objects of our duty and our care; or are they to be our full partners?
We may as well look that question straight in the face. There is no way
around it, or over or under or out of it; and no way of aimlessly and
helplessly shuffling it off on the future, for it presses in the
legislation of Congress to-day. Wards, flung on our hands by the
shipwreck of Spain, helpless, needy, to be cared for and brought up and
taught to stand alone as far as they can; or full partners with us in
the government and administration of the priceless heritage of our
fathers, the peerless Republic of the world and of all the
centuries--that is the question!
Men often say--I have even heard it within a week on this coast--that
all this is purely imaginary; that nobody favors their admission as
States. Let us see. An ounce of fact in a matter of such moment is
worth tons of random denial. Within the month a distinguished and
experienced United States Senator from the North has announced that he
sees no reason why Porto Rico should not be a State. Within the same
period one of the leading religious journals of the continent has
declared that it would be a selfish and brutal tyranny that would
exclude Porto Rico from Statehood. Only a few weeks earlier one of our
ablest generals, now commanding a department in one of our
dependencies, a laureled hero of two wars, has officially reported to
the Government in favor of steps for the admission of Cuba as a State.
On every hand rise cries that in any event they cannot and must not be
dependencies. Some of these are apparently for mere partizan effect,
but others are the obvious promptings of a sincere and high-minded,
however mistaken, conviction.
I shall venture, then, to consider it as a real and not an abstract
question,--"academic," I think it is the fad of these later days to
say,--and I propose again (and again unblushingly) to consider it from
what has been called a low and sordid point of view--so low, in fact,
so unworthy the respect of latter-day altruistic philosophers, that it
merely concerns the interests of our country!
For I take it that if there is one subject on which this Union has a
right to consult its own interests and inclinations, it is on the
question of admitting new States, or of putting territory in a position
where it can ever claim or expect admission; just as the one subject on
which nobody disputes the right of a mercantile firm to follow its own
inclinations is on that of taking in some unfortunate business man as a
partner; or the right of an individual to follow his own inclinations
about marrying some needy spinster he may have felt it a duty to
befriend. Because they are helpless and needy and on our hands, must we
take them into partnership? Because we are going to help them, are we
bound to marry them?
[Sidenote: The Porto Rican Question.]
Partly through mere inadvertence, but partly also through crafty
design, the wave of generous sympathy for the suffering little island
of Porto Rico which has been sweeping over the country has come very
near being perverted into the means of turning awry the policy and
permanent course of a great Nation. To relieve the temporary distress
by recognizing the Porto Ricans as citizens, and by an extension of the
Dingley tariff to Porto Rico as a matter of constitutional right,
foreclosed the whole question.
I know it is said, plausibly enough, in some quarters, that Congress
cannot foreclose the question,--has nothing to do with it, in
fact,--but that it is a matter to be settled only by the Supreme Law of
the land, of which Congress is merely the servant. The point need not
be disputed. But it is an unquestioned part of the Supreme Law of the
land, as authoritative within its sphere and as binding as any clause
in the Constitution itself, which declares, in the duly ratified Treaty
of Paris, that the whole question of the civil rights and political
status of the inhabitants in this newly acquired property of ours shall
be reserved for the decision of Congress! Let those who invoke the
Supreme Law of the land learn and bow to it.
As to the mere duty of prompt and ample relief for the distress in
Porto Rico, there is happily not a shade of difference of opinion among
the seventy-five millions of our inhabitants. Nor was the free-trade
remedy, so vehemently recommended, important enough in itself to
provoke serious objection or delay. Cynical observers might find,
indeed, a gentle amusement in noting how in the name of humanity the
blessings of free trade were invoked by means of the demand for an
immediate application of the highest protective tariff known to the
history of economics! The very men who denounce this tariff as a
Chinese wall are the men who demand its application. They say, "Give
Porto Rico free trade," but what their proposal means is, "Deprive
Porto Rico of free trade, and put her within the barbarous Chinese
wall." Their words sound like offering her the liberty of trade with
all the world, but mean forbidding her to trade with anybody except the
United States.
