HoUinger Corp. pH8.5 WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR DEPENDENQES ? MOORFIELD STOREY u I Ml WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR DEPENDENCIES? THE ANNUAL ADDRESS BEFORE THE BAR ASSOCIATION OF SOUTH CAROLINA Delivered in Columbia January i6, 1903 MOORFIELD STOREY BOSTON Geo. H. Ellis Co., Printers, 272 Congress Street 1903 Ill Exchange Duke Umversity JUL 1 2 ^9^v Mr. President and Gentlemen of the South Carolina Bar : It was with peculiar pleasure that I received the invitation to address you this evening, not only because I felt it to be a high personal compliment, but because it afforded fresh evi- dence, if such were needed, of how entirely the differences that disturbed us a generation ago have ceased to divide us. When the secretary, the biographer, the disciple of Charles Sumner is called from Massachusetts to address the bar of South Carolina, it cannot be doubted that the cordial relations which formerly existed between our States are completely and, I believe, forever restored. If I can, I would carry you back to-night to those early days when our fathers stood shoulder to shoulder in "the times that tried men's souls," and join with you in renewing their pledge to support those great truths which South Carolina and Massachusetts alike then held to be self-evident. The Present Position of our Dependencies. Our country to-day exercises absolute power over more than ten millions of human beings, — Filipinos, Porto Ricans, and Hawaiians, — twice as many as the whole popula- tion of the United States a century ago. Our dominion has been established without consulting them and against such resistance as they could make. They are not American citizens, nor are they likely to become such. They are gov- erned by the President and Congress, but they have no voice in the choice of either. They have no recognized rights under our Constitution ; and, if the President by executive order or Congress by statute has granted to them any of the rights secured by the Constitution to all American citizens. they are merely privileges, which may be recalled at pleasure by a new order or a new statute. If the right of trial by jury and the right to bear arms, both of which are denied the Fili- pinos, are not their constitutional rights, they have no consti- tutional rights. They have no representation in the Congress which taxes them and controls their destiny. In a word, no part of the government under which they live derives its powers from their consent. They are merely subjects of the United States, as absolutely without political rights as if they were subjects of Spain. The question which now confronts the American people, never to be settled " till it is settled right," is whether these conditions shall continue. What shall be our permanent policy toward these dependent peoples ? No more impor- tant questicjn ever engaged our attention ; and we should con- sider it carefully and dispassionately, as Americans, and not as Republicans or Democrats, for we must all suffer alike the consequences of any mistake. It becomes us to study all the ethical and political conditions of our problem, to gather all the light that we can from the experience of others, and not fancy that we have a native genius for gov- erning our fellow-men which has been denied to other nations. We may be sure that the essential qualities and tendencies of human nature are the same, whatever the race to which a man belongs and whatever the color of his skin ; and in these qualities lie causes which under like conditions produce like effects, whether the scene be set in Asia, Africa, or Europe, and whether the time be now or two thousand years ago. Above all, we must dare to look the truth in the face. We gain nothing by clecei\ing ourselves. We cannot change the facts by refusing to see The Foundation of Each Theory. Let us ask ourselves, in the first place, What principles un- derlie these opposing theories ? Disguise it as we will, the claim of one people that it is superior to and therefore en- titled to rule another rests upon no better moral foundation than the heathen maxim, ' ' Might makes right. ' ' The ancient traveller Mandeville stated a universal truth when he said, " For fro what partie of the erthe that men duellen, other aboven or beneathen, it semethe alweys to hem that duellen that thei gon more righte than any other folke. " History contains no instance of a people admitting its inferiority and yielding on that account to a foreign ruler. Rome conquered Greece, Alaric overran Italy and captured Rome, Constantinople fell before the Turks. The Christian powers of Europe could not wrest the Holy Land from the infidel. Each conqueror felt himself superior to his vanquished foe ; but can it be said that the superior civilization triumphed .? Switzerland is perhaps the most highly civilized nation in Europe, but its claim to govern any other country on that account would be preposterous. As well look to see the triumphant prize-fighter obey the gentle admonitions of the next clergyman as expect a people to acknowledge itself inferior, and on that account surrender its liberty. The nation that conquers may govern another ; but it prevails by its might, not by its right. On the other hand, the theory that every people has an equal right to govern itself rests upon justice, the only secure foundation for any human institution. A nation which adopts this principle concedes to every other the same rights that it claims for itself. It may advise and help, but not force its advice and help upon an unwilling neighbor by fire and sword. The sun, not the wind, made the traveller take off his cloak. If we believe that Christianity is the highest civilization, can we doubt which rule is most in accord with its spirit ? What a kp: Inferior Races? If \vc concede that a civilized nation has the right to govern any people who are unfit to govern themselves, who shall decide that such unfitness exists? Can the decision safely he left to the stronger nation ? Shall it be made by men who know nothing of the weaker people, who have never visited their country, who do not understand their language, their traditions, their character, or their needs ? Shall it be made without hearing their representatives and learning all that they can tell about their countrymen ? Can we be sure that the judgment of the strong is not affected by appeals to national vanity, by apostrophes to the flag, by hopes of commercial advantage, by dreams of world power, by the exigencies of party politics, by personal ambitions ? If it is made when passions and prejudices are excited by war, is it not likely to be influenced by these ? If the strong nation or its rulers consider their own interests, is their judgment to be trusted, — and is it possible that they should not do so ? Nations who consent to arbitrate and private litigants seek an impartial tribunal. Is such a tribu- nal unnecessary when the very existence of a nation is at stake ? By what standards is inferiority to be measured ? It is said that an Englishman thinks any one his inferior who does not speak the English language, wear English clothes, eat English food, and belong to the English Church. If a difference in language, raiment, food, and religion constitutes inferiority, the question presents no difficulty. We may learn a profound truth from the history of the word /tostis, which, originally meaning "stranger," came soon to mean " enemy." Men whom we do not know and whom we cannot vmderstand, we distrust and dislike. They are different, therefore inferior. Rome s])()ke of ^' Gravcia fucn- tlnx." h" ranee denounces '' Pcrfidc Albion.'" The Anglo- Saxon insists that the Latin races are habitually false. "The heathen Chinee" despises " tlie foreign dog" who in brute strength tramples upon all that he holds most sacred. Nay, gentlemen, even in the same country each section, each province, each state, is apt to think itself superior to every other. Odious comparisons have not been unknown even in our own country, and in the newspapers and speeches of forty years ago we might find language used by Americans about Americans which would well describe a most inferior race. This is human nature. Let me take a historical instance. When James II. brought Irish troops to England, the feeling of the English is thus described by Macaulay : — " No man of English blood then regarded the aboriginal Irish as his countrymen. They did not belong to our branch of the great human family. They were distinguished from us by more than one moral and intellectual peculiarity. They had an aspect of their own, a mother tongue of their own. When they talked English, their pronunciation was ludicrous, their phraseology was grotesque. ... They were therefore foreigners ; and of all foreigners they were the most hated and despised : the most hated, for they had during five centuries always been our enemies; the most despised, for they were our vanquished, enslaved, and despoiled enemies. . . . The Irish were almost as rude as the savages of Labrador. [The Englishman] was a freeman; the Irish were the hereditary serfs of his race. He worshipped God after a pure and rational fashion; the Irish were sunk in idolatry and superstition ; . . . and he very complacently in- ferred that he was naturally a being of a higher order than the Irishman, . . . who were generally despised in our island as both a stupid and cowardly people. ' ' * Could the inferiority of the Filipinos be painted in stronger language to-day ? ' ' Stupid and cowardly ! ' ' Strike from the annals of the English Parliament the speeches of Irish orators, from the records of the English army the deeds of Irish generals and soldiers, from English literature the works of Irishmen, and some of the brightest pages in English history would be blotted out. The Irish have given to * History of England, ii. p. 332. France a president and many an able ^^eneral, t(^ Spain a prime minister, to Austria, Russia, and other European ct)untries soldiers, prelates, and diplomats of the highest rank. In every corner of the world, Irishmen have won laurels and proved their valor and their ability. " Stupid and cowardly! " How completely has one " inferior race " demonstrated the falsity of its oppressor's verdict ! But it will be said that the white man is confessedly superior to the brown, the Eurojiean to the Asiatic. Doubt- less he is in some respects. Doubtless he is not in others. The qualities of men, mental, physical, and moral, are various. One man is a poet, another an inventor, a third a general. Which is superior ? So is it with races. In the qualities which make for material prosperity, energy, activity, keen practical intelligence, the European is superior. In those which contribute to spiritual elevation, the Asiatic is at least his equal. A recent English writer says of the Chinese, " Courage they have, and of a high quality ; but for centuries they have regarded force as a less desirable method of persuasion than an appeal to reason, and in consequence the soldier has been despised in jirojiortion as the scholar has been honored." Such a nation ma)' not resist a modern army; out is its civili- zation inferior to that which showers rewards upon the suc- cessful general and despises the scholar as a weakling .? * Mr. Meredith Townsend, who is said to know India better than any other Englishman, thus deals with the claim that Asiatics arc inferior : — " These Asiatics who are accounted so despicable have devised and kept up for ages, without exhausting the soil or imjjorting food, a system of agriculture which sustains in health and even comfort a population often thicker than that of any European State. They understand agricultural hydraulics perfectly, and have executed hydraulic works, canals, and tanks which are the achniration of European engineers. l-'rom tiie tlays of Babylon to tiie days of Bombay they have ctnered their continent with great cities, some oi * IlKimsiin. "I'liiiia .ind tin- I'dwci*," \i. ii.?. which contain marvels of architecture, while all have been warehouses for immense trade, centres of great banking sys- tems, or chosen seats of men who have conquered or legis- lated for or administered great empires. "Asiatics built the Alhambra and the Taj, the temples above the Ghauts of Benares, and the fantastic towers of Nankin. Asiatics, unassisted by Europeans, have carried all the arts, save sculpture and painting, to a high degi'ee of perfection, so that learned men have written volumes to ex- plain their architecture; and while no pottery can excel Chinese porcelain, no sword-smith a Damascus blade, no gold- smith will promise to improve on a Trichinopoly chain. ' * They have devoted such mental force to the consideration of the whence and whither and the relation of the visible to the invisible that all the creeds accepted by civilized and semi-civilized mankind are of Asiatic origin. All humanity, except the negroes and the savage races of America and Polynesia, regulate their conduct and look for a future state as some Asiatic has taught them. ' ' Europe, having accepted with hearty confidence the views of Peter and Paul, both Asiatics,, about the meaning of what their divine Master said, regards all other systems of religious thought with contemptuous distaste, and sums them up in its heart as ' heathen rubbish. ' Yet Confucius must have been a wise man, or his writings could not have moulded the Chinese mind ; while Mohammedanism has a grip such as no other creed, not even Christianity, possesses, except on a few individuals. Brahminism and Buddhism alike rest upon deep and far-reaching philosophies. ' ' * Does it not seem the height of presumption for us, in our ignorance, to claim that brown men are necessarily our in- feriors, or that Asiatics, whose ideas govern the moral world, cannot govern themselves ? Said James Russell Lowell, — " When the moral vision of a man becomes perverted enough to persuade him that he is superior to his fellow, he is in reality looking up at him from an immeasurable distance beneath. " * " Asia and Europe," pp. 7, 8, g, 13. lO The Conditions ok Good Go\ern.mknt. Let us proceed to a more important inquiry. If our new subjects cannot give themselves what we think a good gov- ernment, are we likely to give them a better ? Or is Presi- dent Schurman right in saying, "Any decent government of the Filipinos by the Filipinos is better than the best possible government of Filipinos by Americans ' ' ? Let us consider this question, bearing steadily in mind certain fundamental principles. Fiist. Every government should exist solely for the benefit of the governed ; and, to just the extent that the governors consider their own interests first, the govern- ment is bad. Power is held in trust for the good of the community. When he who wields it uses it to advance or enrich himself at the expense of the community, he violates his trust. Second. The