Page:Messages of the President of the United States on the Relations of the United States to Spain (1898).djvu/88

 Rh definition of the right and the guarantee of the casting of the vote, the other that establishes the conditions, so to speak, preparatory to those purposes. Hence the necessity of discriminating between these two parts of the law.

The first undoubtedly possesses a character that yields in importance to constitutional provisions only, and therefore it must, like these, protect itself from the changes and modifications to which legislation is frequently exposed.

It merely behooves the Government to say that since we have considered it good and proper for the Peninsula, it is an obligation that can not be evaded, to extend it and apply it to our colonies.

The same is not the case, however, as regards the mode of procedure.

So far as it possesses that character in the exercise of suffrage, in the taking of the census, in the manner of casting the vote, in the preliminaries of the election, in the organization of the colleges, even in the qualifications of the electors, there are such different points of view, according to the traditions, the geography, and the component parts of a people, that it would be more than illogical, nay, would lead to a result diametrically opposed to that which is had in view, to shape the electoral procedure of the Antilles in the peninsular mold, especially when the creation of self-government and of parliamentary organisms that are to be the expression of the will of the people demand that the regulation of what relates to the exercise and security of the electoral right be intrusted to them.

In view of these weighty considerations, the Government has thought that after separating all that refers to the definition and recognition of the right of suffrage from what might be called the constitution of the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, in order that, in any case, it may be modified by a law, it ought to intrust all the regulations, which will be many in number and complicated in their development, to the insular Parliament, feeling certain that no one possesses to a greater extent the conditions necessary for success in adapting them to the habits and character of the population.

The flexibility thus acquired by the electoral procedure will undoubtedly enable it to identify itself with the conditions of those inhabitants, and to render the exercise of suffrage practical and fruitful, as no one can have more interest in its success than those who are to be governed by it.

On the basis of these considerations, the Government has the honor to submit to the approval of your majesty the accompanying draft of a decree.

At your majesty's royal feet.

2em

November 25, 1897.

In accordance with the opinion of my council of ministers, and in virtue of the power conferred upon my Government by article 89 of the constitution of the monarchy, in the name of my august son, King Alfonso XIII, and as Queen Regent of the Kingdom, I decree as follows:

The electoral law of June 26, 1890, shall be promulgated and observed in the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico, with the modifications that have been introduced in the text that follows this decree, with a view to its adaptation to the conditions of those territories.

The regulations and other necessary provisions for the execution of the present decree, which the Government shall before the Cortes, shall be prepared by the ministry of the colonies.

2em

The president of the council of ministers:

2em

Done at the Palace this 25th day of November, 1897.

All male Spaniards over 25 years of age that shall be in the full enjoyment of their civil rights, and inhabitants of a municipal district in which they shall have resided at least two years, shall be voters in the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico.