The Republican., 1900-12-20
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 90, 1900.
Mr.. HarrisOn's Views.

spect. His address to the students of
Michigan University on 1.-The Status
of Annexed Territory is an able pres
entation of the doctrines of those who
assert that the Constitution of the
United States of its own force instant
ly extends to all territory acquired by
this Government. The United States
Circuit and APPELLATE courts which
have so far passed on this question,
as involved in the Administration
Porto Rican and Philippine policies,
have not agreed with Mr.. Harrison,
but have upheld the Federal Govern
ment's exercise of plenary power in
those territories. The point, however,
has not yet been decided by the Su-
preme Court, and is to be argued be-
fore it i'll few days. If it decides
that the United States has free hand
in the new territories we shall have a
much simplified problem in setting
up governments for people unframed
in Anglo-Saxon ways and as yet un-
fitted for the system of law to which
Americans were accustomed before the
Constitution was adopted. and the
enjoyment of which that instrument
guaranteed them. If it decides that
Congress is subject to the same de-
tailed rules of administration in legis
lating for the Asiatic islands as in leg
islating for the home States, that de-
cision will be accepted in good part
and obeyed, however troublesome it
may make the practical problem of
administering those islands under
actual conditions, which, as Mr.. Har-
rison admits, are such as to unfit
them entirely for an equal place with
in our Union.
There is neither profit nor propriety
in attempting to forecast the view OF
the Supreme Court. Perhaps eX
President Harrison's Interpretation is
the true one. 1t is possible that the
precedents and decisions which the
Republican majority in Congress have
followed in legislating for Porto Rico
will not be regarded as sufficient
authority, when rightly construed, to
uphold that action. But, whatever
the decision, it should be noted now
and remembered hereafter that the
point at issue is no new one, but is
the subject of controversy as old as
the Constitution itself Mr.. Harrison
characterizes the view he opposes as |
an idea which ''seems to have found
its birth within a commercial nee
essity.n This is charge frequent F.!
ly heard from the Democrats in Con-
gress last winter. The constitutional
law of the majority was denounced as
an unheard of innovation. But no
notion could be more mistaken.
Historians who agree with Mr.. Har-
rison on the legal aspects of the case
admit that the Louisiana debate and
the debate on the admission of Mis-
souri, show it to have been the almost
unanimous opinion of Congress that
the Constitution did not extend to
the Territories of its own force, and
that it was not until the Southern
Democrats were forced to reconstruct
their constitutional law that the OPP
posite view, eliminating in the Dred
Scott decision, began to prevail. Con
gress passed act after act extending
the Constitution to Territories as
statute law. In one case, Florida, it
specifically declined to extend the
Constitution as right, but granted
some of its guarantees as favor. In
both Louisiana and Florida it estab-
lished governments which gave the
people fewer of the personal rights
enumerated in the Constitution than
does the government set up in Porto
Rico. These existed unchallenged as
to legality, though not without criti-
cism as being royal and tyrannical,
until the people in those Territories
seemed to Congress fitted for another
sort of government.
The idea which ex-President Har
rison thinks so strange and danger
Gus was acted upon by Thomas JEFF
ferson, the author of the Declaration
of Independence and the champion of
the Bill of Rights amendments to the
Constitution. In spite of those sa-
cred guarantees which he put in the
fundamental law, he denied the con-
stitutional trial by jury to the people
of Louisiana. The theory of q free
hand in the Territories which he ac-
cepted was also held and defended in
his day by Madison, Gallatin, Ran
dolph, Nicholson and Rodney. A
few years later Monroe, John Quincy
Adams. Jackson, and even Calhoun,