eign governments which has caused this legislation to be placed upon the statute book. We have a conservative people, à lawabiding, lawmaking, law-loving people; and when you place a question of foreign relations or foreign troubles or difficulties before the mind of an American, you always find him looking at it with cool circumspection, ready to participate when duty demands it, but not ready to participate as a mere filibuster or as a mere aggressor upon the rights of foreign people. That is not a characteristic of our people that these statutes were put upon the statute book to hold in check or to correct. If we had been as insular as Great Britain, we should have needed none of those statutes with which to control our people. These laws have been put upon our statute book for the protection of our neighbors.

It has been, I think, only on one occasion, or perhaps two, that we have had any necessity for resorting to them in reference to our relations with Canada. We have had more frequent necessity to appeal to those laws in our relations with Mexico, but a still more frequent and still more painful necessity of appealing to them with reference to our relations with Cuba. This graduation of the necessity we have been under of applying those laws is a sufficient indication of our appreciation and that of our people at large of the characteristics of those Governments.

People who conduct good government have the friendship of the American people, while those who rule tyrannically incur their displeasure.

Canada is self-governing; she has a race of people very much like ourselves, very close akin to us. Mexico differs from Canada in that respect; and in consequence of some misfortunes, which crept into her constitution, and which she has only recently gotten rid of, Mexico has been so often in such a state of turbulence that it was necessary that the Government of the United States should exercise extraordinary supervision over her own people to keep them from going down there and participating in the insurrections and rebellions which have so often occurred.

When we get to Cuba, Mr. President, an island which is accessible only by the sea, guarded by a great monarchy, our people, when they have invaded or attempted to invade that island, have not gone there for the purpose of robbery. They have not gone there because they wanted to impose our institutions upon Cuba. Very few Americans, indeed, even the wildest of them, and in the most exaggerated condition of what I might call their covetousness of power and wealth, have ever thought about going to Cuba for the purpose of acquiring it and annexing it to the United States. While our people desire the independence of Cuba, very few of them desire its annexation.

Why is it, then, that we have had to keep these laws on the statute book, and that every time an outbreak has occurred in Cuba the first thing which has been done by the President of the United States was to issue a most radical proclamation, warning our people and forbidding them in the strongest possible manner from going into the Island of Cuba and from violating our laws intended to prevent them from doing so? What has caused this? It has been, on every occasion, some wrong done by Spain to the Cuban people, the recognition of which we could not shut out from our own consciences and our own hearts. We have stood here as a guard, as a picket post, as an outline of defense of the Monarchy of Spain through the medium of these laws and the

proclamations of Presidents of the United States for very nearly a century, during which period of time five great insurrections or revolts have occurred in Cuba.

What has it cost us thus to guard a people whose resentments have been so justly excited, but are reluctant to interfere with foreigners or with foreign Governments? What has it cost us to keep in check and hold down the Cuban refugees who have come to the United States from time to time, driven out of the islands by the stress of persecution? Think of the lives of American citizens that have been sacrificed; think of the men who have been leaned up against adobe walls before sunrise in the morning and shot to death by Spain because, following their sympathies, they felt that they could go to Cuba and give a helping hand to their relatives, their own blood kindred, in the Island of Cuba, who went there, as Lopez did, for the purpose of relieving his own relatives from these barbarities.

What has it cost us? In money, Mr. President, a very large sum; in blood, a very great treasure; in anguish of feeling, an unutterable thing; in national distress, great discomfort; in our commercial relations with Cuba, and even with other parts of the earth, immense losses; in the honor of our flag, frequent searches and visitations, outrageous wrong, which we have put up with for the time being rather than to resent, because we preferred peace to war, although there might have been an occasion when we should have been entirely justified in going to war. That is what it has cost us; that is what it is costing us now. The record of our losses and of our sufferings and of our wrongs, wrongs to our own people which have been inflicted upon them through the cruelties of Spanish dominion in Cuba, is a record which, if it were written up consecutively, would astonish the world.