object of every government should be to educate, develop, and elevate the people, increasing the hap- piness of the individual, not to develop mines, increase com- merce, and add to the world's wealth without regard to the people. In a word, every good ruler should try to make men, in the broadest sense of the term, not to make money. Third. In order to develop a people, their rulers must understand them and believe in them, and must know their tendencies, their limitations, their capabilities, and their prejudices. No man or woman succeeds as a teacher who does not understand children, and no man can lead other men up unless he believes in them and they believe in him. If a ruler feels contempt for his subjects, there is mutual rcj)ulsion ; and his power to lead or teach them is gone. Nothing galls a human being so much as an assumption of superiority by another. In the words of Mr. Townscnd, — " All Asiatics attribute to almost all Englishmen atrocious manners, chiefly because Englishmen are so impatient of II loss of time ; and we are all more irritated by habitual ill- manners, and especially ill-manners indicating contempt, than by any ordinary oppression." Finally, human experience has amply proved that no man can safely be trusted with absolute power. The struggle of men for freedom has ever been an attempt to create ' ' a government of laws, and not of men. In all civilized governments there are two restraints on power, — a constitution and public opinion. A constitution, whether embodied in a written charter or in established prec- edents, contains the matured conclusions of a people on po- litical questions which are settled. Public opinion is the judgment of the people on new questions as they arise ; and, in proportion as this opinion is enlightened and active, govern- ment is good. It is the expression of public spirit ; and, where it is apathetic or mistaken, grave abuses creep into the State. The fear of public opinion restrains every man in public life, and too often makes him a coward ; but, if it is to be a force working for good, the people must know the truth. They must understand each case aright, or their judgment will be wrong; and the gravest responsibility rests on every public man who seeks to mislead them by falsehood or evasion. As abstract propositions, men will generally admit that government should be administered in the interest of the governed, that the primary object should be the elevation of the people, that mutual sympathy and understanding should exist between the people and their rulers, and that the power of the government should be restrained by constitutional limitations and enlightened public opinion. These are essen- tial conditions of good government everywhere. What is the chance of their being observed in the government of our dependencies t The answer to this question will determine whether Mill and Froude and Lincoln are right or wrong in asserting that no nation, least of all a republic, can success- fully govern a subject race. 12 Our Government will not be for the Benefit of THE Go\ERNED. To simplify the argument, let us consider the case of the Philippine Islands. Will our government there exist for the benefit of the governed ? We took them wholly for the benefit of their people. At least, this was the statement of President McKinley, who made the decision, and who, in announcing it to the Peace Commissioners at Paris, told them that he had " been in- fluenced by the single consideration of duty and humanity, and who subsequently wrote to them : — ' ' The trade and commercial side, as well as indemnity for the cost of the war, are questions we might yield. They might be waived or compromised, but the questions of duty and humanity appeal to the President so strongly that he can find no appropriate answer but the one he has marked out." Whatever President McKinley may have persuaded him- self to think, is there any other American who seriously believes that this people hold the Philippine Islands purely from motives of philanthropy, that the thousands of lives and millions of money which we have spent there have been spent in a spirit of simple charity, that the last four years have been an attempt to do unto others what we would that they should do to us? Let us be frank with ourselves, — as frank as Senator Lodge, — than whom no man is closer to the administration, and who in his speech as president of the Republican convention in Philadelphia said: — " W^e make no hypocritical pretence of being interested in the Philippines solely on account of others. While we re- gard the welfare of these people as a sacred trust, we regard the welfare of the American people first. We see our duty to ourselves as well as to others. We believe in trade ex- pansion. " There are no illusions about this statement. Our govern- ment in the Philipi)ines exists ''first" for the interest of the goxc-rnors, not suli-lv or even principally for the benefit of 13 the governed. This in the exact truth, and our whole course shows it. It is not necessary to quote from the speeches of Senator Beveridge and hundreds like him, who i*i the newspaper or on the stump describe the material resources of the islands, and dilate upon the wealth which we shall derive from them. We need not dwell upon the fact that after the Spanish War was over and there was not in the islands a Spaniard who was not a prisoner, we continued to send thousands of troops to the Philippines. Why ? Not to help the Filipinos up, but to crush the anticipated resistance of a people whose right to independence we were determined to deny. The real purpose of the men who are behind this policy of conquest is disclosed by our conduct. The great forests, the rich miiies, the undeveloped wealth of these islands, be- long to the people who have dwelt there for centuries. Is it our purpose to help them to use these resources for their own benefit ? Have we industrial missionaries there, telling the Filipinos how Americans mine, farm, cut lumber, or manufacture goods .? Have we financial missionaries eager to teach them how profitable public franchises may be made, how capital can be combined through corporations, and the small savings of many made adequate to large undertakings ? Have we thought for a moment of giving them the benefit of their home market by an appropriate tariff or dreamt that " The Philippines for Filipinos " is every whit as reasonable as ' ' America for Americans ' ' ? On the contrary, the advocates of our new policy expect to find in these islands chances for Americans, not Filipinos, to make fortunes. Thus Governor Taft, in his testimony before the Senate Committee last spring, said that he thought the power to grant franchises was ' ' indispensable, ' ' and that through them " the agriculture of the islands could be enor- mously developed." He proceeded: "A franchise to an agricultural company, — I know of a number, — accompanied by the right to purchase something of the public domain, would bring a great deal of capital to the islands, if we can 14 jud^e from the statements made to us by those who are interested, for the raising of sugar, for the raising of rice, cocoanuts. I do not know that there is any proposition for the raising of hemp. There is for the raising of cotton and for the raising of tobacco. You would have to give them a part of the public domain, — sell it to them. Of course, a large part of the public domain ought to be sold, ' ' and he thought in " large tracts." He stated also that mining and timber could be developed by franchises, and that a mining law would be necessary, but that franchise and law would be nothing unless there was granted to the corporation '/ the control of title to cer- tain mineral lands." He testified that American prospectors had been in the islands, and were increasing ; and ' ' they go everywhere. . . . They are generally from the volunteers who have been through the countr)% and who, being confident of suc- cess in developing the mining resources, are waiting very patiently — I use the expression with deference — for a law that will enable them to get the benefit of their discoveries and their risks in going through these mountains and finding claims. " The extent of the opportunity is shown by Governor Taft's testimony, that there are in the islands about sixty to sixty- five million acres of agricultural land, and only five million acres under individual ownershij); and the nature of our claim is sliown by Senator Lodge's remark when this testi- mon)' was gi\en : — " The great mass of lands of all kinds are public lands, whicli were crown lands under Spain, and are -now lands of the United States." Governor Taft concluded : " We want to make it profitable for men lo go there, so that they shall invest cajiital and devcloii the country. On the other hand, we do not want to give to corporations or any set of men such contrt)! over the available land of the islands that the\' shall own not only the land, but shall own the peojjlc on it ; and that is the clanger in the l*hilipi)ine Islands." 15 The annual report of the Philippine Commission just pub- lished goes farther, and would repeal the restrictions imposed by Congress only last summer. They say : ' ' Another matter which we desire to call to your attention, and through you, if it meets with your approval, to that of Congress, is the bur- densome restrictions upon the investment of capital in lands and in mines in these islands. As the government owns 65,000,000 of acres out of 70,000,000 in the archipelago, there is substantially no danger that the ownership of land here can be centred in a few individuals or corporations, if the amount owned by any one individual owner or corporation is limited by law to 20,000 or 25,000 acres. ' ' The requirement that no corporation shall own more than 2500 acres stops absolutely the investment of new capital in the sugar industry and in the tobacco industry. It takes away any hope of bringing prosperity to these islands by the extending of the acreage in the cultivation of these two im- portant products of the archipelago. It very much interferes with the investment of capital in railroad enterprises, because they are naturally connected with the possibilities of trans- portation of sugar and tobacco from the interior to seaports." There is no doubt what all this means. No one sug:- gests that these lands are held by the United States in trust for the Filipinos, and to be developed for them and by them. They are the property of the United States, to be used so that Americans can make money. How will the Filipinos benefit by this development ? Is it suggested that this influx of American capital will create a demand for their labor } The answer is found in the recommendations of Professor Jenks to the War Department, just published. The claim is loudly made among the exploit- ers that Filipino labor is worthless; and, dealing with this question, Mr. Jenks says : — " It is, then, possibly, fair to say that of the ordinary Fili- pino laborers a certain percentage may be secured who will work faithfully and well, provided good wages are paid, and provided they are handled by an employer with firmness and skill. i6 " There are, however, not enough Filipinos who can be secured in the city or from the provinces to do anything Uke the amount of work required to develop the resources of the island as rapidly as is desirable. Doubtless some of the American and European employers of labor in Manila who are raising the greatest outcry regarding the scarcity and worthlessness of Filipino labor, and who are demanding that the Chinese be admitted, are wishing mainly to cut down wages and secure cheap labor. To assume that this desire, however, is the only one which leads to the demand for Chinese labor, is to misjudge the facts." His recommendation is that the Philippine Commission be empowered to permit the importation by employers of Chinese laborers under contract for three years, the em- ployers to provide lodging and food, and to return the laborer to China at the end of the time. Under no circumstances are they to leave their district of residence or to settle in the country. The Commission in its report, while saying that, as conditions improve, "the supply and efficiency of the Filipino laborers will become much more satisfactory," yet asks for power to admit a limited number of Chinese, under such restrictions as the Commission may impose. This is clearly an entering wedge, which will be driven farther as capital flows in and grows stronger. The demand comes from Americans and foreigners, not from Filipinos. Can any one fail to see the inevitable effect of such a development } We who claim that only a sense of duty to these people kept us in the Philippine Islands propose now to introduce Chinamen, who are virtually slaves, in competition with native citizens, who require " good wages." General MacArthur appreciated the danger of such a policy, and from his last report I quote : — " Indications are apparent of organized and systematized efforts to break down all barriers with a view to unrestricted Chinese inmiigration for the purpose of quick and effective e.\pl<^itation of the islands, — a policy which would not only be ruinous to the Filipino people, but would in the end surely 17 defeat the expansion of American trade. ... In this con- nection it may not be improper to state that one of the greatest difficulties attending miUtary efforts to tranquilHze the people of the archipelago arises from their dread of sud- den and excessive exploitation, which, they fear, would de- fraud them of their natural patrimony, and at the same time relegate them to a status of social and political inferiority. ... If a spirit of Philippine speculation should seize the pub- lic mind in the United States, and be emphasized by means of grants, concessions, and special franchises for the purpose of quick exploitation, the political situation and permanent interests of all concerned might be seriously jeopardized." Governor Taft admitted that the Filipinos who support the United States are all very much opposed to Chinese immigra- tion, and that the fear of this and the belief that the United States want the islands for exploitation was one great obsta- cle to pacification. Are not the Filipinos right ; and are they reassured by the statement of Governor Taft, that franchises should be granted to Americans, followed by the act of Con- gress which gave the Commission power to grant them .