Revolution or of the Civil War as models,
has looked in some cases to Spain for your example. I
believe--nay, I know--that in general our officers and soldiers
are humane. But in some cases they have carried on your warfare
with a mixture of American ingenuity and Castilian cruelty.

Your practical statesmanship has succeeded in converting a
people who three years ago were ready to kiss the hem of the
garment of the American and to welcome him as a liberator, who
thronged after your men, when they landed on those islands, with
benediction and gratitude, into sullen and irreconcilable
enemies, possessed of a hatred which centuries cannot eradicate.

Mr. President, this is the eternal law of human nature. You may
struggle against it, you may try to escape it, you may persuade
yourself that your intentions are benevolent, that your yoke
will be easy and your burden will be light, but it will assert
itself again. Government without the consent of the
governed--authority which heaven never gave--can only be
supported by means which heaven never can sanction.

The American people have got this one question to answer. They
may answer it now; they can take ten years, or twenty years, or
a generation, or a century to think of it. But will not down.
They must answer it in the end: Can you lawfully buy with money,
or get by brute force of arms, the right to hold in subjugation
an unwilling people, and to impose on them such constitution as
you, and not they, think best for them?

Senator Hoar then went on to make another sort of appeal--the appeal to
fact and experience:

We have answered this question a good many times in the past.
The fathers answered it in 1776, and founded the Republic upon
their answer, which has been the corner-stone. John Quincy Adams
and James Monroe answered it again in the Monroe Doctrine, which
John Quincy Adams declared was only the doctrine of the consent
of the governed. The Republican party answered it when it took
possession of the force of government at the beginning of the
most brilliant period in all legislative history. Abraham
Lincoln answered it when, on that fatal journey to Washington in
1861, he announced that as the doctrine of his political creed,
and declared, with prophetic vision, that he was ready to be
assassinated for it if need be.