New-York tribune., 1900-03-04
*nguished Of his predecessors. to speak for the
conscience and the culture Of Massachusett.
No. no! Let us have truce TO prohtless dis
about what he


DANGER If you will, and when you
can, without harming
causes you hold dear. But for the duty of this
hour consider If there is not common meeting
ground and instant necessity for union in a
rational effort to avert present perils This
then, is my appeal. Disagree as we may about
the past let us to-day at least see straight
see things as they are. Let suspend disputes
about what is done and cannot be undone. long
enough TO rally all the forces of goodwill all
the undoubted courage and zeal and patriotism
that at odds in a devoted effort to
meet the greater dangers that are upon u.s.
For the enemy is at the gates. More than that
there is some reason to fear that through dis
sensions from within. he may gain the citadel
In their eagerness to embarrass the advocates
of what has been done. and with the vain hope
of in some way undoing 1t, and so lifting this
Nation Of seventy-five millions bodily backward
two years on its path there are many who are
still putting forth all their energies in straining
our Constitution and defying our history to
show that we can have no possessions whose
people not entitled to citizenship and nj
timately to Statehood. Grant that and instead Of
reversing engines safely, they vainly hope
they must simply plunge US over the precipice
The movement began in the demand that our
Dingley tarif-as a matter of right not of
policy, for most of these people denounce the
should Of necessity be extended over Puerto
Rico as an integral part Of the United States
Following assent TO this must have come
inevitably all the other rights and privileges
belonging TO citizenship, and then no power
could prevent the admission Of the State Of
Puerto Rico
Some may think that in itself would be no
great thing: though 1t is for YOU to saw how
Massachusetts would relish having this mixed
population little more than half colonial Span
fish, the rest negro and halfbreed. illterate alien
in language, alien in ideas Of right interests and
government. send in from the mid-Atlantic
nearly third OF the way over to Africa two
Senators TO balance the votes of Mr. Hoar and
Mr Lodge;-for you to say how Massachusetts
would regard the spectacle Of her Senatorial
Vote nuIIlhed, and one-third Of her representa-
tion in the House offset on questions for in
stance. Of sectional and tropical interest in the
government Of this Continent, and in the ad-
1ninistration Of this precious heritage of our
fathers.
Or, suppose Massachusetts 10 be so little Yam
kee, On the best sense stiII1 that she couJd hear
all this without murmur or obfection:-is it TO be
imagined that she lift other States in this
generation to her altruistic level? How would
Kansas for example enjoy being balanced in the
Senate, and nearly balanced in the House on
questions relating TO the irrigation Of her arid
plains, or the protection Of her beet-root indus
try, or on any others affecting the great central
regions OF this continent. 0or which the Ameri-
can Union formed). by these voices from the
watery waste of the ocean? Or how would
West Virginia Oregon or Connecticut or half
& dozen others Of similar population, regard 1t,
TO be actually outvoted in their own home on
their own continent, by this Spanish and negro
waif from the mid-Atlantic?
All this, in itself, may seem TO some uninl-
portant, negligible, even trivial. AT any rate it
would be inevitable; since no one is wild enough
TO believe that Puerto Rico can be turned back
10 Spain. or hartered away. or abandoned by the
generation that took it. But make its people
citizens now. and you have already made it.
potentially, State Then behind Puerto Rico
stands Cuba: and behind Cuba, IN time, stand
the whole oe the West Indies. on whom that law
Of political gravitation which John Quincy
Adams described, will be perpetually acting
with redoubled force. And behind them,-no
far ahead Of them-abreast of Puerto Rico
itself stand the Philippines! The Constitution
which our Fathers reverently ordained for the
United States of america is thus tortured by its
professed friends into q crazy quilt under
whose dirty folds must huddle the United States
of America of the West Indies of the East
Indies and OF Polynesia: and Pandemonium is
upon Us.
I implore you. thinking men. pause long
enough to realize the degradation Of the Repub-
lie thus calmly contem-
THE DEGRADA- plated by those who pro-
TION OF THE claim this to be our
REPUBLIC Constitutional duty toward
our possessions. The Re
publican institutions 1 have been trained TO
believe in were institutions founded, like those
of New-England. on the Church and the School
House They constitute system only likely
70 endure among a people of high virtue and
high intelligence. The Republican Government
built up this continent, while the most sue
Cessfu in the history Of the world, is also the
rIost complicated, the most expensive and often
the slowest. Such its complications and
checks and balances and interiependencies,
which tax the intelligence, the patience and the
virtue of the highest Caucasian development
that it is system absolutely unavoidable by a
group Of Oriental and tropical races. more or
less hostile to each other, whose highest type
Is a Chinese and Malay halfbreed, and among
whom millions, a majority possibly, are far be
tcw the level of the pure Malay.
What holds a nation together, unless it be
community Of interests character and language,
and contiguous territory? What would more
thoroughly insure its speedily flying TO pieces
than the lack Of every one of these requisites
Over and over the clearest-eyed students of his
tory have predicted our own downfall as
a continental Republic. in spite Of measure
be enjoyment Of all OF them How near all
believed we came TO il twice! How
snanifestly under the incongruous hodge-podge
OF additions TO the Union thus proposed we
should have the exact conditions which have
invariably led such downfalls elsewhere!
Before the advent of the United States. the
history OF the worlds efforts at Republicanisnl