-' Let a Filipino speak for his countrymen. When asked if they would object to the sale of lands and franchises, he answered Senator Carmack : — " Most assuredly they would. Until the Filipinos have at least internal control of their own affairs, it wovild be a most improper thing to alienate the public lands or to dispose of franchises to foreign capitalists. Under present conditions, when the Filipinos are impoverished by six years of war, when their crops and towns have been destroyed, and when their working animals have almost all died of rinderpest, it would be most unfair to the Filipinos to compel them to com- pete with foreign capitalists in the purchase of public lands and franchises. The foreign capitalist could in every case outbid the native ; and the result would be another and a worse Ireland, with everything of value in the hands of absentees, whose only interest in the country would be what profits could be squeezed out of it." i8 Is this the language of a man so savage or uncivilized as to lack the capacity for self-government ? How many Amer- ican voters could make a better statement ? We exclude the Chinese from our own land lest they injure our citizens. It is proposed that we subject our helpless de- pendants to a competition which we, a race of superior men, are afraid to encounter. American capital is to control lands, mines, forests, and public franchises. Chinese labor is to do the work ; and the resources which belong to the Filipinos, — ** their patrimony," to quote General MacArthur, — which we should hold in trust for them, will be used to enrich us, while, strangers in their own land, they are pushed to the wall. Between the upper and nether millstones of foreign capital and foreign labor they will be crushed. What will be their future when the resources of sixty-five million acres are con- trolled by foreigners ? How long can they retain the little land which they now own against such competition ? We know how hard it is for us here in America to resist the encroachments of capital, which by bribing our legislative bodies controls our public services and obtains special privi- leges, and which buys seats in the Senate, foreign missions, nominations, and elections. We see in Pennsylvania how it breaks the laws intended to restrain it, and how it deals with its laborers. If we have bonds or shares in great cor- porations, we have learned that they do not respect their contracts, and that a minority interest has no rights which a majority is bound to respect. If these things arc done here against us who vote and can make or unmake our rulers, what will be done in distant Luzon against a race whom we call inferior, and which will have no vote and no power to resist the oppression of foreign interests.'' This policy is not promjHed by duty. This is not "benevo- lent assimilation " : it is i)ure greed. It recalls the words of Sir Thomas More, t|uolcd by Mr. llobson : "Everywhere do I perceive a certain conspiracy of rich men seeking their own advantage under the name anil pretext of the Common- wealtli." When men tell us that we must not " haul down 19 the flag," can we fail to recall Cecil Rhodes's remark that his country's flag was " the greatest commercial asset in the world " ? In the avowed purpose to govern the Philippines in our own interest ^^ first'' is found one reason why our rule will injure, and not benefit them. The words I have quoted from Mill exactly fit. Our Government will not Elevate the People. It is equally apparent that the second condition of good government will be lacking. The purpose of our government will not be to develop the FiHpino people, using their re- sources in trust for that purpose, but to develop mines and forests ; not to make men, but to make dollars. That is to be the primary object of our policy. We may talk about, educating them, civilizing them, elevating them ; but these are general phrases by which we deceive ourselves and others. "Where our treasure is, there will our heart be also." What we really want is the money. We wish in a languid way to improve the Filipinos ; but those who desire this, amid their cares in this country, will not give more than an occa- sional thought to these remote people, while those who want wealth will give all their time and energy to the pursuit, and the latter will control our policy. But, granting that we are in earnest, our whole theory of educating and civilizing the Filipinos is mistaken. We find a people, in the first place, largely Christian. Governor Taft, before the Senate Committee, said : " The Christian persons amount to something over 5,000,000, perhaps' 6,000,000. The estimate has been made — a very poor estimate — that there are from one million and a half to two million of the non-Christian tribes, and the rest, to make, up eight or nine millions, have been estimated as Moros. It is the Christians, certainly, who have carried on the insurrection." Senator Lodge, in a report from his committee, made the proportion of Christians larger, — some six and a quarter mill- ions out of seven millions. 20 Questioned as to the education of the Filipinos, Governor Taft told the committee that he did not know what propor- tion of the people could read and write, but the Spaniards thought that between five and seven per cent of the entire population could speak Spanish. "The great majority do not either read or write any language at all." On the other hand, an article sent to the Senate by Sec retary Root, and said to have been compiled in the Division of- Insular Affairs from standard works and the records of the Department, supplemented by the personal experience of re- turning officers, " states that ' most of them [the Tagals], both men and women, can read and write.' " Governor Taft further said, " Among the educated classes there is, undoubtedly, a pride in t^eir own people, and a desire that their own people shall progress. . . . And that pride in town and pride in province and pride in their people, as a people, and their love of education and their desire to be edu-. cated, constitute the hope of success of what we are doing there." He also said *' that for three hundred years they have been educated in the Christian religion." President Schurman, as the chairman of the first Philippine commission, had excellent opportunities to study this people ; and he described them in May last as "the 6,500,000 civilized and Christianized Filipinos of Luzon and the Visayas," and denounced the policy which would retain them, on the ground of advantage to the United States, as " a brutal out- rage on 6,500,000 brother men and fellow Christians." In the same address he said that " nothing could more unhappily describe . . . these people than the word ' tribe,' " and added, " Let us drop so misleading a term, and speak of them as communities, and let us call the aggregate of these com- munities the Phili])pine nation." Senator Iloar is a student of iiistory, ami as competent as any statesman, living or dead, to judge of education and civil- ization. Ik- has given his best consideration to the Philip- pine (lucstion, and he said that " the Fili])ino leaders and the 21 Filipino people have shown themselves under difficult and trying conditions as fit for freedom and self-government as any people south of us on the American Continent from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn. I believe, if we had dealt with them as it seems to me we ought to have dealt with them, they would have established their nation in constitutional liberty much more rapidly than has been done by any Span- ish-speaking people. . . . They had an excellent constitution. They had a congress ; they had courts ; they had a president ; they had a cabinet. . . . They had newspapers, schools, litera- ture, statesmen. . . . The State papers which these people have issued show a high degree of intelligence." Such are the people whom we are undertaking to remake. We find them all speaking a language of their own, and we begin our attempt to improve them by trying to cure them of their mother tongue and make them learn EngHsh. Language is not education. It is a tool by which men get education. Knowing nothing about their tool, we insist that they shall abandon it, and adopt ours as the first step toward learning ; and, when we remember how few of the teachers speak any language but English, we can guess how slow the progress is. Instead of reaching them through their own schools and their own teachers, we would throw away their whole system, and extemporize one of our own at their expense. President Schurman has characterized the attempt as "a crime against nature," but it is typical of our whole attitude. Even among our own young men sprung from the same race we have learned to recognize radical differ- ences. We no longer require them all to pursue the same studies, but we let them elect widely divergent courses. Be- tween races the differences are as ineffaceable as between the oak and the palm. Civilization for each race means the development of its powers along the lines fixed by its nature. The Chinese mandarin is an absolutely different creature from the English nobleman, but both may be equally civil- ized. We in our ignorance are trying to make Filipinos into Americans instead of trying to make them better Filipinos. 22 The experiment has been tried by other nations, and never with success. In India the Mahommedans make many con- verts where the Christian missionaries make few. Let Mr. Townsend tell the reason : — "The missionary never becomes an Indian or anything which an Indian could mistake for himself. . . . He under- stands no civilization not European ; and by unwearied ad- monition, by governing, by teaching, by setting up all manner of useful industries, he tries to bring them up to his narrow ideal. . . . There is the curse of the whole system, whether of missionary work or of education in India. The missionary, like the educationist, cannot resist the desire to make his pupils English, to teach them English literature, English science, English knowledge, often . . . through the medium of English alone. . . . The result is that the missionary becomes an excellent pastor or an efficient schoolmaster, and that his converts . . . become in exact proportion to his success a hybrid caste not quite European, not quite Indian, with the originality killed out of them, with self-reliance weakened, with all mental aspirations wrenched violently in a direction which is not their own. . . . Natives of India, when they are Christians, will be and ought to be Asiatics still, — that is, as unlike English rectors or English dissenting ministers as it is possible for men of the same creed to be ; and the effort to squeeze them into these moulds not only wastes power, but de.stroys the vitality of the original material. Mahommedan prosclytism succeeds in India because it leaves its converts Asiatics still. Christian proselytism fails in India because it strives to make of its converts English middle-class men. That is the truth in a nut.shell, whether we choose to accept it or not .-' " * The advocates of the new jiolicy tell us that we have the experience of other nations to guide us ; but they have not taken the pains to see what that experience has taught. If I may revert to my humble metaphor, it has taught nothing more clearly than that you cannot turn a palm into an oak, though you may easily .spoil the palm in the attempt. •" Asw .Tiul Europe," pp. 78, 79, 81. 23 Americans and Filipinos have no Mutual Sympathy. The third condition of success also is wanting. Mutual understanding, respect, and sympathy do not exist, and never can exist, between us and our Asiatic subjects. We went into the Spanish War as a people with profes- sions of unselfish zeal for humanity. In the words of Presi- dent McKinley to the ambassadors of the various European powers, we hoped that the world would appreciate our " dis- interested and unselfish endeavors to fulfil a duty to humanity by ending a situation the indefinite prolongation of which has become insufferable." The Filipinos, trusting not only in these assurances, but in our record as the sincere friends of the oppressed everywhere, hailed us as deliverers. The proclamation of their leaders, sent to Luzon before our squadron, showed their faith : " Compatriots, Divine Providence is about to place indepen- dence within our reach. . . . There where you see the Amer- ican flag flying, assemble in numbers. They are our deliv- erers ! " And on May 24, 1898, ere the echoes of Dewey's cannon had died away, Aguinaldo's proclamation gave addi- tional assurance : " Filipinos, the great nation, North Amer- ica, cradle of liberty, and friendly on that account to the lib- erty of our people, . . . has come to manifest a protection which is disinterested toward us, considering us with suffi- cient civilization to govern by ourselves this our unhappy land." Must there not always be a profound pathos in these words to any one who reads the story of the Filipino tragedy ? Their expectations were encouraged, after General Merritt's arrival, by his proclamation : " The American people do not come here to make war upon any party. It proclaims itself merely the champion, the liberator of people oppressed by bad government of Spaniards." It is needless to recall how the Filipinos organized their army, and before any American soldiers landed in Luzon ex- pelled the Spaniards from every part of the islands except Manila, capturing many and holding them as prisoners with 24 other Sjianiards delivered to them by Admiral Dewey. The story of their part in the campaign against Spain, as well as any discussion of their relations with our commanders, is for- eign to my immediate purpose. I only wish to make it clear that at the outset we found in the Filipinos enthusiastic friends, and that our feeling toward them was not the result of any hostility on their part. The opinions formed by our representatives were favorable to them. Thus Admiral Dewey on June 27 cabled, — " In my opinion, these people are far superior in their intelligence and more capable of self-government than the natives of Cuba ; and I am familiar with both races." General Merritt, on his arrival in Paris in October, 1898, was reported as saying : — "The Filipinos impress me very favorably. I think great injustice has been done the native population. . . . They are more capable of self-government than, I think, the Cubans are. They are considered to be good Catholics. They have lawyers, doctors, and men of kindred professions, who stand well in the community, and bear favorable comparison with those of other countries. They are dignified, courteous, and reserved." John Barrett, our minister to Siam, saw the government organized by the Filipinos in operation, and described it as " a government which has practically been administering the affairs of that great island [Luzon] since the American pos- session of Manila, and which is certainly better than the for- mer administration. It has a properly formed cabinet and congress, the members of which in appearance and manner would compare favorably with Japanese statesmen." " The congressmen, whose sessions I repeatedly attended, conducted themselves with great decorum, and showed a knowledge of debate and parliamentary law that would not compare un- favorably with the Japanese