Part 6

"When all is said and done, the rule of brotherhood remains as the indispensable prerequisite to success in the kind of national life for which we strive. Each man must work for himself, and unless he so works no outside help can avail him, but each man must remember also that he is indeed his brother's keeper, and that while no man who refuses to walk can be carried with advantage to himself or any one else yet that each at times stumbles or halts, that each at times needs to have the helping hand outstretched to him. To be permanently effective, aid must always take the form of helping a man to help himself, and we can all best help ourselves by joining together in the work that is of common interest to all....

"It is no light task for a nation to achieve the temperamental qualities without which the institutions of free government are but an empty mockery. Our people are now successfully governing themselves, because for more than a thousand years they have been slowly fitting themselves, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, toward this end. What has taken us thirty generations to achieve, we cannot expect to see another race accomplish out of hand, especially when large portions of that race start very far behind the point which our ancestors had reached even thirty generations ago. In dealing with the Philippine people we must show both patience and strength, forbearance and steadfast resolution. Our aim is high. We do not desire to do for the islanders merely what has elsewhere been done for tropic peoples by even the best foreign governments. We hope to do for them what has never before been done for any people of the tropics--to make them fit for self-government after the fashion of the really free nations."

President Roosevelt. First Message, December 3, 1901.

THE QUESTION OF TERMINOLOGY

Mr. President, Members of the Association and Section, Ladies and Gentlemen:

You have heard ably discussed certain questions which arise out of the relationship between the American Union and the annexed Insular regions, viewed in its sociological and economic aspect. I now ask your attention to a question of immediate interest and importance growing out of this relationship viewed in its political, that is to say, its legal aspect. This question, which the Committee on Arrangements has called "The Question of Terminology," is: What are the correct terms to use in describing the political and legal relationship between the American Union and its distant annexed regions, assuming that this relationship is to be permanent and is to be on terms which are just to all parties?

More specifically, the question which I shall discuss will be, whether we, as Americans, ought, according to American principles, to use, in our political and legal language, the terms "colony," "dependence," and "empire," or whether we ought, according to those principles, to substitute for the term "colony," the term "free state," for "dependence," "just connection," and for "empire," "union."

It is needless to say that I shall accept the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States as final in regard to all the matters adjudicated in them. But the Supreme Court has jurisdiction only for the purpose of determining the rights of individuals. The political relations between the Union and the Insular regions, it determines only so far as may be necessary to ascertain individual rights. Its present doctrine--that the American Union has power over the Insular regions subject to "fundamental principles formulated in the Constitution," or subject to "the applicable provisions of the Constitution," protects the civil rights of individuals, but under it the power of the Union for political purposes remains absolute. The proposition which I shall offer for your judgment, will, I believe, not only not be in conflict with the propositions laid down by the Supreme Court, but will give a reason why they are right. It will, too, I believe, give a reasonable basis for our holding that the power of the American Union over the Insular regions, while ample for the maintenance of a just and proper permanent relationship with them under our control, is not absolute even as respects their political rights.

I have said that I shall discuss this question upon American principles. I shall not base myself on the Constitution of the United States, though I shall try to show the relation of that document to the question, as I understand it. I shall assume it to be settled by the decisions of the Supreme Court,--as it seems clearly to be,--that with the exception of the "Territory" clause of that instrument, it is, and of right ought to be, the Constitution of the thirteen original States of the American Union and of the other States which they have admitted into their Union, and of no other States or communities; and that therefore it does not extend of its own force outside the American Union in any constitutional or legal sense, but only in a metaphorical sense--this being as I understand it, the meaning of the Court when they hold, as they do, that, though the "Territory clause" is of present and universal significance as respects all the regions annexed to the Union, yet, with this exception, only "the applicable provisions of the Constitution" or "the fundamental principles formulated in the Constitution" are in force in the annexed regions. "Extensions," so-called, of the Constitution by Act of Congress, are of course mere Acts of Congress, and whether such metaphorical "extensions" are permanent will depend upon the terms and conditions of the "extension."

But though I shall not base myself on the Constitution of the United States, I shall nevertheless base myself on a great American Document, which preceded the Constitution as a statement of American principles, and which is so far from being inconsistent with it that the Democratic party, in its platform of 1900, called it "the Spirit of the Constitution"--I refer to the Declaration of Independence. It is the American principles set forth in that document which I shall try to discover. If I shall be adjudged to have rightly interpreted that instrument, it will follow that we ought to substitute, in our political and legal language, for the term "colony," the term "free state," for "dependence," "just connection," and for "empire," "union." In making such substitution, however, it will be necessary to give to the terms "free state" and "union," a scientific meaning which will differ from that which they now have in the popular mind, but which will, I believe, be the same as was given to these terms by the Revolutionary statesmen.

