When I came into political life shortly after 1848, I found this anti-Catholic feeling most intense. The Catholics in Massachusetts were, in general, in a very humble class. The immigration, which had well begun before the great Irish Famine, was increased very much by that terrible calamity. The Irishmen were glad to build our railroads at sixty cents a day, dwelling in wretched shanties, and living on very coarse fare. They had brought with them the habit of drinking whiskey, comparatively harmless in their native climate—though bad enough there— but destructive in New England. So they contributed very largely to the statistics of crime and disorder.

Even then they gave an example—from which all mankind might take a lesson—of many admirable qualities. They had a most pathetic and touching affection for the Old Country. They exhibited an incomparable generosity toward the kindred they had left behind. From their scanty earnings, Edward Everett, a high authority, estimates that there were sent twenty millions of dollars in four years to their parents and kindred.

There was some jealousy on the part of our working people, especially the men and women employed in large manufacturing establishments, lest the Irish, by working at cheaper wages, would drive them out of employment. But the Irishman soon learned to demand all the wages he could get. The accession of the Irish laborer increased largely the productive forces of the State. So there was more wealth created, of which the better educated and shrewder Yankee got the larger share. By the bringing in of a lower class of labor he was elevated to a higher place, but never driven out of work. The prejudice of which I have spoken showed itself in some terrible Protestant riots in New Orleans and in Baltimore, and in the burning of the Catholic Convent at Charlestown.

There was also a strong feeling that the compact body of Catholics, always voting for one political party was a danger to the public security. Of course this feeling manifested itself in the Whig Party, for whose adversary the solid Irish- Catholic vote was cast. As early as 1844, after the defeat of Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster made a suggestion—I do know where it is recorded now, but I was informed of it on good authority at about the time he made it—that there must be some public combination with a view to resist the influence of our foreign element in our politics.

But there was no political movement on any considerable scale until 1854. In that year there was a very dangerous crusade which came very near National success, and which got control of several States.

In the fall of 1857 the Republican Party elected its first Governor. The slavery question was still very prominent, and the people were deeply stirred by the attempt to repeal the Missouri Compromise. So in that year, under the leadership of Nathaniel P. Banks, Gardner, the Know-Nothing Governor, was defeated, and from that time the strength of Know-Nothingism was at an end. I was elected to the Senate in the fall of 1856 as the Republican candidate from the county of Worcester over the Know-Nothing and Democratic candidates.

It is a remarkable fact that of the men known to join the Know-Nothing Party, no man, unless he were exceedingly young and obscure when he did it, ever maintained or regained the public confidence afterward, with the exception of Henry Wilson, Anson Burlingame and Nathaniel P. Banks. These men all left it after the first year. Wilson and Burlingame denounced it with all the vigor at their command, and Banks led the forces of the Republican Party to its overthrow.

I ought to say, however, of this movement and of the A. P. A. movement, as it is called, of which I am now to speak, that I do not think the leaders in general shared the bitter and proscriptive feeling to which they appealed. The secret organization, founded on religious prejudice, or on race prejudice, is a good instrument to advance the political fortunes of men who could not gain advancement in an established political organization. So a great many men are active and busy in such organizations, who would be equally active and busy in movements founded on precisely the opposite doctrines, if they could as well find their advancement in them. Yet, as I have said, the prejudice which lay at the bottom of this movement was very powerful, very sincere, and not unnatural.

Secret societies were formed all over the country. It seemed not unlikely that the surprise of 1854 would be repeated, and that the great Republican party, which had done so much for civil liberty, would either be broken to pieces or would be brought to take an attitude totally inconsistent with religious liberty.

The organization, calling itself the American Protective Association, but known popularly as the A. P. A., had its branches all over the North. Its members met in secret, selected their candidates in secret—generally excluding all men who were not known to sympathize with them—and then attended the Republican caucuses to support candidates in whose selection members of that political party who were not in their secret councils had no share. Ambitious candidates for office did not like to encounter such a powerful enmity. They in many cases temporized or coquetted with the A. P. A. if they did not profess to approve its doctrine. So far as I know, no prominent Republican in any part of the country put himself publicly on record as attacking this vicious brotherhood. Many men who did not agree with it were, doubtless, so strong in the public esteem that they were not attacked.

That was the condition of things when, in the early summer of 1895, I delivered an address at the opening of the Summer School of Clark University in which I spoke briefly, but in very strong terms, in condemnation of the secrecy and of the proscriptive principles of this political organization. I declared: "I have no patience or tolerance with the spirit which would excite religious strife. It is as much out of place as the witchcraft delusion or the fires of Smithfield." I added: "This Nation is a composite. It is made up of many streams, of the twisting and winding of many bands. The quality, hope and destiny of our land is expressed in the phrase of our Fathers, 'E Pluribus Unum'—of many, one—of many States, one Nation—of many races, one people—of many creeds, one faith—of many bended knees, one family of God." A little later I went with the Massachusetts Club, of which I was a member, to an outing at Newport. There, briefly but still more emphatically, I called upon the people not to revive the bitter memories of ancient, social and religious strife.

These two speeches excited the indignation of the leaders of this organization. A gentleman named Evans, I believe born in England, took up the cudgels. He was supported by many worthy clergymen and a good many newspapers which had been established to support the doctrine of the A. P. A. organization. Mr. Evans, if I am right in my memory, claimed that he was not a member of the organization. But he stood up for it stanchly in two letters to me, in which he very severely denounced what I had said, and pointed out the wicked behavior of some Catholic priests to whom he referred. He said he had looked up to me as he formerly did to Charles Sumner and William H. Seward; that my course would tend as absolutely to the breaking up of the Republican Party as Daniel Webster's speech did to the breaking up of the old Whig Party, and that I had rung my own death knell; that the one mistake Wesley made when he called slavery "the sum of all villainies" was that he did not except the Roman Catholic Church. He added that there were at least three million members of these patriotic orders, constituting at least three fifths of the Republican Party, and that their membership was being added to daily. Mr. Evans also said, what was absolutely without foundation, that I had said, "We need a Father Confessor."

That gave me my opportunity. I answered with the following letter in which I stated my own doctrine as vigorously and clearly as I knew how.

WORCESTER, Aug. 5, 1895. T. C. EVANS, ESQ.:

My Dear Sir—One of the great evils, though by no means the greatest evil of secret political societies, is that foolish and extravagant statements about men who don't agree with them get circulated without opportunity for contradiction or explanation. You seem to be a well-meaning and intelligent man; yet I am amazed that any well-meaning and intelligent man should believe such stuff as you repeat in your letter of August 3. I never said, thought or dreamed what you impute to me. I don't believe there ever was any report in the Worcester Telegram to that effect. Certainly there is none in the report of what I said in the summer school at Clark University the morning after, and there is no such statement in any of the other Worcester newspapers. I never anywhere expressed the idea that there should be a confessional or that there was any need of a Father Confessor, or that I wanted to see something in our Protestant churches like the Father Confessor in the Catholic. The whole thing is a miserable lie and invention made out of whole cloth. The language, which you quote, about an attempt to recall on one side, "the cruelties of the Catholic Church and frighten our women and children with horrid hobgoblins," is not my language. That does appear in the Telegram. But it is the reporter's statement of what he understood my idea to be in his own language. What I said was: "We are confronted with a public danger which comes from an attempt to rouse the old feelings of the dark ages, and which ought to have ended with them, between men who have different forms of faith. It is an attempt to recall on one side the cruelties of the Catholic Church and to frighten old women of both sexes, and, on the other side, to band the men of the Catholic Church together for political action. Both these attempts will fail."

There is no more zealous believer in the principles of the New England Puritans, and no more zealous advocate of them, than I am. There is not a man in Massachusetts who has more at heart the welfare and perpetuity of our system of free common schools than I have. I was the first person, so far as I know, who called public attention to the fact that they were in danger, in any formal way. I drew and had put in the platform of the Republican State Convention the following resolution: "The Republican Party ever has maintained and ever will maintain and defend, the common schools of Massachusetts as the very citadel of happiness. They shall be kept open to all the children and free from all partisan and sectarian control."

