existence of war in Cuba, should so declare, the President not being satisfied that that state of affairs exists in the sense of requiring the Government of the United States to take part in any way in the declaration that it does exist. That ought never to be in the United States. The executive and legislative departments of the Government ought to cooperate in all declarations that relate to war, and the Congress of the United States ought never to make a declaration on that subject unless it is satisfied that the President is willing to yield obedience to the popular will, or the legislative will, as here expressed.

Mr. HALE. Mr. President, I wish that we may have order in the Chamber, because I am very desirous to hear the Senator from Alabama, and I can not hear a word that he says, there is so much confusion.

The VICE-PRESIDENT. The Senate will be in order.

Mr. MORGAN. I have not any very great amount of lung power, though I try to speak as distinctly and deliberately as I can, with a view of making the views that I have to present intelligible at least to my colleagues on the floor.

Mr. HALE. It is not the fault of the Senator from Alabama at all; it is the fault of Senators, all of us perhaps, who are in the habit of participating too much in conversation while a Senator is addressing the body. It is almost impossible for any Senator to make himself heard under such conditions, and for that reason I hope we shall be allowed to have silence, that we may hear the Senator from Alabama.

Mr. MORGAN. A question of war or peace between this country and any foreign country, or a question of the existence of a war in any foreign country, is a matter of such grave importance to all the people of the United States that its consideration should always be entered upon with the utmost degree of deliberation and solemnity, and, as far as possible, it should be free from all the exasperations of feeling that we of course have when quarrels occur between us and other powers. It is in this view, and in this sense, and with this purpose, and only this, that I approach the subject this morning.

I do not wish to create a ferment in the United States about it. It is not necessary to do that, Mr. President, if I were disposed to get up some public excitement, because the mind of the people of the United States is agitated and all their hearts are full of this subject. We are in the midst of a very trying situation that has never heretofore existed as it exists now. All the aggravations that surround us at this moment and the same sense of indignation have never heretofore existed, even in the various and frequent irritations that have occurred between Spain and the United States on the subject of her government in Cuba. We have tried so to feel, we have tried to so believe, and we have so conformed our conduct that it is a matter of indifference to us whether Spain shall persecute her own subjects in Cuba or not. I say we have tried to feel it and we have tried to believe it. At the same time the history of Spanish occupation in Cuba from the beginning of this century, and, indeed, far back of that period of time-but I will say from the beginning of this century, because our Government became concerned in it about that time-the history of Spanish occupation in Cuba has been so full of that absolute and heartless spirit of tyranny toward her own subjects as that it is not to be expected that a country organized as ours is, upon the basis of self-government and of the respect that is due from the Government to the

citizen, should be free from very profound agitation, in view of the repeated and flagrant and very outrageous demonstrations of persecution that have been made by the Crown of Spain against her own subjects in the Island of Cuba.

The subject I am now about to discuss has been before the Senate for days and weeks and even months at a time, and whoever cares to read the record of those debates of a year ago will there, I think, find an exhaustive discussion of almost every proposition that could be advanced pro and con upon the subject of the duty of the Government of the United States to recognize the existence of public war in Cuba. I do not propose to go back over that record. It is made; it has been deliberately made. There is not a statement, I think, that has been made in the Senate that was not authorized by the facts; and to say the least of it, the Government of Spain has had more than a year of opportunity in which to contradict the specific facts that have been stated in the debates in this body relating to the dealing of Spain toward the people of that island. No denial has been made. They seem to be indifferent to the fact. They seem to be entirely indifferent at least to American opinion and to European opinion upon this subject.

That is not a new thing in the history of Spain. That great monarchy has never stopped to take the opinion of the civilized world upon her conduct toward any of her subjects. Whether they have been born within her home boundary or whether they have been born in colonies, or whether they have been conquered, she has never paused to ascertain what is the opinion of the world about her conduct toward her own people or toward her neighbors. That is unfortunate for us, because we have a proper regard for the neighboring countries. We feel it as well as profess it. We do not trench upon the affairs or the rights of the people of Mexico, who is a near neighbor, and who has not had a very permanent form of government until within the last fifteen years, or a very satisfactory one to us. We make no agitation in respect to the domestic policy of the Canadian Government.

