Page:Messages of the President of the United States on the Relations of the United States to Spain (1898).djvu/87

 58 time when it submits to your majesty the other measure which is about to give to our brethren in the Antilles—the right to govern themselves. The full value of that measure would not be appreciated if suspicion and distrust, closely followed by arbitrariness, should prevail in the regions of the Central Power.

Inasmuch as we, in the peninsula, have come to the belief that all executive functions can be discharged within the constitution of the State and under the laws enacted for its execution; inasmuch as instances of resort to force, against which, however, the law of public order is deemed adequate, are not lacking here, we should show ourselves to be illogical, and, consequently, lose the authority requisite for forceful government, if we did not proclaim, as the foremost and most significant part of the transformation effected in our colonial régime, that constitutional unity which is the bond that unites all Spaniards, and under which the free local government of those valued territories will restore confidence in the mother country, and thus will unmistakable evidence be given of the sincerity with which she seeks to render her sovereignty beloved.

Resting on the foregoing reasons, the Government has the honor to submit the appended draft of a decree to your majesty's approval.

At the royal feet of your majesty.

2em

, November 25, 1897.

In accordance with the opinion of my council of ministers and by virtue of the authority conferred on my Government by article 89 of the constitution, in the name of My August Son, King Alfonso XIII, and as Queen Regent of the Kingdom, I hereby decree as follows:

The Spaniards residing in the Antilles shall enjoy, on equal terms with the residents of the peninsula, the rights granted in Title I of the constitution of the Monarchy and the guarantees whereby their exercise is secured by the laws of the Kingdom.

To this end, and conformably to article 89 of the constitution, the laws by which its provisions are supplemented, and especially that of criminal prosecution, that of compulsory expropriation, that of public instruction, that of the press, and of meeting and association, and the code of military justice, shall go into full effect in the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, so that article 14 of the constitution may be executed in its entirety.

In time of war the law of public order shall be enforced in the Antilles with the limitation and in the manner prescribed in article 17 of the constitution.

The ministry of the colonies, after hearing the council of state, shall revise the legislation of the Antilles and the proclamations published by the Governors-General since the promulgation of the constitution, and shall thereafter publish the results of such revision, to the end that henceforth there may be neither on the part of the executive, nor on that of the judiciary, any possibility, through error or neglect, either of citing or enforcing provisions that are at variance with the letter or spirit of the constitution of the Spanish Monarchy.

2em

The president of the council of ministers:

2em

Done at the Palace, November 25, 1897.

The complement of the decree that places the Spaniards on an equal footing as regards the use and enjoyment of their constitutional rights and the indispensable preparation for the organization of local government in the Antilles is the enforcement in those territories of the law of electoral suffrage that is in force in the Peninsula.

To effect this the Government might have confined itself to the reproduction, pure and simple, of that law; but the difficulty of so doing will be apparent when it is remembered that in order to give the greatest security to the electoral right the Cortes of the Kingdom, proceeding with forethought and in their desire to avoid impairing, through seemingly unimportant reglementary provisions, rights that have much value in public life, sought to include in the law even the last and most minute regulations that govern its execution.

For this purpose there are in it two kinds of provisions—one that comprises the