I shall not allow myself to be embarrassed by the fact that in my first published writing I used the terms "colony," "dependence" and "empire;" for at the same time that I used these terms, I based myself on principles which were those of free statehood, just connection and union, to which I adhere to this day.

Taking the Declaration of Independence, therefore, as the exposition of the fundamental principles on which all American political theory is based, and to which all American policy must conform, let me state briefly the general meaning and purpose of this instrument, as I understand it.

As a result of the discussion for twelve years preceding the Declaration, the doctrine of the extension of the British Constitution to the American Colonies, which from their situation, could never be represented on equal terms in Parliament, was found to be useless for the protection of American rights, political or civil; and the doctrine that their rights were dependent on the Colonial Charters was found to be inadequate, for these Charters, while protecting the civil rights of the Americans to some extent, proceeded on the theory that they held all their political rights at the will or whim of Great Britain. The Americans felt and knew that they were entitled to political, as well as civil rights, and they all firmly believed that each so-called "colony" was a free state and subject to no external control beyond what was necessary to preserve their relationship with Great Britain on just terms to all the parties. The only question which the Americans discussed, as soon as they comprehended the whole situation, was, Why was each so-called "colony" a free state and why had it always been such? The Declaration of Independence, as I understand it, gave to the world their solution of this problem. Their answer, as I understand it, was, that the American Colonies were and always had been free states, because their relations with the State of Great Britain were not under the British Constitution and were not wholly under the Colonial Charters, but were under a supreme and universal common law, which governs the relations between men, communities, bodies corporate, states and nations, and which they called in the Declaration "the Law of Nature and of Nature's God," according to which every community on the earth's surface, within reasonable limits for the formation and execution of a just public sentiment, is entitled to be a free state,--that is, to be free from external control, in executing its just public sentiment, except so far as may be necessary to enable it to conform to the terms of its just connections with other free states. This doctrine of free statehood as a universal right is, as I understand it, the central idea of the Declaration.

Assuming this to be the central idea, let us see how this idea is reached; and for that purpose, let us notice the exact language of the Declaration. The first paragraph reads:

"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

The "causes of separation" are prefaced by a number of propositions determining the nature of the "political bands" by which one people may be "connected with" another. These propositions are all rules of human conduct, and are therefore principles of law, though they are called "self-evident truths." This part of the Declaration reads:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

The conception of the universal right of free statehood is reached, in the Declaration, through a series of three propositions, each stated to be self-evident, and yet all forming a sequence. The basal proposition is, that "all men are created equal." Rufus Choate and John James Ingalls have declared this proposition and the succeeding one that "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," to be "glittering generalities." Abraham Lincoln, on the other hand, in his speech at Gettysburg, at the most solemn and stirring moment in the country's history, declared that the proposition that all men are created equal was the foundation-idea of the nation, to which it was dedicated by the Fathers.

The doctrine of equality arising from the common creation of all men as the spiritual offspring of a common Creator, was the doctrine of the Reformation in its broadest form, as declared by Penn. Taking into consideration the religious character of the Americans, as well as the learning and acumen of that most remarkable body of men who constituted the Continental Congress, it seems not only not improbable, but probable, and indeed necessary to conclude, that the proposition that "all men are created equal" was intended to be the epitome of the doctrine of the Reformation, as that doctrine was broadened by the influence of Penn and his followers. As the Governments of Europe were at that time acting on the political philosophy of feudalism and mediaevalism, which in its last analysis was based on the proposition that all men are created unequal, or that some are created equal and some unequal, the Declaration, if it be true that it based the American political philosophy upon the broadest doctrine of the Reformation, announced an American System as opposed to the European System.

From the doctrine of equality arising from the common creation of all men by a personal Creator to whom all were equally related, it is declared by the Declaration to follow as a 'self-evident' truth that there are certain rights, which are attached to all men by endowment of the Creator as being the correlative of the unalienable needs of all men, and which inasmuch as they arise from the universal limitations which the Creator has imposed, are as unalienable as the needs themselves. These unalienable rights are declared to be the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The doctrine of unalienable rights, necessarily supposes a universal law, for the conception of law must precede the conception of right. This law, as conceived of by the Declaration is a common and universal law. In the first part of the preamble this universal common law is spoken of as "the law of Nature and of Nature's God." Inasmuch as the rights claimed are those which depend for their existence upon revelation as well as reason, it is evident that this common and universal law to which the Declaration appeals, is the "law of nature and of nations," of the scholars of the Reformation, which was conceived of as based on revelation and reason, and as governing every relationship of men, of bodies corporate, of communities, of states and of nations. Out of this conception there had already grown that great division of the law which deals with the temporary relations between independent states, which we now call International Law.