In other words, Mr. President, we are in the proper sense of the word good neighbors to those whose territory adjoins ours, and we have no disposition to interfere in Cuba or in any other place for the purpose of extending our institutions or making a propaganda of any ideas that we have or of enforcing upon them the acceptance of our commercial intercourse. That is our situation. We have maintained it always.

Very early in the beginning of this century, for the purpose of making their security greater, for the purpose of cutting our people off from the temptation of making raids against Mexico, Canada, Cuba, and elsewhere, we commenced a series of legislative enactments here of a very severe character to repress all possible endeavor to give assistance to any insurrection or any war or controversy between any neighboring power or any other power and their own people or any other people. We have at great expense in money, and sometimes at an expense to ourselves of very great irritation amongst our own people, enforced those laws in a rigid way, and we are doing it to-day.

I think our desire to evince to other countries our purpose of being on friendly terms with them and of executing every purpose of government without reference to their distress or their embarrassments has involved us in some efforts to enforce our own laws that have inflicted exceeding injustice upon individuals in this country, and certainly have had a very great effect in restraining

if not repressing the expressions of public sentiment which otherwise would have manifested themselves on these occasions.

That being the situation, we have for the third time within this century been drawn into unpleasant contact with a state of affairs in Cuba that has made a very profound impression upon the people of the United States, and not merely upon their sentiment and feeling, but upon their commerce and their intercourse with the people of that island. We have suffered by it on former occasions to such an extent that very large claims for damages have been piled up against the Government of Spain, and I do not remember any instance where we have received compensation for any of those wrongs, when they were established, short of twenty or perhaps thirty years after the termination of their intestinal struggle. So the delays that have been interposed in making compensation to the people of the United States for the wrongs that have been committed in that island, and which are traceable, I think, directly to the tyrannies of the Spanish Government, have been very serious upon our people, and are still very serious. But our people have suffered in one respect a degree of mortification and humiliation as well as a degree of personal distress that it has always been within the power of our Government to prevent. If the Government of the United States had taken care of its own people in the Island of Cuba according to the full measure of its duty, many a life would have been saved in the former struggles and in the present one, much property would have been spared from destruction, great anguish of feeling would have been spared to our people, both native born and adopted. But the Government of the United States has not taken proper care of her own people in Cuba, and it is time that we begin to do so.

The object of the introduction of the joint resolution which is before the Senate to-day is to put the Government of the United States in a proper legal attitude toward the Government of Spain in Cuba, and to enable us simply to take care of our own citizens. I have always declared that this was my leading motive, and in fact my exclusive motive, as a Senator of the United States, in whatever support I have given to measures here in respect of our controversies and difficulties with Spain in the Island of Cuba. I have kept my mind fixed firmly and exclusively upon the duty of the Government of the United States to the citizens of the United States in the presence of this state of facts. I am trying to get from the Congress of the United States-and I hope the Executive will concur with us-a definition and statement of a legal status or situation which makes it possible for us, under the laws of nations, to protect the lives and property of our people in the Island of Cuba.

In accomplishing this result, Mr. President, it may turn outand I would be very glad that it should-that assistance will be given to the people of the Island of Cuba in the establishment of their independence, in freeing themselves from an abominable yoke, which, so far as they are concerned, has never resulted in any benefit to the people there at all, but has been imposed upon them and maintained over them for the mere purpose of leeching out of them their substance and of keeping them as serfs and feudatories to the Crown of Spain and to the nobility and gentry of that country. I should be very glad that a result of that sort should follow; but whether that result shall follow, or one still more disastrous to the people of Cuba, nevertheless it is a duty

that we can not abdicate to take care, so far as in us lies, of our people in that island.

In what way can we do that? That is the question which comes up here now. Can we do it by standing by and witnessing these wrongs inflicted upon them continually, aggressively, and redress them only by filing claims in the Department of State, to be urged against the Spanish Government after the war has ended and after Spain has become bankrupt? Can we accomplish this protection of our citizens by putting a price upon their blood and their sufferings, and by saying to Spain that "in the end of all of this, after the war is over, we shall charge up so many dollars and cents against you for these ruined and destroyed Americans, men, women, and children, and for their property?" In the former war we waited for ten years, and after the termination of that struggle we sent in our account, and we had a part of it allowed and a part of it disallowed, and the part that was allowed was only paid within the last two or three years. That has been nearly thirty years ago.

