Page images
PDF
EPUB

United States shall direct, for the establishment of civil government and for maintaining and protecting the inhabitants of said Islands in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and religion: Provided, That all franchises granted under the authority hereof shall contain a reservation of the right to alter, amend, or repeal the same.

Until a Permanent Government, shall have been established in said Archipelago, full reports shall be made to Congress, on or before the first day of each regular session, of all legislative acts and proceedings of the Temporary Government instituted under the provisions hereof; and full reports of the acts and doings of the said Government, and as to the condition of the Archipelago and of its people shall be made to the President, including all information which may be useful to the Congress in providing for a more permanent Government: Provided, That no sale or lease or other disposition of the public lands or the timber thereon or the mining rights therein shall be made: And provided further, That no franchise shall be granted which is not approved by the President of the United States, and is not in his judgment clearly necessary for the immediate government of the Islands and indispensable for the interest of the people thereof, and which cannot, without great public mischief, be postponed until the establishment of permanent civil government; and all such franchises shall terminate one year after the establishment of such permanent civil government.

The actual condition of affairs with respect to the Philippine Islands, therefore, is that Congress has temporarily withdrawn from the habitual and constant control and has recognized that the President is, for temporary and special purposes, the proper representative of the United States in exercising the Imperial power and performing the Imperial obligations. It exercises the power of superintendence, and claims the power to substitute itself at any time for the President in the habitual and constant exercise of the Imperial power.

As the President exercises all his powers through Secretaries or Secretarial Boards, it is important to ascertain the Executive Departments in whose charge the business of the relations with the dependencies has been since the adoption of the Constitution.

Until March 1, 1873, the relations with the Territories were in the charge of the Secretary who is called the Secretary of State, but who is really the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, upon whom some of the functions of the Secretariat for Home Affairs were imposed in the year 1789, for special reasons which no longer exist. The Secretariat was originally created as the Secretariat for Foreign Affairs and the name was changed when the special duties were added. The dependencies were thus treated as "foreign States" and their affairs as “foreign affairs," to quote the language of the original Act creating this Secretariat.

On March 1, 1873, by Act of Congress, all powers and duties in relation to the Territories "that were, prior to March 1, 1873, by law or custom exercised and performed by the Secretary of State" were transferred to the Secretary of the Interior.

The Secretary of the Interior has charge, under this statute, at the present time, of the relations with the continental Territories, including Alaska, with Hawaii, and, under special statutes, of some of the relations with Porto Rico.

As matter of fact, the relations between the American Union and the Territories seem to have been almost entirely neglected until a very recent period. The appointed Governors and Secretaries have regarded themselves as responsible entirely to the people and the elected Senate and House of Representatives of the respective Territories, and the delegate in Congress, with the power to debate but not to vote, has been recognized as the link between each Territory and the Union. At

the present time Governors of Territories report to the Secretary of the Interior, and their reports are laid before the President and Congress.

Upon the establishment of the Secretariat of War in 1789, the relations with the Indians were placed in charge of this Department. In 1832, by Act of Congress, a permanent Under-Secretariat in this Department for this purpose was created, in charge of a "Commissioner for Indian Affairs" who was to have "the direction and management of all Indian affairs, and of all matters arising out of Indian relations" and was obliged to act "under the direction of the Secretary of War and agreeably to such regulations as the President may, from time to time, prescribe." The propriety and necessity of leaving the habitual and constant charge of the relations with the Indian tribes in the hands of the President was thus recognized. In 1849, by Act of Congress, "the supervising and appellate powers exercised by the Secretary of the War Department" over the Commissioner for Indian Affairs were transferred to the Department of the Interior, where they still remain.

The relations of the American Union with the Philippines are still in the charge of the War Department, in which there has been established a Division, called the Division of Insular Affairs, having the immediate direction of affairs.

In its theory, as declared by the Supreme Court, and in its practice, as shown by the action of Congress and the President, therefore, the American Union is daily recognizing itself as an Imperial State performing Imperial obligations and exercising Imperial power over external States. The American Federal Empire is a fact, and will remain a fact. It remains, therefore, to ascertain its Imperial obligations.

A

CHAPTER XXVII

IMPERIAL OBLIGATIONS

SSUMING it to be granted that the people and lands of the American Union and the people and lands of its dependencies constitute a Federal Empire, and that the people of the American Union, by their written Constitution consented to by all the people of the Empire, have divided the governmental power under an unwritten Constitution, so that the Union is the Imperial State as respects the dependencies, standing in a federal and contractual relation to them, and having neither unconditional nor unlimited power over them, but only a power of disposition,-which implies adjudication as a prerequisite, and in which is included the power to execute its adjudications by all needful rules and regulations,-it becomes important to attempt to ascertain the obligations which, in this view, are imposed upon the American Union and its people.

The first obligation undoubtedly is that the two great instrumentalities of government — the Senate and House of Representatives, together constituting the Congress (the President participating in the action of Congress only as a Committee of Revision with power to compel reconsideration, but not to nullify its action), and the President, acting separately and apart from the Congress shall be properly related to each other in the exercise of the Imperial power.

[ocr errors]

Considering, first, the question of the propriety of attempting to administer the dependencies wholly through

the instrumentality of the Congress, it is to be noticed that, if such were the habitual and constant method of administration, it would amount, when viewed from the standpoint of the dependencies, to habitual and constant administration by an oligarchy of foreigners. If the oligarchy were composed of a small body of men, having a unity of view and interest, and familiar with the local circumstances and conditions of the dependencies as well as with those of the Union, such a body might be, perhaps, a very proper and effective instrumentality for the performance of the national trust. As a matter of fact, however, the Congress is not a small but a large body; it has not a unity of view and interest, but is always divided into at least two great parties, and always represents local interests, many of which are opposed not only to the interests of the dependencies, but to the interests of each other; its members are elected primarily for the protection of local interests, secondarily for the protection of the interests of the whole Union, and lastly, when these interests have been protected, to protect the interests of the dependencies. With the best and most honest intentions in the world, a man elected to the Senate or House of Representatives is under a pressure to protect the local interests and the interests of the whole Union, which makes it impossible for him to place the interests of the dependencies on anything like an equality with the other interests.

Moreover, a large body of men is, in the nature of things, disqualified from determining questions where the facts are complicated and are not facts of common knowledge. The theory of legislation is that the members of the Legislature are familiar with the facts, and that they deliberate simply concerning the rule to be applied to established facts. Congressional committees investigate facts, but such investigations are properly for the purpose of settling disputed or doubtful questions of

« PreviousContinue »