Having thus established the doctrine of unalienable rights, based on a universal common law of nature and of nations, which all men, all bodies corporate, all communities, all governments, all states and all nations were bound to enforce, the Declaration proceeds to a consideration of the forms, methods and instrumentalities by which these unalienable rights are to be secured.

It declares that the primary instrumentality by which these rights are secured, are governments "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Contrary to the usual interpretation, the Declaration does not state that government is the expression of the will of the majority. Governments, it is declared, are instituted to "secure" the "unalienable rights" of individuals. The will of the majority, of course, is quite as likely to destroy as to secure the unalienable rights of individuals. Moreover, the Declaration says merely that "governments are instituted among men"--not that men universally institute their own governments. The whole statement that the governments which are instituted among men to secure the unalienable rights of individuals, universally "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," is inconsistent with the proposition that governments are the expression of the mere will of the majority, for it is only their "just powers" that governments "derive" from "the consent of the governed," and the will of the majority may be just or unjust. The expression "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," seems to me most probably to be an epitome and summary of the two fundamental propositions of the law of agency--Obligatio mandati consensu contrahentium consistit, a free translation of which is "The powers of an agent are derived from the consent of the contracting parties," and Rei turpis nullum mandatum est, a free translation of which is "No agent can have unjust powers." On this interpretation the meaning of the whole sentence "that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," is, it would seem, that there is a universal right of all communities to have a government of a kind best adapted for the securing of the unalienable rights of individuals, instituted either by their own selection or by the appointment of an external power, and that all governments, however instituted, are universally the agents of the governed to secure these rights. Government is thus declared not to be the expression of the will of the majority, but the application of the just public sentiment justly ascertained through forms best adapted for this purpose.

The free statehood which is claimed in the concluding part of the Declaration to be the right of the Colonies is by the Declaration based on the philosophical declarations of the preamble. The particular proposition which bears upon the right of free statehood is evidently the one which declares that, "to secure these [unalienable] rights [of individuals], governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." The intermediate propositions, as the result of which the universal right of free statehood follows from this proposition, are, it would seem, these: If government is the doing of justice according to public sentiment, government is the expression and application of a spiritually and intellectually educated public sentiment, since, although a rudimentary knowledge of what is just is implanted in every human being, a full knowledge of what is just comes only after a course of spiritual and intellectual education. Hence it follows that the forms and methods of government should be such as are adapted to such spiritual and intellectual education. Education takes place by direct personal contact, and can be best accomplished only through the establishment of permanent groups of individuals who are all under the same conditions. The formation and expression of a just public sentiment, therefore, requires the establishment of permanent groups of persons, more or less free from any external control which interferes with their rightful action, under a leadership which makes for their spiritual and intellectual education in justice. Such permanent groups within territorial limits of suitable size for developing and expressing a just public sentiment, are free states. Territorial divisions of persons set apart for the purpose of convenience in determining the local public sentiment, regardless of its justness or unjustness, are not states, but are mere voting districts. Just public sentiment, for its expression and application, requires the existence of many small free states, disconnected to the extent necessary to enable each to be free from all improper external control in educating itself in the ways of justice; mere public sentiment, for its expression and application, requires only the existence of a few great states divided into voting districts, each district being under the control of the Central Government, which is to it an external control. Just public sentiment, as the basis of government, is a basis which makes government a mighty instrument for spirituality and growth; mere public sentiment, regardless of its justness or unjustness, as the basis of government, is a basis which makes government a mighty instrument for brutality and deterioration. Human equality, unalienable rights, government according to just public sentiment, and free statehood, are inevitably and forever linked together as reciprocal cause and effect.

The ultimate meaning of the expression "that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," seems therefore to be that by the common law of nature and of nations there is a universal right of free statehood which pertains to all communities on the face of the earth within territorial limits of suitable size for the development and operation of a just public sentiment.

So complete and universal are the principles of government by just public sentiment and of free statehood that, according to the Declaration, even when all the people of a free state are meeting together to alter or abolish a form of government which has become destructive of the ends of its institution, as it is declared they may rightfully do, their right to form a new government is not absolute so that they can rightfully do whatever the majority wills, but is limited by this universal common law, so that they can rightfully institute only a new form of government whose foundation principles and mode of organization are such "as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness"--that is, to secure the unalienable rights of individuals to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The declaration of the universal right of free statehood is accompanied, in the Declaration, by the claim that the Colonies, as free states, had always been in political "connection" with the State of Great Britain. The concluding part of the Declaration reads:

"We, therefore,... declare that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states,... and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."