p. 201 | PASSING EVENTS by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 26, 1901

PASSING EVENTS

By Editor

Last week we gave the bare record of the repudiation of the Constitution and every principle of republican government by the Congress of the United States. But it ought not to be supposed that that is all there is to the record; and that it shall not be supposed by any, we now present some more of that important record—important to every human being.

Remember that the legislation that was passed says that—

All military, civil, and judicial powers necessary to govern the Philippine Islands acquired from Spain by the treaties concluded at Paris on the 10th day of December, 1898, and at Washington on the 7th day of November, 1900, shall, until otherwise provided by Congress, be vested in such person and persons, and shall be exercised in such manner, as the President of the United States shall direct for the establishment of civil government and for maintaining and protecting the inhabitants of such islands in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and religion: Provided, That all franchises granted under the authority hereof shall contain a reservation of the right to alter, amend, or repeal the same.

On its face, and in every element of it, this places absolute power, for unlimited time, upon one man, and in such person, or persons, as that one man shall choose, and these persons ten thousand miles away from him; so that it puts absolute power on all questions into the hands of human beings who are ten thousand miles away from even the restraints of the opinion of their fellow men.

It is true that there were attempts made to limit this power, both in itself and in the time of the exercise of it, and that every one of these attempts was promptly voted down. But this was not done without solemn warning of the nature and the consequences of what was being done. One speaker said:—

When this amendment shall have been crystallized into law, and the President shall have executed it by appointing his representatives, I say here now that in all the world you will find no more absolute government than that, and you may search every page of history since letters were known to men, and you will not be able to find a more absolute government than that will be. An absolute government of that character established in the twentieth century by the professed great free government of the United States! It is not a free government, it can not be a free government, when all the power is resolved into one man, though he may have a hundred agents to execute it.

The speaker then cited an address from the Continental Congress in 1774, to Britain, in repudiation of exactly this sort of government, though not quite so absolute, and then continued:—

Those were students of history; they were philosophers in the art of government, and greater truths were never uttered. They were not original with them, however; for that great French writer Montesquieu had said the same thing. These great truths that are necessary to be recognized to maintain freedom and liberty are not the creation of men; they have existed always; they are the emanation of the Deity; they are not human, they are divine, and no nation has ever neglected them or repudiated them that could claim to be called a nation of freemen. To-day we are asked here to put our approval upon a bill that would carry the government of this country back to the Dark Ages.

Mr. President, I will not give it my approval; but it will get the approval of the great American Senate and the American House of Representatives, and I very much fear that the people of this country have so forgotten these great principles of liberty that it may receive the approval also of the country. But, nevertheless, it is our duty to raise our voices against it, and at least give warning to the American people that an outrage of this kind, perpetrated upon ten million men, who may not be citizens of this country, but who are under its jurisdiction, at least, must in the end reflect upon every one of the seventy-six million men who dwell under our flag.

Another said:—

I am more strongly opposed to the Philippine proposition than I am to the Cuban proposition; for I believe the Philippine proposition is absolutely indefensible in every respect. It is indefensible from every point of view; and while it is much less offensive and much less objectionable than it was before the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Hoar] offered his amendment, it is still so absolutely un-American, and it so completely violates every idea of government which I have ever heard of, that I am willing to do anything reasonable to defeat this proposition.

Another said:—

Now, what do we propose to these people in the Philippines? It has been stated here, over and over again in this discussion, and I have no desire to repeat it, or to detain the Senate. It has been repeated here over and over again. There is no proposition here for the benefit of the people of the Philippines. The proposition is for somebody else, always somebody else, and the Constitution is set at naught that somebody else may profit by the sort of government that will prevail under this amendment, or what is called the Spooner bill.

Human nature is the same everywhere. We recollect the example of Croesus in Asia Minor, and we recollect the more recent example of Clive and of Warren Hastings in India. Every colonizing country on earth, or country that has had other nations in subjection, that we know of, if history can tell the truth, shows that it has been the fountain and source of all corruption, and that it destroyed the ancient republics of the world. Greece existed in unmitigated splendor, and she colonized as much as any nation that ever lived, but never in any instance did she attempt to retain rule over her colonies; for she was as careless of them when they left her swarming country as the mother hive is of a swarm of bees that leaves. That was because the Greek was individual. But Rome was not individual. She undertook to extend her dominion over all of her colonies. The result was that corruption overthrew the mighty power of Rome.

