CHAPTER IX. Anti-Imperialism The Policy Toward the Philippines Should be Dictated by the HONORABLE GEORGE F. HOAR Senator from Massachusetts NTIL within two years the American people have been wont UN to appeal to the Declaration of Independence as the foremost state paper in history. As the years go round the Fourth of July has been celebrated wherever Americans could gather together, at home or abroad. To have signed it, to an American, was better than a title of nobility. It was no passionate utterance of a hasty enthusiasm. There was nothing of the radical in it; nothing of Rosseau; nothing of the French Revolution. It was the sober utterance of the soberest men of the soberest generation that ever lived. It was the declaration of a religious people at the most religious period of their history. It was a declaration not merely of rights but of duties. It was an act not of revolution but of construction. It was the corner stone, the foundation stone of a great national edifice wherein the American people were to dwell forevermore. The language was the language of Thomas Jefferson. But the thought was the thought of every one of his associates. The men of the Continental Congress meant to plant their new nation on eternal verities which no man possessed by the spirit of liberty could ever thereafter undertake to challenge. As the Christian religion was rested by its author on two sublime commandments on which hang all the laws and the prophets, so these men rested republican liberty on two sublime verities on which it must stand, if it can stand at all; in which it must live or bear no life. One was the equality of the individual man with every other in political right. The other is that you are now seeking to overthrow-the right of every people to institute their own 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, and so 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. Equality of individual manhood and equality of individual states. This is the doctrine which the Republican party is now urged to deny. THOMAS JEFFERSON'S POLICY. To justify that denial the advocates of the policy of imperialism are driven to the strange affirmation that Thomas Jefferson did not believe it and contradicted it when he purchased Louisiana ; that John Quincy Adams did not believe it and contradicted it when he bought Florida; that Abraham Lincoln did not believe it and contradicted it when he put down the rebellion; that Charles Sumner did not believe it and contradicted it when he bought Alaska. They say that because, with the full and practical consent of the men who occupied them, these men bought great spaces of territory occupied by sparse and scattered populations, neither owning it or pretending to own it, not capable of occupying it or governing it, destitute of every single attribute which makes or can make a nation or a people, those statesmen of ours, designing to make the territory acquired into equal states, to be dwelt in and governed under our Constitution by men with rights equal to our own- that therefore you may get by purchase or by conquest an unwilling people, occupying and governing a thickly settled territory, possessing every attribute of a national life, enjoying a freedom they have themselves achieved; that you may crush out their national life; that you may overthrow their institutions; that you may strangle their freedom; that you may put over them governors whom you appoint and in whose appointment they have no voice; that you may make laws for them in your interest and not in theirs; that you may overthrow their republican liberty, and in doing this you appeal to the example of Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams and Abraham Lincoln and Charles Sumner. Thomas Jefferson comes down in history with the Declaration of Independence in one hand and the title deed of Louisiana in the other. Do you think his left hand knew not what his right hand did? Do you think these two immortal transactions contradicted each other? Do you think he bought men like sheep and paid for them in gold? It is true the men of the Declaration held slaves. Jefferson felt the inconsistentcy, and declared that he trembled for his country when he felt that God was just. But he lived and died in the expectation that the Declaration would abolish slavery, as it did. DOCTRINE OF THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED In every accession of territory to this country ever made we recognized fully the doctrine of the consent of the governed and the doctrine that territory so acquired must be held to be made into states. The men who say that Jefferson violated the doctrine of the Declaration when he bought Louisiana, and John Quincy Adams when he acquired Florida, and Sumner when he made his great speech for Alaska, might, with as much reason, justify a rape by citing the precedent of every lawful marriage that has taken place since the beginning of time. The confusion of the argument of our friends on the other side comes from confounding the statement in the Declaration of the rights of individuals with the statement of the rights of nations, or peoples, in dealing with one another. The whole Declaration is a statement of political rights and political relations and political duties. First. Every man is equal in political rights, including the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to every other. Second. No people can come under the government of any other people, or of any ruler, without its consent. The law of nature and of nature's God entitle every people to its separate and equal station among the powers of the earth. Our fathers were not dealing in this clause with the doctrine of the social compact; they were not considering the rights of minorities; they used the word "people" as equivalent to "nation," or "state," as an organized political being, and not as a mere aggregate of persons not collected or associated. They were not thinking of Robinson Crusoe in his desolate island, or of scattered settlers, still less of predatory bands roaming over vast regions they could neither own nor occupy. They were affirming the right of each of the thirteen colonies separately or of all together to throw off the yoke of George III and to separate itself or themselves from Great Britain. Now, you must either admit that what they said was true, or you must affirm the contrary. GOD GIVEN RIGHTS The question is put, with an air of triumph, as if it were somehow hard to answer. If this doctrine apply to 1,000,000 men why does it not apply to 100 men? At what point in the census do men get these God-given rights of yours? Well, the answer is easy enough. Our fathers, in the affirmation of the Declaration of Independence you are now denying, were speaking of the equal rights of nations, of their duties to each other. The exact point where a few scattered settlements become a people, or a few nomadic tribes a nation, may not admit of precise mathematical definition. At what point does a brook become a river? When does a pond become a lake, or a lake a sea, or a breeze a hurricane? You can not tell me. But surely there are nations and peoples, there is organized national life; and there are scattered habitations and wandering tribes to whom these titles are never applied. Louisiana, Florida, Alaska, New Mexico, California, neither had, nor did their inhabitants claim to have, such a national vitality when we acquired them. And if there were anything of that sort when we annexed them, it desired to come to us. And it ! came to us to become part of us-bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, life of our life, soul of our soul. But I can give you two pretty safe practical rules, quite enough for this day's purpose. Each of them will solve your difficulty, if That is a people, that entitled as such to its you have a difficulty, and want to solve it. AGUINALDO BRAVE, HONEST, AND PATRIOTIC The Boer life, though Each one of If there were no Constitution, if there were no Declaration, if there were no international law, if there were nothing but the history of the past two years, the American people would be bound in honor, if there be honor, bound in common honesty, if there be honesty, not to crush out this Philippine republic, and not to wrest from this people its independence. The history of our dealing with the Philippine people is found in the reports of our commanders. It is all contained in our official documents and published statements of General Anderson and in the speeches of the President. It is little known to the country to-day. When it shall be known, I believe it will cause a revolution in public sentiment. |