Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/427

407 GOVERNMENT OF ISLAND TERRITORY. 407 as " a dependent condition, a state o( pupilage, resembling that of a ward to his guardian." * Can this same position be assigned to the Malays, the Moros, and the many savage tribes in the Philippines? This will be a grave question for Congress and the courts to meet.* But, however that may be decided, the people of Puerto Rico and the natives of Hawaii will certainly be fully subject to our jurisdic- tion. Their children, bom after the ratification of the Spanish treaty, if it should be ratified, will all be citizens of the United States. They must, therefore, by the XV. Amendment have the same right of suffrage which may be conceded in those territories to white men of civilized races. One generation of men is soon re- placed by another, and in the tropics more rapidly than with us. In fifty years, the bulk of the adult population of Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the PhiHppines, should these then form part of the United States, will be claiming the benefit of the XV. Amendment. The provision in the first Article of the Constitution that **all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States" will also prove an awkward obstacle to any policy of the "open door," if our protective system is to be maintained. It requires that any customs duties we may impose on imported goods shall be of one and the same form and at one and the same rate at every port of entry throughout the United States.^ If there is a duty of forty per cent collectible on woollen cloth brought to New York from a foreign port, the same percentage must be collected on woollen cloth brought to Manila from a foreign port, subject only to any temporary reservations of a right to entry on more favorable terms which may be made in the treaty of cession. On this point the Supreme Court of the United States had occa- sion to speak soon after the Mexican war, when California became ours by the treaty of peace, and a contest arose over the right of the temporary government set up by the United States to exact duties on imported goods landed at San Francisco. "By the ratifications of tie treaty," says the opinion, "Cali- fornia became a part of the United States. And as there is nothing differently stipulated in the treaty with respect to com- merce, it became instantly bound and privileged by the laws which • Elk V. Wilkins, 112 U. S. 94, 99. ' See United States v. Kagama, 118 U. S. 375, 380, 384. ^ Head Money Cases, 112 U. S. 580, 594.