Another said:—

You are to send out Mr. —— and Mr. —— and the rest, giving them a power which, in the height of his glory, the American people never would have trusted to George Washington; giving them a power which, as an examination shows, the American people did not for a moment intrust to Thomas Jefferson when Louisiana was purchased, although Louisiana was not a people, but was only a great waste place on the face of the earth, save for a few Indian tribes, and a few French settlements, whose inhabitants were largely proposing to return to France.

This act of yours is to wipe out, if it be adhered to, the last hope that the example of the United States hereafter is to continue to work out its great result in the ideas and aspirations of the downtrodden people of the rest of the world. Down to this year, or last year, everywhere the world over,—in Russia, in Austria, in the far East, in the islands of the sea, even in this distant archipelago,—every poor man, every downtrodden man, every brave man who had an impulse toward freedom in his heart, had heard, directly or indirectly, of the great liberty-loving people, where all men were equal, and where no government of despotism could be permitted.

You are going to vote, as far as you can, in about ten minutes, to wipe all that out now. You may talk about benevolent assimilation, or giving good government, or use all the other fine phrases that your ingenuity can invent, but your act is pure, simple, undiluted, unchecked despotism.

“In vain you call old notions fudge, And match your morals to your feeling; The Ten Commandments will not budge, And stealing will continue stealing.”

Mr. President, I do not know how others may feel. But this is the faith in which I was born, in which I was bred, which came to me from my ancestors in every drop of my blood. It is the faith in which I hope to die, and it is the faith for which I am willing to die. Whatever it may be called,—it may be called Quixotism, it may be called extravagance, it may be called enthusiasm, it may be called illusion,—whatever it is, it is the inmost purpose and faith of my soul.

As the greatest intellect that ever lived on the soil of New England, perhaps the greatest that ever lived on American soil,—a mighty genius to which that of Dante alone can be compared,—said in the dark time of his life, so say I now:—

“If such things are enthusiasm and the results of a distempered brain, let my brain be evermore possessed of that happy distemper. If this be distraction, I pray God that the world of mankind may all be seized with this benign, beneficial, beautiful, glorious distraction.”

In supporting the amendment that was offered, beginning: “All persons shall be bailable,” etc., another said:—

Mr. President, I think, after the statement made on this floor of the cruel torture that has been practiced upon these people by the soldiers of the United States and by the natives employed, the Macabebes, that it is very pertinent and proper that this amendment should be adopted; and if those people are to have no protection of the United States laws, and are to be absolutely under the power of the autocratic and absolute government that is to be established in violation of every principle of a free government, this amendment ought to be adopted.

After this amendment had been rejected, then the same speaker said:—

We are about to enact a law that is so contrary to anything that has ever taken place in American history that, even if it is late, I propose to read what the fathers of the republic said at an early day when they were contending with British power. To say it now I have no doubt is treason, but it was patriotism and good law then. On the 14th day of October, 1774, the congress of the colonies passed this resolution with some others, and I want to call the attention of the Senate to it. I want to know whether the Senate does not believe, when it is read, that either that was heresy then or this is heresy now.

“Resolved, It is indispensably necessary to good government, and rendered essential by the English constitution, that the constituent branches of the legislature be independent of each other; that, therefore, the exercise of legislative power in several colonies, by a council appointed during pleasure by the Crown, is unconstitutional, dangerous, and destructive to the freedom of American legislation.

“All and each of which the aforesaid deputies, in behalf of themselves and their constituents, do claim, demand, and insist on as their indubitable rights and liberties, which can not be legally taken from them, altered, or abridged, by any power whatever, without their own consent, by their representatives in their several provincial legislatures.”

Mr. President, if the Crown of Great Britain can not establish an absolute government, the government of the United States can not do so; but that is what you are doing to-night.

Again, in their address to the people of Great Britain, on the 21st day of the same month, that Congress said:—

“That we hold it essential to English liberty that no man be condemned unheard, or punished for supposed offenses without having an opportunity of making his defense.

“That we think the legislature of Great Britain is not authorized by the constitution to establish a religion fraught with sanguinary and impious tenets, or to erect an arbitrary form of government in any quarter of the globe. These rights we as well as you deem sacred, and yet, sacred as they are, they have, with many others, been repeatedly and flagrantly violated.”

They are to be flagrantly violated by the authority of the Congress of the United States. . . .

