e ear of the
Commissioners, there are here and there very sincere, capable people
who are growing a bit weary of a multiplicity of commissions. They
say--so cynical are they--that, in all ages and countries, the easiest
method of evading or postponing a difficult problem has been to appoint
a commission on it and thus prolong the circumlocution.

For a first thing, then, on which we are all united, we look hopefully
to our guests to redeem the character of this mode of government by
commission. For we assume that they are sent out to the archipelago to
govern; and just at present we don't know of any part of the country's
possessions that seems more in need of government.

We all unite in regarding them as setting sail, not only charged with
the national interests, but dignified and ennobled by a guardianship of
the national honor. Thus we are trying to put ourselves in Emerson's
state of mind about a certain notable young poet, and unite in hoping
that, to use his well-known phrase, we greet them at the beginning of a
great career.

We certainly unite in earnestly wishing that they may make the best of
a situation which none of us wholly like, and many dislike with all
their hearts: the best of it for the country which, by good management
or bad, rightfully or wrongfully, is at any rate clearly and in the
eyes of the whole world now responsible for the outcome; and the best
of it, no less, for the distracted people thrown upon our hands.

We cannot well help uniting in the further hope that their first
success will be the re-establishment of order throughout regions lately
filled with violence and bloodshed; and that they can then bring about
a system of just and swift punishment for future crimes of disorder,
since all experience in those regions and among those people shows that
the neglect to enforce such punishment is itself the gravest and
cruelest of crimes.

Nor can any one here help uniting in the hope that their next and
crowning success will some way be attained in the preservation and
extension of those great civil rights whose growth is the distinction,
the world over, of Anglo-Saxon civilization; whose consummate flower
and fruitage are the glory of our own Government.

I am even bold enough to believe that, however it might have been
twelve months ago, or but six months ago, there is no one here
to-night, recognizing the changed circumstances now, who would think
they could best secure those rights