n of the United States."

The very latest judicial utterance on the subject is in harmony with
all the rest. Mr. Justice Morrow of the United States Court of Appeals
for the Ninth Circuit, in February, 1898, held (57 U.S. Appeals 6):
"The now well-established doctrine [is] that the Territories of the
United States are entirely subject to the legislative authority of
Congress. They are not organized under the Constitution nor subject to
its complex distribution of the powers of government. The United
States, having rightfully acquired the Territories, and being the only
Government which can impose laws upon them, has the entire dominion and
sovereignty, national and municipal, Federal and State."

[Sidenote: More Recent Constitutional Objections.]

In the light of such expositions of our constitutional power and our
uniform national practice, it is difficult to deal patiently with the
remaining objections to the acquisition of territory, purporting to be
based on constitutional grounds. One is that to govern the Philippines
without their consent or against the opposition of Aguinaldo is to
violate the principle--only formulated, to be sure, in the Declaration
of Independence, but, as they say, underlying the whole
Constitution--that government derives its just powers from the consent
of the governed. In the Sulu group piracy prevailed for centuries. How
could a government that put it down rest on the consent of Sulu? Would
it be without just powers because the pirates did not vote in its
favor? In other parts of the archipelago what has been stigmatized as a
species of slavery prevails. Would a government that stopped that be
without just powers till the slaveholders had conferred them at a
popular election? In another part head-hunting is, at certain seasons
of the year, a recognized tribal custom. Would a government that
interfered with that practice be open to denunciation as an usurpation,
without just powers, and flagrantly violating the Constitution of the
United States, unless it waited at the polls for the consent of the
head-hunters? The truth is, all intelligent men know--and few even in
America, except obvious demagogues, hesitate to admit--that there are
cases where a good government does not and ought not to rest on the
consent of the governed. If men will not govern themselves with respect
for civilization and its agencies, then when they get in the way they
must be governed--always have been, whenever th