parliament. The executive por- tion of the government was made up of a ministry of bright men, who- .seemed to understand their respective positions," while among Aguinaldo's advisers were " men of acknowl- edged ability as international lawyers." , 25 These were the friendly and intelHgent people with whom our government undertook to establish relations. They were at home in the country where they and their fathers had lived for centuries. They understood their situation and their needs, as men understand subjects which they have spent their lives in studying. We were absolute strangers, rep- resentatives of a people of whom very few, till the victory at Manila, knew where the Philippine Islands were, much less anything of their people. Yet no sooner had we, with their active co-operation, defeated the common enemy than we pro- ceeded to determine their future without even consulting them. No sooner had our soldiers landed than the Anglo- Saxon contempt for men of a race and color different from our own, intensified in the American by the long-established relation of master and slave with the negro and of conqueror with the Indian, began to manifest itself. Privates and officers began to speak of their allies as "niggers" or "Ind- ians," and volumes of evidence would not make their feeling of contempt any clearer to you than their use of these words. Let me add the testimony of an intelligent soldier who was on the spot : — " The outrages committed against his [Aguinaldo's] people in Manila were as varied as they w^ere frequent. I have seen drunken soldiers kick Filipinos, break beer bottles over their heads, and knock them down with their fists. I have seen stands raided, and pedlers ' kangarooed.' Under the credit system that we introduced, bills were run up under false names ; and the wronged native, seeking redress, would be sent from company to company, only to learn that no such person was to be found. Every bunco game known to our civilization was worked upon the natives." This statement is abundantly confirmed by the order pub- lished by General Anderson on January 28, 1899, from which I quote : — " By taking advantage of the ignorance and trust of numer- ous native tradesmen of Manila, many enlisted men of this command have seriously impaired the reputation of the citi- 26 zens of the United States for honesty. These unscrupulous men, instead of insuring the rights and property of a defence- less people under their protection, have resorted to a despicable species of robbery, more dangerous than looting, because less open." Let me quote a single passage from many found in offi- cial orders before hostilities began. These words are found in an order issued July 5, 1898, within a week after our troops landed. It calls attention to the orders regulating the con- duct of "troops in campaign," and proceeds : — " These provisions relate to pillaging, looting, and general misconduct in time of war. They relate to public as well as private property. The desecration of churches is particularly offensive, and will be rigorously punished. Unlawful appro- priation is theft, in war as well as in peace ; and the oppression of non-combatants is cowardly and mean. Such conduct changes friends to enemies." If such was the conduct of privates, what was the course of the government ? The Filipinos sent an accomplished envoy to Washington ; but the government, though willing to make a treaty with the sultan of the Sulus, would not receive this ambassador of their most enlightened Asiatic de- pendants. The Filipino government sent representatives to the Peace Congress at Paris, but the doors of the council- room were closed to them. We would not even let these inferior people tell us what they could of their situation and their wishes. General Merritt thus described his own course : " It was impossible to recognize the insurgents. I made it a point not to do so, as I knew it would lead to complications. I think Admiral Dewey after my arrival pursued tlie same course. What was done before is not a matter upon which I can comment. I purposely did not recognize Aguinaldo nor his troops, nor use them in any way. Aguinaldo did not ask to see me until ten days after my arrival. After that I was too much occupied to see him." It is certain that our commanders ordered Aguinaldo to 27 withdraw his forces, to keep them within certain Hnes, and in v^arious ways asserted "supremacy" over them ; and this atti- tude continued till hostilities began. It is certain that our administration in Washington ignored the Filipinos as com- pletely as if they had not existed in determining what should be done with these thousands of islands and millions of people. From President to private the attitude of our repre- sentatives was consistent. It is not my purpose to character- ize it or to question the sincerity of the men who adopted it. I would only point out how absolutely lacking was all sym- pathy with or respect for the Filipinos on our part, even when they were our friends and allies and before there had been any conflict to create hatred and destroy all chance of nlutual understanding. Their struggle for freedom has not brought us nearer to- gether. President Roosevelt, during the campaign of 1900, said that to give the Filipinos " independence now would be precisely like giving independence to the wildest tribe of Apaches in Arizona." It may be said that these words were hastily uttered in a political speech ; but, none the less, they went all over this country, and helped to form the opinions of many who were glad to believe ill of the people with whom their country was at war. In his first message to Congress, however, is a very careful statement. " What has taken us thirty generations to achieve, we can- not expect to see another race accompUsh out of hand, es- pecially when large portions of that race start very far behind the point which our ancestors had reached even thirty generations ago." It is a bold man who undertakes to say what our ancestors were doing a thousand years ago, and a much bolder who says that large portions of the Filipino race are very far behind the point they had then reached. The language, however, clearly indicates how far below the plane of civilization upon w^hich the President places him- self and his countrymen are the depths in which the Filipinos dwell. I need not quote the Secretary of War, who attributes to this people " the barbarous cruelty common among un- 28 civilized races," and describes them generally as treacherous foes ; but it is a curious illustration of our attitude toward them that Governor Taft, sent out to govern them, never spoke to Aguinaldo after his capture, though his house was very near the latter's place of confinement. Now let us for a moment see how the same people are de- scribed by Captain Hatch, of the i8th Infantry, after serv- ing for more than a year in the islands and being brought in contact with thousands of the people : — He says : " The Filipinos are Malays softened by contact with the Spaniards. . . . The Filipino is essentially honest. . . . The Filipinos are a deeply religious people. . . . They are a temperate, sober people. During a year's residence among them I never saw a drunken Filipino. They are a cleanly people." They are " hospitable, and they are generous in their hospitality. They are not an ignorant people. Their intelligence and educational progress are apt to be underesti- mated because of failure to understand them. Nearly every adult can read and write in the Tagalo or Viscayan dialect ; while the natives of the cities and villages, in addition, can read and write the Spanish language. Moreover, most adults know something of arithmetic, geography, and history. I was surprised one day, in questioning the driver of my quily, an ordinary poor boy of eighteen, to find that he had studied geometry, and had made very material j)rogress. " The Filipinos are not so much different from other people. Their customs, habits, hopes, and aspirations are deep-seated. Their leaders are shrewd, bright men of much ability : the masses are earnest in their loyalty." Let me add the testimony of an American Congressman, Mr. Shafroth, who visited the islands : — " The general impression exists among many Americans that the Philippine people are savages. A visit to the islands will certainly dispel any such delusion. . . . " When I find behind the prescription desks of the numer- ous drug-stores of the islands, even when kept by Americans and Englishmen, Filipinos compounding medicines taken from 29 bottles labelled in Latin ; when I see behind the counter of banks having large capital natives acting as book-keepers and as receiving and paying tellers ; when I find them as mer- chants and clerks in almost all lines of business, as telegraph operators and ticket agents, conductors and engineers upon railroads, and as musicians rendering upon almost all instru- ments high-class music ; when I am told that they alone make the observations and intricate calculations at the Manila observatory, and that prior to the insurrection there were 2,100 schools in the islands and 5,000 students in attendance at the Manila university ; when I find the better class living in good, substantial, and sometimes elegant houses, and many of them pursuing professional occupations, — I cannot but conclude that it is a vile slander to compare these people to the Apaches or the American Indians. . . . " The best evidence of the ability of the Philippine people to govern themselves is that they possess a large intelligent class, thoroughly identified in interest with the islands, and capable of administering good government. The civil com- mission has recognized this ability by recently adding three native members to that governing body ; by appointing three Filipino judges of the supreme court ; by selecting about half of the judges of the first instance and nearly all the gov- ernors of the provinces from that race ; and by appointing a solicitor-general and many other officers from the natives. Are these officials not in the governing business, and do they not perform their work as well as the Americans ? Is it possible that they are capable of governing because they were appointed by the representatives of a distant nation ? Would they lose that ability if elected or chosen by properly consti- tuted authority of their own ? In the latter event they would make far better officers, because they would consult only the interest of their own people instead of that of a nation 7,000 miles away." Between the President's conception of the people whom he rules and this picture painted by American eye-witnesses there is a great gulf. Both sides may be honest : both can- 30 not be right. If the eye-witnesses happen to be right, what, think you, is the chance of our successfully governing such a people as they describe upon the theory of that people's nature and condition which the President entertains ? Entire ignorance or radical misconception of his subjects will insure conspicuous failure on the part of the ruler, whether native or foreign. They ii.we no Constitutional Rights. Let us now pass to two other conditions of good govern- ment which do not exist in the Philippine Islands or any of our insular dependencies. The first is a constitutional restraint on arbitrary power. The essence of constitutional liberty is the protection of the individual man against his government. Against a foreign oppressor, men rely on armies and navies ; but against domestic tyranny they raise the shield of a consti- tution. We are apt to say that constitutional liberty is an Anglo-Saxon invention. Let us grant this, and then realize that its safeguards were devised to protect Anglo-Saxons against Anglo-Saxons. Charles I. was as good an Englishman as Cromwell. James II. was a better Enghshman than William III. The English Constitution has grown up through the efforts of English subjects to restrain English kings. American constitutions have been framed to prevent Ameri- can presidents, governors, judges, and legislatures from op- pressing American citizens. Great as is our confidence in each other, there is no American living who would surrender his constitutional rights, or be content that his liberty or his property should be at the mercy of any other Americans. What laborer would feel safe if his hours and wages could be fixed by a legislature controlled by capital ? What capitalist would invest in a state where nothing restrained a legislature of laborers from destroying his investment ? If the citizen of Massachusetts needs protection against his (jwn fellow-citizens, if the American people dare not give their President and their Congress power unfettered by a constitu- tion, is it n(jt too clear for argument that the shield of a con- 31 stitution is far more needed by the Filipinos ? The Congress which controls their government is composed of men who do not know them, and who meet thousands of miles from their country. Their governors, who may be selected for other reasons than honesty or capacity, do not stay long enough to really know them. Both Congress and governors regard them as their inferiors, and have nothing to fear from their disapproval, since they have neither vote nor representative. If Americans cannot be trusted with arbitrary power over us at home, they cannot be trusted, with it out of sight and over foreigners. There is no Effective Public Opinion. But a still more important safeguard is lacking. I mean public opinion. This is the great force against which laws and even constitutions are ineffectual, and which more than either restrains the rulers of every modern State. Enlight- ened public opinion exists only where the public is informed and where it is interested. Neither knowledge nor interest sufficient to create an effective public opinion can be relied upon to control our . government in the Philippines. Dealing first with knowledge, what has been our experience in the past .? In considering this, we must not forget that the annexation of the Philippines, marking as it did an entirely new depart- ure from our previous policy, was a subject in which the American people naturally took a deep interest. It had never been an issue in any campaign, and it was quite uncer- tain how the people would regard it. It was known that leaders like Harrison, Reed, Hoar, Boutwell, and many others opposed it. It was certainly probable that the voters would be less likely to favor it, if it involved a war of conquest over a civilized people, than if it meant merely the repres- sion of a few bandits who were endeavoring to thwart our benevolent purposes from motives of personal ambition. A presidential campaign was impending, and it was impos- 32 sible for men who were candidates for re-election not to be anxious about the effect on the popular mind of news from the Philippines. There was certainly a strong motive on the part of both military and civil