The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-12-10
sPxRxT or TEE PRESS.
Editorial Opinions OF the Leading Journals
upon Current Topics Compiled Every
Day for the Evening 7 Telegraph.
PRESIDENT GRANTS SAN DOMINGO
JOB.
y, ntn khs N. z. World.

day was the broached and balfed attempt to
put Senator Patterson off the Committee on
Foreign Relations, and substitute a member
not hostile to the acquisition of San Do |
mingo. The active agent in this intrigue !
was Senator Chandler, who, CON Jointly with !
Cameron, manages General Grants politics.
The fact that he was foiled must be regarded
as a triumph over the President, and second !
defeat of his notorious San Domingo job.
The excitement and fracas caused by this
attempt show clearly enough which way the
wind sits in relation to the pet scheme of the
President. Considering that it occupied more
space in his message than any other topic, 50
swift defeat is a signal humiliation.
When, in spite of the Presidents personal
lobbying, the San Domingo treaty broke
down, at the last session, the public supposed
that ended the job 1t was accordingly a
surprise to most readers of the message that
General Grant returned to the charge and
attempted to cireumvent the Senate, as a
part of the treatymaking power, by vene-
ment proposition to acquire San Domingo by
Joint resolution. Why Cameron and Chan
dler counselled him to propose this method
is obvious 1t requires two-thirds of the
Senate to ratify treaty; but a bare maj jority
of the two Houses can pass Joint resolution
Supposing ~ Senators 20 be present it
would take rs to ratify treaty, while 81
would be sufficient to pass resolution; which
10 equlNdl6uG W u gam Ol IL NOJeS lOr
the San Domingo Job. But when the joint
resolution came into the Senate, the first step
would be to refer it to the Committee on
Foreign Relations AS hostile committee
might strangle the scheme in its cradle, and
the committee as now composed is known to
be hostile, q plan was concocted to transfer
one of the opposition members, and substi-
tute thick and-thin supporter of the Presi-
dent in his place; Senator Conkling being the
nit hoH for thaf rba in
trigue was seen through and it threatened
such tempest that Chandler and his asso-
ciates were fain to drop their scheme and
leave the Committee on Foreign Relations
unchanged The feeling provoked by this
exploded manoeuvre will so sharpen the hos
tility to the San Domingo job, that it will
find even less favor in the Senate than it did
last winter.
The Texas precedent, which suggested to
General Grants advisers the new tactics, is
not applicable to this case. With the excep-
ton of Texas all our acquisitions of terri
tory have been made by treaty, which is so
clearly the regular way that General Grant
himself contemplated no other until after he
failed to get his treaty ratified. There were
two circumstances urged in 1915 as reasons
for taking Texas out of the regular rule.
One was that Texas, unlike other ac1uisi-
tions, was already State, and must come in,
if at all, as one of the States of the Union
not as mere territory in which States might
subsequently be erected and admitted into
the Union by Congress. Great stress was
laid on the argument that the treaty making
authority could not usurp any power which
belonged to Congress. The power to ''admit
new States into this Union" is as explicitly
and exclusively lodged in Congress as the
power to make appropriations from the Fede-
raj treasury; and it was contended that the
treaty-making power could no more admit
new State than it could to lay new tax. AS
it was conceded that Texas must come in as
State, it was maintained that nothing short
of the authority of Congress could admit her.
Unless, therefore, General Grant proposes to
bring San Domingo Immediately into the
Union as q State, with black Senators and
black Representatives, and that independence
in local government which belongs to State,
the Texas precedent is not available.
There is another consideration much dwelt
upon in the Texas debates which has no paral-
lei in the San Domingo affair. The annexa-
tion of Texas was subject on which the
people of the United States had expressed
their decisive and unequivocal judgment 1t
was the leading issue of a Presidential cleo
tion which had Just closed by the triumph of
the Texas party. The overwhelming approval
of the people seemed of more weight than the
dissent of the few Senators who needed to be
added to the ma ority to make ratification.
DuI OIL tue Dali DOulASO JOD the VIII OF Cne
people has never been collected. Its anneXa-
tion has never been introduced into any party
platform. After the decisive rejection of the
treaty last spring, the project was regarded
as dead, and before the fall elections it had
passed quite out of political consideration.
If we had just had Presidential election; if
San Domingo had been the issue, as Texas
was; if General Grant had been elected on
that issue, as President Polk was, he might
then, with some show of plausibility, recon-
mend the method pursued in the annexation
of Texas.
We cannot dispute that San Domingo has
great fertility and q capacious harbor; but
there is tone of preposterous exaggeration
in General Grants arguments for annexation.
The United States have grown to be great
and populous nation without port in the
West Indies; and having survived the perils
of infancy without such a means of defense,
there is no very obvious reason why we
should tremble for our safety now. We are
an easy match for any nation that can bring
war to this continent except Great Britain,
and war with Great Britain would not be
decided by naval battles in the West Indies.
General Grant expresses great fears lest, if we
do not receive San Domingo, some European
power will have the offer and accept it. But
such an acceptance would be in the face of
our Monroe doctrine. We have proclaimed
that doctrine SO often that no nation of Eu-
rope is ignorant of the importance we attach
to it, and it is not probable that any of them
will have the temerity to defy u.s. Instead of
pusillanimously holding up this danger, and
concediDg the right of the European powers,
General Grant would have acted more like an
American President if he had reiterated the
frir md oraH To- fl,av not,