The age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1897-1902, 1899-07-16

else than to echo the pathetic appeals of
Aguinaldo that we do not destroy our own
government in order to save the Fipinos
from the fatal power of his dictatorship.
1t is not far to go, nor IS the way obscure,
| to find in the constitution of the United
States express power given to congress to
| do what was done in Louisiana and Ha-
wall, and what our self-respect compels us
| to do in the Philippine Islands.
| Congress is given express power, by the
! constitution, to enforce the laws of ma
| tons by that highest of all legislative au-
| thority-the punishment of crimes against
| that body of laws.
These are the laws that obtain in all
| countries where the local sovereignty is
| changed until the new sovereign has ex-
| tened his municipal or other laws over the
| people whose allegiance has also been
! changed
What the code permits the United States
| to do in the Philippines, in Hawaii, or in
| Cuba, 1t is within the competence of con-
| gress to cause to be enforced; and. until
| such provision is made, it is within the
| competence of the president to see that the
| laws of nations are faithfully executed in
| those countries. Where congress has eX-
| tended over them the municipal laws of the
| United States they are paramount to the
| laws of nations.
| 1t is not to be denied, nor is it regretted,
| that the expansion of the influence of the
| United States has been imperial in its
| tent, and it mas caused great revolutions,
| that have, virtually swept monarchic gov
| eminent from the Western Hemisphere,
| and is now driving it from the islands of
| the great oceans: but we have been self
| denying in the acquisition of countries that
| have sought to be annexed to domain.
In the beginning of this century We es-
| tablished policy which has not been de-
I parted from and will not be changed, that
1 we will not withhold our moral support
| from any people who seek to escape injus-
| tice and tyranny by establishing free gov
| eminent to suppant monarchy; and, when
| such people are brought within our con-
| troll, we will aid them alike against for
| eign interference and domestic faction in
| establishing peace, and we will aid them to
| institute sovereign and independent govern
| ment for themselves. whenever they are
| fitted to take their place among the SOW
| ereign powers of the earth and to main
| tain it without the necessity of our protec-
| ton.
| If must protect them, we must con-
| troll them; and, in order to protect them,
| we will extend them our municipal
| laws wner--T1t is necessary for their well
| fare and the safety of our government.
If that is conquest ii is the result of the
| law of necessity, and not the outgrowth of
| national craving for the increase of our
| domain.
| Without any purpose to acquire any of
| the possessions of Spain; and in the asser-
| ton of duty to secure good government in
| Cuba as the only means of preserving
| peace on our borders and of protecting the
| rights of our people, and in harmony with
| the mission of our great Republc the for
| tunes of war have left to us the temporary
| guardianship of Cuba, and the sovereign
| dominion of the Philippines and Porto
| Rico.
| We could not renounce the duties of this
| involuntary trust without the impeachment
| of the spirit and the purposes of the great
| er kind when our Republic was ordained.
| Its value is eXemplifed in the firm estab-
| lishment of republican constitutional gov
| eminent in every Spanish and Portuguese
| state in North, South and Central Amer
| lea; and it is now being respected in a
| great Arbitral Tribunal sitting in Paris,
| whose creation Is due alone to our firm
| maintenance of the Monroe doctrine That
| trust imposes upon the still more hon.
| orable and more obligatory duty, that
| whenever any foreign people are brought
| within the dominion of the United States
| they shall not be relegated to monarchic
| government, but, in due season, they shall
| have secured to them free constitutional
| republican government. We could not re-
| nounce this trust in the Philippines and the
| duties it imposes upon US while these hu-
| name offices remain to be performed We
| could not. at any time, since the first day
| of May, 1898, have abandoned the Philip
/
| iards, or to the worse fate of being ruled
| by an ambitious, corrupt and arrogant ma
| tive dictator. We could not have ordered
! Admiral Dewey off from the theater of
| his heroic achievement without confessing
| before the world either that our Republic
| was incapable of sustaining its authority
| In distant country with the power of its
| arms that 1t was unwilling to secure
| the rights of humanity to a people who had
| suffered to the last extremity, from Span
| ish tyranny, and who had left to them no
| other alternative but Enal destruction at
| the hands of Aguinaldo.
| If 1t was his purpose, some assert to
| establish a republic in the Philippines, and
| If that intention should commend him to
| our favor how else could we give him aid
| except by driving out Spain and assuming
| protectorate over the entire group of
| islands?
| In the absence of such assistance and
| protection those islands would have been
| speedily occupied by some other power
| Under a treaty with Aguinaldo guarantee
| ing such protection, the United States
f-would have been placed under his control
| with responsibility to other nations for his
| diplomatic vagaries and personal specula-
| tons, which would have resulted in the dis
| posal of the government to the men who
| are now supplying him with guns and am
| munition.
We were confronted with the alternative
l
| tectorate, while he was establishing re-
| public with a constituency unfit to create
| or conduct such government, or that we
| should take control of the country and
| train and educate the people into condition
| for the safe and proper exercise of their
| high and difficult duties.
| That is what we are doing in Cuba, with
| the hope of early success but there we
| have a people capable of self-government
| even to the extent that they are now pre-
| pared for statehood in the American Union,
| if they desired it, and we were ready to I
consent to such a result.
Mr. Jefferson looked to the annexation of
| Cuba to the United States as a necessity
| of our national defense, and few Ameri-
can statesmen have been opposed to that
conclusion; yet when she was stretching
out her hands to us and mploring us for
assistance against Spanish determination
we voluntarily declared her independence
and sent our army and navy to make good
that declaration
We refused to annex Cuba until her neo-