authorities to make the best case for themselves possible ; and it must be remembered that this motive will always operate, so long as our government lasts, no matter who undertakes to govern the Philippines. Almost at the outset of the military occupation a censorship was established over the despatches from Manila. In so far as this was intended to prevent information from reaching the other side, it was but one feature of military operations ; but this does not seem to have been its purpose. All the staff correspondents of American newspapers in Manila, eleven in number, on July 17, 1899, cabled to the United States a joint protest, in which they stated that, " owing to official despatches from Manila made public in Washington, the people of the United States have not received a correct im- pression of the situation in the Philippines. . . . The censor- ship has compelled us to participate in this misrepresentation by excising or altering uncontroverted statements of facts on the plea, as General Otis stated, that ' they would alarm the people at home' or 'have the people of the United States by the ears.' " Two of the signers in letters subsequently pub- lished quoted the censor as saying, " My instructions are to let nothing go that will hurt the McKinley administration." These revelations caused a burst of public indignation, which was met on October 9 by a statement from the adjutant general's office that the censorship had been abolished. After the elections this was shown to be false by the censor himself, who on December 2 declared that the censorship had never been abolished ; and we have every reason to be- lieve that it continues still. The statement of the correspondents, never contradicted, shows that at a very critical period in our history the truth was kept systematically from the American people lest public opinion should be informed and aroused against the persons for the time in power. Their fortunes, not the future 33 of the country, controlled their action ; and, if the policy which has been pursued proves disastrous to this country, let us not forget the methods by which the public was lulled into acquiescence. It is one illustration of the way in which we may lose our rights, — our right to know the truth and decide upon our own policy, — while we think that only the rights of another people are at stake. Let me further illustrate my proposition by a quotation from President McKinley's letter of acceptance : — " The American people are asked by our opponents to yield the sovereignty of the United States in the Philippines to a small fraction of the population, a single tribe out of eighty or more inhabiting the archipelago. We are asked to transfer our sovereignty to a small minority in the islands without consulting the majority, and to abandon the largest portion of the population, which has been loyal to us, to the cruelties of the guerilla insurgent bands." Yet the President's chosen representative, Mr. Schurman, knew and about the same time publicly stated that, while he had gone to the Philippines with the theory that the people were divided into tribes, he discovered that, while Spain three hundred years ago found "tribal Indians governed by their chieftains, . . . these hereditary chieftains had everywhere dis- appeared. . . . Spanish dominion in the course of three cen- turies made itself completely effective among the 6,500,000 of Filipinos, . . . the vast majority of the people of the Philip- pine Islands." And in July of the present year at West Point Secretary Root said of the army, " In the Philippines it has put down an insurrection of 7,000,000 people." How completely are these last statements at variance with President McKinley's assumption ! The American people believed President McKinley, yet Secretary Root's statement is true. I will not dwell upon reports as to the probable length of the contest, the weakness of the Filipinos, or the humanity of our methods, which have been proved completely false by the facts now admitted, but which did their duty as soporifics 34 to the American conscience at critical moments. Let me turn at once to very recent statements as to the conditions which now pre\-ail. The President on November 19, at Memphis, used the fol- lowing language : — " Again, a disease like the cattle plague may cause in some given provinces such want that a part of the inhabitants re- vert to their ancient habit of brigandage. But the islands have never been as orderly, as peaceful, or as prosperous as now." Yet, in his annual report, Secretary Root says that " the ills which have recently befallen the people of the islands call for active and immediate measures of relief. The people of a country just emerging from nearly six years of devastating warfare, during which productive industry was interrupted, vast amounts of property were destroyed, the bonds of social order were broken, habits of peaceful industry were lost, and at the close of which a great residuum of disorderly men were left leading a life of brigandage and robbery, had a sufficiently difficult task before them to restore order and prosperity. In addition to this, however, the people of the Philippine Islands have within the past year been visited by great misfortunes. The rinderpest has destroyed about ninety per cent, of all their carabaos, leaving them without draft animals to till their land and aid in the ordinary work." The " surra " has killed and is killing their horses. •' The rice crop has been reduced to 25 per cent, of the ordinary crop." A plague of locusts " has destroyed much of the remaining 25 per cent. . . . Cholera has raged, and is still raging, throughout the islands " ; and it is estimated that this disease "will claim not less than 100,000 victims." The fall in the price of silver has " borne heavily on the commercial interests and on the wage-earners." "The com- mission has been obliged to go out of the islands and use in- sular funds to buy over 40,000,000 pounds of rice to save the people from perishing by famine," while it "has lost over 51,000,000 in gold by the decline in silver. . . . Agriculture 35 is prostrated, commerce is hampered and discouraged." Well did Mr. Burritt Smith say, " The President's prosperity seems composed in nearly equal parts of pestilence and famine." But, seriously, what must we think when, with these conditions existing, the President can aver that the islands were never " as peaceful and prosperous as now " ? The bare comparison of the statement with the facts makes argument superfluous. Why do I dwell on these things ? Not to impugn the hon- esty of the President, whose nature is combative, not judicial, but because I would make you realize the vital difference be- tween the government of a people by themselves and a gov- ernment of the same people by another nation. A people who choose their own rulers cannot long be deceived as to their own conditions. They do not take the statements of their rulers as necessarily true. For example, if our agriculture were prostrate, our commerce discouraged, our currency dis- ordered, our animals dying of one disease, our fellow-citizens of another, if famine stared us in the face, no President would dare to tell us that we were prosperous. No official could persuade us that coal is now abundant and cheap in this country. President Roosevelt would waste his words if he told the Filipinos that they were never so happy and pros- perous as now. The graves of the dead, the anguish of the living, the desolated fields, the starving people, rinder- pest and cholera, would answer him. This suffering people could not be deceived ; but we, a foreign people, thousands of miles away, have no personal knowledge of the facts. We must rely on evidence, and we believe our countrymen against any Filipino testimony. Hence we may be deceived, as it is now admitted that we have been deceived at every stage of this enterprise. This is no new thing in human history. You yourselves can well recall the days just after the war, when you could not make us Northern men believe that evils existed here which you knew and felt. Your testimony was weighed against that of men sent here to govern you. We said that it was the testimony of rebels against loyal men, of men smarting 36 from defeat and bitterly hostile against the agents of a hated government ; and we would not credit your words. Yet you were our brothers : you spoke our language ; your habits of thought, your traditions, your blood, were ours. We had a common history. We were connected by a thousand ties of kindred and friendship and business. Yet even you found that your just complaints fell on deaf ears. This has been the experience of men from the dawn of history. Apply these considerations to our case. The public opinion of the Filipinos is accurately informed as to the facts, but it is powerless. The Filipino has neither vote nor voice. The public opinion of Americans is all-powerful ; but it is igno- rant, and it must remain so, for it will receive no evidence from Filipinos against Americans ; and the testimony of Americans will always be in their own favor. Let me give you another instance of the difference between the testimony of the governors and that of the people, taken from Porto Rico. I have quoted the President's words which give the ofhcial view of its condition. Against it let me place this statement made very recently by a nephew of the chief justice of Porto Rico, now a Senior in the Cornell Law School, in an address to his class : — " Instead of autonomy, which had been conceded to us by Spain, we now have a government which gives the governor more despotic powers than any Spanish military governor ever had ; and he exercises them to the detriment of the people. In order that his will may be done and that his power may be absolute. Governor Hunt supports the party of the minority, composed of American adventurers and native renegades, who have no regard for the welfare of tbe country and are ready to applaud as long as they enjoy official protection. The electi(jn of November last was the greatest political crime of the century. All means were used from fraud to murder to give the victory to the governmental party, which won, although far in the minority. It fills my heart with anger and indignation wlicn 1 think of tlic number of crimes which have been connnitted to carr)- such elections. But the 37 murderers will remain unpunished because the ministers in the temple of justice are politicians. We have gone back to those dark days of the Spanish administration of 1887, when our mothers and sisters were in constant fear that their sons and brothers might be arrested by the Spanish soldiers, to be thrown into a dungeon and suffer torture for the crime of being patriots. To-day, under the present government, our mothers and sisters have the same fear that they may be brought back murdered because they do not belong to the party protected by the government. Life for honest people is becoming impossible in Porto Rico, because they see that the government protects the criminal and punishes the law- abiding citizen. The government there has tainted the flag with dishonor. I am sure that, if the true facts were known, the honest-hearted Americans would be filled with indigna- tion. But only the official reports reach American ears, and in them Porto Rico is represented as a happy and prosperous country. These reports are basely false. Porto Rico is going through a great crisis. The island is prostrated. I make this appeal to you as true American citizens, because I believe that my country is entitled to have a government founded upon those principles that have made this nation the greatest, the freest, and the noblest among the nations of the world, and because I believe we are at least entitled as civil- ized and Christian people to have our national rights guaran- teed by the government to which we owe our allegiance. In Heaven's name, we want, instead of profligacy, honesty; in- stead of extravagance, economy ; instead of rioting, peace. Where between the American and the Porto Rican lies the truth ? The Conspiracy of Silence. Even if we wished to know the facts, how could we learn them .? The party in power still glories in its policy of con- quest. The alliance between the wealth of the country and that party is very close. The press is largely controlled in the joint interest, by direct ownership, advertising patronage. 38 and political preferment. We get no news from the Philip- pine Islands save an occasional short despatch or an official statement from the War Department. The meetings and arguments of those who oppose the administration are ig- nored, or, as the phrase goes, " crowded out by press of other matter," while wide circulation is given to that which helps it. An investigation is ordered in the Senate, but it is placed in charge of a committee whose chairman has been the most ardent supporter of the Philippine policy. With a long list of important witnesses still uncalled, the in- vestigation is stopped : the officials whose acts are under investigation have been heard, but there is no time to hear the other side. The Filipinos themselves are denied a hear- ing ; though, if they are the loyal, peaceful, prosperous, free people whom the President describes, it is passing strange that they should be denied the opportunity to tell this country how loyal, free,. and happy they are. Such testimony from representative Filipinos, such evidence of their consent to our sway, would be a powerful weapon against the anti-imperial- ists and would make the consciences of Americans far easier. Why are they not called ? I challenge the admin- istration — I challenge Senator Lodge to prove their asser- tions by evidence within their control before a tribunal already organized, and thus confound their opponents. This challenge will never be accepted. No P'ilipino, save an occa- sional renegade like Buencamino, will ever be called. The conspiracy of silence, which is recognized in Europe as well as here, will continue. Silence, evasion, or bold assertion, is safer than the truth. There is no important issue in the history of our country on which the press has been so still as upon this, or where the facts have been so completely disguised. Popular Indifference. But there is another greater difficulty ; and that is the in- difference of the governing nation to the sufferings of distant foreign subjects. Many say that the American people cannot 39 be induced to take an interest in the Philippine question. They are content to let their government deal with it. Where their pockets or their comfort are affected, they take a deep interest and criticise their public officials freely. But they are so busy with their own affairs, getting their own liv- ings, making and spending their own dollars, that they have no time for more than a languid and occasional interest in the affairs of others. It is because the American people do not know and do not really care what is done in the Philippines that they are unfit to govern them. Say what you will of their intelligence, their energy, their high purpose, their fitness to govern, what avail all these, if they will not govern, — if their intelligence, their energy, their high purpose, are not applied to the task .? If the suffering which exists now in Luzon existed in Mas- sachusetts, you citizens of South Carolina would be consider- ing earnestly how to help us, as during the Revolution you sent food and money to the suffering people of Boston. If Louisiana was devastated by cholera, the whole country would be sending aid. If the agriculture of a single West- ern State was prostrate, every other would be doing its best to relieve it. Martinque was near; and we sent ship- loads of provisions a year ago, though her calamities were in no part of our causing. Has the famine and pesti- lence in the Philippines drawn a dollar from one American pocket or stirred one American community to active effort or even to an expression of sympathy.? These people are prostrate at our feet, and many of their ills are directly caused by us. They are to-day members in some sense of our politi- cal community, our countrymen-in-law ; yet they are as alien to us, as remote from our sympathies, as they were before Dewey entered the Bay of Manila. We wish we had not got them ; we dislike to hear about them ; we like to believe that we have done all that a great nation should ; but our consciences are uneasy, and, to avoid the prick, we turn to our own affairs. This attitude is the confession of America that it cannot govern the Philippine Islands. There is no public opinion to restrain their rulers. 