FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48  
49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   >>   >|  
e decision actually rendered, and it would be absurd to stretch this mere dictum of three quarters of a century ago, relating then, at any rate, to this continent alone, to carry the Dingley tariff now across to the antipodes. [Sidenote: Duties of the Hour.] Brushing aside, then, these bugbears, gentlemen, what are the obvious duties of the hour? First, hold what you are entitled to. If you are ever to part with it, wait at least till you have examined it and found out that you have no use for it. Before yielding to temporary difficulties at the outset, take time to be quite sure you are ready now to abandon your chance for a commanding position in the trade of China, in the commercial control of the Pacific Ocean, and in the richest commercial development of the approaching century. Next, resist admission of any of our new possessions as States, or their organization on a plan designed to prepare them for admission. Stand firm for the present American Union of sister States, undiluted by anybody's archipelagos. Make this fight easiest by making it at the beginning. Resist the first insidious effort to change the character of this Union by leaving the continent. The danger commences with the first extra-continental State. We want no Porto Ricans or Cubans to be sending Senators and Representatives to Washington to help govern the American Continent, any more than we want Kanakas or Tagals or Visayans or Mohammedan Malays. We will do them good and not harm, if we may, all the days of our life; but, please God, we will not divide this Republic, the heritage of our fathers, among them. Resist the crazy extension of the doctrine that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed to an extreme never imagined by the men who framed it, and never for one moment acted upon in their own practice. Why should we force Jefferson's language to a meaning Jefferson himself never gave it in dealing with the people of Louisiana, or Andrew Jackson in dealing with those of South Carolina, or Abraham Lincoln with the seceding States, or any responsible statesman of the country at any period in its history in dealing with Indians or New Mexicans or Californians or Russians? What have the Tagals done for us that we should treat them better and put them on a plane higher than any of these? And next, resist alike either schemes for purely military governments, or schemes for territorial civil governments, w
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48  
49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

States

 

dealing

 
American
 

Resist

 

Jefferson

 

century

 

Tagals

 
commercial
 

governments

 

schemes


admission

 

continent

 

resist

 
powers
 
government
 

doctrine

 

extension

 
derives
 

Mohammedan

 

Visayans


Malays
 

Kanakas

 
Washington
 

govern

 

Continent

 

divide

 

Republic

 

heritage

 

consent

 
fathers

Californians

 

Mexicans

 

Russians

 
Indians
 

statesman

 
responsible
 
country
 

period

 

history

 
military

purely

 
territorial
 
higher
 

seceding

 

Lincoln

 

moment

 

practice

 
framed
 
extreme
 

imagined