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Hawaii Organic Act: Congressional debates on Hawaii Organic Act

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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.

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