great changes in my life, but those who come after us will see greater changes still. I may on some proper occasion hereafter give the reasons for my faith in our present financial system. All I ask now is that you will not disturb it with your deficiencies, you will not rob it of its safeguards, you will not return to the days of wildcat money, you will not lessen the savings of prudent labor or the accumulations of the rich. Time makes all things even. Let us give to the executive authorities ample means to meet the appropriations you have made, but let us strengthen rather than weaken our monetary system, which lies at the foundation of our prosperity and progress.

JOHN COIT SPOONER

ON THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PHILIPPINES

[John Coit Spooner, an American political leader, noted as a Republican campaign speaker, was born in Indiana in 1843. Settling as a lad in Wisconsin, he graduated at the University of that State, and at once enlisted in the army as a private, for the Civil War was then raging. He rose through various grades in the volunteer service, and attained the brevet rank of major. When the conflict ended, he took up the study of law, was admitted to the bar, and entered political life as a Republican. He served as assistant attorney-general of Wisconsin, was elected to the State legislature, and in 1885 to the United States Senate. Upon the expiration of his term he resumed the practice of law, but was sent back to the upper house of Congress for a full term of six years in 1897. The speech given here is on the important and interesting subject of the new government in the Philippines. It was delivered in the United States Senate in 1900.]

MR. PRESIDENT: I am impelled to address the Senate

upon this measure, which is the unfinished business, partly because I took the responsibility of introducing it, and owe it to myself to state with frankness the reasons which led me to do so.

The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Lodge] has addressed the Senate upon it in a speech that was very masterful and very eloquent and beautiful, with most of which I agree. I wish to consider the subject upon somewhat different and in some respects less radical lines.

I suppose, Mr. President, it will be admitted that had there been no war with Spain and she had tendered to us "without money and without price" a cession of the Philippine archipelago, and a treaty accepting that cession had been transmitted to the Senate for its action, it would have received hardly a vote in this body, and would have proved entirely unattractive to the great body of our people. The

suggestion in advocacy of it that we are "trustees" to lead the nations of the earth in the work of civilization would not have been at all persuasive.

The quick and sufficient answer to that, would have been that, while this is a missionary people, this is not and cannot become a missionary government, and that it is not our function, philanthropic as we may be and as this people may be, that their government shall police the world, seeking for people oppressed, living in the darkness of ignorance and half civilization, in order to uplift them.

It would have been said that we have problems of our own to solve, some of them complicated, all of them important, and that the first duty of this government, trustee of our people, is to subserve the interests of our people, to develop the illimitable resources of this continent, to spread the blessings of education among the people, to give to the country equal laws, and to lift up as far as possible all here who are oppressed. If it had been said that the islands are full of mineral wealth, of untold richness in soil, and of unspeakable beauty, that would have produced no effect on this chamber.

Our people would not have harbored the thought of going into distant seas and taking archipelagoes of alien people because of the richness of the islands. I can conceive of no argument in favor of the acceptance of such a proposition which would have found much, if any, favor here or in the country.

There would have been found no lust of empire among us; nor is there now, in my opinion, in the sense in which that term is now used in this body and in the country by certain distinguished gentlemen.

But, Mr. President, when the Treaty of Paris was sent to the Senate, containing, as it did, a cession of the Philippine archipelago to us, it came, not as a simple proposition of purchase in time of peace, but it came to us environed by the complications of war and as one of the fruits of war. The debate did not ignore that. We have gone to war with Spain, a war the like of which in its inspiration the whole world never before saw.

No people ever can give to the world higher evidence, Mr. President, of devotion to liberty than the people of the

United States gave when they demanded the withdrawal of Spain from Cuba, and resorted to war to enforce that demand. Admiral Dewey, long before that treaty of cession came to us, had destroyed the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, and made for himself a fame which can never fade. Our troops in Cuba, bearing themselves with the utmost heroism, had forced the capitulation of Santiago, and Sampson and Schley had sent to the bottom the prize fleet of Spain under command of Cervera.

Something more had happened, Mr. President. Admiral Dewey had called for troops to be sent to Manila, and they had been sent. They were not sent to defend the fleet, and every one knew it. Admiral Dewey could have forced in a day the surrender of Manila, but he had not the troops with which to hold it. There are men who have regretted that troops were sent to Manila. Was any voice raised in this chamber or in this country against the sending of soldiers to Manila? I remember very well some criticism of the President that they were not sent with sufficient alacrity; but I never heard a lisp of objection to their being sent to Manila. When the Paris Treaty came before us for ratification, Manila had been captured with 13,000 Spanish troops and their arms, and the soldiers of the United States held that city and its suburbs.

I did not myself take at all kindly to the acquisition under its provisions of the Philippine archipelago. There was a time when, if it had come to a vote, I would not have been willing to vote for it.

I stated to the Senate while that treaty was pending, and I restate it now in a word, that, facing each of the aiternatives which presented themselves to the President, I could not see how he could have done any other thing than demand the incorporation in that treaty of a cession to us of the Philippine archipelago. Several alternatives were open to us. I shall not spend much time upon this. One was to leave the Philippine Islands with Spain; to omit it from the treaty. I felt obliged to reject that alternative.

I could not see then, nor have I ever been able to see since, how the President could have concluded, under the circumstances, a treaty of peace with Spain which did not

contain a cession of the Philippine archipelago. All with whom I have spoken upon this subject have said to me-and it was the sentiment of our country, and it had no lust of empire in it-whatever else is done about the Philippine archipelago, that people must not be left under the tyranny of Spain. That sentiment pervaded the entire people. Am I wrong about that?

Mr. President, our people had been inexpressibly shocked by the unspeakable cruelties perpetrated by Spain in Cuba. No one will soon forget the black days of the reconcentrado period. No one will soon forget the stories, not overtold -impossible to overtell-of the tyranny, the wickedness, and the awful savagery of Spain in Cuba. Our people, not choosing to consider a cause of war existing in their own behalf, sustained the Congress and sustained the President in going into a war to snatch the island of Cuba and her people from that thraldom.

It was hardly to be expected, Mr. President, after our navy had broken the power of Spain in both seas, and after Spain had applied for a suspension of hostilities with a view to a treaty of peace, that a people who, without a cause of war which it chose to enforce on its own behalf, had poured out its treasure and the blood of its sons for the liberty of another people alien to them, because of cruelty and oppression which could not longer be tolerated, would be willing that in the end of that struggle another people, vastly greater in number, who had also been subject to the same tyranny, should be left in the hands of Spain. By the fortunes of war we were there.

It would have seemed to the world, many of us thought, that we had carried our flag of liberty to a mountain top, where all the world could see it, and then, afraid to meet responsibility, shuddering from duty, had incontinently run with it into the valley below, where no man could see it or would wish to see it.

It has been thought if all mention of the Philippines had been omitted from the treaty, Spain never could have retaken those islands. Mr. President, I have never believed that. I have had no doubt myself that Spain would have resumed her sway in the Philippine archipelago. I have never seen any reason to doubt it. First, it must be re