The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1898-02-15
BASELESS ARGUMENTS.

One of the favorite arguments OF
those who are against annexation is
that the machinery of government in
the United States is of such a class
that it is not fitted to cope with the
Hawaiian question.
Of course if there were little OF
truth in this premiss it would be as
unanswerable as another argument,
if that were true, viz: that the Ameri-
can nation connot afford to annex us
because it has too much to do at home.
These men say "we are perpleNed how
to deal with the relations of North
and South East and West, with the
position of the immigrant in the North
and of the negro at the South. In
short, whichever way we turn, we find
ourselves puzzled to discern how the
great experiment of democracy in the
United States is to be made success
under conditions so different from
those which accompanied its estab-
lishment."
AS a fact neither argument is true.
To take the first, the machinery of
government of the United States has
enabled it to assimilate and rule pop
ulations far more antagonistic to its
institutions than the Hawaiian. The
Spanish population of California was,
neither in politics, nor in religion, nor
in nationality, allied in any manner
with the United States, but it has been
absorbed and assmilated completely.
The machinery of government, which,
starting with thirteen original states
on the Atlantic, has in very little over
a century spread from the Gulf of
Mexico to the Canadian border, from
the Alleghanies to the Pacific, the Gulf
of California and even to the frozen
ice fields of the Arctic Ocean, and
wherever it has spread has given law,
order, commercial prosperity and the
culture and polish of western or Ang-
1o-Saxon civilization, is a machinery
which is not likely to break down in
odd population upon the Hawaiian Is
lands; a population, it must be re-
membered, which is prepared to re-
ceive the American institutions and
methods of government, and is in no
way antagonistic to them. There is
absolutely no standing ground for the
first argument. The facts are there,
written in clear cut historical charact-
ers. The machinery of government
has COPIED with and COPIED successfully
with far more difficult questions than
the very small one of Hawaii.
The second proposition takes practi-
cally the view that there is imminent
danger of the breakdown of Ameri-
can institutions. 1t is the kind of
proposition which was put forward by
old fogies when Romilly passed his
execution bill and man could no lon
ger be hung for stealing a sheep, or
the descendants of the same foges
when the Reform bill was passed, or
further descendants when Lincoln de-
-cided to fight.
But the proposition is not true. AS
prominent writer says, the United
States is not trembling before an ON
inous future. The experiment of de-
mocracy is a success beyond all ques-
tion and all the world knows it. The
United States is graphing with and
solving every question that arises. The
question of negro illiteracy has been
largely solved. Enthusiastic Ameri-
cans have been made out of Irishmen,
Germans, and every nation under the
sun. The perpleXities of the time are
neither so agonizing nor so critical
that they are going to overwhelm the
free institutions of the United States,
or even to give them shake to their
foundations. All such talk is rank and
incorrigible pessimism. The idea that
grave complications must arise by the
annexation of the Hawaiian Islands,
whose total population is not that of
a third rate town, is absolutely ride
ulous, and only goes to show how peo-
pie will blind themselves to facts. The
population of New Orleans alone is
twice as great as the population of the
Hawaiian Islands, and it is safe to say
that it is more miscellaneous than is
this population, that it is really fan
less digestible morsel than Hawaii
but it is digested, and very easily.
Practically at the present moment
American institutions and American
ideas control these Islands; they will
control them none the less because
the United States takes actual posses
sion.