ent races, different antecedents, different standards, different methods of thought, different language. The Spaniards came to this country with benevolent professions and intentions. We went with like purposes to the Sandwich Islands. In both cases the result has been the same. The natives become extinct, and their room is occupied by other people. The stronger crowd the weaker out, and the weaker die. The result may be that in a given region a good population is established, which otherwise might have remained at home; but the savage is not governed so well. He may naturally think that a government of his own, however poor, which lets him live, is better than a more enlightened political system, which exterminates him. If there is any benevolence in such cases, it is benevolence to the invaders who thrive on the graves of the invaded. I cannot understand how you, so familiar with our failure to benefit the Indians and with the doubtful future of the negro at our hands, can suppose that we shall display a hitherto unsuspected power in dealing with a distant people whom we already call alternately "niggers" and "Indians.". The words are of ill-omen, and I do not wonder that the Filipinos object to being made the subject of our experiments in colonial government. I am sure that their fears are well founded.

a

Mr. Thayer seems to expect that our new policy will bring us larger and juster style of political thinking . . . and a sober type of political administration." I do not know where, in our experience, he finds any warrant for this hope, whether we recall the reconstruction period or read of our present methods in Luzon. If it were so, I should doubt our right to slaughter Filipinos in order to improve ourselves. As I read history, Athens, Rome, and Spain owed their decay to just the policy which you advocate. I hope that my country may be spared a similar fate; but my opposition to this war rests upon the conviction that this attempt by force to subjugate a weak people is a crime, repugnant alike to the principles upon which this government rests and to the fundamental law of morals, and, if it is such, no advantage to ourselves can excuse it.

This letter has very likely interested me more than it will you, and it may strike you as unduly polemical; but it is written with sincere respect for you, and in the hope that some suggestion in it may lead you to reconsider your present opinion.

Sincerely yours,

MOORFIELD STOREY.

SPEECH AT BROOKLINE.

Mr. Chairman and Fellow-citizens of Brookline:

The question presented to the voters of this district is not a question of persons. It is a question of principles: it is a question of freedom, and each man must answer it upon his conscience. Will you join in refusing to others that liberty which you claim for yourselves, which you have always believed to be the inalienable birthright of every man, no matter what his race or his color? Will you now deny the truths which for more than a century we have called self-evident? Will you abandon the ideals of free America, and approve the principles and practices of despotism? This is the question which you will answer when you cast your votes, a question which, as Senator Hoar has well said, "is greater than parties, greater than administrations, greater than the happiness or prosperity of a single generation." Upon this question what shall be the voice of this district in the next Congress?

The supporters of the President try in various ways to evade this issue. Thus Senator Lodge said at Pittsfield: "We are not going to pull down the flag while it is being shot at. We have never done it, and never will.” This is a mere appeal to passion. Whether the flag is rightly resisted or not, whether some officer or agent of ours has wrongly attacked a peaceful neighbor or not, no matter how criminal our aggression, no matter how just the resistance, if a shot is fired against us, this mighty nation in blind wrath must crush its opponent, not asking nor caring whether it is right or wrong. This doctrine dethrones God, and makes a deity of bunting. Is this the voice of free, Christian Massachusetts ? They repeat the cry of "Our country, right or wrong," demanding in the sacred name of our country that we support the party in power, whether right or wrong. I deny that Mr. McKinley, Mr. Hanna, Mr. Lodge, or any other politician for the day in office, or all together, are my country. I deny that they may commit us to a bloody and needless war, and then insist that those who oppose their policy are not patriots. The doctrine that the king

can do no wrong has no place in a republic and no application to its servants. It has ever been a buttress of despotism. Mr. Schurz has given a far higher and truer meaning to these words: "Our country, right or wrong: if right, to be kept right; if wrong, to be set right." This is the true rule of the patriot.

Let me, if I may, address your reason and your conscience. If the facts do not support my contention, you will reject it. Appeals to prejudice and passion obscure the truth, and are the arguments of orators whose case is bad. I would present our case on its merits.

The ablest defender of the administration is the President himself, who, in his letter accepting his renomination, has undertaken "to give the people authentic information of the acts and aims of the administration," and who is clearly in a position to do so. He says that "imperialism has no place in its creed or conduct. Freedom is a rock upon which the Republican party was builded and now rests. It will not be guided in its conduct by one set of principles at home and another set in the new territory belonging to the United States." If he is right, there is an end of the discussion. Mr. Reed may return to public life. President Harrison may approve his successor's policy without reserve. Senator Hoar need no longer lament his difference with the President.