This doctrine I stand by. And I stand by the further doctrine, as I stated at length in my address at Clark University, that the whole resources of the Commonwealth are pledged to their support, and that that is the bottom mortgage on every dollar of our property, and that no person can escape or be allowed to escape that responsibility. The difference between you and me is a difference of method. I want to get the 700,000 Catholics in Massachusetts on our side. I want them to send their children to the public schools, to pay their share of the cost, and when their young men and women are suitable, are intelligent, liberal persons, attached to the school system, I want some of them to be employed as teachers. I don't wish to exclude them from my political support when they are Republicans and agree with me in other matters, because of their religious faith. Nor do I wish to exclude them from being public school teachers, if they will keep their particular religious tenets out of their instruction, because of their religious faith, any more than I would have excluded Phil Sheridan from his office in the army, or would have refused to support him for any public office, if he had been nominated for it. Further, I want to state and advocate my opinions in the face of day, and you may be sure that I shall do this without flinching before anybody's threats or anybody's displeasure or indignation. You, on the other hand, I understand, want to go into a cellar to declare your principles. You want to join an association whose members are ashamed to confess they belong to it; many of whom, without apparently forfeiting the respect of their fellows, lie about their membership in it when they are asked about it. You want to mass together the whole Catholic population of Massachusetts to the support of their extreme and wrong- headed priests, if any such can be found.

The difference between us is a difference of methods in accomplishing the same result. I think your method would overthrow the common school system, would overthrow the Republican Party, and would end by massing together all the Catholic voters, as proscription always does mass men together, to increase and strengthen that political power which you profess so much to dread.

When O'Neill, the young Catholic soldier of Worcester, lay dying, he said: "Write to my dear mother and tell her I die for my country. I wish I had two lives to give. Let the Union flag be wrapped around me and a fold of it laid under my head." I feel proud that God gave me such a man to be my countryman and townsman. I have very little respect for the Americanism that is not moved and stirred by such a story. If O'Neill had left a daughter who had her father's spirit, I would be willing to trust my child or grandchild to her instruction in secular education in the public school, even if the father had kissed with his last breath the cross on which the Saviour died, or even if the parting soul had received comfort from the lips of Thomas Conaty or John Power or John Ireland or Archbishop Williams.

When John Boyle O'Reilly, the Catholic poet, sang the praises of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, in that noblest of odes, when he quoted in his preface from William Bradford and John Robinson and Robert Cushman, I was glad to hear what he said, especially when he quoted from the lips of the clergyman Robinson: "I charge you before God that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ. If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry, for I am verily persuaded, I am very confident, the Lord hath more truths yet to break forth out of His Holy Word." I liked what he said. If I understand your former letter correctly, you didn't. That is where we differ. When John Boyle O'Reilly said, declaring the very spirit of New England Puritanism, and speaking of religious faith, "the one sacred revolution is change of mind," when he spoke these noble lines:

So held they firm, the Fathers aye to be, From Home to Holland, Holland to the sea— Pilgrims for manhood, in their little ship, Hope in each heart, and prayer on every lip. Apart from all—unique, unworldly, true, Selected grain to sow the earth anew; A winnowed part—a saving remnant they; Dreamers who work; adventurers who pray! We know them by the exile that was theirs; Their justice, faith and fortitude attest.

When he further said:

On the wintry main God flings their lives as farmers scatter grain, His breath propels the winged seed afloat; His tempests swerve to spare the fragile boat; Here on this rock and on this sterile soil, Began the kingdom, not of kings, but men; Began the making of the world again, Their primal code of liberty, their rules Of civil right; their churches, courts and schools; Their freedom's very secret here laid down— The spring of government is the little town! On their strong lines, we base our social health— The man—the home—the town—the Commonwealth; Their saintly Robinson was left behind To teach by gentle memory; to shame The bigot spirit and the word of flame; To write dear mercy in the Pilgrim's law; To lead to that wide faith his soul foresaw—

I liked what he said. If I understand your former letter, you didn't. You don't want a man who differs from you saying or thinking such things. I want the whole 700,000 Catholics of Massachusetts to believe what John Boyle O'Reilly believed, and to love and reverence the Puritan founders of Massachusetts as he did, and I think my way is the way to make them do it. You don't, if I understand you. You think the way to make good citizens and good men of them and to attract them to Protestantism, is to exclude them, their sons and daughters, from all public employment and to go yourself into a dark cellar and curse at them through the gratings of the windows.

I stated my religious faith and my ideas of the relation of our religious denominations to each other, in an address I delivered at Saratoga last year, of which I send you a copy, and which I hope, as you have kindly volunteered to send me so much of your opinion, you may perhaps be willing to read. It doesn't become me to say anything about it myself. I am deeply sensible of its imperfections. It fails to do justice to what is in my own heart. But perhaps I may be permitted to say that within a few weeks after it was delivered, an eminent Catholic clergyman sent me a message expressing his delight in it. The most famous Episcopalian Bishop in the country said to a friend of mine that he had read it with great pleasure and that it sounded to him like the old times. A Baptist minister, bearing one of the most distinguished names in the country, wrote me a letter, in which he said, as he read it, "At every sentence, I said to myself, Amen, Amen." An eminent Orthodox minister, Doctor of Divinity, read it aloud to his parish, in full, instead of his Sunday's sermon. And a very excellent and able Methodist minister wrote to me and said, "If that is Unitarianism, I am afraid I am a Unitarian." I think the time has come to throw down the walls between Christians and not to build new ones. I think the time has come to inculcate harmony and good will between all American citizens, especially between all citizens of the old Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

You quote some expressions which you attribute to Catholic clergymen. If you don't get any nearer right in quoting them than you do in quoting me, I don't believe that they ever said any such thing. If they have, they never will persuade any considerable number of Catholic laity in this country, in this nineteenth century, to follow them. You may perhaps induce the Catholic young men and women of Massachusetts to believe there is something in what those clergymen say. They never will succeed in doing it themselves.

I don't think you will succeed in getting any considerable number of the people of this country, who are able to read and write, or to count ten on their fingers, to believe that, as I am entering my seventieth year, I am actuated by any personal ambition, in the counsel which I give my fellow citizens. I don't think you will get them to believe that, if I were so actuated, I should begin by saying anything which would estrange a considerable number of the Protestant Republican citizens of Massachusetts. I don't think you will convince them that I am indifferent to the good will of so large a portion of the American people as are said to be enlisted in the ranks of the secret society to which you refer. If you know as little of your Catholic fellow citizens as you know of me, you have a good deal as yet to learn of the subject of which you are speaking.

On the other hand, you may be quite sure I should be unwilling to do injustice to any of my fellow citizens. They will hardly need be assured that I would not lightly or unnecessarily incur their disapprobation. But you may perhaps think it pardonable that I should not be thoroughly informed as to the principles, motives or conduct of a secret society. As you have undertaken the duty of giving me information, will you kindly answer for me the following questions:

1st. Is the organization to which you refer a secret organization? Are its discussions in the face of day? Do the persons whose political errors they especially oppose have an opportunity to know their purposes and to be convinced by their arguments? If the organization be in any respect secret, why is it deemed necessary to maintain such secrecy in the United States of America and at the close of the nineteenth century?

2d. Is it the custom of many persons who belong to it to deny, when inquired of, that they are members of such an association? And if this be true, does such a falsehood cost them the respect and friendship of their associates or diminish their influence in the order?

3d. Do members of the association, after joining it, retain their membership in other political parties? Do they agree together upon candidates for office or delegates to conventions to nominate officers and then go into their party caucuses to support such delegates agreed upon in secret, without consultation with their political brethren? If that be true, does it seem to you that that course is honest?

4th. Do you understand that any considerable number of Catholic laymen, in this country, accept the interpretation which you put upon the fifteen articles which you quote as principles of the Roman Catholic Church? Is it not true that the interpretation is absolutely rejected by the Catholic laity in general, and that they affirm for themselves as absolute independence of the Pope or of the clergy in all secular matters as you or I claim for ourselves in regard to Protestant clergymen?

5th. Are not Italy and France, two Catholic countries, to- day as absolutely free from any temporal power or influence of the Pope or the Catholic clergy as is Massachusetts?

6th. I have had sent me a little leaflet, purporting to be the principles of the American Protective Association, which you doubtless have seen. When you say, in your third article, that the American Protective Association is "opposed to the holding of offices in the National, State or municipal Government, by any subject or supporter of such ecclesiastical power," and in your fifth article, that you "protest against the employment of the subjects of any un-American ecclesiastical power as officers or teachers of our public schools," do you mean, or no, that no Catholic shall hold such National or State or municipal office, and that no Catholic shall be a teacher in a public school? You don't answer this question by quoting the language of church officials in by-gone days or the intemperate language of some priests in recent times. It is a practical question. Do you or don't you mean to exclude from such office and from such employment as teachers the bulk of the Catholic population of Massachusetts?