Mr. President, if the Island of Cuba were as close to Great Britain as it is to the United States and the same wrongs had been done there that have been perpetrated against our neighbor, who can fail to understand what would have been the fate of Cuba? Great Britain would have absorbed her a century ago or more. She would have said to herself as she has said in respect to Ireland, but with extreme injustice with regard to Ireland, “You have a rich country that we need; you have a people who are incapable of self-government, refractory, turbulent, and rebellious, and the best thing that Great Britain can do is to take you into the Kingdom and govern you, discrown your king, hang your martyrs, break down your constitution and the traditions of the past, and take you into our lordly bosom." If Cuba had occupied the geographical relation to Great Britain, France, or Germany that she occupies to the United States, long ago she would have disappeared from the list of Spanish colonies, and she would have belonged to some great ruling, energetic, Christian power.

Mr. GRAY. Does the Senator from Alabama like our policy better?

Mr. MORGAN. The Senator from Delaware asks me if I like our policy better. I like it better, provided that our temporizing is not to be protracted until Cuba is destroyed and until our selfrespect is gone. I think there is a moment of time-perhaps that moment has arrived-when we have to determine that question for ourselves. Perhaps the moment now is when the American people ought to say to themselves: "It is high time that those people in Cuba had a government under which they could at least exist."

Now, our attitude toward Cuba and toward Spain has been one entirely innocent. It has been forbearing; it has been just and upright, and there is no ground for accusation against us. The only ground of accusation that exists in regard to our attitude toward Spain and Cuba is that we have forborne to do perhaps in the past what we should have done, to the great wrong of the people of Cuba and particularly to that large and respectable class of people who have been driven by those revolutions into the United States seeking hospitality.

I wish to speak a moment about those people who have come to the United States under the invitation of this Government upon its doctrines of expatriation and of naturalization. They have in good faith united in our citizenship; they have adopted our flag as the flag of their country; they have sworn allegiance to the Constitution of our country, and when war has prevailed here, or the exigencies of the Government have demanded any other great sacrifice, they have come along as willingly as any of us, and have contributed to the power and the honor and the glory of the United States. As citizens in time of peace, the Cubans, who, perhaps, mostly reside in the larger cities of the United States, have been citizens of eminent respectability and propriety of conduct.

I do not remember any Cuban who has been called to account in the courts of the United States or elsewhere for disloyalty to the Government of this country. They are not to be accounted among the rabble or the outcasts of society. Many of them have transferred their property to this country-what remnant of it was left-and have started in upon business engagements here of an honorable character. Many of them have left behind the titles that they wore under the Spanish Monarchy and in Cuba, and have cheerfully abandoned the distinctions which made them prominent among their own class of people, in order to accept the plain equality of the democracy and the republicanism of the United States. They have come in great numbers, and not one of them has set his foot upon these shores who has not had extended to him a hand of welcome and a heart beating with cordial regard, for this is the land of the persecuted refugee. It is a land to which all the oppressed of the earth may come with perfect assurance that when they have planted their feet upon our soil they have got home to the land of liberty.

These people have come in great numbers. Some of the most eminent men, not politically, but in science and in business and in law, are found among the Cuban circles who have been driven out of Cuba and who have taken refuge in the United States. I have great respect for them. Martin Kozsta had no firmer hold upon the heart of Daniel Webster than a man like Menocal has upon my heart to-day. When those people have ventured to go back to their own country occasionally, they have been subjected to violence and imprisonment and confiscation and the like by the Spanish Government out of a spirit of mere anger, resentment, and retaliation. That is not among the least of the evils that we have had to put up with or overlook on behalf of the Cubans who have been here.

To-day Spain has more animosity toward us on their account than on account of everything else. These men can traverse this country from one end to another; they can raise money for the relief of the people of Cuba; they can send it to them. They can discuss the situation in Cuba with perfect freedom. They can discuss and understand the restrictions of our laws upon them and

render cheerful and perfect obedience to them. But the Spanish Government regards the liberty that we have accorded to them in holding their meetings and conventicles and in passing their resolutions or adopting their programmes in behalf of the people of Cuba as an offense that is intolerable to the mind and heart of a Spanish ruler. For that reason they, of course, grow more and more angry toward us continually, and that is the true ground of the opposition of Spain to the United States.

Spain would be the best friend to us that we have in the world if whenever a Cuban refugee undertakes to land in one of our ports we should drive him back to the sea and tell him to seek a home elsewhere. But we open our doors to him; he comes in here, and when he gets here he comes, it is true, as an enemy of Spain, but Spain becomes our enemy because we tolerate in our midst somebody who does not happen to like her. That is the situation. We give no encouragement to any ill feeling toward Spain, but accord to our citizens, native or adopted, the right to love Spain or to abhor her according to their free will. Justice, as it is enforced by public opinion, will temper such feelings, but force can not crush them out.

