posterity. The glorious court of Fontainebleau was refulgent with a brightness which indicated the effort of power to conceal a condition which eventuated in a culmination which threatened the thrones of the Old World.

The United States will never be too prosperous or strong to adhere to constitutional restraints and to work out its mission with the aid of intelligent and honest men. It is in the hope that we may aid to preserve forever stainless in its purity and unconquerable in its integrity the Republic of our fathers that I register here my protest against what I conceive to be a disastrous innovation.

CHAPTER XX.

LARGE STANDING ARMIES A MENACE TO

A REPUBLIC.

BY HON. ARTHUR P. GORMAN,

UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM MARYLAND.

I have not consumed much of the time of the Senate in the discussion of the pending resolutions. I have had no intention of doing so, and would not now but for the occurrences of the last two days in this chamber. The remarks of the Senator from Nebraska, who addressed the Senate this morning, in connection with the remarks made by the Senator from Colorado seem to make it necessary that I should say one word before we shall have entered upon the real consideration of the treaty in secret session.

It has grown to be an unfortunate custom that the newspaper criticisms of public men find ready conduits in this body, so that their utterances may be recorded here upon our records. No matter how severe the criticism, how unjust the comment, it seems that at times they are to find their way into this body and to be repeated by honorable members of the Senate.

My attitude upon this treaty was well defined in a public utterance before the treaty was negotiated so far as it refers to the acquisition of the Philippine Islands. My opinion upon that question was known and freely expressed by me to one of the commissioners who negotiated the treaty before he left this country for Paris. I have had no cause to change the opinions then expressed publicly and privately. They were opinions formed after mature deliberation; opinions that I be

lieved were in the best interests of my country; opinions to be maintained by me, no matter what the influence may be upon the other side.

In my course in public life Presidents of the United States and their cabinets have had no terrors for me. I have opposed them when they were of my own political faith, when I believed that the measures presented were too extreme and would put in jeopardy the business interests of the American people. I oppose this treaty in the form in which it comes to us, and under which we are to acquire the sovereignty of the Philippine Archipelago, filled with people who never can assimilate with us, because I believe its adoption and the acquisition of the territory would be more disastrous to my country than any other measure which has come before the Congress of the United States or the Senate of the United States from the formation of the Government to this hour.

The Senator from Colorado, in his carefully prepared speech, as I take it, after having described the conditions attending the consideration of the treaty, said:

Bar England, there is not a country in Europe that is not hostile to us. During all this war they stood in sullen hate, hoping for our defeat and that disaster might come to us; and to-day they wait with eager and rapacious gaze, hoping that some event may yet prevent our reaping the fruits of the treaty which has been agreed upon by the commissioners of the two countries. Yet, while this critical condition of affairs exists, it has become evident within the last few days that certain political leaders in this chamber believe that a new issue should be brought before the American people to be determined at the next Presidential election. They intend that the American people shall be called upon to pass on the questions arising out of the war, and that this shall be the issue of the next campaign.

For one, I believe that issue a fair one, and I am ready, as all good citizens ought to be, to meet the views of the whole American people upon the question of the conduct of the war, of its achievements, and of the policy this country should pursue at its close. But it is deplorable that in formulating such an issue and in pursuit of such a policy those leaders should find it necessary to seek to dishonor this Government and the administration which has guided us so wisely through the troubled sea of international complications and brought us to the threshold of an honorable peace; that they should seek to degrade us in the face of the nations of the world; and that they should attempt to bring about some fancied political advantage by an effort to defeat the ratification of a treaty which, if unratified, must bring back a condition of war as it existed before the report of the commissioners, passive it may be, but full of uncertainty and full of disaster to the interests and the welfare of our country.

I suppose that a fair judgment and a charitable judgment would enable me to say that the Senator from Colorado alone, of all the Senators in this body, is the only one capable of such an utterance when we are considering such a great question.

Aspirations of public men amount to but little. That the political desire for preferment of any man would control his vote upon this treaty is inconceivable to me, and he who entertains such an idea is on a very low plane in the consideration of a measure so grave.

I believe in parties. I believe in my party, because I believe that the interests of the people will be best served in the end by its promotion to power and its control of governmental affairs. I adhered to it when some of its doctrines were very far from meeting with my approval, because I have believed that in the main the interests of the country would be better subserved through it.

Away beyond office, away beyond personal desire of promotion of any sort, stands the great question we are facing. On yesterday, Sunday, the cable flashed the news that because of the attitude of the American Republic in their determination, in their effort, in their threat to take possession of a people who did not desire to become a part of the nation the blood of American citizens had flowed. Those natives, fighting for their liberty as they understand it, made an attack upon the American army.

Who believes for a moment that if there was a provision in the pending treaty like the one relating to Cuba that our occupation would be only temporary, that it is only intended to aid them to form a better government to control their own affairs, that there would have been a single life lost? They would have submitted as Gomez has submitted, and turned their army as allies and supporters of the American flag,

which would, under that condition, give them liberty ard freedom.

I believe that if the pending treaty is ratified and we obtain a cession of the sovereignty of those islands, it will be only the beginning of a war that will cost us hundreds, yes, thousands, of lives of our splendid specimens of intelligent young manhood and millions and millions of money, and that when we shall have, as we will, driven them at the point of the bayonet to submit to the authority of the American nation, with all the accompanying destruction of property and lives, the whole archipelago will then be a pest to the American Union. I believe that it will open the door for a flow from the Chinese Empire and from the islands themselves of a host of men, untold in numbers, who will not assimilate with, but will tend to degrade, the American people.

Do you remember-I do-that it was but ten years ago that this great American nation, with all its power, when two great political parties were lining up in the Presidential battle of 1888, was compelled by the working people, the men who are engaged in trades, the men who are engaged in labor, to abrogate a treaty with China which permitted the Chinese to come in? Only a few hundred thousand had come in on the Pacific coast, yet the feeling against them was so intense that both political parties were forced to declare against their further entry. I think it the most remarkable chapter in the history of the country and the only instance of the abrogation of a treaty by statute. While we were negotiating with China, a friendly nation, with which we were at peace, for a modification of the treaty negotiated by Mr. Seward in 1868, both parties were absolutely driven, so powerful was the feeling of the laboring people of the country to pass an act of Congress which abrogated the treaty without.