7th. Is it you opinion that General Philip H. Sheridan, were he living, would be unfit to hold civil or military office in this country? Or that his daughter, if she entertained the religious belief of her father, should be disqualified from being a teacher in a public school?

I have no pride of opinion. I shall be very glad to revise any opinion of mine and, as you state it, I shall be very glad to "know better in the future," if you will kindly enlighten me.

You and I, as I have said, have the same object at heart. We desire, above all things, the maintenance of the principles of civil and religious liberty; and above all other instrumentalities to that end, the maintenance of our common school system, at the public charge, open to all the children and free from partisan or sectarian control. If you and I differ, it is only as to what is the best means of accomplishing these ends. If you think that they are best accomplished by secret societies, by hiding from the face of day, by men who will not acknowledge what they are doing, and by refusing public employment to men and women who think on these subjects exactly as we do, but whose religious faith differs from ours, then I don't agree with you. I think your method will result in driving and compacting together, in solid mass, persons who will soon number nearly or quite fifty per cent. of the voting population of Massachusetts. Nothing strengthens men, nothing makes them so hard to hear reason, nothing so drives them to extremity in opinion or in action as persecution or proscription.

On the other hand, my method is the method of absolute freedom and of pure reason. The Catholic boy, who has grown up in our common schools, who had formed his youthful friendships with his Protestant classmates, whose daughter or sister, as he grows older, is employed as a teacher, will very soon be attached to our common school system as we are ourselves. He will be required, as he gets property, to pay his share of his support. He cannot ask to be exempt from a tax to which all Protestants cheerfully submit, whether their own children be in the schools or not, and he will not easily be made to give his consent to paying twice. The American Spirit, the Spirit of the age, the Spirit of Liberty, the Spirit of Equality, especially what Roger Williams called "Soul Liberty" is able to maintain herself in a fair field and in a free contest against all comers. Do not compel her to fight in a cellar. Do not compel her to breathe the damp, malarial atmosphere of dark places. Especially let no member of the Republican Party, the last child of freedom, lend his aid to such an effort. The atmosphere of the Republic is the air of the mountain top and the sunlight and the open field. Her emblem is the eagle and not the bat.

I am faithfully yours, GEORGE F. HOAR.

After the publication of the foregoing letter, I received one from Theodore Roosevelt, who was holding a high office in New York City, then at the beginning of his illustrious political career. He expressed his hearty sympathy and approval, and offered to lay aside everything else and come to my aid, if I so desired. I need not say I took special pleasure in this letter, which disclosed so unmistakably the honest and brave heart of the man, who was then in his difficult office fighting wild beasts at Ephesus. But I did not need to accept his offer.

I was angrily denounced. But the leading Republican papers soon came to my support. The Republican political leaders generally, though quietly, approved what I had said and done. The generous and just heart of the American people was stirred, and the result was that the movement, inspired by bigotry and intolerance, lost its force, languished for a year or two, and was little heard of afterward.

I dare say that the same causes which excited it may provoke a similar movement more than once hereafter. But I believe it will fail as that failed.

I know how prone men are, especially old men, in telling the story of their lives, to over-estimate the value and the consequence of the things in which they have taken a part. But I think I am not extravagant in claiming that the overthrow of this dangerous delusion was of great value not only to the Republican Party, but to the cause of religious liberty in this country, and that the success of the A. P. A. would have been the destruction of both.

CHAPTER XXX THE ENGLISH MISSION

I may as well put on record here a matter which I suppose has never been made public. When in President Hayes's time Mr. Welsh resigned the English Mission, Mr. Lowell, then in Spain, was strongly recommended for the place. Mr. Evarts, Secretary of State, was quite unwilling to have Mr. Lowell appointed. I fancied that Mr. Evarts might have been influenced somewhat by his reluctance to appoint a Harvard man. He was an exceedingly pleasant-natured man, with no bitterness in him. But he entered with a good deal of zeal into the not unhealthy rivalry between the two famous Universities, Harvard and Yale. Of course I did not like that notion. President Hayes had an exceedingly friendly feeling for Harvard. He had studied at the Harvard Law School, and later had the degree of Doctor of Laws there. Mr. Lowell hesitated about accepting the duty. I said to the President: "In the matter of the English Mission, if Mr. Lowell declines, I have a suggestion to make which Mr. Evarts, I am afraid, won't like very well. But I wish to ask you to consider it, Evarts or no Evarts." My relations with both of them made this familiar and half- boyish style of dealing with so important a matter not unbecoming. "I think President Eliot would be an excellent person for such a service. It is understood that he is somewhat out of health. I think if he should go to England for a year or two, and take a vacation from his duties at the College, it would reflect great credit on your Administration and on the country, and he would return to his duties at Harvard with renewed health and added reputation and capacity for usefulness." Mr. Hayes did not quite commit himself. But he expressed his very emphatic approval of the idea, and said he guessed it might be brought to pass. But I had, at his request, sent a cable to Mr. Lowell who was then in Spain, urging him to take the place. He was then hesitating, but finally, as is well known, consented.

I was on the friendliest terms with President Hayes. As I have already said he was good enough to offer me the office of Attorney-General, when the appointment of Devens to the Circuit Court was under consideration.

I had already, before that time, received from Mr. Evarts, Secretary of State, the offer of the English Mission, as I have said in another place, when Mr. Welsh resigned.

I may as well state here, although it belongs to a later time, that the offer was made to me again, by President McKinley. I give the correspondence with President McKinley when he made me that offer:

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C. September 13, 1898. HON. GEORGE F. HOAR (Confidential), WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS.

It would give me much satisfaction to appoint you Ambassador to London. Will it be agreeable to you?

WILLIAM MCKINLEY.

September 14, 1898. TO THE PRESIDENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.

I am highly honored by your confidence, for which I am grateful. But I believe I can better serve my country, and better support your Administration by continuing to discharge the legislative duties to which I have been accustomed for thirty years, than by undertaking new responsibilities at my age, now past seventy- two. If it were otherwise, I cannot afford to maintain the scale of living which the social customs of London make almost indispensable to an Ambassador, and I have no right to impose upon my wife, in her present state of health, the burden which would fall upon her. Be assured of my warm personal regard and of my desire to stand by you in the difficult and trying period which is before you.

GEO. F. HOAR

CHAPTER XXXI PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AND THE SYRIAN CHILDREN

A very touching incident, characteristic of the kind heart of President Roosevelt, ought to be put on record in connection with his visit to Worcester.

During the Christmas holidays of 1901 a very well known Syrian, a man of high standing and character, came into my son's office and told him this story:

A neighbor and countryman of his had a few years before emigrated to the United States and established himself in Worcester. Soon afterward, he formally declared his intention of becoming an American citizen. After a while, he amassed a little money and sent to his wife, whom he had left in Syria, the necessary funds to convey her and their little girl and boy to Worcester. She sold her furniture and whatever other belongings she had, and went across Europe to France, where they sailed from one of the northern ports on a German steamer for New York.

Upon their arrival at New York, it appeared that the children had contracted a disease of the eyelids, which the doctors of the Immigration Bureau declared to be trachoma, which is contagious, and in adults incurable. It was ordered that the mother might land, but that the children must be sent back in the ship upon which they arrived, on the following Thursday. This would have resulted in sending them back as paupers, as the steamship company, compelled to take them as passengers free of charge, would have given them only such food as was left by the sailors, and would have dumped them out in France to starve, or get back as beggars to Syria.

The suggestion that the mother might land was only a cruel mockery. Joseph J. George, a worthy citizen of Worcester, brought the facts of the case to the attention of my son, who in turn brought them to my attention. My son had meantime advised that a bond be offered to the Immigration authorities to save them harmless from any trouble on account of the children.

I certified these facts to the authorities and received a statement in reply that the law was peremptory, and that it required that the children be sent home; that trouble had come from making like exceptions theretofore; that the Government hospitals were full of similar cases, and the authorities must enforce the law strictly in the future. Thereupon I addressed a telegram to the Immigration Bureau at Washington, but received an answer that nothing could be done for the children.

Then I telegraphed the facts to Senator Lodge, who went in person to the Treasury Department, but could get no more favorable reply. Senator Lodge's telegram announcing their refusal was received in Worcester Tuesday evening, and repeated to me in Boston just as I was about to deliver an address before the Catholic College there. It was too late to do anything that night. Early Wednesday morning, the day before the children were to sail, when they were already on the ship, I sent the following dispatch to President Roosevelt:

TO THE PRESIDENT, WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D. C.

