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2126 careful and our affectionate consideration. They have a right to our trust and our confidence. There is no such thing in the government of Hawaii as fraud or robbery, failure to account, or anything of that kind. Those people have commended themselves to us by every consideration, so that it is our duty to reserve to them, or rather, I should say, to preserve to them, something of the establishments and institutions that they have built up. They have built them splendidly. They have administered them with purity and justice. The fruits of their administration and the effects of their laws are manifest on every side in Hawaii; and we ought not to take those people whom we have been inviting to come into the American Republic since the days of Franklin Pierce, who made the first treaty with them-we ought not to take them, now that they have become annexed, with their consent, to the Government of the United States, and treat them either as if they were children or ignorant bands of Indians or early settlers in a wild country; but we ought to take them as we find them, people of developed institutions, who understand the very highest arts of civilization and who have in all of their establishments, both domestic and public, the strongest evidence of the highest possible culture. So I insist, Mr. President, that there can be no harm, there can be no wrong, there is no invasion of the Constitution of the United States in our giving to those people that privilege of local self-government which relates to the selection of their own judicial officers. If there is any one part of local self- government that is more important to the people than any other, it is to have some control, some voice, in the selection of those men who have in their hands the issues of life and death and whose judgments dispose of all rights of persons and property. I can not see why it is that the President of the United States should hare imparted to him the power to appoint judicial officers there, except merely that they may become an appanage or a part of the patronage of his office; and I detest the very idea of having men sent into the Hawaiian government who go there merely as the selected agents of a political party in the United States. You do not select the judges for Alabama or Connecticut or Ohio according to their political complexion. None of the people of the different States would tolerate the idea of having the Government of the United States appoint judges for them because, forsooth, they are not qualified to select their own judges through their own agents; and there is no reason for haying that done. We hear very much said, Mr. President, of late about imperialism. I do not know of any definition of imperialism as it is being used at the present time, and I have a difficulty in locating my own attitude in regard to imperialism because of the want of a definition of what that may mean. The imperialism that I am. opposed to is that which takes away from the people of any part of the United States a proper participation in the right of local self-government. That is the imperialism I am opposed to. The imperialism that I am afraid of is not the natural growth or expansion of our influence in the world, for it was made to expand and it ought to expand, because it is good. No human being ever has been, and I hope that no human being ever will be, included in the power and jurisdiction of the United States who does not receive that blessing in consequence of the fact that he is placed within our jurisdiction. But the imperialism that I as a Democrat have always resisted, and I resist it now, and will always resist it, is the magnifying of the power of the Federal Government and extending it into every cranny and corner of the United States that it may reap a harvest of political power or patronage or something of that kind. If I were going to define the idea of imperialism I would take up the amendment of the Senator from Connecticut, and I would take away from that enlightened and splendid community in Hawaii the right through their governor and their senate to select their judges for local affairs and local jurisdiction, and confer it upon the President of this .imperial Government at Washington. I could not find a better definition of imperialism, it seems to me, than that, and I am opposed to it with that definition in all of its phases and in allot' its applications. I believe in the right of local self-government. I believe that there is not an intelligent community in the United States, I mean of white people, who are not entirely competent to select for themselves their local officers, whether they are executive, legislative, or judicial, and any bill which gives the selection of the legislative officers into the hands of Hawaii and denies to them all participation in the selection of their judicial officers I find a contradiction which is entirely illogical, and unless some necessity can be pointed out for it, I must be opposed to it. Now, that is all I care to say now. I understand the Senator from Rhode Island proposes to make a report, perhaps a conference report, and I yield the floor.