Article XIII. The rights of property secured by copyrights and patents acquired by Spaniards in the island of Cuba, and in Porto Rico, the Philippines, and other ceded territories, at the time of the exchange of the ratifications of this treaty, shall continue to be respected. Spanish scientific, literary, and artistic works not subversive of public order in the territories in question shall continue to be admitted free of duty into such territories for the period of ten years, to be reckoned from the date of the exchange of the ratifications of this treaty.
Article XIV. Spain shall have the power to establish consular officers in the ports and places of the territories the sovereignty over which has either been relinquished or ceded by the present treaty.
Article XV. The Government of each country will, for the term of ten years, accord to the merchant-vessels of the other country the same treatment in respect to all port charges, including entrance and clearance dues, light dues and tonnage duties, as it accords to its own merchant-vessels not engaged in the coastwise trade.
This article may at any time be terminated on six months' notice given by either Government to the other.
Article XVI. It is understood that any obligations assumed in this treaty by the United States with respect to Cuba are limited to the time of its occupancy thereof; but it will, upon the termination of such occupancy, advise any Government established in the island to assume the same obligations.
Article XVII. The present treaty shall be ratified by the President of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate thereof, and by Her Majesty the Queen Regent of Spain; and the ratifications shall be exchanged at Washington within six months from the date hereof, or earlier if possible.
In faith whereof we, the respective plenipotentiaries, have signed this treaty and have hereunto affixed our seals.
Done in duplicate at Paris, the tenth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight.
1At this time it was still a secret that among the many intrigues afoot during the negotiations at Paris was one for the transfer of the Philippines to Belgium. But for the perfectly correct attitude of King Leopold, it might have had a chance to succeed, or at least to make trouble.
2The request of the editor for the preparation of this article was received just after the British and American forces had their conflict with the natives in Samoa.
3One of the author's colleagues at Paris, the Hon. Cushman K. Davis, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the United States Senate, and among the most scholarly students of International Law now in American public life, says in a private letter:
"I was at first very much struck by the unanimity of action by the South American republics in the assumption of debts created by Spain. But some reflection upon the subject has caused that action to lose, to me, much of its apparent relevancy. There was in none of those cases any funded debt, in the sense of bond obligations, held in the markets of the world. There were two parties in the various Spanish provinces of North and South America, one of which supported Spanish ascendancy, and the other of which was revolutionary. The debts created by the exactions of Spain and of the revolutionary party alike were, mainly if not entirely, obligations due to the people of the colonies themselves. As to the continuance of pensions, endowments, etc., it must be remembered that these were Catholic countries, and that these obligations ran to a state church, which continued to be a state church after the colonies had achieved their independence. As to the Napoleonic treaties cited by the Spanish Commissioners, they were mere matters of covenant in a special case, and were not, in my judgment, the result of any anterior national obligation."]
"I was at first very much struck by the unanimity of action by the South American republics in the assumption of debts created by Spain. But some reflection upon the subject has caused that action to lose, to me, much of its apparent relevancy. There was in none of those cases any funded debt, in the sense of bond obligations, held in the markets of the world. There were two parties in the various Spanish provinces of North and South America, one of which supported Spanish ascendancy, and the other of which was revolutionary. The debts created by the exactions of Spain and of the revolutionary party alike were, mainly if not entirely, obligations due to the people of the colonies themselves. As to the continuance of pensions, endowments, etc., it must be remembered that these were Catholic countries, and that these obligations ran to a state church, which continued to be a state church after the colonies had achieved their independence. As to the Napoleonic treaties cited by the Spanish Commissioners, they were mere matters of covenant in a special case, and were not, in my judgment, the result of any anterior national obligation."]
4It might, of course, have run away and left them to disorder. That is what a pirate could have done, and would have compelled the intervention of European governments for the protection of their own citizens. Or it might have restored them to Spain. Besides the desertion of natives whose aid against Manila had been encouraged, that would have been to say that while the United States went to war because the injustice and barbarity of Spanish rule in the West Indies were such that they could no longer be tolerated, it was now so eager to quit and get peace that it was willing to reëstablish that same rule in the East Indies!
5Much attention had been attracted, as the date for this celebration approached, to the numerous sons of this small college who had in one way or another become prominent; and the newspapers printed long lists of them. Among the names thus singled out in the press were Benjamin Harrison, of the class of 1852, President of the United States, 1889-93; William Dennison, class of 1835, Governor of Ohio, 1859-63, and Postmaster-General under Abraham Lincoln; Caleb B. Smith, 1826, Secretary of the Interior in the same Administration; General Robert C. Schenck, 1827, Chairman Ways and Means Committee in House of Representatives, Major-General in the Civil War, and United States Minister to Brazil and to Great Britain; William S. Groesbeck, 1834, Congressman, counsel for Andrew Johnson in the impeachment proceedings, and United States delegate to the International Monetary Congress, 1878; Samuel Shellabarger, 1841, Congressman, member of the Crédit Mobilier Investigation, and of the United States Civil Service Commission; Oliver P. Morton, 1845, War Governor of Indiana, and United States Senator; Charles Anderson, 1833, Governor of Ohio; James Birney, 1836, Governor of Michigan; Richard Yates, 1830, War Governor of Illinois, and United States Senator; Milton Sayler, 1852, Speaker House of Representatives; John S. Williams, 1838, the "Cerro Gordo Williams" of the Mexican War, United States Senator from Kentucky; George E. Pugh, 1840, United States Senator from Ohio; James W. McDill, 1853, United States Senator from Iowa; General Samuel F. Carey, 1835, Congressman from Ohio, and temperance orator; Albert S. Berry, 1856, Congressman from Kentucky; Dr. John S. Billings, U.S.A., 1857, head of New York Library; David Swing, 1852, the Chicago clergyman; General A. C. McClurg, 1853, the Chicago publisher; Henry M. MacCracken, 1857, Chancellor of New York University; William M. Thomson, 1828, author of "The Land and the Book"; Calvin S. Brice, 1863, railway-builder, and United States Senator; etc.
