If the question were, whether I am myself right, or whether
my friends and companions in the Republican Party be right,
I should submit to their better judgment. But I feel quite
confident, though of that no man can be certain, that if the
judgment of the American people, even in this generation,
could be taken on that question alone, I should find myself
in the majority. If it be not so, the issue is between the
opinion of the American people for more than a century, and
the opinion that the American people has expressed for one
or two Presidential terms.
Surely I do not need to argue the question; at any rate, I
will not here undertake to argue the question, that our dealing
with the Philippine people is a violation of the principles
to which our people adhered from 1776 to 1893. If the maintenance
of slavery were inconsistent with them, it was admitted that
in that particular we were violating them, or were unable
from circumstances to carry them into effect. Mr. Jefferson
thought so himself.
But the accomplishment by this Republic of its purpose to
subjugate the Philippine people to its will, under the claim
that it, and not they, had the right to judge of their fitness
for self-government, is a rejection of the old American doctrine
as applicable to any race we may judge to be our inferior.
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