I propose to compare the assertions which I have quoted with the undisputed facts, to the end that we may at least understand in what sense the President uses language, and may place their true value upon the benevolent phrases which he employs so freely. We may begin with Porto Rico; for here the essential facts are embodied in a statute with which the President is entirely familiar. Of this he says:—

"Congress has given to this island a government in which the inhabitants participate,— elect their own legislature, enact their own local laws, provide their own system of taxation,—and in these respects have the same power and privileges enjoyed by other territories belonging to the United States. . The generous

treatment of the Porto Ricans accords with the most liberal thought of our own country, and encourages the best aspirations of the people of the island.”

"The inhabitants participate,-elect their own legislature." The Statute, 56 Cong. 1st Sess. c. 191, establishes in Porto Rico a

"legislative assembly" consisting of two houses. The upper house, known as the executive council, consists of eleven members, of whom six are the leading executive officers of the island under the governor, who are required to reside there while in office, and five must be native inhabitants of Porto Rico. The members of this council are all appointed by the President, with the consent of the Senate; and they may be removed at his pleasure. The lower house consists of thirty-five members, elected biennially by such of the people as are allowed to vote. The qualifications of voters for the first election were fixed by "the laws and military orders in force on the first day of March, 1900, subject to such modifications and additional qualifications" as were "prescribed by the executive council." They can be changed by an act of the assembly. The legislature thus constituted may pass laws subject to the veto of the governor, as here; but all their acts may be annulled by Congress. The cherished provision of Anglo-Saxon constitutional law, that money bills must originate in the house which directly represents the people, is annulled by an express proviso that "all bills may originate in either house."

The governor of the island and the judges, with the exception perhaps of inferior magistrates, are appointed by the President or the governor.

The executive, judicial, and legislative powers of Porto Rico are therefore directly under the control of the United States, and substantially in the hands of the President, through his power of appointment and removal. Such inhabitants "participate" in the government as the officers of the United States have permitted or may hereafter permit to do so. Their participation is limited to the choice of one house in the legislature; and, as no law can be passed without the assent of both houses, the representatives of Porto Rico cannot pass the simplest act except by the consent of the President's appointees. There is, therefore, in Porto Rico no legislature independent of the President's will; and the people of that island are deprived of any power to resist him. Does the language "a government in which the inhabitants participate, elect their own legislature," - fairly describe the government of Porto Rico? Would the people of Massachusetts elect their own legislature if a foreign ruler appointed all the senators?

"Enact their own local laws." How is this statement reconciled with the law as quoted? How does it agree with the proviso in

the statute "that all grants of franchises, rights, and privileges or concessions of a public or quasi-public nature shall be made by the executive council with the approval of the governor, and all franchises granted in Porto Rico shall be reported to Congress, which reserves the power to annul or modify the same"? Is there anything more purely "local" than the laws which regulate the terms upon which water, gas, or electricity shall be supplied to a community, or those which determine the relations between the people and the men who furnish transportation or other public services? In America these are largely subject to municipal control, but in Porto Rico the representatives of the people have no voice in regard to them. These are sources of profit, and therefore are kept under the control of the President through his appointees, subject also to the veto of Congress.

"Provide their own system of taxation." The President in these words refers to local taxation; but, since the representatives of Porto Rico are powerless to legislate at all, save with the approval of men in whose selection they have no voice, they are equally unable to determine their own taxes.

"In these respects have the same power and privileges enjoyed by other territories belonging to the United States." If we look at the statutes of the United States regulating the government of territories, we shall find that the inhabitants choose both houses of their legislature, and that every male citizen of the United States over twenty-one years of age, who is an inhabitant, may vote, including those who have declared an intention to become such. We have in these territories no upper house appointed and removable by the President, no control of the suffrage by the President's appointees.

But, if we leave out from the sentence last quoted the words "in these respects," we find far wider differences. In Porto Rico the statute declares that "all inhabitants continuing to reside" there, "who were Spanish subjects on the eleventh day of April, 1899, and then resided in Porto Rico, and their children born subsequent thereto, shall be deemed and held to be citizens of Porto Rico, and as such entitled to the protection of the United States; and they, together with such citizens of the United States as may reside in Porto Rico, shall constitute a body politic, under the name of the people of Porto Rico." This statute is, in my opinion, unconstitutional; but it is the law which the President is describing in the