[Sidenote: Importance of the Question.]
The importance of the question from an economic point of view has been
ludicrously exaggerated on both sides. The original proposal would have
in itself done far less harm than its opponents imagined and far less
good than its supporters hoped. Yet to the extent of its influence it
would have been a step backward. It would have been the rejection of
the modern and scientific colonial method, and the adoption instead of
the method which has resulted in the most backward, the least
productive, and the least prosperous colonies in the world--the method,
in a word, of Spain herself. For the Spanish tariff, in fact, made with
some little reference to colonial interests, we should merely have
substituted our own tariff, made with sole reference to our own
interests. A more distinct piece of blacksmith work in economic
legislation for a helpless, lonely little island in the mid-Atlantic
could not well be imagined. What had poor Porto Rico done, that she
should be fenced in from all the Old World by an elaborate and highly
complicated system of duties upon imports, calculated to protect the
myriad varying manufactures and maintain the high wages of this vast
new continent, and as little adapted to Porto Rico's simple needs as is
a Jorgensen repeater for the uses of a kitchen clock? Why at the same
stroke must she be crushed, as she would have been if the Constitution
were extended to her, by a system of internal taxation, which we
ourselves prefer to regard as highly exceptional, on tobacco, on
tobacco-dealers, on bank-checks, on telegraph and telephone messages,
on bills of lading, bills of exchange, leases, mortgages,
life-insurance, passenger tickets, medicines, legacies, inheritances,
mixed flour, and so on and so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam? Did she
deserve so badly of us that, even in a hurry, we should do this thing
to her in the name of humanity?
All the English-speaking world, outside some members of the United
States Congress perhaps, long since found a more excellent way. It is
simplicity itself. It legislates for a community like Porto Rico with
reference to the situation and wants of that community--not with
reference to somebody else. It applies to Porto Rico a system devised
for Porto Rico--not one devised for a distant and vastly larger
country, with totally different situation and wants. It makes no effort
to exploit Porto Rico for the benefit of another country. It does make
a studied and scientific effort from the Porto Rico point of view (not
from that of temporary Spanish holders of the present stocks of Porto
Rican products) to see what system will impose the lightest burdens and
bring the greatest benefits on Porto Rico herself. The result of that
conscientious inquiry may be the discovery that the very best thing to
provide for the wants and promote the prosperity of that little
community out in the Atlantic Ocean is to bestow upon them the unmixed
boon of the high protective Dingley tariff devised for the United
States of America. If so, give them the Dingley tariff, and give it
straight. If, on the other hand, it should be found that a lower and
simpler revenue system, better adapted to a community which has
practically no manufactures to protect, with freedom to trade on equal
terms with all the world, would impose upon them lighter burdens and
bring them greater benefits, then give them that. If it should be
further found that, following this, such a system of reciprocal rebates
as both Cuba and the United States thought mutually advantageous in the
late years of Spanish rule, would be useful to Porto Rico, then give
them that. But, in any case, the starting-point should be the needs of
Porto Rico herself, intelligently studied and conscientiously met--not
the blacksmith's offhand attempt to fit on her head, like a rusty iron
pot, an old system made for other needs, other industries, a distant
land, and another people.
And beyond and above all, give her the best system for her situation
and wants, whether it be our Dingley tariff or some other, because it
is the best for her and is therefore our duty--not because it is ours,
and therefore, under the Constitution of the United States, her right
and her fate. The admission of that ill-omened and unfounded claim
would be, at the bar of politics, a colossal blunder; at the bar of
patriotism, a colossal crime.
[Sidenote: Political Aspect of the Constitutional Claim.]
The politics of it need not greatly concern this audience or long
detain you.
But the facts are interesting. If Porto Rico, instead of belonging to
us, is a part of us, so are the Philippines. Our title to each is
exactly the same. So are Guam and the Sandwich Islands, if not also
Samoa; and so will be Cuba if she comes, or any other West India
Island.
