with those of the present day and what, from the very words
of Washington then, would be his counsels to his countrymen
now? Europe has still her set of primary interests, with
which we have little or a remote relation. Our distant and
detached situation with reference to Europe remains the
same. But we were then the only independent nation of this
hemisphere, and we were surrounded by European colonies,
with the greater part of which we had no more intercourse
than with the inhabitants of another planet. These colonies
have now been transformed into eight independent nations,
extending to our very borders, seven of them Republics like
ourselves, with whom we have an immensely growing commercial
and must have, and have already, important political
connections, with reference to whom our situation is neither
distant nor detached, whose political principles and systems
of government, congenial with our own, must and will have an
action and counteraction upon us and ours to which we cannot
be indifferent if we would.
The rapidity of our growth, and the consequent increase of
our strength, has more than realized the anticipations of
this admirable political legacy. Thirty years have nearly
elapsed since it was written, and in the interval our
population, our wealth, our territorial extension, our
power--physical and moral--have nearly trebled. Reasoning
upon this state of things from the sound and judicious
principles of Washington, must we not say that the period
which he predicted, as then not far off, has arrived, that
America has a set of primary interests which have none or a
remote relation to Europe, that the interference of Europe,
therefore, in those concerns should be spontaneously
withheld by her upon the same principles that we have never
interfered with hers, and that if she should interfere, as
she may, by measures which may have a great and dangerous
recoil upon ourselves, we might be called, in defence of our
altars and firesides, to take an attitude which would cause
our neutrality to be respected, and choose peace or war as
our interest guided by justice, should counsel?
"The acceptance of this invitation, therefore, far from
conflicting with the counsel or the policy of Washington, is
directly deducible from and conformable to it. Nor is it
less conformable to the views of my immediate predecessor,
as declared in his Annual Message to Congress of the 2d
December, 1823."
President John Quincy Adams. Communication to the House of
Representatives, in answer to their Resolution of Inquiry,
regarding the proposed Panama Congress, March 15, 1826.
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE REDEDICATED TO THE PRESERVATION OF
THE AMERICAN SYSTEM, BY PRESIDENT LINCOLN, AT
GETTYSBURG.
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on
this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated,
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that
war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a
final resting place for those who here gave their lives that
the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper
that we should do this.
"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate--we can not
consecrate--we can not hallow--this ground. The brave men,
living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it,
far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will
little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can
never forget what they did here. It is for us the living,
rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which
they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is
rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task
remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the
last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this
nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and
that government of the people, by the people, for the
people, shall not perish from the earth."
President Lincoln. Address at the Dedication of the National
Cemetery at Gettysburg, November 19, 1863.
THE AMERICAN SYSTEM APPLIED IN THE EXTERNAL JUSTICIARY
RELATIONS OF THE AMERICAN UNION, BY PRESIDENT MCKINLEY.
"In order to facilitate the most humane, specific, and
effective extension of authority throughout [the Philippine
Islands], and to secure with the least possible delay the
benefits of a wise and generous protection of life and
property, I have named Jacob G. Schurman, Rear-Admiral
George Dewey, Major-General Elwell S. Otis, Charles Denby,
and Dean C. Worcester to constitute a Commission to aid in
the accomplishment of these results....
"The Commissioners will endeavor,... to ascertain what
amelioration in the condition of the inhabitants and what
improvements in public order may be practicable, and for
this purpose they will study attentively the existing social
and political state of the various populations particularly
as regards the forms of local government, the administration
of justice, the collection of customs and other taxes, the
means of transportation and the need of public improvements.
"They will report to the State Department according to the
forms customary or hereafter prescribed for transmitting and
preserving such communications, the results of their
observations and reflections, and will recommend such
Executive action as may from time to time seem to them wise
and useful....
"It is my desire that in all their relations with the
inhabitants of the Islands the Commissioners exercise due
respect for all the ideals, customs, and institutions of the
tribes and races which compose the population, emphasizing
upon all occasions the just and beneficent intentions of the
Government of the United States.'
"It is also my wish and expectation that the Commissioners
may be received in a manner due to the honored and
authorized representatives of the American Republic, duly
commissioned, on account of their knowledge, skill and
integrity, as bearers of the good will the protection, and
the richest blessings of a liberating rather than a
conquering nation."