Now, Mr. President, these laws to which I have referred, after we have passed the concurrent resolution, will remain precisely what they are now. They will not be changed in the least, nor will any other law of the United States be changed, although there will be a new application of some of the international laws to a situation created by this act of recognition. That is all. The laws will not be changed anywhere, but a new application of them will thus be made.

Mr. PLATT. Will the Senator from Alabama allow me?
Mr. MORGAN. Certainly.

Mr. PLATT. Does the Senator understand that the passage of the pending concurrent resolution by the two Houses without its sanction by the President amounts to anything? Does he understand that it amounts to a recognition of belligerent rights?

Mr. MORGAN. I think it does, if the concurrent resolution is adopted. I do not deny the delicacy of that question, nor do I deny the fact that we have never settled it by a statute in the United States. That question is left open simply as a constitutional question, and the measure of the rights of Congress and of the President of the United States in respect to it is found only in the Constitution. What the proper interpretation of that instrument is as bearing upon the particular right or matter that the Senator from Connecticut suggests is something not really necessary in this debate, because the form of the resolution is not such as to evoke the question.

Nevertheless, if it becomes necessary, or if the Senate of the United States desires to pass a resolution of the actual recognition of the independence of Cuba on this occasion, then we would have to give consideration necessarily to the question whether a recognition by a concurrent vote of the two Houses would be a full recognition or whether the President of the United States must participate in the act before it becomes a full recognition.

Mr. HALE. Does the Senator from Alabama have any doubt that the passage of such a resolution as he has indicated, recognizing the independence of this assumed republic, would result immediately in a suspension of friendly diplomatic relations, the withdrawal of the Spanish minister, with the near probability of being involved in hostilities? Does not the Senator think that

such a resolution would be a distinctive act in the direction of a probable war?

Mr. MORGAN. I remarked in the opening of my speech that this question had grown upon us, that we had approached it, I confessed I approached it, reluctantly because of its magnitude, because of the ultimate consequences that might follow it, and I think I will take the liberty of saying to the Senate what I said to the Committee on Foreign Relations on that question when this matter came up.

Mr. HALE. I am sure we will be glad to hear the Senator from Alabama.

Mr. MORGAN. Here was a great mass of petitions and memorials to which we had to make some answer. We had to report them back adversely and ask to be discharged from the further consideration of the question, or else we had to do something in the direction at least of the recognition of the belligerent rights of the Cubans. How far we should go was, of course, a matter left for after consideration.

Mr. HOAR. The Senator from Alabama has yielded to other Senators, and I should like to ask him a practical question. Suppose the pending resolution is passed by the concurrent action of the two Houses, not going to the President, what right or duty appertains to an American citizen after its passage which does not appertain to an American citizen before its passage, and what right belongs to a Cuban insurgent after its passage that he did not possess before?

Mr. MORGAN. It is a part of my duty, before I can lay this matter properly before the Senate, although it may require some prolixity of speech to do so, to take up the question suggested by the honorable Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. HOAR], and also the one suggested by the honorable Senator from Connecticut [Mr. PLATT].

Mr. PLATT. I do not think I made myself exactly clear. The question which I wish to have answered is whether the passage of this resolution by the two Houses of Congress, without the action of the Executive, amounts to according to the insurgents or patriots, as they may be called, in Cuba belligerent rights?

Mr. MORGAN. That will depend on the wording of the resolution. The question put to me by the Senator from Maine [Mr. HALE] involves the very consideration of the question whether

Mr. PLATT. If I may be permitted still further, we understand that when the President, under such circumstances, issues a proclamation of neutrality, which is the ordinary form in which belligerent rights are accorded, certain rights attach to the people who are struggling, and certain obligations attach to the United States.

Now, what I wish to know is whether those same rights attach to the Cuban people and the same obligations attach to the people of the United States and the Government of the United States upon the passage of this resolution just as if it were an Executive act, performed by the President.

Mr. MORGAN. I can not leave the floor without answering, if I am able to do so, the questions propounded by each of the honorable Senators.

Mr. CALL. Mr. President

Mr. MORGAN. I hope the Senator from Florida will let me go on without further interruption, inasmuch as I have before me a large field of questions to answer.