sions of Duty.]

Against such a conscientious and painstaking course in dealing with the
grave responsibilities that are upon us in the East, two lines of
evasion are sure to threaten. The one is the policy of the upright but
short-sighted and strictly continental patriot--the same which an
illustrious statesman of another country followed in the Sudan:
"Scuttle as quick as you can."

The other is the policy of the exuberant patriot who believes in the
universal adaptability and immediate extension of American
institutions. He thinks all men everywhere as fit to vote as himself,
and wants them for partners. He is eager to have them prepare at once,
in our new possessions, first in the West Indies, then in the East, to
send Senators and Representatives to Congress, and his policy is: "Make
Territories of them now, and States in the American Union as soon as
possible." I wish to speak with the utmost respect of the sincere
advocates of both theories, but must say that the one seems to me to
fall short of a proper regard for either our duty or our interest, and
the other to be national suicide.

Gentlemen in whose ability and patriotism we all have confidence have
lately put the first of these policies for evading our duty in the form
of a protest "against the expansion and establishment of the dominion
of the United States, by conquest or otherwise, over unwilling peoples
in any part of the globe." Of this it may be said, first, that any
application of it to the Philippines probably assumes a factional and
temporary outbreak to represent a settled unwillingness. New Orleans
was as "unwilling," when Mr. Jefferson annexed it, as Aguinaldo has
made Manila; and Aaron Burr came near making the whole Louisiana
Territory far worse. Mr. Lincoln, you remember, always believed the
people of North Carolina not unwilling to remain in the Union, yet we
know what they did. But next, this protest contemplates evading the
present responsibility by a reversal of our settled policy any way. Mr.
Lincoln probably never doubted the unwillingness of South Carolina to
remain in the Union, but that did not change his course. Mr. Seward
never inquired whether the Alaskans were unwilling or not. The historic
position of the United States, from the day when Jefferson braved the
envenomed anti-expansion sentiment of his time and bought the territory
west of the Mississippi, on down, has been to consider, not the
willingness or unwillingness of an