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for the Territory, it would seem, must legislate under the Constitution. [Here the hammer fell.] Mr. MCALEER. I yield five
minutes more to the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. DE ARMOND]. Mr.
DE ARMOND. If it be true that no part of the territory of the
United States outside of the States is or can be tinder constitutional
protection until Congress has put the territory and the people under
the Constitution, then Congress must have the power and right to
withdraw the Constitution from that territory and that people
whenever it pleases. Now, who will dispute that proposition?
Who finds fault or who can find fault with that reasoning? It
seems to me that those who would have Congress so mighty and the
Constitution so weak are driven then to this absurdity — that the
Constitution being carried by Congress to a Territory, the people of
the Territory once being under the Constitution, Congress for the
time being must legislate in subordination to the Constitution:
but whenever Congress concludes to reassert its vast power, all it
has to do is, by another act, to lift the Constitution, to gather the
Constitution in and fold its wings of protection, and then to resume
its own absolute sway, independent of the Constitution.
Gentlemen, what do you think of that doctrine as you follow it out?
What respect, my friends, do you really have for your own judgment
and your own logic, your own premises and your own treatment of
them, when you proclaim or subscribe to the doctrine that the
Constitution is nowhere outside of the States except where
Congress carries it — that in legislating for the Territories the
Constitution does not interfere with Congress? I understand, and
you understand, that this proposition lies at the very foundation of
the Philippine question and the Puerto Rican question and the
Hawaiian question, and the other questions that have arisen and will
arise in this career which some gentleman call progress, which others
might properly call adventure — gathering in all that is loose around
about, and then in providing a government, throwing away our
constitutional safeguards in order to deal with our acquisitions,
"our newly acquired possessions," in the way that necessity or
cupidity may suggest. [Applause.] I believe that no department or
agency of the Government can escape from constitutional control
otherwise than by violating the Constitution. I believe that the
Constitution is in and over every act and act: on of Congress to
sanction and sustain because in harmony with it, or to condemn and
annul because in conflict with it. I believe the Constitution floats in
the current of all Congressional legislation and directs the course of
the stream. It is to Congressional life and action what the air we
breathe is to human life and achievement. No legislation can
escape from its supervising control, and wherever a law of
Congressional enactment is in a Territory as well as in a State there
is the Constitution also, having traveled in its own way, by its own
conveyance, commanding Congress always and never commanded
by Congress. I did not intend to go into this question at length. It is
worthy of some discussion. I may be wrong about it, but I
think the time is coming and is not far distant when this proposition
upon which so many gentlemen rest so much will receive more
consideration than as yet has been given to it. I believe the time is not
far off — and I am warranted in that belief by reference to the
decisions of the Supreme Court, by everything that we have upon
that subject that deserves the name of authority, and, I am almost
tempted to say, by everything which deserves the name of reason —
I am led to the belief, and am confident in it. that the time is not far
off when the doctrine in this country will be reestablished, to the
satisfaction of many and the confusion of some others, that the
Constitution is not merely a convenient little, thing like a garment,
to be taken off and put on; that the Constitution is not to be handled
by the Congress of the United States as an overcoat might be
handled by a servant in waiting — put on, pulled off, hung up or laid
down, or even folded and stored away with spices and anti-moth
preparations until a more convenient season for taking it out.
[Laughter.] I believe the doctrine soon will be reestablished in this
country, to the satisfaction of many and to the confusion of some
others, that the one thing that abides here, the one thing to which
all of us must bow, the one thing to which all of us owe allegiance,
the one thing which determines and measures the powers of Congress
and of the President, whether the greatest or the smallest, that
protects the feeblest and the mightiest, is the Constitution of the
United States [applause on the Democratic side]; that it lives
without Congressional action, and that the highest duty of Congress
is to legislate under it and not against it. [Applause on the
Democratic side.] )) [Here the hammer fell.] Mr. KNOX. I yield
forty-five minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. BOREING].
