ment would not dare to educate the Filipinos, lest they learn to read the Declaration of Independence! His argument, if intended to appeal to the intelligence of the American people, was a singular reflection upon their morality. It was based upon a strong distrust of the purpose and ability of the American Government to exercise the same humanitarian principles toward the Filipinos that had already been shown to such a remarkable extent toward the Cubans. It was based upon the assumption that the people of the Philippine Islands were precisely the same in intellect, education, and the antecedents of self-government as were the colonists of America, though nothing could be farther from the truth. It assumed, also, that the population of the Philippines were a united people, crying with a single voice for independence, whereas the Tagalogs, to whom he would have given the entire government of the archipelago, were only one of many tribes, variously estimated at from twenty-five to eighty. To have handed them the sovereignty would have been to establish a bad government, without the consent of the governed, over all the other peoples of the islands, and to set up a reign of anarchy that would have plunged the people into more misery than the Spanish oppression which they had just escaped.

The ringing tones of McKinley's Speech of Ac

ceptance and the calm, dispassionate logic of his formal Letter which followed, exposed the fallacies of his opponents and the shamefulness of their sinister expressions of distrust. The courage, the sincerity, and the common sense of both Speech and Letter made an irresistible appeal to the intelligence and patriotism of the people. When he declared, in the former, "There must be no scuttle policy," the applause was tremendous and long continued, and was renewed again and again when he said it is "the high purpose of this nation to restore order in the islands and establish a just and generous government, in which the inhabitants shall have the largest participation for which they are capable." The enthusiasm continued to grow with each succeeding sentence "There will be no turning aside, no wavering, no retreat"; "No blow has been struck except for liberty and humanity and none will be"; "We will perform without fear every national and international obligation"; and the climax came when he said, "The Republican Party... broke the shackles of 4,000,000 slaves and made them free and to the party of Lincoln has come another supreme opportunity which it has bravely met in the liberation of 10,000,000 of the human family from the yoke of imperialism."

The following from the diary of Mr. Cortelyou

shows more intimately the trend of the President's mind. He was willing to guarantee self-government when the proper time came, but was wise enough to refrain from making any definite promise about independence:

"Friday, Sept. 7, 1900. This statement in the Letter of Acceptance is likely to cause comment: ‘It is our purpose to establish in the Philippines a government suitable to the wants and conditions of the inhabitants and to prepare them for self-government, and to give them self-government when they are ready for it and as rapidly as they are ready for it.' "This was inserted in the Letter on Wednesday, the 5th. It is most important.

"The President has now on his desk a letter from Senator Hoar bearing upon this matter, saying in effect that if the President would make a statement in his Letter of Acceptance that we would give the Filipinos independence as soon as they were capable of it, such an announcement would absolutely assure Mr. Bryan's defeat. Wednesday afternoon the President dictated a page, based largely on the lines of Senator Hoar's suggestion. These circumstances show the drift of his mind. While the page referred to was not incorporated in the Letter, they furnish significant testimony to what the President feels on this subject."