First, then, you are proposing to open the ports of the United States
directly to the tropical products of the two greatest archipelagos of
the world, and indirectly, through the Open Door we have pledged in the
Philippines, to all the products of all the world! You guarantee
directly to the cheap labor of these tropical regions, and indirectly,
but none the less bindingly, to the cheap labor of the world, free
admission of their products to this continent, in unrestricted
competition with our own higher-paid labor. And as your whole tariff
system is thus plucked up by the roots, you must resort to direct
taxation for the expenses of the General Government.
Secondly, as if this were not enough, you have made these tropical
laborers citizens,--Chinese, half-breeds, pagans, and all,--and have
given them the unquestionable and inalienable right to follow their
products across the ocean if they like, flood our labor market, and
compete in person on our own soil with our own workmen.
Is that the feast to be set before the laboring men of this country? Is
that the real inwardness of the Trojan horse pushed forward against our
tariff wall, in the name of humanity, to suffering Porto Rico? What a
programme for the wise humanitarians who have been bewitching the world
with noble statesmanship at Washington to propose laying before the
organized labor of this country as their chosen platform for the
approaching Presidential campaign! They need have no fear the
intelligent workingmen of America will fail to appreciate the sweet
boon they offer.
[Sidenote: The Patriotic Aspect of it.]
But if the question thus raised at the bar of politics may seem to some
only food for laughter, that at the bar of patriotism is matter for
tears. If the islanders are already citizens, then they are entitled to
the future of citizens. If the territory is already an integral part of
the United States, then by all our practice and traditions it has the
right to admission in States of suitable size and population. Is it
said we could keep them out as we have kept out sparsely settled New
Mexico? How long do you expect to keep New Mexico out, or Oklahoma, or
Arizona? What luck did you have in keeping out others--even Utah, with
its bar sinister of the twin relic of barbarism? How long would it take
your politicians of the baser sort to combine for the admission of the
islands whose electoral votes they had reason to think they could
control?
But it is said that Porto Rico deserves admission anyway, because we
are bound by the volunteered assurance of General Miles that they
should have the rights of American citizens. Perhaps; though there is
no evidence that he meant more, or that they thought he meant more,
than such rights as American citizens everywhere enjoy, even in the
District of Columbia--equal laws, security of life and property,
freedom from arbitrary arrests, local self-government, in a word, the
civil rights which the genius of our Government secures to all under
our control who are capable of exercising them. If he did mean more, or
if they thought he meant more, did that entitle him to anticipate his
chief and override in casual military proclamation the Supreme Law of
the land whose commission he bore? Or did it entitle them to suppose
that he could?
But Porto Rico received the irresistible army of General Miles so
handsomely, and is so unfortunate and so little! Reasons all for
consideration, certainly, for care, for generosity--but not for
starting the avalanche, on the theory that after it has got under only
a little headway we can still stop it if we want to. Who thinks he can
lay his hand on the rugged edge of the Muir Glacier and compel it to
advance no farther? Who believes that we can admit this little island
from the mid-Atlantic, a third of the way over to Africa, and then
reject nearer and more valuable islands when they come? The famous law
of political gravitation which John Quincy Adams prophetically
announced three quarters of a century ago will then be acting with
ever-increasing force. And, at any rate, beside Porto Rico, and with
the same title, stand the Philippines!
Regard, I beg of you, in the calm white light that befits these
cloistered retreats of sober thought, the degradation of the Republic
thus coolly anticipated by the men that assure us we have no
possessions whose people are not entitled under our Constitution to
citizenship and ultimately to Statehood! Surely to an audience of
scholars and patriots like this not one word need be added. Emboldened
by the approval you have so generously expressed, I venture to close by
assuming without hesitation that you will not dishonor your Government
by evading its duty, nor betray it by forcing unfit partners upon it,
nor rob it by blind and perverse neglect of its interests.
