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3751
for the Territory, it would seem, must legislate under the Consti-
tution. [Here the hammer fell.] Mr. MCALEER.   I yield five minutes 
more to the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. DE ARMOND]. Mr. DE 
ARMOND.   If it be true that no part of the territory of the United 
States outside of the States is or can be tinder constitutional 
protection until Congress has put the territory and the people under 
the Constitution, then Congress must have the power and right to 
withdraw the Constitution from that territory and that people 
whenever it pleases.   Now, who will dispute that proposition?   
Who finds fault or who can find fault with that reasoning? It 
seems to me that those who would have Congress so mighty and the 
Constitution so weak are driven then to this absurdity - that the 
Constitution being carried by Congress to a Territory, the people of 
the Territory once being under the Constitution, Congress for the 
time being must legislate in subordination to the Constitution: 
but whenever Congress concludes to reassert its vast power, all it 
has to do is, by another act, to lift the Constitution, to gather the 
Constitution in and fold its wings of protection, and then to resume 
its own absolute sway, independent of the Constitution. 
Gentlemen, what do you think of that doctrine as you follow it out?   
What respect, my friends, do you really have for your own judgment 
and your own logic, your own premises and your own treatment of 
them, when you proclaim or subscribe to the doctrine that the 
Constitution is nowhere outside of the States except where 
Congress carries it - that in legislating for the Territories the 
Constitution does not interfere with Congress? I understand, and 
you understand, that this proposition lies at the very foundation of 
the Philippine question and the Puerto Rican question and the 
Hawaiian question, and the other questions that have arisen and will 
arise in this career which some gentleman call progress, which others 
might properly call adventure - gathering in all that is loose around 
about, and then in providing a government, throwing away our 
constitutional safeguards in order to deal with our acquisitions, 
"our newly acquired possessions," in the way that necessity or 
cupidity may suggest.    [Applause.] I believe that no department or 
agency of the Government can escape from constitutional control 
otherwise than by violating the Constitution.   I believe that the 
Constitution is in and over every act and act: on of Congress to 
sanction and sustain because in harmony with it, or to condemn and 
annul because in conflict with it.   I believe the Constitution floats in 
the current of all Congressional legislation and directs the course of 
the stream.   It is to Congressional life and action what the air we 
breathe is to human life and achievement.   No legislation can escape 
from its supervising control, and wherever a law of Congressional 
enactment is in a Territory as well as in a State there is the 
Constitution also, having traveled in its own way, by its own 
conveyance, commanding Congress always and never commanded 
by Congress. I did not intend to go into this question at length.   It is 
worthy of some discussion.   I may be wrong about it, but I think 
the time is coming and is not far distant when this proposition upon 
which so many gentlemen rest so much will receive more consid-
eration than as yet has been given to it. I believe the time is not far off 
- and I am warranted in that belief by reference to the decisions of 
the Supreme Court, by everything that we have upon that subject 
that deserves the name of authority, and, I am almost tempted to 
say, by everything which deserves the name of reason - I am led to 
the belief, and am confident in it. that the time is not far off when 
the doctrine in this country will be reestablished, to the satisfaction 
of many and the confusion of some others, that the Constitution is 
not merely a convenient little, thing like a garment, to be taken off 
and put on; that the Constitution is not to be handled by the 
Congress of the United States as an overcoat might be handled by 
a servant in waiting - put on, pulled off, hung up or laid down, or 
even folded and stored away with spices and anti-moth preparations 
until a more convenient season for taking it out.   [Laughter.] I 
believe the doctrine soon will be reestablished in this country, to the 
satisfaction of many and to the confusion of some others, that the 
one thing that abides here, the one thing to which all of us must 
bow, the one thing to which all of us owe allegiance, the one thing 
which determines and measures the powers of Congress and of the 
President, whether the greatest or the smallest, that protects the 
feeblest and the mightiest, is the Constitution of the United States 
[applause on the Democratic side]; that it lives without 
Congressional action, and that the highest duty of Congress is to 
legislate under it and not against it.   [Applause on the Democratic 
side.] )) [Here the hammer fell.] Mr. KNOX.   I yield forty-five 
minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. BOREING]. Mr. 
