his recommendation for the repeal of laws allowing shares of fines,
penalties, forfeitures, etc., to officers of the Government or to
informers.

The office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue is one of the most
arduous and responsible under the Government. It falls but little, if
any, short of a Cabinet position in its importance and responsibilities.
I would ask for it, therefore, such legislation as in your judgment
will place the office upon a footing of dignity commensurate with its
importance and with the character and qualifications of the class of
men required to fill it properly.

As the United States is the freest of all nations, so, too, its people
sympathize with all people struggling for liberty and self-government;
but while so sympathizing it is due to our honor that we should abstain
from enforcing our views upon unwilling nations and from taking an
interested part, _without invitation_, in the quarrels between different
nations or between governments and their subjects. Our course should
always be in conformity with strict justice and law, international and
local. Such has been the policy of the Administration in dealing with
these questions. For more than a year a valuable province of Spain, and
a near neighbor of ours, in whom all our people can not but feel a deep
interest, has been struggling for independence and freedom. The people
and Government of the United States entertain the same warm feelings
and sympathies for the people of Cuba in their pending struggle that
they manifested throughout the previous struggles between Spain and
her former colonies in behalf of the latter. But the contest has at
no time assumed the conditions which amount to a war in the sense of
international law, or which would show the existence of a _de facto_
political organization of the insurgents sufficient to justify a
recognition of belligerency.

The principle is maintained, however, that this nation is its own judge
when to accord the rights of belligerency, either to a people struggling
to free themselves from a government they believe to be oppressive or to
independent nations at war with each other.

The United States have no disposition to interfere with the existing
relations of Spain to her colonial possessions on this continent. They
believe that in due time Spain and other European powers will find their
interest in terminating those relations and establishing their present
dependencies as independent