40 Our examination thus far proves that, of the conditions which we have deemed essential to the success of any human government, not one is present. It is not our purpose to use our power solely for the good of the Filipinos, but first, as Senator Lodge says, to benefit ourselves. The development which we propose is not the development of the Filipino race, but the development of their material resources for our own benefit. We have no real knowledge of or sympathy with the Filipino people. We dislike and distrust them as inferiors with whom we do not care to associate. We pro- pose to give them such measure of free government as we think them qualified to use, or, in briefer phrase, to govern them as we see fit, exercising a power unfettered by any con- stitution and unrestrained by any informed and interested public opinion. How can we hope that a .system under which no American would be safe in the hands of Americans, a system which throws aside all the restraints which civilized men find it necessary to impose upon the governments which they frame for themselv^es, will insure good government to these distant Asiatics, whose future we have undertaken to control against their will .? We have been urged not to adopt the policy of "scuttle." There is no meaner policy of "scuttle" than that which retains the power and shirks the responsibility ; which "scuttles" from our ideals and our principles, which forces itself into a trust and ignores its obligations. It is against such a " scuttle " that the busy and indifferent people of this country should be warned. Our Policy does not le.^d to iNnEPENDENCE. But I am told that we are only preparing the Filipinos for independence. We are educating them ; and, when their education is complete, we shall let them go. Our practical policy is calculated to i)revent this. If we offer American capital the opportunity to find investment in these islands, if American companies acquire mines, forests, great tracts of 41 arable land, and public franchises, we establish the strongest possible barrier against Filipino independence. Our citizens will say to the government : " You invited us into the islands. You told us that our capital was needed, and we accepted your invitation. If now you surrender the control of the gov- ernment to the Filipinos, what security have we that our property will be safe ? You are bound to stay here in order t-o protect us." The American owners of investments in the Philippines will, perhaps, be rich and powerful. They will certainly be here and clamorously insistent, while the Fili- pinos will be alien and remote. How a small interest can override considerations of national honor is shown by the success of the beet-sugar makers in controlling our policy with Cuba. There is nothing clearer in modern politics than the alliance between financial and political powers. Everywhere capital seeks to control the government in its own interest. If invested in a weak for- eign state, its owners seek to own the government of that state, and, failing, try to make their own government inter- fere and control it. This was the origin of the Boer War ; and like influences have inspired English, French, and German aggression in Asia and Africa. The policy of Governor Taft and the Philippine statute of last summer are fatal to the in- dependence of the Philippines. Every dollar that we plant there is an argument against freedom. Such are some of the reasons for a confident belief that our government of the Philippine Islands cannot be good and can- not lead to their elevation and ultimate independence. The Experience of Other Nations. But men say that human experience proves the contrary. Other nations have succeeded : why should not we ? What other nations have succeeded .? Not the Greeks, though Alexander, the greatest soldier that the world has known, pushed his conquests in Asia almost to the Ganges, and in Africa to the desert, and died supreme in three con- 42 tinents. His empire crumbled at his death, and during the centuries since he died Macedonia has been but a name. Not the Romans. Their foreign conquests began when Scipio triumphed at Zama, and during the next century they ex- tended their dominions far and wide, but their provinces be- came the scenes of the most intolerable oppression and extor- tion practised by successive Roman governors. At the end of a century Mommsen says that " the governor of a province seemed to administer it no longer for the senate, but for the order of capitalists and merchants." It had become a quarrel between Romans over the division of spoil, with no thought by either for the men who were despoiled. Lucullus and Galba harried Spain and Portugal ; and of their acts the same historian says, "War has hardly ever been waged with so much perfidy, cruelty, and avarice as by these two generals ; yet by means of their criminally acquired treasures the one escaped condemnation ; and the other escaped even impeach- ment." Their cases were typical. The colonies of Rome were the nurseries in which were trained the armies which under Marius, Sulla, and Caesar over- threw the Roman Republic. The treasures wrung from the provinces, and the example of successful robbers like Lucul- lus, changed the standards and ideals of Rome and corrupted the whole people, so that they had not virtue enough to resist these generals. In barely a hundred years after Zama the Roman Republic had ceased to exist. Surely, neither Roman nor provincial gained by the colonial policy of Rome. Take even our own ancestors, with their genius for free- dom : what did four centuries of Roman rule do for them ? The historian Green answers : * — " Commerce sprang up in ports like that of London. Agriculture flourished till Britain became one of the great corn-exporting countries of the world. Its mineral resources were explored. . . . The wealth of the island grew fast during centuries of unbroken peace"; but " Here, as in Italy or Gaul, the population probably declined as the estates of the landed proprietors grew larger, and the cultivators sank •"A short History nf the Englisli People," p. 5. 43 into serfs, whose cabins clustered round the luxurious villas of their lords. The mines, if worked by forced labor, must have been a source of endless oppression. Town and country were alike crushed by heavy taxation. . . . Above all, the purely despotic system of the Roman government, by crush- ing all local independence, crushed all local vigor. Men forgot how to fight for their country when they forgot how to govern it." Four centuries of Roman rule left in England magnificent roads and 'fine buildings ; but it left a vigorous people robbed of their native strength and a prey to barbarians whom they could not resist. Can the Filipinos make head against the influences which the English could not resist .? How is it with Spain, whose soldiers, whose sailors, whose statesmen, conquered and governed so large a portion of the world ? She, too, embarked in her career with high purposes. It was to save men's souls that Isabella offered to pawn her jewels in aid of Columbus, and in 1495 the pope issued his proclamation of •* benevolent assimilation " : — " You shall persuade the people who inhabit these islands and continents to accept the Christian faith. We impress upon you, according to your promise, ... to select honorable men, and send them to these continents and islands, — men who fear God, who are instructed, clever and suitable for the purpose of teaching the Catholic doctrine to the inhabitants, and to bring them up in good habits." * Alas ! these noble aspirations did not live to cross the sea and the unhappy natives did not survive to become Christians. In 1492 San Domingo had a population of about a million people. In twenty years it had sunk to thirteen thousand : the rest were dead or slaves. Spain sent her sons, the flower of her manhood, abroad to conquer the world. Some died on the sand-dunes of Holland, at the hands of the Beggars of the Sea, who ate their hearts in bitter hatred. Some sank beneath the waves of " the narrow seas " when the Great Armada perished. Many laid their bones in the tropics, or lived to lose their manhood and propagate a degenerate race * Bigelow, "The Children of the Nations," p. g. 44 Where is the region that is better for the civilization brought by Spain ? Where, after four centuries, is Spain herself ? But England at least has succeeded. The Anglo-Saxon wins where the Latin fails. Let us test this assertion. We must not overlook, however, the important distinction between the self-governing colonies of England and her dependencies, like India. President Roosevelt, in his Life of Benton, at the v^ery beginning of the Spanish War, made this difference clear in discussing the annexation of some Canadian provinces : — " Of course, no one would wish to see these or any other settled communities now added to our domain by force : we want no unwilling citizens to enter our Union. The time to have taken these lands was before settlers came into them. European nations war for the possession of thickly settled districts, which, if conquered, will for centuries remain alien and hostile to the conquerors. We, wiser in our generation, have seized waste solitudes that lay near us, the limitless forests and never-ending plains, and the valleys of the great lonely rivers, and have thrust our own sons into them to take possession." It was thus that England colonzied this country, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. These colonies choose their own rulers and govern themselves as completely as do the English. Their connection with England is nominal ; and, if they wished to break the bond, they could do so at pleasure. They possess that peculiar power of an independent nation, — the power to impose a protective tariff upon imports from the mother country. No one proposes to give the Filipinos a government like that of Canada. If this were the policy of the adminis- tration, there would be no opposition. Our people will never colonize the Philippine Islands. We are not overcrowded, and there is no pressure of population. No American will ever leave the pleasant conditions of his native land to make a home in the Philippines. He may go there for a temporary sojourn, but never to settle. After centuries of British rule in India, Mr. Townsend can say : " Not only is there no white race in India, not only is 45 there no white colony, but there is no white man who proposes to remain. . . . No ruler stays there to help or criticise or moderate his successor. No successful white soldier founds a family. No white man who makes a fortune builds a house or buys an estate for his descendants. The very planter, the very engine-driver, the very foreman of works, departs before he is sixty, leaving no child or house or trace of himself behind. No white man takes root in India." * Thus it is likely to be with us in the Philippines. Our dollars will be there, but not our people. Corporations will place young men in charge of their interests, who will .enlist in the service for a term of years, and who will endeavor to make as much money in as short a time as possible that they may escape the sooner. With Chinese labor under American superintendents, some capitalists of America may grow rich, while the great body of the nation pays the expense of holding the Filipinos down that their business may be prosecuted safely. The English precedents relied on are Egypt and India. Let me hasten to admit that England has introduced many reforms into Egypt, and bettered the conditions of the people ; but with what is her administration compared, and what has she bettered .-' Egypt was a province of the Turkish empire, suffering under the ills of Turkish administration, with a people weakened by centuries of such misrule. This was the condition which England found, and which she has reformed. No one doubts that an English governor is better than a Turkish despot. But the people learn self-government under neither. India. The rule of England in Egypt has been brief ; but in India it has endured for some centuries. What is the result upon the people ? England boasts that she has established peace and order throughout the great peninsula, the vaunted pax Britamiica. Peace has prevailed for years, unbroken save by the great Mutiny and by various wars with nations and * " Asia and Europe," p. S6. 