J. N. Larned

“ I would declare that the United States will enforce the same doctrine as applicable to the Philippines that we declared as to Mexico and Haiti and the South American Republics. It is true that the Monroe Doctrine, a doctrine based largely on our regard for our own interests, is not applicable either in terms or in principle to a distant Asiatic territory. But, undoubtedly, having driven out Spain, we are bound, and have the right, to secure to the people we have liberated an opportunity, undisturbed and in peace, to establish a new government for themselves. ”

“ Jefferson spoke so freely and used language with such precision that no one can be ignorant of his views. On one occasion he declared: 'If there be one principle more deeply rooted than any other in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.' And again he said: 'Conquest is not in our principles; it is inconsistent with our government.' The forcible annexation of territory to be governed by arbitrary power differs as much from the acquisition of territory to be built up into states as a monarchy differs from a democracy. ”

“ With ample knowledge of the sources of health, we allow, and even compel, the bulk of our population to live and work under conditions which greatly shorten life; while every year we see from 50,000 to 100,000 infants done to death by our criminal neglect. In our mad race for wealth, we have made gold more sacred than human life; we have made life so hard for the many, that suicide and insanity and crime are alike increasing. With all our labour-saving machinery and all our command over the forces of nature, the struggle for existence has become more fierce than ever before ”

“ After mature deliberation, I resolutely proclaim to the world that I cannot refuse to heed the voice of a people longing for peace, nor the lamentations of thousands of families yearning to see their dear ones enjoying the liberty and the promised generosity of the great American Nation. By acknowledging and accepting the sovereignty of the United States throughout the Philippine Archipelago, as I now do, and without any reservation whatsoever, I believe that I am serving thee, my beloved country. May happiness be thine. ”

“ A growth of fellow-feeling which began in the last century has been an increasing growth. It has not ended war, nor the passions that cause war, but it is rousing an opposition which gathers strength every year. It has made democratic institutions of government so common that the few arbitrary governments now remaining in civilized countries seem disgraceful to the people who endure them so long. It has broken old yokes of conquest, and revived the independence of long subjugated states. It has swept away unnatural boundary lines, which separated peoples of kindred language and race. ”

“ Have we the right to crush and hold under our feet an unwilling and subject people whom we had treated as allies, whose independence we are bound in good faith to respect, who had established their own free government, and who had trusted us? ”

“ I affirm that you can not get by conquest, and you can not get by purchase, according to the modern law of nations, according to the law of nations as accepted and expounded by the United States, sovereignty over a people, or title to a territory, of which the power that undertakes to sell it or the power from whom you undertake to wrest it has not the actual possession and dominion. ... You cannot buy a war. More than this, you cannot buy a tyrant's claim to subject again an oppressed people who have achieved their freedom. ”

“ I can not believe that we would be protected against these evils by limiting immigration to those who can read and write in any language twenty-five words of our Constitution. In my opinion, it is infinitely more safe to admit a hundred thousand immigrants who, though unable to read and write, seek among us only a home and opportunity to work than to admit one of those unruly agitators and enemies of governmental control who can not only read and write, but delights in arousing by inflammatory speech the illiterate and peacefully inclined to discontent and tumult. ”

“ It exhorts us all to other duties, to the serious combating of designs directed against the very basis of our political and social fabric. To you, gentlemen, I address my summons to the fight for religion, morality, and order against the parties of revolution. Even as the ivy winds round the gnarled oak, and, while adorning it with its leaves, protects it when storms are raging through its topmost branches, so does the nobility of Prussia close round my house. ”

“ I believe that we shall have the courage not to depart from those islands fearfully, timidly, and unworthily and leave them to anarchy among themselves, to the brief and bloody domination of some self-constituted dictator, and to the quick conquest of other powers, who will have no such hesitation as we should feel in crushing them into subjection by harsh and repressive methods. It is for us to decide the destiny of the Philippines, not for Europe, and we can do it alone and without assistance. ”

“ Most Serene Emperor, most powerful King and Lord, illustrious brother,—As children we grew up together. Later on it was granted to us as men to look into each other's eyes and stand faithfully at each other's side. To your Majesty the imperial crown has come with thorns. I have striven in my restricted sphere and with my scanty strength, as man, soldier, and citizen, to help your Majesty. We have reached a great epoch, an important epoch for the nation—an important epoch for your Majesty and the Navy. ”

“ The policy of the President offers the inhabitants of Porto Rico, Hawaii and the Philippines no hope of independence, no prospect of American citizenship, no constitutional protection, no representation in the Congress which taxes them. This is the government of men by arbitrary power without their consent. This is imperialism. There is no room under the free flag of America for subjects. The President and Congress, who derive all their powers from the Constitution, can govern no man without regard to its limitations. ”

“ It has, gentlemen, sprung from the hearts of the people, who alone are the real strength of nations, the sovereign king of races, the producers of the arts, of science, of commerce, of wealth, of agriculture, of civilization, of progress, and of all the productions of human labor and intelligence, in all of which the people of the Philippine Islands had made great progress. The Filipinos were not sunk in lethargy, as some untruthfully assert. They suffered, but the hour to break their chains came to them in August, 1896, and they proclaimed to the world their emancipation. ”