I appeal to your clear understanding and kind and brave heart to interpose your authority to prevent an outrage which will dishonor the country and create a foul blot on the American flag. A neighbor of mine in Worcester, Mass., a Syrian by birth, made some time ago his public declaration for citizenship. He is an honest, hard-working and in every way respectable man. His wife with two small children have reached New York.

He sent out the money to pay their passage. The children contracted a disorder of the eyes on the ship. The Treasury authorities say that the mother may land but the children cannot, and they are to be sent back Thursday. Ample bond has been offered and will be furnished to save the Government and everybody from injury or loss. I do not think such a thing ought to happen under your Administration, unless you personally decide that the case is without remedy. I am told the authorities say they have been too easy heretofore, and must draw the line now. That shows they admit the power to make exceptions in proper cases. Surely, an exception should be made in the case of little children of a man lawfully here, and who has duly and in good faith declared his intention to become a citizen. The immigration law was never intended to repeal any part of the naturalization laws which provide that the minor children get all the rights of the father as to citizenship. My son knows the friends of this man personally and that they are highly respectable and well off. If our laws require this cruelty, it is time for a revolution, and you are just the man to head it.

GEORGE F. HOAR.

Half an hour from the receipt of that dispatch at the White House Wednesday forenoon, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, sent a peremptory order to New York to let the children come in. They have entirely recovered from the disorder of the eyes, which turned out not to be contagious, but only caused by the glare of the water, or the hardships of the voyage. The children are fair-haired, with blue eyes, and of great personal beauty, and would be exhibited with pride by any American mother.

When the President came to Worcester he expressed a desire to see the children. They came to meet him at my house, dressed up in their best and glorious to behold. The President was very much interested in them, and said when what he had done was repeated in his presence, that he was just beginning to get angry.

The result of this incident was that I had a good many similar applications for relief in behalf of immigrants coming in with contagious diseases. Some of them were meritorious, and others untrustworthy. In the December session of 1902 I procured the following amendment to be inserted in the immigration law.

"Whenever an alien shall have taken up his permanent residence in this country and shall have filed his preliminary declaration to become a citizen and thereafter shall send for his wife or minor children to join him, if said wife or either of said children shall be found to be affected with any contagious disorder, and it seems that said disorder was contracted on board the ship in which they came, such wife or children shall be held under such regulations as the Secretary of the Treasury shall prescribe until it shall be determined whether the disorder will be easily curable or whether they can be permitted to land without danger to other persons; and they shall not be deported until such facts have been ascertained."

CHAPTER XXXII NATIONAL BANKRUPTCY

I have, since I have been in the Senate, taken great interest in the passage of a bill for a system of National Bankruptcy. The Constitution gives Congress power to establish a uniform system of Bankruptcy. The people of Massachusetts, a commercial and manufacturing State from the beginning, have always desired a Bankrupt law. They were large dealers with other States and with other countries. Insolvent debtors in Massachusetts could not get discharge from their debts contracted in such dealings. The Massachusetts creditors having debts against insolvents in other States found that their debtors under the laws of those States either got preferences or made fraudulent assignments which they could not detect or prevent.

On the other hand, the bankruptcy laws have always been unpopular in many parts of the country. The Democrat who strictly construed the Constitution did not like to see this power of Congress vigorously exercised. The National Courts, who must administer such laws, were always the object of jealousy and suspicion in the South and West. The people did not like to be summoned to attend the settlement of an estate in bankruptcy, hundreds and hundreds of miles, to the place where the United States Court was sitting, in States like Texas or Missouri. The sympathy of many communities is apt to be with the debtor, and not with the creditors, who were represented as harpies or vultures preying on the flesh of their unfortunate victims. A good example of this prejudice will be found in an extract from the speech of Senator Ingalls, of Kansas. He said in defending what was known as the equity scheme:

"The opposition arose first, from the great wholesale merchants in the chief distributing centres of the country. They have their agents and attorneys in the vicinity of every debtor, obtaining early information of approaching disaster, and ready to avail themselves of the local machinery of State courts by attachment or by preferences, through which they can secure full payment of their claims, to the exclusion of less powerful or less vigilant but equally meritorious creditors. Naturally they want no Bankrupt law of any description.

"Second. From the disabled veterans of the old army registers; from the professional assignees and wreckers of estates, who, by exorbitant fees and collusive sales of assets to convenient favorites, plundered debtor and creditor alike and made the system an engine of larceny and confiscation.

"Third. From those who desire, instead of a system for the discharge of honest but unfortunate debtors upon the surrender of their estates, a criminal code and a thumb-screw machine for the collection of doubtful and desperate debts. They covet a return to the primitive practices which prevailed in Rome, when the debtor was sold into slavery or had his body cut into pieces and distributed pro rata among his creditors.

"Fourth. From those timid and cautious conservatives who believe that nothing is valuable that is not venerable.

"Like the statesman described by Macaulay, they prefer to perish by precedent rather than be saved by innovation. They adhere to ancient failures rather than incur the risk of success through venture and experiment.

"Fifth. From Boards of Trade, Chambers of Commerce and other ornamental organizations who, being entirely uninformed on the subject, permit themselves to become the conduits through which the misrepresentation and animosity of avaricious creditors and rapacious attorneys are discharged upon Congress and the country."

I had moved in the Senate, in 1882, a bill favored by the merchants and manufacturers of Massachusetts, which was largely the work of Judge John Lowell, of the United States Circuit Court, one of the most accomplished lawyers of his day, as an amendment to a bill which Mr. Edmunds, Mr. Davis and Mr. Ingalls had reported as a Subcommittee to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and which had been reported from that Committee to the Senate.

The Lowell Bill was on my motion substituted for the report of the Judiciary Committee, by a majority of three. This bill was extensively discussed in June and December. But I was unable to secure its passage. It passed the Senate, but it did not get through the House.

I have had the Parliamentary charge of all Bankruptcy measures in the Senate from that time. After the failure of the Lowell Bill, the Boards of Trade and Chambers of Commerce, and other like associations throughout the country, took up the matter very zealously by employing an able lawyer, the Hon. Jay L. Torrey of Missouri, to present the matter in the two Houses of Congress. He was thoroughly acquainted with the principles and history of Bankruptcy laws in this country and England. But he had no compromise in him. He insisted on the Bill which he drew, which was a modification of the Lowell Bill, without being willing to make any concession to objection or difference of opinion in Congress, or out of it. He said he would have a perfect law, or none at all. The measure as he drew it was apparently very austere and harsh to the debtor. It enumerated a large number of offences for which the debtor was to be punished by fine and imprisonment, and by a denial of his discharge. Mr. Torrey's provisions were not very unreasonable. But they made it seem as if the Bill were a penal code for the punishment of fraudulent debtors. A simple provision that any debtor who wilfully should make false answer to any question lawfully put to him by the Court, or who wilfully concealed or attempted to conceal any property from his assignee should lose his discharge and be punished with a proper and moderate punishment, would have answered the whole purpose. I take some blame to myself for not insisting more strenuously upon modifying Mr. Torrey's measure. But he constantly visited different Senators and Representatives and came back to me with glowing accounts of the prospects of the Bill, and of their promises to support the Bill. He was also the agent of the business organizations of the country who had passed resolutions in favor of the measure as he had drawn it. It seemed to me therefore that if I should get the Bill amended and then it got lost, I should incur the great reproach of having obstinately set up my judgment against that of this large number of the ablest men in the country, who were so deeply interested in the matter. So the Bill, though brought up and pressed Congress after Congress, failed until Mr. Torrey enlisted in the Spanish War.

I then introduced a Bill in a softened and modified form. It was attacked in that form by Senator Nelson of Minnesota, a very excellent lawyer and gentleman of great influence, in the Senate. He succeeded in having the Bill modified and softened still more. The Bill then passed and went to the House which, under the leadership of the Judiciary Committee, substituted the original Bill.

Mr. Nelson and I, with Mr. Lindsay of Kentucky, were put on the Conference Committee in the Senate, with Mr. Henderson, afterward Speaker, Mr. Ray of New York, now Judge of the U. S. District Court, and Mr. Terry of Missouri, on the part of the House. We struggled nearly the whole winter. Mr. Nelson and Mr. Ray took the burden of the contest upon their shoulders. Their attempts at compromise reminded their brethren of the old scientific problem—"What will happen when an irresistible force encounters an immovable obstacle." But both gentlemen, each exceedingly firm in his own opinion when he thought he was in the right, were wise and reasonable and conscientious men. So at last they agreed upon the present Bankruptcy Bill, which became a law July 1, 1898. It was on the whole satisfactory to the country, except for one clause in it, which was interpreted by the United States Supreme Court in a manner contrary to the understanding and expectation of the framers of the Bill.

