final
conclusion at Washington was apparently reached on the Commission's
recommendation from Paris. As the cold fit, in the language of one of
our censors, has followed the hot fit in the popular temper, I readily
take the time which hostile critics consider unfavorable, for accepting
my own share of responsibility, and for avowing for myself that I
declared my belief in the duty and policy of holding the whole
Philippine Archipelago in the very first conference of the
Commissioners in the President's room at the White House, in advance of
any instructions of any sort. If vindication for it be needed, I
confidently await the future.

What _is_ the duty of a public servant as to profiting by opportunities
to secure for his country what all the rest of the world considers
material advantages? Even if he could persuade himself that rejecting
them is morally and internationally admissible, is he at liberty to
commit his country irrevocably to their rejection, because they do not
wholly please his individual fancy? At a former negotiation of our own
in Paris, the great desire of the United States representative, as well
as of his Government, had been mainly to secure the settled or partly
settled country adjoining us on the south, stretching from the Floridas
to the city of New Orleans. The possession of the vast unsettled and
unknown Louisiana Territory, west of the Mississippi, was neither
sought nor thought of. Suddenly, on an eventful morning in April, 1803,
Talleyrand astonished Livingston by offering, on behalf of Napoleon, to
sell to the United States, not the Floridas at all, but merely
Louisiana, "a raw little semi-tropical frontier town and an unexplored
wilderness."

Suppose Livingston had rejected the offer? Or suppose Gadsden had not
exceeded his instructions in Mexico and boldly grasped the opportunity
that offered to rectify and make secure our Southwestern frontier?
Would this generation judge that they had been equal to their
opportunities or their duties?

The difficulties which at present discourage us are largely of our own
creation. It is not for any of us to think of attempting to apportion
the blame. The only thing we are sure of is that it was for no lack of
authority that we hesitated and drifted till the Tagals were convinced
we were afraid of them, and could be driven out before reinforcements
arrived. That was the very thing our officers had warned us
against,--the least sign of hesitation o