Mr. BOREING. Mr. Chairman, our Government was created
without a pattern, and its founders commenced business without
a dollar and without a foot of territory. Guided by the flag and not
by the Constitution, they fought England seven years for our first
possessions. To-day the American Republic stands in the
forefront of the world's powers, without a peer in existence or a
parallel in history. We have spanned this continent, compassed the
seas, and planted our outposts at the threshold of the Asiatic
countries, where we can command the trade and commerce of the
world and protect our missionaries in all lands, and are now
engaged in enacting a constitution for the islands of the Pacific
Ocean. We have the praise and admiration of the great civilized powers
of the earth and no enemy in our front to stop our onward inarch
around the globe. Yet there is a voice that calls us to halt and
retreat. That voice comes from the rear. It is not the voice of
Grant. It is not the voice of Stonewall Jackson. The men who
wore the blue and the men who wore the gray are at the front upholding the flag, with a united people and a prosperous country
behind them. The voice that calls us back is the voice of the
Tory in the Revolutionary days; the voice of Vallandigham and the
Copperheads in the days of the civil war. It is the voice of the
demagogue, the pessimist, and a few constitutional lawyers. Shall
we obey that voice, or shall we state the philosophy of our politics
and the religion of our Government in a broader patriotism, looking
to a wider and higher national destiny? I am well aware. Mr.
Chairman, that our able statesmen are not all agreed about these
matters. This comes of our free institutions and is the result of free
thought, free speech, and a free press. But, Mr. Chairman, the
people of this country may be divided into two classes. The time
has never been when they might not have been divided into two
classes. One class live for themselves alone, and the other class
live for others as well as themselves. To the latter class we are
indebted for American independence. To this class we are
indebted for the preservation of the Federal Union and for the absolute
freedom of all American citizens.
This class have built our
churches, endowed our colleges, and inaugurated our systems of
public instruction, and to them alone I am willing to intrust the
destiny of our people and the fate of this nation. Mr. Chairman, the
idea of self-government was not born upon this continent. It
came to us from across the seas, and after a trial and approval of a
century and a quarter, may we not send it back with our greetings?
The idea is modern, but it is not new. It is modern because it is
imperishable. It is too pure to decay. Forms decay, words become
obsolete, and languages die, but great ideas, .truths, and principles
live forever. The great Nazarene teacher, who taught as man
never taught, and who spake as never man spake, suggested the idea
of self-government to the human race and taught the doctrine of
civil liberty two thousand years ago. When he appeared upon the
scene as a teacher human slavery existed in every civilized nation in
the world; but these wicked and degrading institutions have melted
down before the sunlight of the gospel. Our German ancestry, the
Angles and the Saxons, carried the spirit of self-government from
Germany into England in the fifth century. It struggled there for
more than ten centuries against monarchical forms of government
before it was driven to this country in search of a more congenial soil
where it might develop and mature. It found lodgment in the
patriotic heart of Washington and the brilliant intellect of Franklin;
it found expression in the language of Jefferson; it found
interpretation in the conscience of Lincoln, and it is finding
dissemination in the patriotic judgment of William McKinley, to the
credit of his brilliant Administration and the honor and glory of this
nation. [Applause on the Republican side.] When Mr. Jefferson
wrote the Declaration of Independence, he stated a powerful
governmental fact — all men are created equal — the full meaning of
which I do not believe he comprehended. It remained for
Abraham Lincoln, the great emancipationist of the nineteenth
century, the type of the American Republic, who was endowed by
nature and, as Mr. Watterson claims, was inspired by the
Almighty, to so interpret this fact as to make it speak the whole
truth. Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin saw only the white
man in that declaration, because they all indorsed the Constitution of
the United States, which provided for the enslavement of the black
man. But Mr. Lincoln, who possessed that invisible power of the
human mind that could detect the invisible power that lurked in
the great fact, saw as clearly as a sunbeam that it included the black
man, and it is now dawning upon Mr. McKinley that the
interpretation of Lincoln, that emancipated not only the bodies but
the minds and consciences of men and gave this country a new
civilization founded upon enlightened civil liberty, includes every
shade of color between the white and the black man. But how have we
acquired our territory in this country? How has our Government
grown up like its great type, Mr. Lincoln, from nothing to become
everything? In 1783 Great Britain ceded to us the 13 original
colonies, embracing 815,000 square miles of territory. We obtained
this under