title—such a title as an unscrupulous corporation-wrecker may, by legal quirks and technicalities and treachery and force, get to the property of the stockholders. But suppose we had won actual possession of the Philippines. Would that alter the moral nature of the question? If we have them we are, in view of the way we got them, in possession of stolen goods—goods obtained by fraud, treachery, and brutal force. We know the goods are stolen goods, for we have stolen them ourselves. When we remind the imperialists of that fact, the answer is substantially this: “Spare us the useless discussion of that academic question. Suppose the goods are stolen. Then the possession of those goods devolves upon us new responsibilities which in the first place require us to keep the stolen goods.”
Is this really the first demand of the new responsibility of the great American republic? I have always believed that the republic of Washington and Lincoln should and would always recognize it as the first and highest responsibility to give to the world an example of good faith and perfect justice in the recognition of the rights of others, be they ever so humble. Unless I am altogether wrong in this belief, our true responsibilities in the case of the Philippines demands not that we regard it as a mere academic question how we got them, or that we should keep the stolen goods under the sanctimonious pretence of benevolent purposes, but that, as an honest and righteous people, we should restore them to their rightful owners, and to secure, so far as it is in our power, those owners in the possession of them.
A most startling attempt to justify the retention of the Philippines and the subjugation of their inhabitants has recently been made by Bishop Potter, when he said in a public speech on this matter: “If my son should come to me and say he proprosed to marry a young creole woman with seven children, I would call him a great ass. But if he had come to me and said he had already contracted such a marriage, I should still try to maintain intimate relations with him. What we have done in the
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