President McKinley--Instructions to the Secretary of State
regarding the First Philippine Commission, January 20, 1899.
THE DEFINITION OF THE AMERICAN SYSTEM AS APPLIED BOTH TO
THE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL RELATIONS OF THE AMERICAN
UNION--BY PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT.
"When all is said and done, the rule of brotherhood remains
as the indispensable prerequisite to success in the kind of
national life for which we strive. Each man must work for
himself, and unless he so works no outside help can avail
him, but each man must remember also that he is indeed his
brother's keeper, and that while no man who refuses to walk
can be carried with advantage to himself or any one else yet
that each at times stumbles or halts, that each at times
needs to have the helping hand outstretched to him. To be
permanently effective, aid must always take the form of
helping a man to help himself, and we can all best help
ourselves by joining together in the work that is of common
interest to all....
"It is no light task for a nation to achieve the
temperamental qualities without which the institutions of
free government are but an empty mockery. Our people are
now successfully governing themselves, because for more than
a thousand years they have been slowly fitting themselves,
sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, toward this
end. What has taken us thirty generations to achieve, we
cannot expect to see another race accomplish out of hand,
especially when large portions of that race start very far
behind the point which our ancestors had reached even thirty
generations ago. In dealing with the Philippine people we
must show both patience and strength, forbearance and
steadfast resolution. Our aim is high. We do not desire to
do for the islanders merely what has elsewhere been done for
tropic peoples by even the best foreign governments. We hope
to do for them what has never before been done for any
people of the tropics--to make them fit for self-government
after the fashion of the really free nations."
President Roosevelt. First Message, December 3, 1901.
THE QUESTION OF TERMINOLOGY
_Mr. President, Members of the Association and Section, Ladies and
Gentlemen_:
You have heard ably discussed certain questions which arise out of the
relationship between the American Union and the annexed Insular
regions, viewed in its sociological and economic aspect. I now ask
your attention to a question of immediate interest and importance
growing out of this relationship viewed in its political, that is to
say, its legal aspect. This question, which the Committee on
Arrangements has called "The Question of Terminology," is: What are
the correct terms to use in describing the political and legal
relationship between the American Union and its distant annexed
regions, assuming that this relationship is to be permanent and is to
be on terms which are just to all parties?
More specifically, the question which I shall discuss will be, whether
we, as Americans, ought, according to American principles, to use, in
our political and legal language, the terms "colony," "dependence,"
and "empire," or whether we ought, according to those principles, to
substitute for the term "colony," the term "free state," for
"dependence," "just connection," and for "empire," "union."
It is needless to say that I shall accept the decisions of the Supreme
Court of the United States as final in regard to all the matters
adjudicated in them. But the Supreme Court has jurisdiction only for
the purpose of determining the rights of individuals. The political
relations between the Union and the Insular regions, it determines
only so far as may be necessary to ascertain individual rights. Its
present doctrine--that the American Union has power over the Insular
regions subject to "fundamental principles formulated in the
Constitution," or subject to "the applicable provisions of the
Constitution," protects the civil rights of individuals, but under it
the power of the Union for political purposes remains absolute. The
proposition which I shall offer for your judgment, will, I believe,
not only not be in conflict with the propositions laid down by the
Supreme Court, but will give a reason why they are right. It will,
too, I believe, give a reasonable basis for our holding that the power
of the American Union over the Insular regions, while ample for the
maintenance of a just and proper permanent relationship with them
under our control, is not absolute even as respects their political
rights.
I have said that I shall discuss this question upon American
principles. I shall not base myself on the Constitution of the United
States, though I shall try to show the relation of that document to
the question, as I understand it. I shall assume it to be settled by
the decisions of the Supreme Court,--as it seems clearly to be,--that
with the exception of the "Territory" clause of that instrument, it
is, and of right ought to be, the Constitution of the thirteen
original States of the American Union and of the other States which
they have admitted into their Union, and of no other States or
communities; and that therefore it does not extend of its own force
outside the American Union in any constitutional or legal sense, but
only in a metaphorical sense--this being as I understand it, the
meaning of the Court when they hold, as they do, that, though the
"Territory clause" is of present and universal significance as
respects all the regions annexed to the Union, yet, with this
exception, only "the applicable provisions of the Constitution" or
"the fundamental principles formulated in the Constitution" are in
force in the annexed regions. "Extensions," so-called, of the
Constitution by Act of Congress, are of course mere Acts of Congress,
and whether such metaphorical "extensions" are permanent will depend
upon the terms and conditions of the "extension."
