es his
inheritance is too sentimental and moon-shiny for the Nineteenth
Century or the Twentieth, and too unpractical for Americans of any
period. It may flourish in Arcadia or Altruria, but it does not among
the sons of the Pilgrims, or on the continent they subdued by stern
struggle to the uses of civilization.

Nevertheless, our people did stop to consider very carefully their
constitutional powers. I believe we have reached a point also where the
result of that consideration may be safely assumed. The constitutional
arguments have been fully presented and the expositions and decisions
marshaled. It is enough now to say that the preponderance of
constitutional authorities, with Gouverneur Morris, Daniel Webster, and
Thomas H. Benton at their head, and the unbroken tendency of decisions
by the courts of the United States for at least the last fifty years,
from Mr. Chief Justice Waite and Mr. Justice Miller and Mr. Justice
Stanley Matthews, of the Supreme Court, down to the very latest
utterance on the subject, that of Mr. Justice Morrow of the Circuit
Court of Appeals, sustain the power to acquire "territory or other
property" anywhere, and govern it as we please.[9] Inhabitants of such
territory (not obviously incapable) are secure in the civil rights
guaranteed by the Constitution; but they have no political rights under
it, save as Congress confers them. The evidence in support of this view
has been fully set forth, examined, and weighed, and, unless I greatly
mistake, a popular decision on the subject has been reached. The
constitutional power is no longer seriously disputed, and even those
who raised the doubt do not seem now to rely upon it.

[9] Some of these authorities have already been briefly presented
in the address at Miami University, pp. 107-158. It may be
desirable to consult a few additional ones, covering the main
points that have been disputed. They are grouped for convenience
in the Appendix.

[Sidenote: Contributions to International Law and Morality.]

In thus summarizing what has been already settled or disposed of in our
dealings with the questions of the war, I may be permitted to pause for
a moment on the American contributions it brought about to
international morality and law. On the day on which the American Peace
Commissioners to Paris sailed for home after the ceremonial courtesy
with which their labors were concluded, the most authoritative journal
in