“ Netted with steam and electric railways, seamed with canals, wire-strung with telegraphic and telephonic lines, its ocean-voyages made holiday excursions, its every-day labors, of the forge, the plough, the sickle, the spindle, the loom, the needle, and even of the pen, done with magical deftness by machines, which its coal mines and its waterfalls lend forces to move, it is nothing less than a new world that men are making for themselves, out of that in which they lived at the beginning of the era of mechanism and electricity and steam. ”

“ I am, nevertheless, firm in my conviction that while it is a grievous thing to contemplate the two great English-speaking peoples of the world as being otherwise than friendly competitors in the onward march of civilization and strenuous and worthy rivals in all the arts of peace, there is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people's safety and greatness. ”

“ We continue the state of war, and every sensible man in the country, every business interest, desires the re-establishment of peace in law as well as in fact. At the same time we repudiate the President and his action before the whole world, and the repudiation of the President in such a matter as this is, to my mind, the humiliation of the United States in the eyes of civilized mankind and brands us a people incapable of great affairs or of taking rank where we belong, as one of the greatest of the great world powers. ”

“ Never has clericalism been so influential in the legislation and administration of this Empire. The most powerful party is the one that takes its 'mot d'ordre' from the Papal Nunciature. It guides the feudal nobility, it is the thorn in the flesh of the German population, it has provoked a 20 years' reaction in Austria, and, unhindered and protected, it scatters in Hungary that seed which has thriven so well in this half of the Monarchy that nothing is done in Austria without first considering what will be said about it in Rome. ”

“ If it were possible to obliterate every word written or spoken in defense of the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence, a war of conquest would still leave its legacy of perpetual hatred, for it was God himself who placed in every human heart the love of liberty. He never made a race of people so low in the scale of civilization or intelligence that it would welcome a foreign master. "Those who would have this nation enter upon a career of empire must, consider not only the effect of imperialism on the Filipinos, but they must also calculate its effects upon our own nation. ”

“ There would have been to-day a noble republic in the East, sitting docile at our feet, receiving from us civilization, laws, manners, and giving in turn everything the gratitude of a free people could give-love, obedience, trade. The Philippine youth would throng our universities; our Constitution, our Declaration, the lives of Washington and Lincoln, the sayings of Jefferson and Franklin would have been the textbooks of their schools. ”

“ No man who is fit for the position can to-day hold a place involving the direction of his country's international policy without feeling an almost intolerable pressure of responsibility. To him every remote chance of a lightening of his burden comes as a promise of blessed relief. It is a historical fact that none of the obstacles to success which the Peace Conference had to overcome originated in the mind of any sovereign or of any high minister of State. In every case they were raised by underlings without responsibility and anxious to show superior wisdom by finding fault. ”

“ Trusts, the overshadowing evil of the age, are the result and culmination of the private ownership and control of the three great instruments of commerce—money, transportation, and the means of transmission of information—which instruments of commerce are public functions, and which our forefathers declared in the Constitution should be controlled by the people through their Congress for the public welfare. The one remedy for the trusts is that the ownership and control be assumed and exercised by the people. We further demand that all tariffs on goods controlled by a trust shall be abolished. ”

“ Say what we will, the controversy always seems to relapse into the old ruts—it is the British Government on the one hand, and the Boers on the other. The question how a particular policy will affect, not merely our enemies, but our now equally numerous friends, seems seldom to be adequately considered. And yet it would seem that justice and policy alike should lead us to be as eager to consider the feelings and interests, and to retain the loyalty, of those who are fighting on our side, as to disarm the present enmity and win the future confidence of those who are fighting against us. ”

“ Believing in the principles of self-government and rejecting, as did our forefathers, the claims of monarchy, we view with indignation the purpose of England to overwhelm with force the South African Republics. Speaking, as we believe, for the entire American nation, except its Republican officeholders, and for all free men everywhere, we extend our sympathy to the heroic Burghers in their unequal struggle to maintain their liberty and independence. ”

“ Nevertheless, it would be the duty of this country to maintain by force of arms the proposition that there shall be no forcible establishment of European institutions and European Governments over any portion of this territory. Who can entertain the idea that war can be made with Great Britain, and that the people of the British Empire will permit that Government to engage in war upon a question of boundaries which is not sustained by the facts of the case, but a mere aggression, and that the peace of mankind shall be disturbed by it. ”

“ To say a thing can only be done in a way which must necessarily bring about the grossest wrong, is to delusively admit the existence of the power, while substantially denying it. And the grievous results sure to follow from any attempt to adopt such a system are so obvious that my mind cannot fail to see that if a tax on invested personal property were imposed by the rule of population, and there were no other means of preventing its enforcement, the red spectre of revolution would shake our institutions to their foundation. ”

“ A Republic can have no subjects. A subject is possible only in a government resting upon force; he is unknown in a government deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed. "The Republican platform says that 'the largest measure of self-government consistent with their welfare and our duties shall be secured to them (the Filipinos) by law.' This is a strange doctrine for a government which owes its very existence to the men who offered their lives as a protest against government without consent and taxation without representation. ”