A law was passed February 7, 1903, correcting this and some minor defects. It is hoped, though we cannot be sure in such a matter, that a permanent system of Bankruptcy, so essential to all commercial, indeed to all civilized nations, is now established, and will be maintained in the United States.

CHAPTER XXXIII THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

It has been my singular ill fortune that I have been compelled to differ from the Republican Party, and from a good many of my political associates, upon many important matters.

It has been my singular good fortune that, so far, they have all come to my way of thinking, as have the majority of the American people, in regard to every one, with perhaps one exception. That is the dealing of the American people with the people of the Philippine Islands, by the Treaty with Spain. The war that followed it crushed the Republic that the Philippine people had set up for themselves, deprived them of their independence, and established there, by American power, a Government in which the people have no part, against their will. No man, I think, will seriously question that that action was contrary to the Declaration of Independence, the fundamental principles declared in many State constitutions, the principles avowed by the founders of the Republic and by our statesmen of all parties down to a time long after the death of Lincoln.

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.

This doctrine will be applied hereafter, unless it be abandoned, to the Negro at home. Senator Tillman of South Carolina well said, and no gentleman in the Senate contradicted him: "Republican leaders do not longer dare to call into question the justice or the necessity of limiting Negro suffrage in the South." The same gentleman said at another time: "I want to call your attention to the remarkable change that has come over the spirit of the dream of the Republicans. Your slogans of the past—brotherhood of man and fatherhood of God—have gone glimmering down through the ages. The brotherhood of man exists no longer." These statements of Mr. Tillman have never been challenged, and never can be.

I do not mean here to renew the almost interminable debate. I will only make a very brief statement of my position:

The discussion began with the acquisition of Hawaii. Ever since I came to the Senate I had carefully studied the matter of the acquisition of Hawaii. I had become thoroughly satisfied that it would be a great advantage to the people of the United States, as well as for the people of Hawaii.

Hawaii is 2,100 miles from our Pacific coast. Yet if a line be drawn from the point of our territory nearest Asia to the Southern boundary of California, that line being the chord of which our Pacific coast is the bow, Hawaii will fall this side of it. Held by a great Nation with whom we were at war, it would be a most formidable and valuable base of supplies. We had sustained a peculiar relation to it. American missionaries had redeemed the people from barbarism and Paganism. Many of them, and their descendants, had remained in the Islands. The native Hawaiians were a perishing race. They had gone down from 300,000 to 30,000 within one hundred years.

The Japanese wanted it. The Portugese wanted it. Other nations wanted it. But the Hawaiians seemed neither to know nor care whether they wanted it or no. They were a perishing people. Their only hope and desire and expectation was that in the Providence of God they might lead a quiet, undisturbed life, fishing, bathing, supplied with tropical fruits, and be let alone.

We had always insisted that our relation to them was peculiar; that they could not be permitted to fall under the dominion of another power, even by their own consent. That had been declared by our Department of State under Administrations of all parties, including Mr. Webster, Mr. Seward, and Mr. Bayard. They were utterly helpless. As their Queen has lately declared: "The best thing for them that could have happened was to belong to the United States."

By the Constitution of Hawaii, the Government had been authorized to make a treaty of annexation with this country. It was said that that Constitution was the result of usurpation which would not have come to pass but for American aid, and the presence of one of our men-of-war. But that Government had been maintained for six or seven years. Four of them were while Mr. Cleveland was President, who it was well known would be in full sympathy with an attempt to restore the old Government. So if the people had been against it, the Government under that Constitution could not have lasted an hour.

President Harrison had negotiated a treaty of annexation, against which no considerable remonstrance or opposition was uttered. My approval of it was then, I suppose, well known. Certainly no friend of mine, and nobody in Massachusetts, so far as I know, in the least objected or remonstrated against it. The treaty was withdrawn from the consideration of the Senate by President Cleveland.

Another was negotiated soon after President McKinley came in. Meantime, however, the controversy with Spain had assumed formidable proportions, and the craze for an extension of our Empire had begun its course. Many Republican leaders were advocating the acquisition of the Hawaiian Islands, not for the reasons I have just stated, but on the avowed ground that it was necessary we should own them as a point of vantage for acquiring dominion in the East. It was said that China was about to be divided among the great Western powers, and that we must have our share. I saw when the time approached for action of the McKinley Treaty that the question could not be separated, at least in debate, from the question of entering upon a career of conquest of Empire in the Far East.

Under these circumstances the question of duty came to me: Will you adhere to the purpose long formed, and vote for the acquisition of Hawaii solely on its own merit? Or, will you vote against it, for fear that the bad and mischievous reasons that are given for it is so many quarters, will have a pernicious tendency only to be counteracted by the defeat of the treaty itself?

I hesitated long. President McKinley sent for me to come to the White House, as was his not infrequent habit. He said he wanted to consult me upon the question whether it would be wise for him to have a personal interview with Senator Morrill of Vermont. He had been told that Mr. Morrill was opposed to the Treaty. The President said: "I do not quite like to try to influence the action of an old gentleman like Mr. Morrill, so excellent, and of such great experience. It seems to me that it might be thought presumptuous, if I were to do so. But it is very important to us to have his vote, if we can." The President added something implying that he understood that I was in favor of the Treaty.

I said, "I ought to say, Mr. President, in all candor, that I feel very doubtful whether I can support it myself." President McKinley said: "Well, I don't know what I shall do. We cannot let those Islands go to Japan. Japan has her eye on them. Her people are crowding in there. I am satisfied they do not go there voluntarily, as ordinary immigrants, but that Japan is pressing them in there, in order to get possession before anybody can interfere. If something be not done, there will be before long another Revolution, and Japan will get control. Some little time ago the Hawaiian Government observed that when the immigrants from a large steamer went ashore they marched with a military step, indicating that they were a body of trained soldiers. Thereupon Hawaii prohibited the further coming in of Japanese. Japan claimed that was in violation of their treaty, and sent a ship of war to Hawaii. I was obliged to notify Japan that no compulsory measures upon Hawaii, in behalf of the Japan Government, would be tolerated by this country. So she desisted. But the matters are still in a very dangerous position, and Japan is doubtless awaiting her opportunity."

I told President McKinley that I favored then, as I always had, the acquisition of Hawaii. But I did not like the spirit with which it was being advocated both in the Senate and out of it. I instanced several very distinguished gentlemen indeed, one a man of very high authority in the Senate in matters relating to foreign affairs, who were urging publicly and privately the Hawaiian Treaty on the ground that we must have Hawaii in order to help us get our share of China. President McKinley disclaimed any such purpose. He expressed his earnest and emphatic dissent from the opinions imputed to several leading Republicans, whom he named.

I never, at any time during the discussion of the Philippine question, expressed a more emphatic disapproval of the acquisition of dependencies or Oriental Empire by military strength, than he expressed on that occasion. I am justified in putting this on record, not only because I am confirmed by several gentlemen in public life, who had interviews with him, but because he made in substance the same declaration in public.

He declared, speaking of this very matter of acquiring sovereignty over Spanish territory by conquest:

"Forcible annexation, according to our American code of morals, would be criminal aggression."

He said at another time:

"Human rights and constitutional privileges must not be forgotten in the race for wealth and commercial supremacy. The Government of the people must be by the people and not by a few of the people. It must rest upon the free consent of the governed and all of the governed. Power, it must be remembered, which is secured by oppression or usurpation or by any form of injustice is soon dethroned. We have no right in law or morals to usurp that which belongs to another, whether it is property or power."

I suppose he was then speaking of our duty as to any people whom we might liberate from Spain, as the results of the Spanish War. He unquestionably meant that we had no right, in law or morals, to usurp the right of self-government which belonged to the Cubans, or to the Philippine people.

Yet I have no doubt whatever that in the attitude that he took later he was actuated by a serious and lofty purpose to do right. I think he was led on from one step to another by what he deemed the necessity of the present occasion. I dare say that he was influenced, as any other man who was not more than human would have been influenced, by the apparently earnest desire of the American people, as he understood it, as it was conveyed to him on his Western journey. But I believe every step he took he thought necessary at the time. I further believe, although I may not be able to convince other men, and no man will know until the secret history of that time shall be made known, that if he had lived, before his Administration was over, he would have placed the Republic again on the principles from which it seems to me we departed—the great doctrine of Jefferson, the great doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, that there can be no just Government by one people over another without its consent, and that the International law declared by the Republic is that all Governments must depend for their just powers upon the consent of the governed. This was insisted on by our Fathers as the doctrine of International law, to be acted upon by the infant Republic for itself. In this I am confirmed by the testimony of Mr. Secretary Long, who was in President McKinley's most intimate counsels.

