Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/311

291 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. VOL. XII. DECEMBER 25, I898. NO. 5 CONSTITUTIONAL ASPECTS OF ANNEXATION. Part First. I. "T /"HETHER a European power shall indulge the appetite for ' ^ land is a question merely of ability and expediency. An Englishman, a Frenchman, a Russian, or a German would not pre- sume to discuss the right of his government to seize land anywhere, hold it by any tenure, and rule it at will. For these governments, however unlike in structure and purpose, enjoy alike sovereignty in its elementary form. What the government wills, that it may do without considering the act or its consequences in the light of an organic law of binding obligation. The Federal Government is in a different position. Its powers are conferred, and duties and restraints are imposed upon it, by a written constitution inter- preted by an independent judiciary. Whether the United States shall annex Spanish lands now in their mihtary possession, or within the immediate sweep of their military arm, demands a more searching examination of the powers, the duties, the purposes of our republic as marked by the Constitu- tion than has any question arising since the Civil War. II. The United States have the power of expansion. Chief Justice Marshall says : " The Constitution confers absolutely on the gov- 38