Mr. President, it is not a question of Filipinos alone; it is a question of American citizenship. I read here the other day of an outrage that has called forth no protest from any official of this government,—an outrage to an American citizen, a soldier, who had gone there to fight the battles of his country, and was there discharged; who wrote an inoffensive article in a public paper, an article that I read, and I challenge any man now here to assert that there was either treason or menace or defiance or anything of the character in it.

I said then, and I repeat it now, that that rule applied would put every editor in the United States in jail; and yet that man was taken away from his business without a trial, without a hearing, except before a military officer, because he had assailed, not in violence, not slanderously either, the collector of the port, a man who appears to have been a pet of the government, a man who was court-martialed for conduct unbecoming a gentleman and an officer in

the Navy, a man against whom the secretary of the Navy, Mr. Hunt, passed the severest condemnation.

We have more than once called attention to the fact to which in these speeches attention is also called: that this legislation throws back the principles and the form of the government of the United States, not merely to those of Britain, but beyond those of Britain, to those of Rome alone.

In 1825 there was absolute power in the hands of Englishmen, in the British West Indian possessions which had fallen to Britain from Spain. Thus these English inhabitants had succeeded to the Spanish absolutism. Macaulay wrote on the subject. It is true that, there, slavery was involved in the absolutism; but the principles laid down by Macaulay are universal, and without exception. There the law did really impose some restraints; but in THIS legislation of the United States with regard to the Philippines there is no restraint whatever. Then says Macaulay:—

We are required to believe that the place of all other checks will be fully supplied by the general sense of those who participate in his power and his temptations. This may be reason at Kingston; but will it pass at Westminster? We are not inveighing against the white inhabitants of the West Indies. We do not say that they are naturally more cruel or more sensual than ourselves. But we say that they are men; and they desire to be considered as angels!—we say as angels, for to no human being, however generous and beneficent, to no philanthropist, to no fathers of the Church, could powers like theirs be safely intrusted. Such authority a parent ought not to have over his children.

They ask, very complacently, “Are we men of a different species from yourselves? We come among you; we mingle with you in all your kinds of business and pleasure; we buy and sell with you on ’Change in the morning; we dance with your daughters in the evening. Are not our manners civil? Are not our dinners good? Are we not kind friends, fair dealers, generous benefactors? Are not our names in the subscription lists of all your charities? And can you believe that we are such monsters as the saints represent us to be? Can you imagine that, by merely crossing the Atlantic, we acquire a new nature?” We reply, You are not men of a different species from ourselves; and, therefore, we will not give you powers with which we would not dare to trust ourselves. We know that your passions are like ours. We know that your restraints are fewer; and, therefore, we know that your crimes must be greater.

Are despotic sovereigns men of harder hearts by nature than their subjects? Are they born with a hereditary thirst for blood—with a natural incapacity for friendship?—Surely not. Yet what is their general character?—False, cruel, licentious, ungrateful. Many of them have performed single acts of splendid generosity and heroism; a few may be named whose general administration has been salutary; but scarcely one has passed through life without committing at least some one atrocious act, from the guilt and infamy of which restricting laws would have saved him and his victims. If Henry VIII had been a private man, he might have torn his wife’s ruff and kicked her lapdog. He was a king, and he cut off her head—not that his passions were more brutal than those of many other men, but that they were less restrained. How many of the West Indian overseers can boast of the piety and magnanimity of Theodosius? Yet, in a single moment of anger, that amiable prince destroyed more innocent people than all the ruffians in Europe stab in fifty years. . . .

Nothing is so capricious and inconsistent as the compassion of men. The Romans were people of the same flesh and blood with ourselves: they loved their friends; they cried at tragedies; they gave money to beggars;—yet we know their fondness for gladiatorial shows. When, by order of Pompey, some elephants were tortured in the amphitheater, the audience was so shocked at the yells and contortions by which the poor creatures expressed their agony, that they burst forth into execrations against their favorite general. The same people, in the same place, had probably often given the fatal twirl of the thumb which condemned some gallant barbarian to receive the sword. In our own time, many a man shoots partridges in such numbers that he is compelled to bury them, who would chastise his son for amusing himself with the equally interesting, and not more cruel, diversion of catching flies and tearing them to pieces. The drover goads oxen; the fishmonger crimps cod; the dragoon sabers a Frenchman; the Spanish Inquisition burns a Jew; the Irish gentleman torments a Catholic. These persons are not necessarily destitute of feeling. Each of them would shrink from any cruel employment except that to which his station has familiarized him.

This absolutism of government in the islands will inevitably react on the government at home. And thus the image of Rome continues to grow.