at peace with the Philippine republic, and our Army and Navy, which is now waging war against our former friends and allies, would have been disbanded. No Army bill for a standing army of 100,000 men would have been pending or necessary, and we could now be getting ready to reduce instead of getting ready to greatly increase the burden of our taxation. But the President changed his original intention. He committed a fatal error. He wrote into that treaty the absolute transfer of Spanish sovereignty over the Philippines to ourselves, and the payment of $20,000,000 out of the United States Treasury as a consideration for the cession.

He sent this treaty to the Senate of the United States for ratification. Then he issued to the people of the Philippines that proclamation in which he informed them that the United States had succeeded to the title of Spain, declared that the government and control of their territory belonged to us, ordered them to pay their taxes to the military government which. he established over them, and blandly made known to them that our mission in their midst was one of "benevolent assimilation." They were further assured by him, as he took their islands without their consent and established government over them against their will, that we came in order that we might confer inestimable advantages and blessings upon them, and that if they accepted our control without remonstrance they would be protected, but that if they failed to do so they would be coerced.

Then sir, turning again to the treaty which he had negotiated, he drove it through the Senate of the United States by the unlimited exercise of all those powers and influences which the great office he holds makes possible.

These facts which I have stated are true; they are

now known to all intelligent men. They can not be successfully denied. What, then, did the Chief Executive mean by telling those who gathered around the banquet board at Boston that up to the ratification of the Paris treaty he had simply held the Philippines as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy without any policy of his own, leaving the whole matter to be determined afterward by the Congress of the United States? Was he foolish enough to believe that his mere statement would be allowed to pass unchallenged? Was he vain enough to imagine that his ipse dixit would conclude the matter, with the damning proof of its falsity so near at hand?

Why did the President change his original intention as to the terms to be incorporated into the treaty? What were the influences that brought the change about? I have heard it stated that the applause of the people who greeted him just about this juncture of public affairs, while he was on his tour in the West, was the reason for it. Was it, then, the condition of public sentiment rather than the right or wrong of the matter which influenced the Presidential mind? Does the Chief Executive regard his great prerogatives to be so supinely representative that he must needs abdicate them at every popular wind that blows? Does he feel that his high office gives him no latitude for the exercise of individual judgment and of independent action? Did he make no allowance for transient ebullitions of public enthusiasm and excitement, overlook his opportunity to save the people from themselves, lose sight of all the sacred traditions of the country, and fear to make his appeal to that ultimate tribunal which has so often in our national history vindicated those who have fearlessly stood for the right in public affairs-the sober, second thought of the great American people?

And is His Excellency quite sure that he properly gauged the condition of the public mind on the subject of Philippine annexation? Is he absolutely certain. that one swallow really makes a whole summer? It would seem so, for in this Home Market address he exultingly declared that the annexation treaty had passed the Senate by over two-thirds majority of that body and was sanctioned by the judgment of ninetenths of his countrymen. How that treaty finally got its two-thirds majority in the Senate-the tremendous pressure necessary to secure it there-where its fate hung doubtful and trembling in the balance until the very latest moment, and was then only saved by the votes of Senators who had most of them spoken against it, no man knows better than William McKinley, the President of the United States. Every Representative upon this floor knows that it is doubtful whether the treaty could secure a two-thirds vote in this House if the test were to be made here to-day.

Judging, then, by the opinion of their Representatives, sir, only two-thirds, and not nine-tenths, of the American people are inclined to ratify this treaty. Adulation has indeed sorely blinded the Chief Executive to the truth if he imagines that even the majority of his countrymen approve of this permanent holding in the Orient. Let him not pin his faith too securely to the sordid interests which clamor so loudly in his hearing, to those who so confidently and recklessly assume to speak for the whole of our mighty population. If he will but quiet the noisy throng which surrounds him long enough to put his ear to the ground and listen he will distinguish the premonitions of a coming storm; he will hear the steady tread, not of the 100,000 men whom he demands for a crusade against liberty, but of a mighty army of free