"lished throughout the archipelago, when education "shall have become general, then, in the language "of a leading Filipino, his people will, under our 'guidance, 'become more American than the Ameri"cans themselves.""

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CONCLUSIONS IN REGARD TO THE CONSTITUTION

A hostile environment does not annul, though it may impair, the efficiency of the Constitution. In the Philippine Archipelago, as in all United States territory, the Constitution confers rights upon the ignorant and the unwilling as well as upon those who value them; enjoins our public servants to respect it always; justifies resistance to forbidden acts; and, in theory of law, renders void every command and illegal every act disregarding its prohibitions. For by the law of this Constitution all land under the sovereignty of Congress is one country; all people within its jurisdiction are one people, who enjoy life, liberty, and property of constitutional right without regard to which side of a boundary line between State and Territory or of lines of latitude or longitude they happen to live; and these lines cannot be made a hindrance to the course of legitimate commerce.

A few months ago this statement was generally accepted, and it would not be attacked to-day had the Treaty of Paris limited our acquisitions to American territory. It is the circumstance of conquest in Asia, with its suppressed but inevitable suggestion of further aggrandizement in the East, that provokes

the assertion that at last we have gone beyond the proper sphere of the Constitution.

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that this assertion is true, or at all events that it expresses the deliberate wish of the American people, how shall we deal with the question it presents? Certainly not by accepting an injurious rule as a perpetual obligation, or by refusing to admit that the Constitution must come at last to reflect a matured public opinion. If the application of the Constitution in the Philippines will cause serious embarrassment, the approbation of law will not make it endurable. Or, if the American people are unwilling to treat the islands as United States territory in any circumstances, no rule of law will long compel them. I am convinced that either event should move us to relinquish sovereignty over the country we cannot, or will not govern according to our Constitution. The taking over of millions of Asiatics who are deemed unfit for fellowship must increase our burdens without bringing new strength to bear them; and we may yet need the strength that inheres only in a people united by the bonds of sympathy, and of equality before the law.

Withholding the Constitution from the Philippines must tend to lessen respect for it here. It is impossible that we, who have maintained the necessity of constitutional restraints for the ordering of our intelligent and self-governing community, should disregard them anywhere without weakening our faith in their virtue.

Should the Constitution be denied to the Philippines upon any pretext a drawback from indiscriminate expansion will be removed. While acquisition

of territory means the enlargement of the United States and the reception of new citizens, while Congress must govern all country within its jurisdiction as a social and commercial unit, the American people will not covet outlying land if its acquisition means fellowship with uncongenial multitudes. It is objected that any restraint upon appropriating territory as spoil of war will embarrass our military arm. Must we survey land before invading it, lest we stumble upon an unwelcome addition to the United States? Shall we sacrifice the right to indemnify ourselves for the cost of successful war? Surely these questions are not serious. A wise policy of expansion is promoted by a determination to gain desirable territory, not by a weakness for seizing anything within reach. The theory that conquest entails perpetual responsibilities is, too often, merely the conqueror's excuse for keeping coveted land. As for indemnity, it is gained directly by exactions of money, or, indirectly, by retaining desirable land. It is a contradiction in terms to say that it may be gained by keeping undesirable land.

Recognition of the Constitution in the Philippines will not check the expansion of our republic: It will tend to guide the course of expansion aright.

Should the above considerations be overborne by a determination to hold the Philippines as a subject province at all cost, let the Constitution as it stands remain unspoiled by interpretations restricting it to the States, or conditioning its efficacy in national territory upon the pleasure of Congress, or the treatymaking body. Let us frankly admit that in ruling

without the restraint of organic law the government would assume an office requiring the approval of imperial standards for its acceptance, the delegation of imperial powers for its administration, and then approve these standards and delegate these powers in a special amendment of the Constitution. I have seen no considered suggestion that the Constitution be amended, yet it must come to this if the United States are to govern subject provinces with lawful and adequate powers. A short amendment would serve to distinguish the republic, governed under the old organic law, from outlying provinces ruled as policy shall dictate.

Meanwhile, the present Constitution is the law. And to the objection that the treatment of our new possessions is one of those purely political matters in which the judiciary must follow its coördinate departments, and not presume to check them, I reply that the immensity of the issues does not affect the judiciary in determining whether in fact there is a law of the land applicable to a case at bar. Shall this suitor pay a tax? Shall that one be deprived of liberty? These may be momentous political questions, without the precincts of the Court; within, they are judicial questions.

CHAPTER IV

THE GOVERNING OF THE PHILIPPINES

The inclusion of the Philippines within the boundaries of the United States, and the aegis of the Constitution, are results of acquiring territorial sovereignty, and while this sovereignty is maintained we must address ourselves to practical questions of government and policy involved in the administration of United States territory. Some of these have been already considered; of the rest I shall consider only the primary questions concerning the powers of our President and Congress, and our attitude toward some of the principal institutions of the old order.

THE POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT

Executive Powers

The President is in possession of the Philippines, and his governing of them, provisionally, by military agents is a lawful exercise of executive power. This government originated in a belligerent occupation of foreign territory, and, agreeably to the precedent approved by the Supreme Court in the case of California, it was not dissolved by the trans