Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/119

Rh have bought with a stipend like that which the Republic in its feeble infancy paid to the pirates of the Barbary States. And even his friendship will hardly last long. Yes, it is a terrible fact that in one year we have mace them hate us more, perhaps, than they hated even their Spanish oppressors, who were at least less foreign to them, and that the manner in which we are treating them has caused many, if not most, of the Filipinos to wish that they had patiently suffered Spanish tyranny rather than be “liberated” by us.

Thus it appears that we who represent in the Philippines no popular element at all, but are unpopular in the extreme, cannot enter into relations with an established government for the pretended reason that it does not represent all the people, while it does represent a very important part of them, and would probably soon represent them all if we did not constantly throw obstacles in its way—aye, if we did not seek to extinguish it in blood. Was there ever a false pretense more glaring?

But the ghastliest argument of all in defense of the President's course is that he had to extend American sovereignty over the whole archipelago even before the ratification of the treaty, and that he was, and is now, obliged to shoot down the Filipinos, to the end of “restoring order” and “preventing anarchy” in the islands. We are to understand that if our strong armed hand did not restrain them from doing as they pleased—that is, if they were left free and independent—they would quickly begin to cut one another's or other people's throats, and to ravish and destroy one another's or other people's property. We may reasonably assume that if this were sure to be the upshot of their being left free and independent, they would have shown some such tendency where they have actually held sway under their own revolutionary government.