Concerning an agreement made with the Sultan of Sulu by the military authorities, the President says:1 "Article X provides that any slave in the archipelago of Jolo shall have the right to purchase free"dom by paying to the master the usual market "value. The agreement by General Bates was made "subject to confirmation by the President, and to "future modifications by the consent of the parties "in interest. I have confirmed said agreement, sub"ject to the action of the Congress, and with the "reservation, which I have directed shall be commu"nicated to the Sultan of Jolo, that this agreement "is not to be deemed in any way to authorize or give "the consent of the United States to the existence "of slavery in the Sulu archipelago. I communicate "these facts to the Congress for its information and "action." As the article in question purports to accord a qualified recognition of slavery it is outlawed by the Constitution. We may not handle slavery with gloves. The gradual emancipation tolerated by England in Zanzibar is not permitted to us. There is not even a lawful process of emancipation. The Amendment declares sharply that slavery shall not "exist," and the Supreme Court has pronounced it to be "undoubtedly self-executing with"out any ancillary legislation, so far as its terms are "applicable to any existing state of circumstances. By its own unaided force and effect it abolished "slavery, and established universal freedom." 2

The full effect of the prohibition of "involuntary "servitude" has not been determined by the Supreme 1 Annual message of 1899, p. 43.

2 Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, 20.

Court, which has decided, however, that it does not
abrogate the ancient rule of the sea whereby a sailor
shipping for a voyage may be compelled to perform his
contract under pain of imprisonment, nor is intended
to introduce "any novel doctrine with respect to
"certain descriptions of service which have always
“been treated as exceptional; such as military and
"naval enlistments, or to disturb the right of parents
"and guardians to the custody of their minor chil-
"dren or wards services which have from time
"immemorial been treated as exceptional shall
"not be regarded as within its purview." Nor is
it necessary to insist that a person can in no case be
compelled to complete a particular undertaking
an engineer who should be prevented from wilfully
abandoning a pump forcing air into a mine would
not be held in "involuntary servitude." But after
making all exceptions warranted by inveterate usage
or emergency, the Thirteenth Amendment appears to
declare that an employer cannot of his own motion,
or by the assistance of the state force an unwilling
workman to perform his contract. As Judge Cooley
says: "Contracts for personal services cannot, as a
'general rule, be enforced, and application to be
discharged from service under them on habeas
"corpus is evidence that the service is involuntary.'
And the Supreme Court has said: "If Mexican
peonage or the Chinese coolie labor system shall
"develop slavery of the Mexican or Chinese race
"within our territory, this amendment may safely be

1 Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U. S. 275, 282.
2 Constitutional Limitations, 6th Ed. 363, note.

"2

"trusted to make it void."1 What effect the enforcement of the Thirteenth Amendment against the coolie system would have upon agriculture in some of our new possessions cannot be known until the labor conditions are thoroughly understood. It is noteworthy, however, that Great Britain finds it expedient to legitimate this system in several of her colonies, shorn of most abuses, it is true, yet retaining the essential feature of compulsory service during an agreed period. And in the report on British New Guinea for 1897-982 we read that Ordinance No. II of 1897: "rendered it compulsory "on a native to perform the work for which he may "be duly engaged"; and Ordinance No. VIII of 1897: "provides that a deserting laborer may be re"turned to his employer." However, in view of the state of labor in Hawaii we are not free, at present, to criticize British policy. In June, 1899, the Supreme Court of Hawaii confirmed the order of a district magistrate who, under the Masters and Servants Act, had sentenced a man to imprisonment at hard labor "until he should consent to return to his "master and consent to serve according to law."3 The prisoner was an Austrian who had been "im"ported" by the company under contract to work for three years. The Court did not attempt to distinguish the imprisonment from the "involuntary

1 Slaughter-house Cases, 16 Wallace 36, 72; cited in U. S. v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U. S. 649, 677. For a description of peonage see Jaremillo v. Romero, I New Mexico 190.

2 Pages 10, II.

3 Honomu Sugar Co. v. Zeluch, 60 Albany Law Journal 213.

"servitude" forbidden by the Thirteenth Amendment, but dismissed the Amendment with a curt reference to earlier opinions in which it had pronounced the Constitution of the United States to be of no force during "the transition period."

If it shall be finally determined that in the United States Territory of Hawaii a plantation hand may be imprisoned until he is ready to perform his contract to labor, perhaps a like system will some day be established in the States that have already practically disfranchised the negro.

RIGHTS OF PERSONS

Political Franchises

Citizens of the United States not residing in States have no voice in federal affairs,1 nor have they a constitutional right to regulate their own.

The entire sovereignty over territory beyond the States is vested exclusively in the federal legislature. This proposition was questioned in the Dred Scott case, and Senator Douglas and other statesmen declared that the people of the Territories possessed sufficient "popular sovereignty" to decide for themselves whether slavery should be allowed within their borders. The doctrine of " popular sovereignty" in the Territories was a political device for taking the question of slavery out of federal politics. It was wholly incompatible with the fundamental conception 1 See supra, p. 14.

2 Scott v. Sandford, 19 Howard 293, 501.

of the union of States, and is now thoroughly discredited.1 The definition of Filipinos as "citizens" carries no right to participate in governing the republic, nor any State, nor even the Philippines. They can become members of the voting body of the United States only by coming into a State and satisfying the requirements of the local law of suffrage. They can exercise in the islands only such political franchises as Congress may grant. In the language of the Supreme Court: "The personal and civil "rights of the inhabitants of the Territories are se"cured to them, as to other citizens, by the principles "of constitutional liberty which restrain all the agencies of government, State and national; their politi"cal rights are franchises which they hold as privileges "in the legislative discretion of the Congress of the "United States." 2

46

Civil Rights

There is no absurdity in attributing the personal and civil rights of the Constitution to the Filipinos when the nature and limitations of these rights are understood. Surely the republic must regard life, liberty, and property everywhere as rights, not as privileges. Even these primary rights are not absolute. Each one may be forfeited for crime. Each is held subject to the legitimate claims of the State.

Of course the right to liberty confers the freedom

1 See National Bank v. County of Yankton, 101 U. S. 129, 133; Murphy v. Ramsey, 114 U. S. 15, 44; Mormon Church v. U. S., 136 U. S. 1, 44.

2 Murphy v. Ramsey, 114 U. S. 15, 44.