May I not go further, and vouch for you, as Californians, that the
faith of the fathers has not forsaken the sons--that you still believe
in the possibilities of the good land the Lord has given you, and mean
to work them out; that you know what hour the national clock has
struck, and are not mistaking this for the Eighteenth Century; that you
will bid the men who have made that mistake, the men of little faith,
the shirkers, the doubters, the carpers, the grumblers, begone, like
Diogenes, to their tubs--aye, better his instruction and require these
his followers to get out of your light? For, lo! yet another century is
upon you, before which even the marvels of the Nineteenth are to grow
pale. As of old, light breaks from the east, but now also, for you,
from the farther East. It circles the world in both directions, like
the flag it is newly gilding now with its tropic beams. The dawn of the
Twentieth Century bursts upon you without needing to cross the Sierras,
and bathes at once in its golden splendors, with simultaneous
effulgence, the Narrows of Sandy Hook and the peerless portals of the
Golden Gate.
XI
"UNOFFICIAL INSTRUCTIONS"
This speech was delivered at the Farewell Banquet given by over four
hundred citizens of San Francisco to the second Philippine Commission,
on the eve of their sailing for Manila, at the Palace Hotel, April 12,
1900. The title is adopted from the phrase used by the President of the
Commission in his response; to which a leading journal of the Pacific
coast, "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer," promptly added that the
address "spoke for the whole people of the United States," and was "the
concrete expression of a desire that animates nine tenths of all our
citizens." Judge Taft frankly stated his concurrence in the views
expressed (though he held some legal doubts as to whether the
Constitution of the United States did not extend, ex proprio vigore, to
the new possessions), and he pledged the Commission against the
influence of political considerations.
"UNOFFICIAL INSTRUCTIONS"
The kindness of your call shall not be misinterpreted or taken
advantage of. Quite enough of my voice has been heard in the land, and
that very recently, as some of you can testify to your cost. There are
others here with far greater claims upon your attention, and I promise
to be as brief as heretofore I have been prolix.
The occasion is understood to be primarily one of congratulation and
personal good will. It is evident that San Francisco thinks well of the
Pacific coast member of this Commission, and none the worse because he
seems to have been chosen for the post merely on account of his being
peculiarly fit for it. The city gladly takes the rest of you on faith,
believing that the same rule of selection must have been applied in the
cases with which it has not the happiness to be quite so familiar.
But it is an occasion, I am authoritatively assured, of no political
significance whatever. It embraces in its comprehensive impulse of
greeting and good wishes Republicans and Democrats and Dewey men; men
who hold the offices, men who want the offices, and men who say, "A
plague on both your houses!"--men who indorse the course of the
Administration, and men who believe the acquisition of the Philippines
a mistake. I shall not attempt to disguise from you the fact that this
last is not an opinion that I individually hold. Still, I can respect
the convictions of those who do.
But evidently we can have no concurrence to-night on our
extra-continental policy, since the differences are so wide on vital
points. Yet the organizers of this testimonial made no mistake. There
is a common ground for our meeting. We are all citizens of the
Republic, grateful for our high privilege and solicitous that the
Republic shall take no harm--all Americans, proud of the name and eager
that it shall never be stained by base or unworthy acts. There is no
one here, of whatever political faith or lack of faith, who is not a
patriot, anxious for our country on these new and untried paths it must
walk--most desirous that all its ways may prove ways of pleasantness
and all its paths lead to honorable peace.
Well, then, gentlemen, what is it that a company thus divided in
opinion, and united only in patriotic aspirations, can agree in looking
to this Commission for? What do the American people in general, and
without distinction of party, look to them for?