BOREING.   Mr. Chairman, our Government was created without a 
pattern, and its founders commenced business without

a dollar and without a foot of territory.   Guided by the flag and not 
by the Constitution, they fought England seven years for our first 
possessions.   To-day the American Republic stands in the forefront 
of the world's powers, without a peer in existence or a parallel in 
history.   We have spanned this continent, compassed the seas, and 
planted our outposts at the threshold of the Asiatic countries, where 
we can command the trade and commerce of the world and protect 
our missionaries in all lands, and are now engaged in enacting a 
constitution for the islands of the Pacific Ocean. We have the praise 
and admiration of the great civilized powers of the earth and no enemy 
in our front to stop our onward inarch around the globe.   Yet there 
is a voice that calls us to halt and retreat.   That voice comes from 
the rear.   It is not the voice of Grant.   It is not the voice of 
Stonewall Jackson.   The men who wore the blue and the men who 
wore the gray are at the front upholding the flag, with a united 
people and a prosperous country behind them.   The voice that 
calls us back is the voice of the Tory in the Revolutionary days; the 
voice of Vallandigham and the Copperheads in the days of the civil 
war.   It is the voice of the demagogue, the pessimist, and a few 
constitutional lawyers. Shall we obey that voice, or shall we state 
the philosophy of our politics and the religion of our Government in 
a broader patriotism, looking to a wider and higher national destiny? I 
am well aware. Mr. Chairman, that our able statesmen are not all 
agreed about these matters.   This comes of our free institutions and 
is the result of free thought, free speech, and a free press.   But, Mr. 
Chairman, the people of this country may be divided into two 
classes.   The time has never been when they might not have been 
divided into two classes.   One class live for themselves alone, and 
the other class live for others as well as themselves.   To the latter 
class we are indebted for American independence.   To this class 
we are indebted for the preservation of the Federal Union and for the 
absolute freedom of all American citizens.     This class have built our 
churches, endowed our colleges, and inaugurated our systems of 
public instruction, and to them alone I am willing to intrust the 
destiny of our people and the fate of this nation. Mr. Chairman, the 
idea of self-government was not born upon this continent.   It came 
to us from across the seas, and after a trial and approval of a 
century and a quarter, may we not send it back with our greetings?   
The idea is modern, but it is not new. It is modern because it is 
imperishable.   It is too pure to decay. Forms decay, words become 
obsolete, and languages die, but great ideas, .truths, and principles 
live forever.   The great Nazarene teacher, who taught as man never 
taught, and who spake as never man spake, suggested the idea of 
self-government to the human race and taught the doctrine of civil 
liberty two thousand years ago.   When he appeared upon the scene as 
a teacher human slavery existed in every civilized nation in the 
world; but these wicked and degrading institutions have melted 
down before the sunlight of the gospel. Our German ancestry, the 
Angles and the Saxons, carried the spirit of self-government from 
Germany into England in the fifth century.   It struggled there for 
more than ten centuries against monarchical forms of government 
before it was driven to this country in search of a more congenial soil 
where it might develop and mature.   It found lodgment in the 
patriotic heart of Washington and the brilliant intellect of 
Franklin; it found expression in the language of Jefferson; it found 
interpretation in the conscience of Lincoln, and it is finding 
dissemination in the patriotic judgment of William McKinley, to the 
credit of his brilliant Administration and the honor and glory of this 
nation.   [Applause on the Republican side.] When Mr. Jefferson 
wrote the Declaration of Independence, he stated a powerful 
governmental fact - all men are created equal - the full meaning of 
which I do not believe he comprehended.   It remained for Abraham 
Lincoln, the great emancipationist of the nineteenth century, the 
type of the American Republic, who was endowed by nature and, 
as Mr. Watterson claims, was inspired by the Almighty, to so 
interpret this fact as to make it speak the whole truth.   Jefferson, 
Washington, and Franklin saw only the white man in that 
declaration, because they all indorsed the Constitution of the United 
States, which provided for the enslavement of the black man.   But 
Mr. Lincoln, who possessed that invisible power of the human mind 
that could detect the invisible power that lurked in the great fact, 
saw as clearly as a sunbeam that it included the black man, and it is 
now dawning upon Mr. McKinley that the interpretation of Lincoln, 
that emancipated not only the bodies but the minds and 
consciences of men and gave this country a new civilization 
founded upon enlightened civil liberty, includes every shade of color 
between the white and the black man. But how have we acquired our 
territory in this country?   How has our Government grown up like 
its great type, Mr. Lincoln, from nothing to become everything? In 
1783 Great Britain ceded to us the 13 original colonies, embracing 
815,000 square miles of territory.   We obtained this under

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