The Treaty negotiated by President McKinley with Hawaii was not acted upon. It was concluded to substitute a joint resolution, for which there was a precedent in the case of the acquisition of Texas. I voted for the joint resolution, as did Senator Hale of Maine, and several Democratic Senators, who were earnestly opposed to what is known as the policy of Imperialism.

I left the President, after the conversation above related, without giving him any assurance as to my action. But I determined on full reflection, to support the acquisition of Hawaii, in accordance with my long-settled purpose, and at the same time to make a clear and emphatic statement of my unalterable opposition to acquiring dependencies in the East, if we did not expect, when the proper time came, to admit them to the Union as States. This I did to the best of my power. I was invited to give an address before a college in Pennsylvania, where I took occasion to make an emphatic declaration of the doctrine on which I meant to act.

Afterward, July 5, 1898, I made a speech in the Senate, on the joint resolution for the acquisition of Hawaii, in which I said that I had entertained grave doubts in regard to that measure; that I had approached the subject with greater hesitation and anxiety than I had ever felt in regard to any other matter during the whole of my public life.

I went on to say:

"The trouble I have found with the Hawaiian business is this: Not in the character of the population of the Sandwich Island, not in their distance from our shores, not in the doubt that we have an honest right to deal with the existing government there in such a matter. I have found my trouble in the nature and character of the argument by which, in the beginning and ever since, a great many friends of annexation have sought to support it . . . .

"If this be the first step in the acquisition of dominion over barbarous archipelagoes in distant seas; if we are to enter into competition with the great powers of Europe in the plundering of China, in the division of Africa; if we are to quit our own to stand on foreign lands; if our commerce is hereafter to be forced upon unwilling peoples at the cannon's mouth; if we are ourselves to be governed in part by peoples to whom the Declaration of Independence is a stranger; or, worse still, if we are to govern subjects and vassal States, trampling as we do it on our own great Charter which recognizes alike the liberty and the dignity of individual manhood, then let us resist this thing in the beginning, and let us resist it to the death.

"I do not agree with those gentlemen who think we would wrest the Philippine Islands from Spain and take charge of them ourselves. I do not think we should acquire Cuba, as the result of the existing war, to be annexed to the United States."

I reinforced this protest as well I could. But I went on to state the reasons which had actuated me in favoring the measure, and that my unconquerable repugnance to the acquisition of territory to be held in dependency did not apply to that case.

I cited the Teller resolution, and declared that it bound the American people in honor, and that its principle applied to all Spanish territory. I maintained that there was nothing in the acquisition of Hawaii inconsistent with this doctrine. I think so still.

I was bitterly reproached by some worthy persons, who I suppose will always find matter for bitter reproach in everything said or done on public matters. They charged me with speaking one way and voting another. But I am content to leave the case on its merits, and on the record.

The war went on. The feeling of the country was deeply excited. President McKinley made his famous Western journey. He was greeted by enthusiastic throngs. The feeling in that part of the country in favor of a permanent dominion over the Philippine Islands was uttered by excited crowds, whom he addressed from the platform and the railroad cars as he passed thorough the country. But the sober, conservative feeling, which seldom finds utterance in such assemblies, did not make itself heard.

The President returned to Washington, undoubtedly in the honest belief that the country demanded that he acquire the Philippine Islands, and that Congress should govern them.

I have never attributed publicly, or in my own heart, to President McKinley any but the most conscientious desire to do his duty in what, as the case seems to me, was an entire change of purpose. Many military and naval officers, from whose reports he had to get his facts almost wholly, insisted that the Philippine people were unfit for self-government. After the unhappy conflict of arms the solution of the problem seemed to be to compel the Philippine people to unconditional submission. It would not be just or fair that I should undertake to state the reasons which controlled the President in adopting the conclusions to which I did not myself agree. I am merely telling my own part in the transaction.

When I got back to Washington, at the beginning of the session in December, 1898, I had occasion to see the President almost immediately. His purpose was to make a Treaty by which, without the assent of their inhabitants, we should acquire the Philippine Islands. We were to hold and govern in subjection the people of the Philippine Islands. That was pretty well understood.

The national power of Spain was destroyed. It was clear that she must submit to whatever terms we should impose. The President had chosen, as Commissioners to negotiate the Treaty, five gentlemen, three of whom, Senators Cushman K. Davis, and William P. Frye and Whitelaw Reid, the accomplished editor of the New York Tribune, former Minister to France, were well known to be zealous for acquiring territory in the East. Mr. Frye was said to have declared in a speech not long before he went abroad that he was in favor of keeping everything we could lay our hands on. I suppose that was, however, intended as a bit of jocose extravagance, which that most excellent gentleman did not mean to have taken too seriously.

Mr. Day, the Secretary of State, and Senator Gray of Delaware, were understood to be utterly opposed to the policy of expansion or Imperialism.

I do not know about Mr. Day. But it appeared, when three years afterward the correspondence between the Commissioners and the Department of State became public, that Mr. Day expressed no objection to the acquisition of Luzon, but objected to a peremptory demand for the whole Philippine Island group, thereby—to use his language—"leaving us open to the imputation of following agreement to negotiate with demand for whole subject matter of discussion ourselves."

The public impression as to Senator Gray is confirmed by the following remonstrance, which appears in the same correspondence:

PEACE COMMISSIONERS TO MR. HAY [Telegram]

PARIS, October 25, 1898.

The undersigned cannot agree that it is wise to take Philippine Islands in whole or in part. To do so would be to reverse accepted continental policy of the country, declared and acted upon throughout our history. Propinquity governs the case of Cuba and Porto Rico. Policy proposed introduces us into European politics and the entangling alliances against which Washington and all American statemen have protested. It will make necessary a navy equal to largest of powers; a greatly increased military establishment; immense sums for fortifications and harbors; multiply occasions for dangerous complications with foreign nations, and increase burdens of taxation. Will receive in compensation no outlet for American labor in labor market already overcrowded and cheap; no area for homes for American citizens; climate and social conditions demoralizing to character of American youth; new and disturbing questions introduced into our politics; church question menacing. On whole, instead of indemnity—injury.

The undersigned cannot agree that any obligation incurred to insurgents is paramount to our own manifest interests. Attacked Manila as part of legitimate war against Spain. If we had captured Cadiz and Carlists had helped us, would not owe duty to stay by them at the conclusion of war. On the contrary, interests and duty would require us to abandon both Manila and Cadiz. No place for colonial administration or government of subject people in American system. So much from standpoint of interest; but even conceding all benefits claimed for annexation, we thereby abandon the infinitely greater benefit to accrue from acting the part of a great, powerful, and Christian nation; we exchange the moral grandeur and strength to be gained by keeping our word to nations of the world and by exhibiting a magnanimity and moderation in the hour of victory that becomes the advanced civilization we claim, for doubtful material advantages and shameful stepping down from high moral position boastfully assumed. We should set example in these respects, not follow in the selfish and vulgar greed for territory which Europe has inherited from mediaeval times. Our declaration of war upon Spain was accompanied by a solemn and deliberate definition of our purpose. Now that we have achieved all and more than our object, let us simply keep our word. Third article of the protocol leaves everything concerning the control of the Philippine Islands to negotiation between the parties.

It is absurd now to say that we will not negotiate but will appropriate the whole subject-matter of negotiation. At the very least let us adhere to the President' instructions and if conditions require the keeping of Luzon forego the material advantages claimed in annexing other islands. Above all let us not make a mockery of the injunction contained in those instructions, where, after stating that we took up arms only in obedience to the dictates of humanity and in the fulfillment of high public and moral obligations, and that we had no design of aggrandizement and no ambition of conquest, the President among other things eloquently says:

"It is my earnest wish that the United States in making peace should follow the same high rule of conduct which guided it in facing war. It should be as scrupulous and magnanimous in the concluding settlement as it was just and humane in its original action."

This and more, of which I earnestly ask a reperusal, binds my conscience and governs my action.

GEORGE GRAY. WEDNESDAY, 12.30, night.