But though I shall not base myself on the Constitution of the United
States, I shall nevertheless base myself on a great American Document,
which preceded the Constitution as a statement of American principles,
and which is so far from being inconsistent with it that the
Democratic party, in its platform of 1900, called it "the Spirit of
the Constitution"--I refer to the Declaration of Independence. It is
the American principles set forth in that document which I shall try
to discover. If I shall be adjudged to have rightly interpreted that
instrument, it will follow that we ought to substitute, in our
political and legal language, for the term "colony," the term "free
state," for "dependence," "just connection," and for "empire,"
"union." In making such substitution, however, it will be necessary to
give to the terms "free state" and "union," a scientific meaning which
will differ from that which they now have in the popular mind, but
which will, I believe, be the same as was given to these terms by the
Revolutionary statesmen.
I shall not allow myself to be embarrassed by the fact that in my
first published writing I used the terms "colony," "dependence" and
"empire;" for at the same time that I used these terms, I based myself
on principles which were those of free statehood, just connection and
union, to which I adhere to this day.
Taking the Declaration of Independence, therefore, as the exposition
of the fundamental principles on which all American political theory
is based, and to which all American policy must conform, let me state
briefly the general meaning and purpose of this instrument, as I
understand it.
As a result of the discussion for twelve years preceding the
Declaration, the doctrine of the extension of the British Constitution
to the American Colonies, which from their situation, could never be
represented on equal terms in Parliament, was found to be useless for
the protection of American rights, political or civil; and the
doctrine that their rights were dependent on the Colonial Charters was
found to be inadequate, for these Charters, while protecting the civil
rights of the Americans to some extent, proceeded on the theory that
they held all their political rights at the will or whim of Great
Britain. The Americans felt and knew that they were entitled to
political, as well as civil rights, and they all firmly believed that
each so-called "colony" was a free state and subject to no external
control beyond what was necessary to preserve their relationship with
Great Britain on just terms to all the parties. The only question
which the Americans discussed, as soon as they comprehended the whole
situation, was, Why was each so-called "colony" a free state and why
had it always been such? The Declaration of Independence, as I
understand it, gave to the world their solution of this problem. Their
answer, as I understand it, was, that the American Colonies were and
always had been free states, because their relations with the State of
Great Britain were not under the British Constitution and were not
wholly under the Colonial Charters, but were under a supreme and
universal common law, which governs the relations between men,
communities, bodies corporate, states and nations, and which they
called in the Declaration "the Law of Nature and of Nature's God,"
according to which every community on the earth's surface, within
reasonable limits for the formation and execution of a just public
sentiment, is entitled to be a free state,--that is, to be free from
external control, in executing its just public sentiment, except so
far as may be necessary to enable it to conform to the terms of its
just connections with other free states. This doctrine of free
statehood as a universal right is, as I understand it, the central
idea of the Declaration.
Assuming this to be the central idea, let us see how this idea is
reached; and for that purpose, let us notice the exact language of the
Declaration. The first paragraph reads:
"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary
for one people to dissolve the political bands which have
connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers
of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the
laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should
declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
The "causes of separation" are prefaced by a number of propositions
determining the nature of the "political bands" by which one people
may be "connected with" another. These propositions are all rules of
human conduct, and are therefore principles of law, though they are
called "self-evident truths." This part of the Declaration reads:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights, that among these are life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these
rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever
any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it
is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new government, laying its foundation on such
principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their safety and
happiness."