Now, can we afford to stand by here and see repeated, in a form that has become historic in Cuba, these wrongs and outrages against our own people, trusting to the settlement of an account for damages after the wrong has been done? Are we in that sublime state of indifference and self-denial in respect to what is going on in Cuba that we shall abstain from doing anything for our people until this struggle which is now going on has ended one way or the other? Shall we refuse to protect our people and deny to ourselves the right, the power, the opportunity, and the duty of providing for them as this struggle goes on?

Well, Mr. President, I hope that the Senate of the United States at least will not agree that it is our duty to ignore these things, to pass them by silently and quietly. I hope that the expression on the part of the Senate will be now what it has been heretofore, a year ago, and still earlier than that-that we recognize the existence of public war in Cuba, attended with all the consequences under the laws of nations that belong to that legal situation; that we will stand neutral between these parties, and that we will execute the laws of neutrality, and especially those laws of neutrality which protect our own people.

Now, as different occurrences are developed in Cuba, we might send ships of war to demand immediate indemnity, but it seems, Mr. President, that we have not got yet to the condition of following the bright British example of always sending her flag and her guns, following her people about over the earth, to demand their rescue from the hands of tyranny and wrong and injustice. We have not come to that; but perhaps after we get a little older and learn more, and have more true spirit amongst the American people, and our Government is truer to them, we will be able to send our flag and our guns about the earth and demand immediate compensation for the wrongs done to our people and their immediate surrender from the jaws of death when they are held contrary to treaties and to international law and to the laws of humanity and of mercy.

I am hopeless, Mr. President, utterly hopeless, that any Administration of the Government of the United States, particularly with the last four years of disastrous example that we have had, will get its courage to the point of sending ships of war to Habana or to any other port of Cuba, and demanding in given cases, how

ever serious, redress for our people or liberty for them from incarceration in their prisons as the occurrences arise.

Here was the case of Dr. Ruis, who was said to have been murdered in prison at the instance and by the direction of the governor of Guanabacoa in that province, an American citizen who was a dentist, and who went back to the land of his forefathersI do not know where he was born-for the purpose of practicing his profession, and he was said to have had no connection whatever with the strife that existed in Cuba. He was killed, and killed in prison. So it is alleged in the newspapers and so, I understand, it is alleged in the reports of our consul-general in Cuba. Now, what can we do in the case of Dr. Ruis? Of course that case must pass into the balance sheet to be added up in a sum of dollars and cents for the compensation to his widow as soon as it is ascertained in some form or other that the Government of Spain has been accessory to his murder. I understand that the reports of the consul-general indicate in no uncertain way that the Government of Spain is directly responsible through one of her military officers for this outrage.

If that is true, Mr. President, instead of hunting about for a lawyer to go down to Cuba to search out in some technical way an information such as a solicitor would find to be presented to a grand jury in secret session, the Government of the United States might very well send a ship of war to the port of Habana, with a commission upon it, and say to the government of Spain in Cuba, "We intend to have this matter investigated, and if there is evidence to prove that this man has been murdered by this governor in prison, you must have that man arrested, and you must have him shot, or you must have him disposed of in some way that the laws of war require, and you must on the spot make immediate indemnity to the family of this murdered man."

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Mr. HALE. Do I understand, in a case such as the Senator has cited, and has objected to the Government sending a lawyer down there, that the Senator would object, when a case of that kind arises, to the Government sending some proper agent, be he lawyer or otherwise, in order to establish the actual facts upon which we should act afterwards? Does the Senator think that would be an improper course on the part of the Government?

Mr. MORGAN. Mr. President, as an American citizen, following the precedents and practices that have heretofore obtained in matters of this kind, I should regretfully assent to the sending of a lawyer to Habana to make an investigation; but if I were a British subject, I should expect the flag and a man-of-war to go there, for the purpose of demanding reparation on the spot and an explanation which would exculpate that governor from this charge or else would consign him to his deserved fate.

Mr. HALE. That is, the Senator would send a ship of war before he sent the lawyer to investigate the facts?

Mr. MORGAN. I would send a ship of war with a lawyer along, or without one; but I do not think that I would have very much use for the lawyer. [Laughter.]

Mr. HALE. I fancy that what the Senator is seeking is a condition of hostility and the use of ships of war and the danger incident to having them in those waters. In that case there would not be much use for a lawyer; there would be use for ships of There would be war there.

war.

Mr. MORGAN. In the great and solemn duty of taking care of the lives and property of American citizens, particularly when