co deserves admission anyway, because we
are bound by the volunteered assurance of General Miles that they
should have the rights of American citizens. Perhaps; though there is
no evidence that he meant more, or that they thought he meant more,
than such rights as American citizens everywhere enjoy, even in the
District of Columbia--equal laws, security of life and property,
freedom from arbitrary arrests, local self-government, in a word, the
civil rights which the genius of our Government secures to all under
our control who are capable of exercising them. If he did mean more, or
if they thought he meant more, did that entitle him to anticipate his
chief and override in casual military proclamation the Supreme Law of
the land whose commission he bore? Or did it entitle them to suppose
that he could?

But Porto Rico received the irresistible army of General Miles so
handsomely, and is so unfortunate and so little! Reasons all for
consideration, certainly, for care, for generosity--but not for
starting the avalanche, on the theory that after it has got under only
a little headway we can still stop it if we want to. Who thinks he can
lay his hand on the rugged edge of the Muir Glacier and compel it to
advance no farther? Who believes that we can admit this little island
from the mid-Atlantic, a third of the way over to Africa, and then
reject nearer and more valuable islands when they come? The famous law
of political gravitation which John Quincy Adams prophetically
announced three quarters of a century ago will then be acting with
ever-increasing force. And, at any rate, beside Porto Rico, and with
the same title, stand the Philippines!

Regard, I beg of you, in the calm white light that befits these
cloistered retreats of sober thought, the degradation of the Republic
thus coolly anticipated by the men that assure us we have no
possessions whose people are not entitled under our Constitution to
citizenship and ultimately to Statehood! Surely to an audience of
scholars and patriots like this not one word need be added. Emboldened
by the approval you have so generously expressed, I venture to close by
assuming without hesitation that you will not dishonor your Government
by evading its duty, nor betray it by forcing unfit partners upon it,
nor rob it by blind and perverse neglect of its interests.

May I not go further, and vouch for you, as Californians, that the
faith of the fathers has not forsaken the sons--that