THE AMERICAN DEBATE ON EXPANSION.
WE have no belief whatever in the opposition which is revealing itself in Washington to the annexa- tion of the Philippines. All the Times' correspondents, who evidently do not like the project, give every import- ance to speeches against it, and to the stories, or rather rumours, about local resistan ce which are spread in America and Europe by allies of Aguinaldo. The policy of America when once defined is not likely to be deflected by the resistance of semi-civilised coloured men, who have not a notion of the irresistible strength they are contend- ing against, and one terrible defeat will probably convince the Tagals that their leaders have deceived them. With the American fleet in movement the islanders are split up into minute sections, the cities are all on the coast exposed to the fire of the shipping, and as to guerilla war, why has it never been successful in driving out the Spaniards ? The Americans will pacify the dominant caste, the Tagals, as soon as they have organised native regiments ; they have already the support of the Papacy, trembling for its great possessions ; and the Spaniards left in the islands having elected to join the civilised side, will at once supply any lack of local knowledge. The real contest will be in Washington, and it will not be very fierce there. America has always parties, and Americans let nothing pass without loud speeches, which they often enjoy as other peoples enjoy music—you may see the same phenomenon in Ireland—but the parties on this occasion are not equal. The Democrats have split, " Boss " Croker, who knows his men, having become as violent for expansion as Mr. Cleveland is violent in opposition to it ; while the Republicans of New England, who from tradition distrust the new policy, are overwhelmed by the multitudes of the West., who really govern the Union, and who see in expansion chances of unhoped-for adventure, excitement, and gain. In a recent census of newspapers throughout the Union it was found that two-thirds were for a forward policy, and we question, if a popular vote were taken on the single question, whether even that proportion would represent the majority. The orators of the Opposition reveal, indeed, in their speeches an inner consciousness of unpopularity. They do not venture to say frankly that the Treaty of Peace should be rejected and the Philip- pines surrendered to Spain, nor do they repeat their first argument, that Americans cannot be trusted to civilise half-blood Malays, but fall back upon the abstract rights of man as defined in the Constitution. The only just basis of government, says Senator Hoar, who probably whips his children when they are naughty, is " the consent of the governed." That argument sounds beau- tiful; but it is hardly likely to convince Americans, who expended a million lives and six hundred millions sterling in compelling the Southerners to accept a govern- ment against which they had rebelled ; who refuse all political rights to their home-grown Indians, the original proprietors of the soil; and who, after granting the vote to negroes, suffered it to be rendered valueless by terrorism. Just imagine a Louisianian Representative talking about " consent" after reading of the military occupation by which his State, just after its purchase from Napoleon, was reduced to order, or a Floridan Senator familiar with the history of the savage war which suppressed the Seminoles. Are the Americans, perhaps, going to give up Texas or hand over California to the Mexicans with an apology and a few- millions in compensation ? All that talk ends in words. If Americans can constitutionally govern dark races within the Union without conceding to them political powers, so they can govern them in distant possessions, and the single thing for them to consider is whether in so governing them they are doing good and not evil. We maintain that they are doing good, that the dark races both of Asia and Africa need a century or two of discipline before their full powers can reveal themselves, and that there are races which can enforce this discipline without tyranny and with a perceptible re. duction of the great sum of human misery. We believe the Americans to be one of these, and that fifty years hence under their control the Filipinos, who now retain so many savage instincts, will be orderly, law-abiding persons like our own Hindoos, with a taste for acquiring money, and the foible of believing that rhetoric is an admirable sub- stitute alike for thought and action. Like Arabs and Malays, they are born with the literary predispositions ; and as they will speak either Spanish or American, their forms of expression are pretty sure to be a little " high- falutin.' " We write these arguments because our business is to discuss ; but at heart we doubt whether the great move- ments of humanity are ever much affected by discussion. Nobody, we may safely assert, ever argued the white barbarians into the conquest of the Roman Empire, or the Arabs into the strange outpouring which submerged Western Asia, and North Africa, or the Spaniards into that colonisation of South America which even now is only half explained, or Europeans into that mighty stream of emigration which has changed most of the conditions of the world and probably all its future. Most certainly nobody argued the English into the conquest of India, for there are reams of despatches peremptorily for- bidding and censuring almost every step in the process. The great races, when the hour of opportunity arrives, expand greatly,—that is all we really know; and what, when the momentum is on them, they have to care about is to see that their action, for which they are only half respr‘r.sible, benefits the world. As yet the signs in America are, we think, decidedly favourable. It is good that Americans should be gravely discussing whether they are right or wrong in conquering, instead of throwing their caps up in ecstasies of delight at their own greatness and glory, as so many nations would. It is better still that they are free from the blood-thirst, and ready even to incur the charge of weakness—as they have been doing at Iloilo—if only they see a chance of securing peaceful submission. And it is best of all that, departing from American precedents, they have left all substantial power, both in Cuba and the Philippines, to officers of the mili- tary and naval services,—that is, to trained and edu- cated men, who will obey orders, who know how to secure obedience, and who can be shot for misbehaviour. It will be necessary by and by to create a Colonial Civil Service composed of men willing to pass the whole maturity of their lives within the tropics, but until that service is created the fighting services offer the best reservoir of agency. The grand danger was of a rush of applicants for posts by men without experience, with few scruples, and with strong hopes of making a fortune in a few years' time. That danger, which so nearly wrecked us in India, has been for the present, happily, averted, and it will, we hope, be prevented for the future by the establish- ment of a strong Civil Service, with a direct pecuniary interest in keeping adventurers out.
We are asked why the Washington Government draw such a strong distinction between their administration in Cuba and their administration in the Philippines. The former is declared to be a temporary military occupation, while the latter is described as a permanent govern men. to be maintained at least until the natives can establish a civilised and orderly administration for themselves, say in A.D. 2400. We imagine that the difference is a per- fectly honest one. The American statesmen, who are aware of the terrible decline in the population of Cuba consequent on the Civil War, believe, we are assured, that a considerable immigration will take place, that the immigrants, whether American, Italian, or Spanish in origin, will be penetrated with American feeling and ac- quainted with American modes of action, and that it will consequently be possible in a very few years to admit the island, probably as two States, into the Union. As America and Spain can hardly be at war for the second time, there being nothing left to fight about, there would be no fear for the loyalty of the population, which, again, will be accustomed to look to Washington as their capital, and the United States as the place where they must acquire education and seek careers. It is hoped, in fact, at no great distance of time, to fuse Cuba with the Union, and thus terminate all questions about the expediency or morality of separate jurisdiction. Whether the hope is too sanguine must be decided by experience, but it is at least a kindly one, and one inconsistent with any form of tyranny,—except, indeed, the tyranny of Trusts which are already forming, we regret to see, to monopolise sugar and tobacco. For the present, if Cubans will be quiet they will be governed as leniently as the district of Columbia, and by precisely the same authority. The Americans, on the other hand, have no intention of admitting the Philippines into the Union on any terms, and hence the dependency and the colony will from the first be differently governed. As to the still more diffi- cult question whether, if Cuba voted herself free and in- dependent, the Union would give effect to the vote, opinions will probably be violently different. Americans may do it, for an English House of Commons in our own time voted Home-rule for Ireland; but we should ourselves say that the one event was about as probable as the other, and that if Cuba were once admitted into the Union, the great precedent of the War of 1861-64 would be very strictly followed. It is not easy for any community, how- ever large, to consider a vote of secession from itself as anything but an unfriendly act.
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