ssential to all commercial, indeed to all civilized nations, is
now established, and will be maintained in the United States.

CHAPTER XXXIII
THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

It has been my singular ill fortune that I have been compelled
to differ from the Republican Party, and from a good many
of my political associates, upon many important matters.

It has been my singular good fortune that, so far, they have
all come to my way of thinking, as have the majority of the
American people, in regard to every one, with perhaps one
exception. That is the dealing of the American people with
the people of the Philippine Islands, by the Treaty with Spain.
The war that followed it crushed the Republic that the Philippine
people had set up for themselves, deprived them of their independence,
and established there, by American power, a Government in
which the people have no part, against their will. No man,
I think, will seriously question that that action was contrary
to the Declaration of Independence, the fundamental principles
declared in many State constitutions, the principles avowed
by the founders of the Republic and by our statesmen of all
parties down to a time long after the death of Lincoln.

If the question were, whether I am myself right, or whether
my friends and companions in the Republican Party be right,
I should submit to their better judgment. But I feel quite
confident, though of that no man can be certain, that if the
judgment of the American people, even in this generation,
could be taken on that question alone, I should find myself
in the majority. If it be not so, the issue is between the
opinion of the American people for more than a century, and
the opinion that the American people has expressed for one
or two Presidential terms.

Surely I do not need to argue the question; at any rate, I
will not here undertake to argue the question, that our dealing
with the Philippine people is a violation of the principles
to which our people adhered from 1776 to 1893. If the maintenance
of slavery were inconsistent with them, it was admitted that
in that particular we were violating them, or were unable
from circumstances to carry them into effect. Mr. Jefferson
thought so himself.

But the accomplishment by this Republic of its purpose to
subjugate the Philippine people to its will, under the claim
that it, and not they, had the right to judge of their fitness
for self-government, is a rejection of the ol