The conception of the universal right of free statehood is reached, in
the Declaration, through a series of three propositions, each stated
to be self-evident, and yet all forming a sequence. The basal
proposition is, that "all men are created equal." Rufus Choate and
John James Ingalls have declared this proposition and the succeeding
one that "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness," to be "glittering generalities." Abraham Lincoln, on
the other hand, in his speech at Gettysburg, at the most solemn and
stirring moment in the country's history, declared that the
proposition that all men are created equal was the foundation-idea of
the nation, to which it was dedicated by the Fathers.
The doctrine of equality arising from the common creation of all men
as the spiritual offspring of a common Creator, was the doctrine of
the Reformation in its broadest form, as declared by Penn. Taking into
consideration the religious character of the Americans, as well as the
learning and acumen of that most remarkable body of men who
constituted the Continental Congress, it seems not only not
improbable, but probable, and indeed necessary to conclude, that the
proposition that "all men are created equal" was intended to be the
epitome of the doctrine of the Reformation, as that doctrine was
broadened by the influence of Penn and his followers. As the
Governments of Europe were at that time acting on the political
philosophy of feudalism and mediaevalism, which in its last analysis
was based on the proposition that all men are created unequal, or that
some are created equal and some unequal, the Declaration, if it be
true that it based the American political philosophy upon the broadest
doctrine of the Reformation, announced an American System as opposed
to the European System.
From the doctrine of equality arising from the common creation of all
men by a personal Creator to whom all were equally related, it is
declared by the Declaration to follow as a 'self-evident' truth that
there are certain rights, which are attached to all men by endowment
of the Creator as being the correlative of the unalienable needs of
all men, and which inasmuch as they arise from the universal
limitations which the Creator has imposed, are as unalienable as the
needs themselves. These unalienable rights are declared to be the
rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The doctrine of unalienable rights, necessarily supposes a universal
law, for the conception of law must precede the conception of right.
This law, as conceived of by the Declaration is a common and universal
law. In the first part of the preamble this universal common law is
spoken of as "the law of Nature and of Nature's God." Inasmuch as the
rights claimed are those which depend for their existence upon
revelation as well as reason, it is evident that this common and
universal law to which the Declaration appeals, is the "law of nature
and of nations," of the scholars of the Reformation, which was
conceived of as based on revelation and reason, and as governing every
relationship of men, of bodies corporate, of communities, of states
and of nations. Out of this conception there had already grown that
great division of the law which deals with the temporary relations
between independent states, which we now call International Law.
Having thus established the doctrine of unalienable rights, based on a
universal common law of nature and of nations, which all men, all
bodies corporate, all communities, all governments, all states and all
nations were bound to enforce, the Declaration proceeds to a
consideration of the forms, methods and instrumentalities by which
these unalienable rights are to be secured.
It declares that the primary instrumentality by which these rights are
secured, are governments "deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed." Contrary to the usual interpretation, the
Declaration does not state that government is the expression of the
will of the majority. Governments, it is declared, are instituted to
"secure" the "unalienable rights" of individuals. The will of the
majority, of course, is quite as likely to destroy as to secure the
unalienable rights of individuals. Moreover, the Declaration says
merely that "governments are instituted among men"--not that men
universally institute their own governments. The whole statement that
the governments which are instituted among men to secure the
unalienable rights of individuals, universally "derive their just
powers from the consent of the governed," is inconsistent with the
proposition that governments are the expression of the mere will of
the majority, for it is only their "just powers" that governments
"derive" from "the consent of the governed," and the will of the
majority may be just or unjust. The expression "deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed," seems to me most probably to
be an epitome and summary of the two fundamental propositions of the
law of agency--_Obligatio mandati consensu contrahentium consistit_, a
free translation of which is "The powers of an agent are derived from
the consent of the contracting parties," and _Rei turpis nullum
mandatum est_, a free translation of which is "No agent can have
unjust powers." On this interpretation the meaning of the whole
sentence "that to secure these rights, governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed," is, it would seem, that there is a universal right of all
communities to have a government of a kind best adapted for the
securing of the unalienable rights of individuals, instituted either
by their own selection or by the appointment of an external power, and
that all governments, however instituted, are universally the agents
of the governed to secure these rights. Government is thus declared
not to be the expression of the will of the majority, but the
application of the just public sentiment justly ascertained through
forms best adapted for this purpose.