the
East, the other possessing a superabundance of the precious metals and
other valuable products to give in exchange.... If ever a route across
the Isthmus shall be opened, California will then be one of the most
interesting commercial situations in the world; it would in that case
be the rendezvous for all vessels engaged in the trade between Europe
and Asia by that route. It is nearly mid-voyage between these two
countries, and would furnish provisions and all naval supplies in the
most ample abundance, and most probably would become a mart for the
interchange of the commodities of the three continents."
[Sidenote: Has the State Lost Heart and Shriveled?]
Let no man fancy that these sometimes exuberant expressions of a noble
and far-seeing faith by your own predecessors and by a prescient
foreigner have been revived in derision or even in doubt. Those were
the days when, if some were for a party, at any rate all were for the
State. These were great men, far-seeing, courageous, patriotic, the men
of Forty-nine, who in such lofty spirit and with such high hope laid
the foundation of this empire on the Pacific. Distance did not disturb
them, nor difficulties discourage. There sits on your platform to-day a
man who started from New York to California by what he thought the
quickest route in December, 1848; went south from the Isthmus as the
only means of catching a ship for the north, and finally entered this
harbor, by the way of Chile, in June, 1849. He could go now to Manila
thrice over and back in less time. And yet there are Californians of
this day who profess to shrink in alarm from the remoteness and
inaccessibility of our new possessions! Has the race shriveled under
these summer skies? Has it grown old before its time; is its natural
strength abated? Are the old energy and the old courage gone? Has the
soul of this people shrunk within them? Or is it only that there are
strident voices from California, sounding across the Sierras and the
Rockies, that misrepresent and shame a State whose sons are not
unworthy of their fathers?
The arm of the Californian has not been shortened, that he cannot reach
out. The salt has not left him, that he cannot occupy and possess the
great ocean that the Lord has given him. Nor has he forgotten the
lesson taught by the history of his own race (and of the greatest
nations of the world), that oceans no longer separate--they unite.
There are no protracted and painful struggles to build a Pacific
railroad for your next great step. The right of way is assured, the
grading is done, the rails are laid. You have but to buy your
rolling-stock at the Union Iron Works, draw up your time-table, and
begin business. Or do you think it better that your Pacific railroad
should end in the air? Is a six-thousand-mile extension to a through
line worthless? Can your Scott shipyards only turn out men-of-war? Can
your Senator Perkins only run ships that creep along the coast? Is the
broad ocean too deep for him or too wide?
[Sidenote: New Fields and the Need for them.]
Contiguous land gives a nation cohesion; but it is the water that
brings other nations near. The continent divides you from customers
beyond the mountains; but the ocean unites you with the whole
boundless, mysterious Orient. There you find a population of over six
hundred millions of souls, between one fourth and one third of the
inhabitants of the globe. You are not at a disadvantage in trading with
them because they have the start of you in manufactures or skill or
capital, as you would be in the countries to which the Atlantic leads.
They offer you the best of all commerce--that with people less
advanced, exchanging the products of different zones, a people
awakening to the complex wants of a civilization that is just stirring
them to a new life.
Have you considered what urgent need there will be for those new
fields? It is no paltry question of an outlet for the surplus products
of a mere nation of seventy-five millions that confronts you. Your
mathematical professors will tell you that, at the ratio of increase
established in this Nation by the census returns for the century just
closing, its population would amount during the next century to the
bewildering and incomprehensible figure of twelve hundred millions. The
ratio, of course, will not be maintained, since the exceptional
circumstances that caused it cannot continue. But no one gives reasons
why it should not be half as great. Suppose it to turn out only one
fourth as great. Is it the part of statesmanship--is it even the part
of every-day, matter-of-fact common sense--to reject or despise these
Oriental openings for the products of this people of three hundred
million souls the Twentieth Century would need to nourish within our
borders? Our total annual trade with China now--with this customer whom
the friendly ocean is ready to bring to your very doors--is barely
twenty millions. That would be a commerce of the gross amount of six
and two third cents for each inhabitant of our country in the next
century, with that whole vast region adjoining you, wherein dwell one
fourth of the human race!
Even the Spanish trade with the Philippines was thirty millions. They
are merely our stepping-stone. But would a wise man kick the
stepping-stone away?
[Sidenote: The New Blood Felt.]
San Francisco is exceptionally prosperous now. So is the State of
California. Why? Partly, no doubt, because you are sharing the
prosperity which blesses the whole country. But is that all? What is
this increase in the shipping at your wharves? What was the meaning of
those crowded columns of business statistics your newspapers proudly
printed last New Year's?--what the significance of the increase in
exports and imports, far beyond mere army requirements? Why is every
room taken in your big buildings? What has crowded your docks, filled
your streets, quickened your markets, rented your stores and dwellings,
sent all this new blood pulsing through your veins--made you like the
worn Richelieu when, in that moment, there entered his spent veins the
might of France?
Was it the rage you have witnessed among some of your own leaders
against everything that has been done during the past two years--the
warning against everything that is about to be done? Was it the proof
of our unworthiness and misdeeds, to which we all penitentially
listened, as so eloquently set forth from the high places of light and
leading--the long lamentation over how on almost every field we had
shown our incapacity; how unfit we were to govern cities, unfit to
govern territories, unfit to govern Indians, unfit to govern
ourselves--how, in good old theological phrase, we were from head to
foot a mass of national wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, and
there was no health in us? Was it the demonstration that what we needed
was to sit under the live-oaks and "develop the individual man," nor
dare to look beyond? Was it the forgetfulness that muscles grow strong
only with exercise; that it is the duties of manhood that take the
acrid humors out of a youth's blood; that it is great responsibility,
manfully met, not cowardly evaded, that sobers and steadies and
ennobles?
Some one has lately been quoting Lincoln's phrase, "We cannot escape
history." It is a noble and inspiring thought. Most of us dare not look
for a separate appearance at that greatest of human bars--may hope only
to be reckoned in bulk with the multitude. But even so, however it may
be with others on this coast, I, for one, want to be counted with those
who had faith in my countrymen; who did not think them incapable of
tasks which duty imposed and to which other nations had been equal; who
did not disparage their powers or distrust their honest intentions or
urge them to refuse their opportunities; to be counted with those who
at least had open eyes when they stood in the Golden Gate!
[Sidenote: Wards or Full Partners.]
I do not doubt--you do not doubt--they are the majority. They will
prevail. What Duty requires us to take, an enlightened regard for our
own interests will require us to hold. The islands will not be thrown
away. The American people have made up their minds on that point, if on
nothing else.