6"My dear Sir:I have received your letter of the 23d inst., notifying me of my election as a vice-president of the Anti-Imperialist League. I recognize the compliment implied in this election, and appreciate it the more by reason of my respect for the gentlemen identified with the league, but I do not think I can appropriately or consistently accept the position, especially since I learn through the press that the league adopted at its recent meeting certain resolutions to which I cannot assent.... I may add that, while I fully recognize the injustice and even absurdity of those charges of 'disloyalty' which have been of late freely made against some members of the league, and also that many honorable and patriotic men do not feel as I do on this subject, I am personally unwilling to take part in an agitation which may have some tendency to cause a public enemy to persist in armed resistance, or may be, at least, plausibly represented as having this tendency. There can be no doubt that, as a matter of fact, the country is at war with Aguinaldo and his followers. I profoundly regret this fact;... but it is a fact, nevertheless, and, as such, must weigh in determining my conduct as a citizen....
"Charles Jerome Bonaparte.
"Baltimore,"May 25, 1899."
7The Hon. Albert S. Berry, M.C., from the Covington, Kentucky, District.
8Protocol No. 19 of the Paris Commission, Conference of December 5, 1898: "The President of the Spanish Commission having agreed, at the last session, to consult his Government regarding the proposal of the American Commissioners that the United States should maintain public order over the whole Philippine Archipelago pending the exchange of ratifications of the treaty of peace, stated that the answer of his Government was that the authorities of each of the two nations shall be charged with the maintenance of order in the places where they may be established, those authorities agreeing among themselves to this end whenever they may deem it necessary."
9Some of these authorities have already been briefly presented in the address at Miami University, pp. 107-158. It may be desirable to consult a few additional ones, covering the main points that have been disputed. They are grouped for convenience in the Appendix.
10London "Times," December 17, 1898.
11See (pp. 70-105) article from "The Anglo-Saxon Review."
12There has been so much misconception and misrepresentation about this payment of twenty millions that the following exact summary of the facts may be convenient.
When Spain sued for peace in the summer of 1898, she had lost control of the Philippines, and any means for regaining control. Her fleet was sunk; her army was cooped up in the capital, under the guns of the American fleet, and its capture or surrender had only been delayed till the arrival of reinforcements for the American Army, because of the fears expressed by foreigners and the principal residents of Manila that the city might be looted by natives unless American land forces were at hand in strength ample to control them. The Spanish army did so surrender, in fact, shortly after the arrival of these reinforcements, before the news of the armistice could reach them.
In the protocol granting an armistice, the United States exacted at once the cession of Porto Rico and an island in the Ladrones, but reserved the decision as to the control, disposition, and government of the Philippines for the treaty of peace, apparently with a view to the possibility of accepting them as further indemnity for the war.
When the treaty came to be negotiated, the United States required the cession of the Philippines. Its Peace Commissioners stated that their Government "felt amply supported in its right to demand this cession, with or without concessions," added that "this demand might be limited to the single ground of indemnity," and pointed out that it was "not now putting forward any claim forpecuniaryindemnity, to cover the enormous cost of the war." It accompanied this demand for a transfer of sovereignty with a stipulation for assuming any existing indebtedness of Spain incurred for public works and improvements of a pacific character in the Philippines. The United States thus asserted its right to the archipelago for indemnity, and at the same time committed itself to the principle of payment on account of the Philippine debt.
When it became necessary to put the Philippine case into an ultimatum, the Peace Commissioners did not further refer to the debt or give any specific reason either for a cession or for a payment. They simply said they now presented "a new proposition, embodying the concessions which, for the sake of immediate peace, their Government is, under the circumstances, willing to tender."
But it was really the old proposition (with the "Open Door" and "Mutual Relinquishment of Claims" clauses added), with the mention for the first time of a specific sum for the payment, and without any question of "pacific improvements." That sum just balanced the Philippine debt—40,000,000 Mexican, or, say, 20,000,000 American dollars.
13General Carl Schurz, at the Chicago Anti-Expansion Convention, October, 1899.
14The exact proposition made by General Carl Schurz in addressing the Chicago Anti-Expansion Convention, October 17, 1899.
15General Carl Schurz, at the Philadelphia Anti-Imperialist Convention, February 22, 1900.
16Thomas Corwin of Ohio, in United States Senate, 1848.
17Over a month after the above was delivered came the first recent judicial expression of a contrary view. It was by Judge William Lochren of the United States Circuit Court at St. Paul, in the case of habeas corpus proceedings against Reeve, warden of the Minnesota State Prison at Stillwater, for the release of a Porto Rican named Ortiz. He was held for the murder of a private soldier of the United States, sentenced to death by a Military Commission at San Juan, and, on commutation of the sentence by the President of the United States, sent to this State Prison for life. Judge Lochren denied the writ on the ground that the conviction took place before the Treaty of Paris, by which Spain ceded sovereignty in Porto Rico to the United States, had been ratified by the Senate. The Judge went on, however, to argue that Ortiz could not have been lawfully tried before the Military Commission after the ratification of the treaty, because the island of Porto Rico thereby became an integral part of the United States, subject to the Constitution and privileged and bound by its provisions. As this point was not involved in the case he was deciding, this is, of course, merely a dictum—the expression of opinion on an outside matter by a Democratic judge who was recently transferred by Mr. Cleveland from a Washington bureau to the bench. It clearly shows, however, what would be his decision whenever the case might come before him. His argument followed closely the lines taken by Mr. Calhoun in the Senate and Mr. Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott decision.