46 tribes over which she has extended her sway ; but is war the greatest calamity which a nation can know ? Mr. Digby, an Englishman of experience in India, who has devoted years to his subject, tells us that the deaths by war in the whole world during 107 years, from 1793 to 1900, have been about 5,000,000, while the deaths from famine in India alone during 10 years, from 1891 to 1900, have been 19,000,000. This horror is progressive, and constantly in- creases. During the first quarter of the nineteenth century there were in India five famines, costing perhaps 1,000,000 lives ; in the second quarter there were two, causing half as great a mortality ; in the third quarter there were six, causing 5,000,000 deaths ; and in the last quarter there were eigh- teen, and it is estimated that 26,000,000 people died of star- vation. In 1880, said Sir William Hunter, "there remain forty million of people who go through life on insufficient fqod." In 1901 an Indian publicist wrote, "'For nearly fif- teen years there has been a continuous famine in India, owing to high prices." The average duration of human life in England is about forty years : in India it is twenty-three. These figures tell a ghastly story. The resources of England are strained to conc^uer the Boers, but only a trifling ex- penditure in comparison is made to save the lives of men whom they have already conquered. The Indian administrator is prone to claim that the Indians are lightly taxed. So they are, if the rate per head is taken ; but the reverse is true, if the proportion of tax to property is considered. Applying this test, it would seem that the Indian tax-payer paid four times as much as the Scotch and three times as much as the English subject of the crown. A few years ago it was stated in Parliament that the income tax in India yielded one-sixtieth as much for each million people as in England ; and the speaker added, " If this is not con- clusive of the poverty of the people, nothing will satisfy the most exacting mind." The accumulated wealth of India in the days of Warren Hastings was carried away by Englishmen. Now her income 47 is drained to Eng^land to pay the interest on English invest- ments in railroads and public works, and the expenses of the English administration. This drain is said to be now some ^30,000,000 a year. As Mill said in his History of India, " It is an extraction of the life blood from the veins of national industry, which no subsequent introduction of nour- ishment is furnished to restore." Mr. Digby's statements as to the income of the average Indian are fortified by a multitude of statistics, and may be subject to correction, but they must be so near the truth as to illustrate the condition of the Indian population. He says that the estimated income of the people per head in 1850 was twopence a day, that the official estimate in 1882 was one and a half pence a day, and that in 1900 it was less than three-quarters of a penny a day, and he commends these figures to the secretary of state for India, who in 1901 said to the House of Commons, "If it could be shown that India has retrograded in material prosperity under our rule, we stand self-condemned, and we ought no longer to be trusted with the control of that country." Mr. Digby is strongly opposed to British rule in India. Let me quote an authority who strongly favors it, and who thus defines his standard : — " A prosperous country is one in which the great mass of the inhabitants are able to procure, with moderate toil, what is necessary for living human lives, — lives of frugal and as- sured comfort. . . . But millions of peasants in India are struggling to live on half an acre. Their existence is a constant struggle with starvation, ending too often in defeat. Their difficulty is not to live Jmman lives, — lives up to the level of their poor standard of comfort, — but to live at all, and not die. . . . We may truly say that in India, except in the irrigated tracts, famine is chronic, — endemic." * How is it with manufacturing industries? Mr. Hobson quotes passages from various high authorities, of whom one says, " Under the pretence of free trade, England has com- pelled the Hindus to receive the products of the steam looms * " India and its Problems," Lilly, pp. 284, 2S5, quoted by J. A. Hobson. 48 of Lancashire. Yorkshire, Glasgow, and at mere nominal duties, while the hand-wrought manufactures of Bengal and Behar, beautiful in fabric and durable in wear, have had heavy and almost prohibitive duties imposed on their importation to England." *. . . Another spoke of the policy thus : " In India the manu- facturing power of her people was stamped out by protection against her industries, and then free trade was forced on her so as to prevent a revival." * Sir George Birdwood described and lamented the process more than twenty years ago in these words : — " But of late these handicraftsmen, for the sake of whose work the whole world has been ceaselessly pouring bullion into India, and who, for all the marvellous tissue they hav6 wrought, have polluted no rivers, deformed no pleasing pros- pects, nor poisoned any air, are being everywhere gathered from their democratic village communities, in hundreds and thousands, into the colossal mills of Bombay, to drudge in gangs, for tempting wages, at manufacturing piece goods, in the production of which they are no more morally and intel- lectually concerned than the grinder of a barrel-organ in the tunes turned out from it." f Have these centuries of English rule elevated the Hindus as a people, and are they nearer to self-government than they were when England's dominion began ? I asked this question of Sir Andrew Clarke, the distinguished administrator of the Straits Settlements and a high authority on English colonial government. He answered " Not a bit." " Do they not want to govern themselves.?" I asked. In reply he quoted the remark of a native Hindu of high rank, who said, "I suppose, if we were left to govern ourselves, my head might be the first to roll in the gutter ; but I feel it in my heart that I wish we had the chance to try." The English have broken down the little village democ- racies, the nurseries of self-government ; and they have suc- cessfully excluded the native Hindus from all important offices and all substantial share in the government. Acts of Parlia- • " Ini|)erwlism," p. 313. f Ibid., p. 310. 49 ment and proclamations have promised the Hindus equal opportunities ; but, as Lord Lytton, the viceroy of India, said in 1878, "We have had to choose between prohibiting them and cheating them, and we have chosen the least straightfor- ward course." It is unnecessary to multiply testimony. No child learns to walk in the arms of its mother, and no people learns to govern itself except by doing it. Centuries of subjection weaken their initiative, as the muscle which is never used becomes atrophied. Men work upward by their own exer- tions, and learn by their own mistakes. Failure is a better teacher than success. When every avenue to ambition is closed, a people soon decays. No one has stated this law of human nature better than Macaulay: "There is' only one cure for the eyils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom. When a prisoner leaves his cell, he cannot bear the light of day, he is unable to discriminate colors or recognize faces ; bift the remedy is not to remand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which have become half -blind in the house of bondage; but, let them gaze on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years, men learn to reason ; the extreme violence of opinion subsides; hostile theories correct each other; the scattered elements of truth cease to conflict and begin to coalesce ; and at length a system of justice and order is educed out of chaos. Many politicians of our time are in the habit of lay- ing it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free until they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim ! If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may, indeed, wait forever! " Says Bernard Holland: "British rule tends to destroy native originality, vigor, and initiative. How to replace that which our rule takes away is the great Indian problem." It 50 has caused, in the words of another, "the gratkial decay, . . . the slow death, . . . of Indian art, Indian culture, Indian military spirit." Let me give you in conclusion the testimony of two Englishmen who believe in the empire, but who see its results. Said Professor Seeley of the Indian government : " At best, we think of it as a good specimen of a bad political system. We are not disposed to be proud of the succession of the Grand Mogul. We doubt whether, with all the merits of our administration, the subjects of it are happy. We may even doubt whether our rule is preparing them for a happier con- dition, whether it may not be sinking them lower in misery ; and we have our misgivings that perhaps a genuine Asiatic government, and still more a national government springing up out of the Hindu population itself, might, in the long run, be more beneficial, because more congenial, though perhaps less civilized, than such a foreign unsympathetic government as our own." * And Meredith Townsend says: "Beneath the small film of white men who make up the ' Indian empire ' boils or sleeps away a sea of dark men, incurably hostile, who await with patience the day when the ice shall break and the ocean regain its power of restless movement under its own laws. As yet there is no sign that the British are accom- plishing more than the Romans accomplished in Britain, that they will spread any permanently successful ideas, or that they will found anything whatever. It is still true that, if they departed or were driven out, they would leave behind them, as the Romans did in Britain, splendid roads, many useless buildings, an increased weakness in the subject ' people, ' and a memory which in a centur)- of new events would be e.xtinct." f His conclusion is, — " The chasm between the brown man antl the white man is unfathomable, has existed in all ages, and exists still every- where. •"The Kxpansicjn of Kngland,"' p. 273, quoted by Mr. Uobsoii. t " Asia and Kurope," pp. 26, 97. 51 This is the verdict of Englishmen on the results of English rule in Asia, which has lasted for centuries. They are con- demning not the foundation, which was laid in blood and rapine, but the edifice which has been patiently reared by hundreds of conscientious men. It is a confession of failure. Have We Succeeded.? But we are confidently told that we have succeeded already. "No policy ever entered into by the American people has vindicated itself in 'a more signal manner than the policy of holding the Philippines." The policy of freedom adopted by the men who founded the republic, the poHcy of peace with foreign nations, the various policies under which we have grown in numbers and prosperity, have, in comparison, but little claim to our admiration. " The triumph of our arms — above all, the triumph of our laws and principles — has come sooner than we had any right to expect." The triumph of our arms has come, if triumph is the word which fitly describes the victory won by this mighty nation, with every resource of modern war, over the weak, undisciplined, poorly armed men who have died for the free- dom of their native land. But has it come sooner than we had a right to expect .'' If so, what shall we say of the official despatches and reports which have assured us from the very outbreak of hostilities that the end was at hand .'' Did the administration seriously expect that it would take more than 125,000 men and more than four years to conquer "a single tribe out of eighty or more inhabiting the archipelago.-'" If so, these expectations were carefully concealed from the American people. Let us concede the triumph of our arms ; but where shall we look for the triumph of our principles and our laws ? Cer- tainly, the triumphant principles are not to be found in the Declaration of Independence, in the Constitution of the United States, or in the Sermon on the Mount. One i^iighvt 52 ask for a statement of any principle ever cherished by this people which has not been trodden under foot. This policy *' has vindicated itself"! What have been its results ? We have destroyed a large part of the Filipino people. General Bell said that in two years before May, 1901, "one- sixth of the natives of Luzon have either been killed or had died of dengue fever." This was comparatively early; and a year later an official report, as to one province, stated that the population had been reduced by one-third. After this date Samar was made "a howling wilderness" under General Smith, and General J. F. Bell dealt with Batangas as follows. I quote his words : — " I am now assembling in the neighborhood of 2,500 men who will be used in columns of about fifty men each. I take so large a command for the purpose of thoroughly searching each ravine, valley, and mountain peak for insurgents and for food, expecting to destroy everything I find outside of towns. All able-bodied men will be killed or captured. Old men, women, and children will be sent to towns. This movement begins January i,by which time I hope to have nearly all the food supply in the towns. These people need a thrashing, to teach them some good common sense ; and they should have it for the good of all concerned." We have laid waste their fields, we have destroyed both crops and cultivators, we have burned villages and towns leaving the people homeless, we have adopted the reconcentration policy of General Weyler, and have borrowed mediaeval tortures from Spain, in order to aid our policy of conquest. I cannot add to the picture of resulting ruin which Sec- retary Root has drawn in his annual report. We found 7,000,000 of people friendly and prosperous. We have reduced them to straits like these. We have de- stroyed more Mlipino life and property in four years than Spain in her centuries of rule. Is this success.? We have sent to the islands nearly 125,000 of our citizens, of whom many have been killed, many more disabled by 53 wounds and disease, many made insane, and a very large num- ber so demoralized as to regard torture, reconcentration, and the slaughter of prisoners and non-combatants as right ! Is this success ? We have spent hundreds of millions, drawn from the taxes of the people, on this war ; and the end is not yet. Three millions more are asked now to save the Filipinos from starva- tion, and the Commissioners tell us that conditions will be worse before they are better. Is this success ? We have stricken down the first republican government ever established in Asia, and have turned millions of cordial friends into bitter enemies. Is this success ? Finally, we have abandoned the ideals and principles of liberty which we have cherished from our birth, and have adopted the principles and practices of tyranny, which we have always condemned. I ask again. Is this success ? We have proved abundantly the truth of Lincoln's words : " No man is good enough to govern another without that other's consent " ; and the more we extol the character and purposes of those who have done these things, the more com- plete is the proof. What do we gain ? Commercial expansion ? If the whole commerce of the Orient were offered us at such a price, had we the right to pay it ? But such methods do not extend trade. With the Filipinos as our friends, prospering with our help, our commerce with them would have been as valu- able as it is capable of being ; but commerce is not promoted by ruining and killing our customers. I will not weary you with figures ; but the experience of England and every