of State under Administrations
of all parties, including Mr. Webster, Mr. Seward, and Mr.
Bayard. They were utterly helpless. As their Queen has lately
declared: "The best thing for them that could have happened
was to belong to the United States."

By the Constitution of Hawaii, the Government had been authorized
to make a treaty of annexation with this country. It was
said that that Constitution was the result of usurpation which
would not have come to pass but for American aid, and the
presence of one of our men-of-war. But that Government had
been maintained for six or seven years. Four of them were
while Mr. Cleveland was President, who it was well known would
be in full sympathy with an attempt to restore the old Government.
So if the people had been against it, the Government under
that Constitution could not have lasted an hour.

President Harrison had negotiated a treaty of annexation,
against which no considerable remonstrance or opposition
was uttered. My approval of it was then, I suppose, well
known. Certainly no friend of mine, and nobody in Massachusetts,
so far as I know, in the least objected or remonstrated against
it. The treaty was withdrawn from the consideration of the
Senate by President Cleveland.

Another was negotiated soon after President McKinley came
in. Meantime, however, the controversy with Spain had assumed
formidable proportions, and the craze for an extension of
our Empire had begun its course. Many Republican leaders
were advocating the acquisition of the Hawaiian Islands, not
for the reasons I have just stated, but on the avowed ground
that it was necessary we should own them as a point of vantage
for acquiring dominion in the East. It was said that China
was about to be divided among the great Western powers, and
that we must have our share. I saw when the time approached
for action of the McKinley Treaty that the question could
not be separated, at least in debate, from the question of
entering upon a career of conquest of Empire in the Far East.

Under these circumstances the question of duty came to me:
Will you adhere to the purpose long formed, and vote for the
acquisition of Hawaii solely on its own merit? Or, will you
vote against it, for fear that the bad and mischievous reasons
that are given for it is so many quarters, will have a pernicious
tendency only to be counteracted by the defeat of the treaty
itself?

I hesitated long. President McKinley