SPEECH

OF

HON. GEORGE F. HOAR.

The Senate having under consideration the joint resolution (S. R. 53) defining the policy of the United States relative to the Philippine Islands, as follows:

Be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Philippine Islands are territory belonging to the United States; that it is the intention of the United States to retain them as such and to establish and maintain such governmental control throughout the archipelago as the situation may demand

Mr. HOAR said:

Mr. PRESIDENT: When, on the 8th of July, 1898, less than two years ago, the lamented Vice-President declared the session of the Senate at an end, the people of the United States were at the highwater mark of prosperity and glory. No other country on earth, in all history, ever saw the like. It was an American prosperity and an American glory.

We were approaching the end of a great century. From thirteen States we had become forty-five States. From 3,000,000 people we had become near 80,000,000. An enormous foreign commerce, promising to grow to still vaster proportions in the near future, was thrown into insignificance by an internal commerce almost passing the capacity of numbers to calculate. Our manufactures, making their way past hostile tariffs and fiscal regulations, were displacing the products of the greatest manufacturing nations in their own markets. South of us, from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn, our Monroe doctrine had banished from the American continent the powers of Europe; Spain and France had retired; monarchy had taken its leave; and the whole territory was occupied by republics owing their freedom to us, forming their institutions on our example. Our flag, known and honored throughout the earth, was welcomed everywhere in friendly ports, and floated everywhere on friendly seas. We were the freest, richest, strongest nation on the face of the earth-strong in all the elements of material strength, stronger still in the justice and liberty on which the foundations of our empire were laid. We had abolished slavery within our own borders by our constitutional mandate, and had abolished slavery throughout the world by the influence of our example.

Our national debt had been reduced with unexampled rapidity. We had increased it somewhat for the necessary expenses of the war. But if it had all been due, we could have paid it all in a single year by a tax solely upon the luxuries of the rich, which the rich would scarcely have felt, and which would have vexed no manufacture and no branch of commerce. Rich in all material wealth, we were richer still in a noble history and in those priceless ideals by which a Republic must live or bear no life.

From all over the country came the voice of well-paid labor, dwelling in happy homes, full of contentment with the present and of hope for the future. Capital was seeking new investments on all sides. Our domestic market, rescued from foreign invasion, was our own. Foreign markets were opening. The balance of trade was on our side. The product of American industry was carried abroad on an overwhelming and increasing tide.

We had won the glory of a great liberator in both hemispheres. The flag of Spain-emblem of tyranny and cruelty-had been driven from the Western Hemisphere, and was soon to go down from her eastern possessions. The war had been conducted without the loss of a gun or the capture of an American soldier in battle. The glory of this great achievement was unlike any other which history has recorded. It was not that we had beaten Spain. It was not that 75,000,000 people had conquered 15,000,000. Not that the spirit of the nineteenth century had been too much for the spirit of the fifteenth century. Not that the young athlete had felled to the ground a decrepit old man of ninety. It was not that the American mechanic and engineer in the machine shop could make better ships or better guns; or that the American soldier or sailor had displayed the same quality in battle that he had shown on every field-at Bunker Hill, at Yorktown, at Lundys Lane, at New Orleans, at Buena Vista, at Gettysburg; in every sea fight on Lake Erie or on the Atlantic. Nobody doubted the skill of the American general, the gallantry of the American admiral, or the courage of the American soldier or sailor. The glory of the war and of the victory was that it was a war and a victory in the interest of liberty. The American flag had appeared as a liberator in both hemispheres; when it floated over Havana or Santiago or Manila, there was written on its folds, where all nations could read it, the pledge of the resolution of Congress and the declaration of the President.

Every true American thanked God that he had lived to behold that day. The rarest good fortune of all was the good fortune of President McKinley. He was, in my judgment, the best beloved President who ever sat in the chair of Washington. His name was inseparably connected with two periods of unexampled prosperity, made more impressive by the period of calamity which came between them. The people believed that to the great measure called by his name was due a time of happiness and comfort never equaled in this country, and never approached by any other. It was the high-water mark on this planet of everything that could bring happiness to a people. But high as the tide reached then, it went still higher under the operation of the policies which came in with his Administration.

He had won golden honors by his patriotic hesitation in bringing on the war, and by his interpretation of the purpose with which the people, at last entered upon it.

When I say that President McKinley was the best beloved President that ever sat in the chair of Washington, I do not mean, of course, to compare the reverence in which any living man is held with that which attends the memory of Washington or Lincoln. But Washington and Lincoln encountered while they were alive a storm of political hostility, which President McKinley has fortunately been spared. I repeat that it seems to me that President McKinley holds a place in the affection of the people at large which no one of his predecessors ever attained in his lifetime.