Senator Gray afterward signed the Treaty, defended it in debate, and voted for its ratification. He vigorously defended his vote on the floor of the Senate, chiefly by the argument that when he learned that it was the purpose of the United States to expel Spain from the Philippine Islands, he concluded it was our duty to remain there for the protection of the people against foreign rapacity and against domestic anarchy. He claimed that he had been influenced in coming to this conclusion very considerably by the fact that I was reported to have said that under no circumstances would we give back the Philippine people to Spain. That was true. I believed then, and believe now, that it was our duty to deliver them from Spain, to protect them against her, or against the cupidity of any other nation until her people could have tried fully the experiment of self- government, in which I have little doubt they would have succeeded.

When I saw President McKinley early in December, 1898, he was, I suppose, committed to the policy to which he adhered. He greeted me with the delightful and affectionate cordiality which I always found in him. He took me by the hand, and said: "How are you feeling this winter, Mr. Senator?" I was determined there should be no misunderstanding. I replied at once: "Pretty pugnacious, I confess, Mr. President." The tears came into his eyes, and he said, grasping my hand again: "I shall always love you, whatever you do."

I found we differed widely on this great subject. I denounced with all the vigor of which I was capable the Treaty, and the conduct of the war in the Philippine Islands, in the Senate, on the platform, in many public letters, and in articles in magazines and newspapers. But President McKinley never abated one jot of his cordiality toward me. I did not, of course, undertake to press upon him my advice in matters affecting the Philippine Islands, about which we differed so much. But he continued to seek it, and to take it in all other matters as constantly as ever before.

In order that it may not be supposed that I deceived myself in regard to President McKinley's kindly regard, I may perhaps be pardoned for saying that his close friend, Senator Hanna, has more than once assured me that McKinley's love for me was never abated, and for citing a sentence from an article by Charles Emory Smith, his trusted counsellor and able and accomplished Postmaster-General, in this Cabinet. Mr. Smith says:

"Senator Hoar was the earnest foe and critic of President McKinley's policy. But President McKinley had the warmest regard and consideration for him. Nothing, indeed, in public life was sweeter than the sentiment of these different and differing men toward each other. President McKinley was anxious to commission Senator Hoar as Minister to England, and proffered him the place. It was without any desire to remove him from the arena of contention—apprehension of such a reflection restrained the proffer for a time—though the contention had not then been fully developed."

After President McKinley's death I expressed the public sorrow and my own in an address to a vast audience of the people of my own city of Worcester, in Mechanics' Hall; and again, at the request of the Republican State Committee, at the Republican State Convention shortly afterward.

I have reason to know that both the addresses gave pleasure to many of the lamented President's closest and warmest friends throughout the country. I was afterward invited by the City Government of Worcester to deliver a historical eulogy on President McKinley before them. That office, it seemed to me, I ought to decline. It was not because I was behind any other man in admiration or personal affection for that lofty and beautiful character. But I thought that address, which was not only to utter the voice of public sorrow, but to give a careful and discriminating sketch of the public life of its subject, ought to be delivered by some person who agreed with him in regard to the most important action of his life. I could not well pass over the Philippine question. I could not well speak of it without stating my own opinion. I could not undertake to state President McKinley's opinion, conduct or policy, without expressing my disapproval of it, and if I did not do that, I could not state it without being thought by those who heartily approved it, not to have stated it justly and fairly.

I had repeatedly declared, during the preceding two years, both before and since his death, my highest admiration for the intellectual and moral qualities of my beloved friend, and my belief that he would have a very high place in history among the best and ablest men of the country.

But I thought the story of the important part of his life should be told from his point of view, and not from mine; that the reasons which governed him should be stated by a person sure to appreciate them fully. If a great Catholic Prelate were to die, his eulogy should not be pronounced by a Protestant. When Dr. Channing died, we did not select a Calvinist minister to pronounce his funeral sermon. When Charles Sumner died Mr. Schurz and Mr. Curtis, not some old Whig, and not some earnest supporter of General Grant, pronounced the eulogy. I suppose nobody would have dreamed of asking a Free Trader to pronounce the eulogy on President McKinley if he had died soon after the beginning of his first term. So I declined the office. The City did not ask anybody else to fill my place, or perform the task.

I will not now renew the debate about our treatment of the people of the Philippine Islands. My opinion has not at all changed. I think that under the lead of Mabini and Aguinaldo and their associates, but for our interference, a Republic would have been established in Luzon, which would have compared well with the best of the Republican Governments between the United States and Cape Horn. For years and for generations, and perhaps for centuries, there would have been turbulence, disorder and revolution. But in her own way Destiny would have evolved for them a force of civic rule best adapted to their need. If we had treated them as we did Cuba, we should have been saved the public shame of violating not only our own pledges, but the rule of conduct which we had declared to be self-evident truth in the beginning of our history. We should have been saved the humiliation of witnessing the subjection by Great Britain of the Boers in South Africa, without a murmur of disapproval, and without an expression of one word of sympathy for the heroic victims.

My term as Senator expired on the fourth of March, 1901. The election of Senator for the following term came in January of that year. I differed sharply from my colleague, Mr. Lodge, in this whole matter. But the people of Massachusetts, with the generous and liberal temper which ever distinguished that noble Commonwealth, desired that their Senators should act upon their own judgment, without any constraint.

A resolution was introduced at the session of the Legislature of 1899 by Mr. Mellen, Democratic member from Worcester, thanking me for my speech in opposition to the Spanish Treaty, endorsing the doctrine of that speech, and condemning the subjugation of the Philippine people by force of arms.

Charles G. Washburn, Republican member from Worcester, introduced a resolution commending my speech, and declaring it to be "A speech of the loftiest patriotism and eloquent interpretation of the high conception of human freedom which the fathers sought to preserve for all time in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution of the United States."

These resolution, if adopted, would, by implication, condemn the well-known opinion and action of my colleague. They were encountered by several others, none of which referred to either Senator, but expressed approval of the Spanish Treaty. One of them, however, presented in the House by Mr. Mills of Newburyport, declared that the Treaty ought to be ratified, and then the United States should fulfil to Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands the pledge of self-government and independence made to Cuba. Very wisely all these resolutions were referred to the Committee on Federal Relations, who reported this as a compromise:

RESOLUTION REPORTED BY THE COMMITTEE ON FEDERAL RELATIONS, OF THE LEGISLATURE, MARCH 29, 1899

Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in General Court assembled, that Massachusetts, ever loyal in sympathy and support of the General Government, continues her unabated confidence in her Senators, and with a just pride in the eloquent and memorable words they have uttered, leaves them untrammeled in the exercise of an independent and patriotic judgment upon the momentous questions presented for their consideration.

The whole matter was then dropped. But the Legislature, and the generous people of Massachusetts whom they represented, acted upon the spirit of the Committee's Resolution. I was reelected without opposition. I had every Republican vote, and many Democratic votes, of the Legislature. My affectionate and cordial relations with my brilliant and accomplished colleague have never suffered an instant's interruption.

I think I am entitled to record, however, that this result was not accomplished by any abatement of my opposition to the policy of the Administration as to the Philippine Islands. I made a great many speeches within a few weeks of the Presidential election in 1900. The members of the Senate and House, of the Massachusetts Legislature, who were to choose a Senator, were to be chosen at the same time. I expressed my unchanged and earnest opposition of disapproval to the whole business at length.

In speaking of the habit of appealing to the love of the flag in behalf of this policy of conquest, I said that there was but one symbol more sacred than the American flag. That was the bread and wine which represented the body and blood of the Saviour of mankind; adding, that a man who would use an appeal to the flag in aid of the subjugation of an unwilling people, would be capable of using the sacramental wine for a debauch.

The week before the election of Senator came on a bill for the reorganization of the Army was before the Senate. That contained a provision for increasing the Army to a hundred thousand men, allowing the President, however, to reduce it to seventy thousand, and to raise it again if necessary, so it would in his discretion be elastic, within those limitations.

Mr. Bacon, of Georgia, who seemed to be the leader of the Democrats on that measure, inquired of the Republicans who were managing the bill, how many men they needed and what time would be required to put down the insurrection in the Philippine Islands. Senator Bacon said that they would give them the hundred thousand men, or any force they might demand for one or two or three or five years, or for any required time. But they were unwilling to give the President the power of expanding and contracting the army in time of peace. This was in full Senate.

I followed with a statement that I had no objection to giving the President this discretion, and did not disapprove the bill on that account. I thought the size of the Army in time of peace should be left largely to the opinion of the experts, especially General Miles, the famous soldier at the head of our Army, who thought the regular Army should consist of one hundred for every thousand of our population. That would be about eighty thousand then, and before long would require a hundred thousand men. But I said I was opposed to raising soldiers to carry on the war in the Philippine Islands. The only way to stop it that I knew was to refuse to vote for the Army Bill. I voted against it solely on that account.

