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2327
Mr. ALLEN.   I should like to ask the Senator from Illinois if 
these are Territorial judges? 
Mr. CULLOM.   Yes; they are Territorial judges. 
Mr. ALLEN.   And it is proposed to pay them out of the Treas- 
ury of the United States?
Mr. CULLOM.   Out of the Treasury of the United States. 
Mr. ALLEN.   Why should they be paid in that way? 
Mr. CULLOM.   The original bill, according to the system 
adopted by the commission and the committee, made them ap- 
pointive by the governor and paid by the Territory.   The Senate, 
however, on yesterday changed the bill and provided for their 
appointment by the President of the United States.   It would 
seem that they ought to be paid by the United States, as we pay 
in that way all of the judges of the present Territories in our own 
country, I understand.
Mr. ALLEN. The Senator holds to the idea, then, that because 
it has been done it should be done.
Mr. CULLOM. That is a question for the Senate. It would 
seem that when the President appoints them, and takes them out 
of the hands of the Territory entirely, perhaps the Government 
of the United States ought to pay them.
Mr. ALLEN. With the Senator's permission, I do not think it 
makes much difference one way or the other, whether we have 
been paying Territorial judges out of the Treasury of the United 
States or not, so far as the right or wrong is concerned.
Mr. CULLOM.   Will the Senator allow me to say a word in 
addition to what I have said. 
Mr. ALLEN.   Yes, sir.
Mr. CULLOM. This bill turns all the money received from 
customs, internal revenue, post-offices, and all that into the 
United States Treasury, so that we are taking away a very large 
share of the income that they received as they have been existing 
heretofore.
Mr. ALLEN. I suppose the customs duties are to pass into the 
hands of the Government the same as the customs duties of the 
United States proper; but as I understand this bill, in the short 
time I have had to look into it, it preserves the distinction between 
a Territorial court established under the United States statutes 
and a Federal court proper - that is, there is a Federal court to be 
established there in addition to these Territorial judges.
Mr. CULLOM. There is to be one United States judge to ad- 
minister United States statutes,
Mr. ALLEN.   The district judge who will exercise the powers 
of a circuit judge? 
Mr. CULLOM.   Yes.
Mr. ALLEN. Probably with powers a little more enlarged 
than our circuit judges have. Now, I can see no reason why the 
Government of the United States should pay all these judges and 
bear the expenses of the judicial department of that Territory. 
There may be some reason, Mr. President, that I do not under- 
stand, but I see no reason except as was suggested by the Senator 
from Montana a moment ago, that it has been that way heretofore. 
Mr. ALLISON. All Territorial judges have always been paid 
by the Government.
Mr. ALLEN.   And I suppose as it has existed heretofore, there- 
fore it should always exist, whether it is right or wrong. 
Mr. CLARK of Wyoming.   Mr. President -- 
The PRESIDING OFFICER.   Does the Senator from Nebraska 
yield to the Senator from Wyoming? 
Mr. ALLEN.   Certainly.
Mr. CLARK of Wyoming.  If I may suggest to the Senator one 
thought, it is that these judicial officers are officers of the United 
States Government, appointed by the President and confirmed by 
the Senate, and that appears to me to be a very good reason why 
they should be paid by the Government of the United States.
Mr. ALLEN. They are officers of the United States Govern- 
ment only in a qualified sense. They are Territorial officers ap- 
pointed by the President of the United States, and they sustain 
no different relations to the people of that country than the elect- 
ive judiciary of the State of Wyoming to the people of that State, 
except in the method of their appointment, the method of holding 
their office.
Now, Mr. President, it may be idle for me to argue to the con- 
trary and to contend to the contrary. It may be that this bill 
will go through without any objection and that this amendment 
will become a part of the bill. But if that judiciary is calculated, 
as it is in its nature, to deal with the local affairs of those islands, 
it is a local judiciary to all intents and purposes, and should be 
supported by local taxation. There is not the slightest reason 
why the expense of that judiciary should be borne by the Gov- 
ernment of the United States any more than to say that a justice 
of the peace or any other local officer should be paid by the Gen- 
eral Government.
I know there is a good deal of force in precedents, and, Mr. 
President, whenever a man has no reason to give for the opinion 
be seeks to enforce he always resorts to precedents. 