Did I hear a public opponent but personal friend over there murmur as
his reply, "Not much of anything"? Alas! we may as well recognize that
there are political augurs who are ready to give just that as their
horoscope, and even point to their useful predecessor, the last
Commission, for presumptive proof! In fact, there are occasional
grumblers who would look for more from them if they were fewer. These
skeptical critics recognize that sometimes in a multitude of counselors
there may be safety, but also recall the maxim that councils of war
never fight. If the truth must be whispered in the ear of the
Commissioners, there are here and there very sincere, capable people
who are growing a bit weary of a multiplicity of commissions. They
say--so cynical are they--that, in all ages and countries, the easiest
method of evading or postponing a difficult problem has been to appoint
a commission on it and thus prolong the circumlocution.
For a first thing, then, on which we are all united, we look hopefully
to our guests to redeem the character of this mode of government by
commission. For we assume that they are sent out to the archipelago to
govern; and just at present we don't know of any part of the country's
possessions that seems more in need of government.
We all unite in regarding them as setting sail, not only charged with
the national interests, but dignified and ennobled by a guardianship of
the national honor. Thus we are trying to put ourselves in Emerson's
state of mind about a certain notable young poet, and unite in hoping
that, to use his well-known phrase, we greet them at the beginning of a
great career.
We certainly unite in earnestly wishing that they may make the best of
a situation which none of us wholly like, and many dislike with all
their hearts: the best of it for the country which, by good management
or bad, rightfully or wrongfully, is at any rate clearly and in the
eyes of the whole world now responsible for the outcome; and the best
of it, no less, for the distracted people thrown upon our hands.
We cannot well help uniting in the further hope that their first
success will be the re-establishment of order throughout regions lately
filled with violence and bloodshed; and that they can then bring about
a system of just and swift punishment for future crimes of disorder,
since all experience in those regions and among those people shows that
the neglect to enforce such punishment is itself the gravest and
cruelest of crimes.
Nor can any one here help uniting in the hope that their next and
crowning success will some way be attained in the preservation and
extension of those great civil rights whose growth is the distinction,
the world over, of Anglo-Saxon civilization; whose consummate flower
and fruitage are the glory of our own Government.
I am even bold enough to believe that, however it might have been
twelve months ago, or but six months ago, there is no one here
to-night, recognizing the changed circumstances now, who would think
they could best secure those rights to all the people by calling back
the leader who is in hiding, and his forces, which are scattered and
disorganized, and by now abandoning to such revengeful rule the great
majority of the islanders who have remained peaceful and orderly during
our occupation. For the present, at least, we unite in recognizing that
they are forced to retain that care themselves; forced to act in the
common interest of all the people there, not in the sole interest of a
warring faction in a single tribe--in the interest of all the islands
for which we have accepted responsibility, not simply of the one, or of
a part of the population on the one, that has made the most trouble.
There can be little disagreement in this company on the further
proposition that, in like manner, they must act in the interest of all
the people here. In the interest of the islanders, they will soon seek
to raise the needed revenue in the way least burdensome and most
beneficial to the islands; but in the interest of their country, we
cannot expect them to begin by assuming that the only way to help the
islanders is to throw products of tropic cheap labor into unrestricted
competition with similar products of our highly paid labor. In the
interest of the islanders, they will secure and guarantee the civil
rights which belong to the very genius of American institutions; but in
the interest of their country, they will not make haste to extend the
privilege of American citizenship, and so, on the one hand, enable
those peoples of the China Sea, Chinese or half-breed or what not, to
flood our labor market in advance of any readiness at home to change
our present laws of exclusion, while, on the other hand, opening the
door to them as States in the Union to take part in the government of
this continent. If, in the Providence of God, and in contempt of past
judicial rulings, the Supreme Court should finally command it, this
Commission, like every other branch of the Government, will obey. Till
then we may be sure it will not, in sheer eagerness and joyfulness of
heart, anticipate, or, as Wall Street speculators say, "discount," such
a decree for national degradation. But in their own land, and, as far
as may be, in accordance with their old customs and laws, the
Commission will secure to them, if it is to win the success we all wish
it, first every civil right we enjoy, and next the fullest measure of
political rights and local self-government they are found capable of
sustaining, with ordered liberty for all the people.