I meant that if the Legislature of Massachusetts were to reelect me, no man should ever have it to say that I had bought my reelection by silence on this question, or concealed my opinion, however extreme it might be, until after election.

After my election I delivered an address before the two Houses of the Legislature, at their request, and was received with a most cordial enthusiasm.

Yet I think that if any leading Republican who had differed from me on this question, especially Governor Long, of whose brilliant administration of the Navy the people of the Commonwealth were so proud, had pressed his candidacy for the office in opposition to me, as has been the custom in like cases in other States, it is not unlikely that he would have been elected.

I have no doubt I should have found Governor Roger Wolcott a formidable competitor, if he had lived and been willing. Governor Wolcott had made a statement in public, quietly and briefly, as was his wont, expressing his sympathy with me when the question of the Treaty was under debate. Somewhat later he made a statement in the same way, expressing his opinion that the Administration should be supported. Both these declarations were in general terms. They were not inconsistent with each other. But death arrested the honorable and useful career of Roger Wolcott when he was still in the prime of life, in the strength of his noble manhood, a strength which seemed rapidly enlarging and growing as if in early youth.

I have not doubt that the subjugation of the Philippine Islands, the acquisition of a dependency to be held in subjection by the United States, the overthrow of the great doctrine that Governments rest on the consent of the governed; that all the painful consequences which have attended the war for the subjugation of that distant people, would have been avoided if the Democratic opposition had been hearty and sincere. The same spirit that defeated the Election bill in spite of the majority in its favor, would have easily accomplished that result. The Democratic Party, as a party, never meant business in this matter. I do not deny that many Democrats— I dare say a majority of the Democrats—were as earnestly and seriously opposed to the acquisition of the Philippine Islands as I was myself. But they never wielded their party strength in opposition to it. I said to one eminent Democratic leader early in the year 1900: "There is one way in which you can put an end to this whole business. If you can elect a Democratic House it will have power under the Constitution to determine the use to which the Army shall be put. In that way you compelled President Hayes to refrain from further support by military force of the Republican State Governments in the South." He answered: "Mr. Hoar, we shall never do anything as radical as that."

When Senator Bacon made the offer to the majority of the Senate to agree to give them all the military power they desired for the suppression of the resistance in the Philippines for as long a time as they should think it necessary, the entire Democratic Party in the Senate was in their seats, and there was no expression of dissent.

I think the Democratic Party feared the fate of the Federalists who opposed the War of 1812, and of the Democrats who opposed the War for the Union in 1861. This of course in the nature of things is but conjecture.

Seventeen of the followers of Mr. Bryan voted for the Treaty. The Treaty would have been defeated, not only lacking the needful two thirds, but by a majority of the Senate but for the votes of Democrats and Populists.

Senators Morgan and Pettus of Alabama, Senator McLaurin of South Carolina, Senator McEnery of Louisiana, were avowed supporters of the Treaty from the beginning.

Mr. Bryan in the height of the contest came to Washington for the express purpose of urging upon his followers that it was best to support the Treaty, end the War, and let the question of what should be done with our conquest be settled in the coming campaign. He urged upon them, as I was told by several Democrats at the time who did not take his advice, that the Democratic Party could not hope to win a victory on the financial questions at stake after they had been beaten on them in a time of adversity; and that they must have this issue for the coming campaign. He was besought by his wiser political associates to go away and leave the Senate to settle the matter. But he remained.

After that it became impossible, not only to defeat the Treaty, but to defeat the policy which had inspired it. The Treaty pledged that the Philippine Islands should be governed by Congress. It undertook obligations which require for their fulfillment, at least ten years' control of the Islands. It put the people of the Philippine Islands in the attitude of abandoning the Republic they had formed, and of acknowledging not only our supremacy but that they were neither entitled or fit to govern themselves or to carry on the war which had unfortunately broken out. I do not mean to imply that, as I have said, a large number of the Democratic Party both in public life and out of it, were not sincere and zealous in their opposition to this wretched business. But next to a very few men who controlled the policy of the Republican Party in this matter, Mr. Bryan and his followers who voted in the Senate for the Treaty are responsible for the results.

I have been blamed, as I have said already, because, with my opinions, I did not join the Democratic Party and help to elect Mr. Bryan. I disagreed with him and his party as to every other issue then pending before the American people. So differing from him, I found nothing in his attitude or that of his party, to induce me to support him, or even to inspire my confidence in their settlement of the question of Imperialism or expansion.

In my opinion, if he had been elected, he would have accepted the result, have put the blame for it on his predecessor in office, and matters would have gone on very much as they have under Republican control.

I have been told by many Senators who voted for the Treaty, that they regretted that vote more than any other act of their lives. Enough Senators have said this to me in person, not only to have defeated the Treaty, but if they had so voted, to have defeated it by a majority. A very eminent Republican Senator told me that more than twenty Senators, who voted for the Treaty, had given the same assurance to him. But they are very unwilling to make the declaration public. Several gentlemen, however, have publicly expressed their regret for their vote, as is well known, enough to have changed the result.

When I think of my party, whose glory and whose service to Liberty are the pride of my life, crushing out this people in their effort to establish a Republic, and hear people talk about giving them good Government, and that they are better off than they ever were under Spain, I feel very much as if I had learned that my father, or some other honored ancestor, had been a slave-trader in his time, and had boasted that he had introduced a new and easier kind of hand-cuffs or fetters to be worn by the slaves during the horrors of the middle passage.

I do not believe that there is a respectable or intelligent Filipino to-day, unless possibly some Macabebe scout, who would not get rid of the Government of the United States at once, if he could. Buencamino is said to be one of the ablest of their public men. He has been quoted as friendly to us, and is so. There is no doubt that he has so expressed himself. He has been appointed a member of the Taft Government, and has had committed to him the responsible and important duty of deciding the appointments to the offices which are to be filled by the native Filipinos, under the existing establishment. It is said by both sides that he is crafty and selfish and ambitious, and that he likes to be on the side that is the strongest. How that may be, I do not know. But he will not even pretend to accept the rule of the United States willingly. He appeared as a witness before a Committee of the House of Representatives, when in this country in 1902. He was asked whether his people approved the policy of the Democratic Party. He answered emphatically: "No. They do not wish to have the United States abandon them to the ambition or cupidity of foreign Governments." But he added: "Every Filipino is in favor of the policy advocated by Senator Hoar." "What!" said his inquirer, with great surprise, "Do you mean to say that every Filipino agrees with Senator Hoar in his views?" "Yes," replied the man, with great emphasis; "every Filipino agrees with Senator Hoar."

I mentioned this one day in conversation with President Roosevelt. He told me that Buencamino had said exactly the same thing to him.

General Miles told me on his return from his journey round the world that he saw many leaders of the Philippine people; that they spoke of me with great regard and attachment.

June 17, 1902, an eminent Hindoo scholar, published a long article in the Japan Times, in which he said:

"The speech of Mr. Hoar, though an address to his own countrymen, is a message of hope to the whole world which sank with despondency at the sight of Republican America behaving like a cruel, tyrannical and rapacious Empire in the Philippines and particularly to the broken-hearted people of Asia who are beginning to lose all confidence in the humanity of the white races. Or is it that they have lost it already? Hence all papers in Asia should reprint his speech, translate it, and distribute it broadcast. Let it be brought home to the Asiatic people so that they may work and worship their champion and his forefathers. Thanks to the awakening in America, thanks to the forces that are at work to chase out the degenerating, demoralizing passion for territorial aggrandizement from the noble American mind and save it for itself and the world at large from the cancer of Imperialism."

I am afraid I am committing an offence against good taste in repeating such laudations. But it must be remembered that a public man who has to encounter so much bitter reviling and objurgation, is fairly entitled to have a little extravagance on the other side that the balance may be even. I would rather have the gratitude of the poor people of the Philippine Islands, amid their sorrow, and have it true that what I may say or do has brought a ray of hope into the gloomy caverns in which the oppressed peoples of Asia dwell, than to receive a Ducal Coronet from every Monarch in Europe, or command the applause of listening Senators and read my history in a Nation's eyes.

At first there can seem nothing more absurd than the suggestion of my Asiatic friend that the people of Asia should worship their champion and his ancestors. But on second thought, it is fair to say that while no human being can be entitled to be worshipped by any other, yet that we got our love of Liberty from our ancestors, or at any rate that is where I got mine, and that they are entitled to all the credit.