Mr. CULLOM.   If the Senator will allow me, I do not want to
interrupt him any further than to give him in perfect good faith 
whatever information I can with reference to the matter. 
Mr. ALLEN.   I have no doubt about that. 
Mr. CULLOM.   Three supreme judges, so called, one of them 
a chief justice, existed there under their system of government. 
They have been paid over there 56,000 a year each.   I do not know 
but that the chief justice gets a thousand dollars more than the 
circuit judges.   Two of them receive $4,000, and the others $3,000 
apiece.
Mr. ALLEN. Are the circuit judges ex officio judges of the 
supreme court?
Mr. CULLOM. No. sir; they are not. It is a different system. 
We found that system of government there, and wo tried to let it 
alone so far as we could. We provided that when their terms 
should expire the governor should appoint and that the Territory 
should pay them. But there seemed to be a disposition to require 
the President to appoint them, and such an amendment has been 
adopted. The original bill embodied the idea of a commission, 
that all the expenses of the Territorial government there should be 
paid by the Territory itself, including the legislature. I may say 
in pur Territories here, Arizona, New Mexico, and so on, the 
United States pays the courts and pays the expenses of the legis- 
lature as well.
We still require that the Territory shall pay all the expenses of 
the administration of the government, except these judges ap- 
pointed by the President of the United States, and, of course, the 
district judge of the United States, the United States marshal, 
district attorney, the governor, and secretary of the Territory. 
All of the rest of the establishment there is to be paid by the Ter- 
ritory. Now, the Senate thought, I think, that in view of the 
fact that we are taking away from them all their customs and in- 
ternal-revenue receipts and putting them into the United States 
Treasury, the people of the Territory will have about as much as 
they can do to pay the balance.
Mr. SPOONER.   Will the Senator from Illinois allow me to 
interject a word there? 
Mr. CULLOM.   Yes; two of them.
Mr. SPOONER. We are not only taking away from them cer- 
tain revenues, but we are imposing our own revenue taxes upon 
them.
Mr. ALLEN. I do not think there is any misunderstanding 
about that.
Mr. BACON. Will the Senator from Illinois please state how 
these salaries compare with the salaries of other Territorial 
judges?
Mr. CULLOM.   They are a little higher than we pay. 
Mr. CLARK of Wyoming.   Some of them. 
Mr. TELLER.   Some of them are higher than we pay, and some 
are the same that our Territorial judges receive. 
Mr. CULLOM.   I do not know exactly what we pay. 
Mr. ALLISON.   In Indian Territory we pay $$5,000 a year.   To 
the others we pay $3,000.
Mr. SPOONER.   The statute makes the pay of the others $3,000. 
Mr. CULLOM.   But I want to say that the expense of living in 
those islands is much higher than it is anywhere in the United 
States; so that, in my judgment, the salaries fixed are as small as 
they ought to be.   I beg pardon for interrupting the Senator.
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. President, when the Senator from Illinois 
kindly interrupted me I was just in the act of saying that when- 
ever a man wants to fortify a thing which he can not fortify in 
logic or reason he always resorts to precedents. I have no doubt 
the man who taught the doctrine that the world was flat and 
rested upon a serpent invoked that precedent in subsequent dis- 
cussion.
Now, a precedent has value just as it is based upon reason and 
principle, and no further. It maybe that in interpreting prop- 
erty rights it is sometimes better to stand by a precedent which 
was wrong in the first instance than to make a change, by reason 
of the consequences that would follow a change. But that rea- 
soning does not apply to a case of this kind. Here are a distinct 
people, 2,000 miles from our shores, who have maintained a dis- 
tinct government in the Sandwish Islands for a great many years. 
They have had their judiciary; they have had their legislative 
department; they have had their executive departments. They 
were brought into this country by an act of Congress annexing 
them in 1898 - leprosy, bubonic fever, and everything that afflicts 
the country. They are a part, and parcel now of the United 
States, according to modern construction.
Now, we propose to give them not only a Territorial judicial 
department, but a Federal judicial department distinct from that 
Territory, which, I submit, is without a precedent. Heretofore 
the Territorial judges have been ex officio judges of the Federal, 
and have determined questions arising in their Territories. Now,  
we propose to give this archipelago some four or five ordinary cir- 
cuit judges, such as we find in our statutes, and then a district 
supreme court to which appeals are to be taken, and I presume 
with a writ of error from that court of appeals to the circuit court

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