other nation has shown that tropical trade has never paid the cost of tropical conquest, and nothing is more completely disproved than the claim that trade follows the flag. No, our policy has not succeeded. It has failed, and its failure is written in blood on every fold of the flag which we loved to call "the flag of the free." It is written on the fresh graves, the ruined homes, and the barren fields of the conquered islands. It is written in the sullen hearts of the 54 Filil^inos, who cannot but remember our cruelties, and, in the President's own words, " will for centuries remain alien and hostile to the conquerors." It is written also in the hard- ened hearts of our own countrymen, who have forgotten their ideals and have learned to tolerate and to approve what they ha\e always execrated. •■ The Moving Finger writes ; and, having writ, Moves on, nor all your Piety nor Wit Can lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all vour Tears wash out a Word of it." But we arc told, " These things are past, and will soon be forgotten." So men have always hoped of their misdeeds. Let me turn to another page of history. Centuries ago Pizarro and Cortez descended on the Peruvians and Mexicans, slaugh- tered them, robbed them of their treasures, visited them with the extremities of war, annexed their countries to the domin- ions of Spain, and returned, loaded with spoil, to receive the applause of their countrymen. Long afterward the galleons of Spain continued to carry gold and silver from Mexico and Peru to fill the coffers of the king. The Peruvians and Mexicans spoke no language that any European could understand. No cable, no reporter, no newspaper, no mail, carried to Europe any story of their wrongs. They were more remote than any corner of the w^orld to-day. Their voices could not reach across the seas to tell their woes. Yet there is not a school-boy to-day who does not know what they suffered, and has not learned to hate their con- querors. Peru and Mexico long ago ceased to be territory of Spain. The treasures which they poured into her lap have long been speM ; but there remains upon the flag of Spain the deep red stain which Pizarro and Cortez left there, and the whole Spanish nation has shared the disgrace Think you that, if this voiceless ])e()])le could make their woes known across the ages and across the centuries, the deeds oi Americans in Luzon and Samar are so soon for- gotten .'' We know them, even though we dare not admit 55 them, and the world knows them ; and we may be sure that they will be remembered as long and as far as the dfeeds of Pizarro and Cortez. May the stain on our flag not prove as indelible ! The True Policy. There is but one remedy for the wrongs we have done. We cannot recall the dead ; but we can do justice to the living, as a great nation should. If we have been wrong, let us not adopt the helpless attitude, and say, " We are sorry we began ; but, being in, we must persist." Must we, because we have entered upon the wrong path, pursue it to the bitter end rather than retrace our steps ? " There are three short and simple words," says Lowell, " the hardest of all to pronounce in any language (and I suspect they were no easier before the confusion of tongues), but which no man or nation that cannot utter can claim to have arrived at manhood. Those words are '/ zvas toj-ong.'^'' Shall we shrink from this test of our manhood .-' Our true course is to give the Filipinos their indepen- dence. Self-government is the right of every nation because no other surely regards the interests of the governed. Men are essentially selfish, and power is always used to benefit him who wields it. The king aims to preserve and strengthen his dynasty. The oligarchy clings to its privileges at the expense of the people. The " boss " governs in his own interest. It is only when the power is in the hands of the people that the rights and interests of the people are secure, and this is the truth which the founders of this nation declared. We have the precedent of Cuba ; and, if there is a difference, it is in favor of the Filipinos, for they had a government fully organized and in successful operation everywhere outside our lines till we destroyed it, while the Cubans had theirs to organize. Why should we not give the Filipinos the same opportunity that we are proud to have given the Cubans .? It is said that they are divided into many tribes, and that 56 they cannot govern themselves. The answer is that they united against Spain and against us, and that they did govern themselves with entire success till we interfered. If it was safe to leave the sultan of the Sulus to govern his people, why not let the accepted government of the other islands re- tain its power ? I think it is Professor Jenks who, in his recent report, said that the Filipinos were unfit to govern themselves be- cause "they are readily bribed." How should we Anglo- Saxons stand this test ? Shall we disfranchise St. Louis, many of whose elected governors are now in prison or on the way to it for bribery ? Shall we deal likewise with Min- neapolis, whose mayor and chief of police administered a whole system of corruption ? Shall every State now repre- sented in the Senate by a man who bought his seat be driven from the family of States ? Is bribery unknown in Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York ? What say the empty chairs at Washington which wait the result of the effort made by Mr. Addicks to buy the State of Delaware ? What municipal legislature, what State legislature, indeed, is to-day above suspicion, if great corporations are seeking legislation ? Let New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati, Boston, tell us whether bribery is unknown to them, and, when these questions are answered, we may decide how great is the mote in our brother's eye. But it is said they would kill each other, and that anarchy would ensue if we left the islands. When our troops reached the islands, there was no anarchy and the Filipinos were governing themselves. The only anarchy that has been known there is the anarchy which we introduced. It is j)ure assumption that the I-'ilipinos would have engaged in internecine war. The Japanese, also Malays, and far less civilized than the Filii^inos when we first knew them, have grown in fifty years into the greatest Eastern power. We did not feel bound to annex them, lest they should kill each other, nor to stop such wars as they have known since. We have aided them by teaching them here and in 57 Japan, and we have let them develop on their own lines. Why should not their fellow Malays be as successful ? It may be doubted whether Asiatics are more prone to civil war than Europeans, or whether in proportion to their num- bers more men have been killed in any Asiatic country than fell in the wars of the Roses, in the Revolution, in the sub- jugation of Ireland, and in the wars with Scotland, while the British nation was in making. When we reflect that the Crimean War, the wars between France and Austria, Prussia and Austria, Germany and France, Russia and Turkey, and our own Civil War, to say nothing of many minor wars, have occurred within fifty years, can we justly claim that we are more peaceful than the Asiatics, or deny to them for this reason the independence which we claim for ourselves ? Se- vastopol, Gettysburg, Solferino, Sadowa, Sedan, Plevna, — what are our associations with these names ? Asiatic nations have endured as long as man's memory extends, undestroyed by civil war. Why should we assume that the Filipinos would develop a passion for slaughtering each other which would exceed the measure allowed to civilized nations ? Why should we not have waited till interference became necessary, and not ourselves begin the killing ? They could not in fifty years, with their skill in arms, have done themselves such damage as we have done them in four. But some other nation might interfere ; and, to protect our lambs from other wolves, we must turn wolf ourselves. This, again, is a pure assumption, and one often resorted to as an excuse for aggression. If no nation interfered to help them in their struggle with us, it was either indifference or fear of us that prevented. Had we simply made it known to foreign powers that we wished the independence of the islands respected, the same influences would have been effectual. Our wish has protected this continent against European oppression, and it would have been equally potent to protect the Philippines. Had a show of force been deemed necessary, far fewer ships and soldiers could have held the islands with the Filipinos as cordial allies than we need 58 now to repress the Filipinos alone. As we never tried to secure their independence by international agreement, we have no riL;ht to assume that the attempt would have failed. We cannot excuse ourselves by assuming a danger that never existed, even if we can justify ourselves in doing what we think no other nation should have done. A war to preserve Filipino independence would have been philanthropy : a war to destroy it was a crime. Our plain duty now is to re- store it. To Ilawaiians and Porto Ricans should be given at once all the rights of American citizens, and we should either in the near future admit these territories as States adopting the policy pursued with Florida and Louisiana, or contemplate their ultimate indej:)endence. Their present position cannot be permanent. How WILL OUR Policy affect Ourselves.? " Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for them- selves, and under a just God cannot long retain it." Are the words of Lincoln true ? They have the support of much human experience. A republic finds its only secure foundation in the belief of the people that men have equal rights. Once shatter that belief — once teach them that the stronger or the wiser or the better men have the right to rule others against their will, and the stronger are easily persuaded that they are also the wiser and the better. Let them once see the easy methods of despotism applied to one part of the people vmder their flag, and they ask themselves why they should not apply the same methods to others whom they dis- like or distrust. There comes a time in tlie history of most governments when internal differences make men feel insecure. Let me illustrate my meaning by an extract from a letter written by Guizot to Henry Reeve after Napoleon HL had overthrown the French Republic. He wrote : — " The great bulk of the people, those to whom their private interest is the sole consideration, are satisfied. The expecta- 59 tion of the crisis of 1852 weighed upon these interests Uke a nightmare. The president delivered them from it : he is fighting against socialism and demagogism. By his triumph, manufacturers, merchants, honest artisans and peasants, may look for some security in their work and business for some time to come. They ask nothing more of him." Is there nothing in this line of thought which seems famil- iar to you ? Within a few years the Southern States have disfranchised a large body of voters. It was accomplished with apparent ease, and it is justified by those who supported it on the ground that the interests of the community required it. It is certainly possible that this precedent may be followed in other States, and that bodies of naturalized voters or of ignorant voters may be disfranchised for a like reason. It is not inconceivable that a large campaign fund might be pro- vided, and that the very class whose rights were attacked might follow the example of Esau. The process of changing the beliefs of a nation is slow ; but are not the evidences of such a change about us .? Our legislatures no longer command our respect. A few years ago the House of Representatives " ceased to be a delibera- tive body," as Mr. Reed described the result of his own rules. This great arena, in which the representatives of the nation assemble to discuss the affairs of us all, is no longer the home of free speech. A few men decide what the House shall do, who shall speak, and how long their speeches shall occupy. It is a significant change. It is common report that in some States senators of the United States determine in advance how the legislature shall be organized, and how it shall deal witli the measures before it. Where the " boss " is well es- tablished, there is to-day little government by the people. The voter trusts the party, the party surrenders to the organization, the organization obeys the " boss." This ten- dency to a "one-man power" is suggestive. It is astonishing how commonly in private conversation men express the belief that republican government is a failure, and the tendency to vest larger powers in executive officers 6o and to curb in \-arious ways the power of the legislature is apparent everywhere. When Guizot asked Lowell how long our republic would last, he replied, " As long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue dominant." They are the foundation of our gov- ernment, and whatever weakens them endangers it. We have learned how the republics of the ancient world successively fell, and we have seen the overthrow of a republic in France. To meet our problems here, to restrain the power of capital and the excesses of labor, we need a deeply rooted faith in our own institutions, a passionate love of justice. We cannot destroy the ideals of the nation : we cannot insist that the Declaration of Independence is wrong : we cannot govern millions of men outside the Constitution : we cannot hold a single Filipino, like Mabini, a prisoner without trial or sen- tence, — and hope to preserve in full strength that faith in the equal rights of men which is the soul of this nation. Every man who defends these things has begun to lose his belief ; and, while years may elapse without a change in the external form of government, no one can tell when some crisis will find our people as glad to welcome a strong man as the French were to receive a new Napoleon. Let us remember that Dreyfus in his cage on Devil's Island, with the whole army against him but with justice on his side, was strong enough to shake the French Republic. Let us cling fast to our faith, and regard him who would weaken it as an enemy to his country. The time will come, if this republic is to endure, when an overwhelming public sentiment will make itself felt, and we shall do what every true American in his heart would like to have his country do, — give the Filipinos their freedom, and thus regain that proud position among the nations of the world which we have lost, the moral leadership of mankind, becoming again, in the words of Aguinaldo, "the great nation, North America, Cradle of Liberty," beneath whose flag, wherever it floats in this wide world, there is no room for a subject, but a sure refuge for every man who desires that freedom which is the birthright of every human being. LibKHKX Ul- <-«Ji-"-' 010 457 092 6