THE EFFECT OF ANNEXATION OF THE PHILIPPINES ON AMERICAN LABOR.

BY HON. JOHN W DANIEL,

UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM VIRGINIA.

It is the first step that costs. To-day we are the United States of America. To-morrow, if a treaty now pending in the Senate is ratified, we will be the United States of America and Asia. Our name, like a hoop upon a barrel, marks the boundary of our national projection and ambition. It is proposed to embody into the American Commonwealth as an integral part thereof a large and miscellaneous assortment of Asiatic islands, estimated in number at from 1,200 to 2,000, and to make citizens of the United States, with all the rights of citizenship which attach to the inhabitants of an American Territory, a large and miscellaneous and diversified assortment of people.

We are told by a number of Senators who have addressed us that of these islands and of this people we know but little. Our ignorance of them is a self-evident fact. The documents of our Government, in which have been collected such information as encyclopedias and books of travel would furnish, commence their imperfect account by telling us that both as to the islands and as to the people who inhabit them little that is accurate can be ascertained. We are invoked to do the gravest, the most serious, and solemn act that can ever be done in the movements of mankind, an act in its nature implying permanence.

It is to establish and to assert the sovereignty of the American people over these islands and over this people. For my part, I deem it inexpedient, unwise, and unjust that we should do so.

We are just emerging from a war of humanity, of liberty, and of national honor. In the beginning of that war, and in calling upon volunteers to follow our flag, both the Congress of the United States and the President of the United States declared our national purpose. Congress disclaimed in the joint resolution which led to war any intention of conquest. The President declared that forcible annexation was criminal aggression.

The war has been a glorious success. Our Navy has startled the world by the brilliancy of its achievements. Our Army has added new laurels to the chaplet of its veteran glories. Our people have been united as no people ever were united in supporting a National Administration.

Victory came on eagle's wings to our standard, and on the 1st day of January of the present year the last of the empire of Charles V vanished from the American continent and the dream of Spain for universal empire turned to dust and ashes.

So in We are

In war it is the unexpected that happens. every great and new adventure of peace. asked now to sally forth 7,000 miles from our native seat to grasp, against their will, eight millions of unwilling people-to seize upon them, to take them by force of arms and deposit them, land and people, within the lines of the Constitution under the American flag-to make them an integral part of this American Republic.

I do not believe that the great body of the American people understand the significance of this treaty. I

do not believe, at least if I may judge from their utterances, that many Senators who are saying, "Vote for the treaty now and fix your policy to-morrow,” understand what that treaty does irretrievably. That treaty fixes our policy. The rest of our policy is a mere matter of clerkly detail. The treaty is the thoroughfare, and through and over that thoroughfare eight millions of Filipinos march into the open doorway of the American Republic. More than that, 70,000,000 Americans march into the Philippine Islands as the Filipinos march here.

It is a marriage of nations. This twain become one flesh. They become bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. Henceforth and forever, according to the terminology of this treaty, the Filipinos and Americans are one. I trust yet, that before this marriage is consummated the spirit of American constitutional liberty will arise and forbid the bans.

There is one characteristic of the speeches which have been delivered on this subject by those who favor the treaty and of the essays and editorials which doubtless has not escaped your observation. The issue joined in the debate has been too much joined. upon a mere question of power. Who has told us what we are going to the Philippine Islands for? Who has told us what moral or legal compulsion we are under to go there?

Who has said that we are going to make a more perfect union or add to the general welfare, to the national defense, to the establishment of justice, or to the insurance of domestic tranquillity, or how or in what way we will secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,-how attain by going there any of the great ends for which our Government was founded and our Constitution ordained? Upon these

subjects there has been a general if not an absolute silence.

I shall speak on this question solely from the standpoint of an American, a republican American, if you please, believing in republican doctrines and in republican institutions; a democratic American, if you please, believing in the right of this people and the right of all people to govern themselves. No obligation to any other nation, nay, no obligation to the Filipinos, however fanciful or however solid, should for a single instant disturb us from standing firmly and fixedly on this standpoint.

It is the American people who have got the first mortgage upon our diligent attention and loyalty to their interests, to their Constitution, to their principles; it is the American people who have got the preferred stock in anything that we may do or project concerning our national polity. We may have some. obligations to others. They are secondary. But we have none which is not perfectly consistent with such amendment to this treaty as will preserve our national character and consummate perfectly the purposes for which the war was begun.

It is said that we can not leave the Filipinos in the hands of Spain. I agree to that. Our obligation is one of equity and is one of honor. But why leave the Filipinos in the hands of Spain? What have we to do with them and what is their relation to us that we should sally forth knightlike, with lance in hand, to do anything for or about them? It is a fact that the Filipinos helped us in our war with Spain. They became our comrades in the line of battle. The blood of the brown people of the Philippine Archipelago and the blood of the paleface from the great Northern