eady to
enforce their demands. This, briefly, was the condition of affairs
when the protocol of 1905 was submitted to the Senate for
ratification.

For more than a quarter of a century we have had a peculiar interest
in Santo Domingo. As is well known, under the Administration of
President Grant a treaty was negotiated and sent to the Senate
providing for the annexation of Santo Domingo. Senator Sumner was
Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, and as such was
able to prevent the consideration of the treaty by the committee,
and its ratification by the Senate. Some one said that the only
objection that Charles Sumner had to the treaty was that President
Grant had suggested it first. This was one of the reasons why
Senator Sumner was deposed as chairman of the Foreign Relations
Committee. It would probably have been better for the United
States, and it certainly would have been better for the Dominican
Republic, if the treaty had been ratified.

The protocol submitted to the Senate involved very large responsibilities
on the part of the United states. It provided that the United
States was to adjust all the obligations of the Republic, the
arrangement of the payment, to pass upon all claims of Santo Domingo,
determine their amount and validity, take charge of all the custom
houses, and collect and disburse the customs receipts, giving to
Santo Domingo forty-five per cent of the customs receipts and
devoting the balance to the liquidation of her debts.

This protocol had the active opposition of the minority of the
committee and in the Senate and, in addition, such conservative
members as Senator Hale and other prominent Republicans opposed
it. We fought over it in committee month after month; but finally,
on March 10, 1905, it was reported by me to the Senate with a large
number of amendments. It was considered by the Senate, recommitted
at the end of the Congress, and again reported at the following
Congress. But those in favor of it became convinced that we did
not have the two-thirds necessary to ratify it, and it was never
brought to a vote. It was thought that nothing more would be heard
of the Santo Domingo protocol; but Senator Root, when Secretary of
State, took the subject up _de novo_, and made a new treaty, in
which the United States did not assume the broad obligations it
assumed under the first one, and which was not generally of so
complicated a character.

It imposed the duty upo