United States was one which might properly be referred to the Cuban courts. Report of Mr. Magoon, law officer, Division of Insular Affairs, Aug. 8, 1900, "I can not assent to the proposition that the right to perform any part of the duties or receive any part of the compensation attached to the office of sheriff of Habana under Spanish sovereignty constituted a perpetual franchise which could survive that sovereignty. The fact that the Spanish Crown permitted an office to be inherited or purchased does not make it any the less an office the continuance of which is dependent upon the sovereignty which created it. "The services which the petitioner claims the right to render and exact compensation for are in substance an exercise of the police power of the State. The right to exercise that power under Spanish appointment or authority necessarily terminated when Spanish sovereignty in Cuba ended. It thereupon became the duty of the military governor to make a new provision under which this part of the power of the new sovereignty, which took the place of the sovereignty of Spain, should be exercised and the necessary service rendered to the public. The petitioner has been deprived of no property whatever. The office, right, or privilege which she had acquired by inheritance was in its nature terminable with the termination of the sovereignty on which it depended. "The question whether by reason of anything done before that time the right to compensation from the municipality of Habana has arisen is a question to be determined by the courts of Cuba. "The application for the revocation of the order heretofore made herein by the military governor of Cuba is denied." Decision of Mr. Root, Secretary of War, in the matter of the application of the Countess of Buena Vista, Dec. 24, 1900, Magoon's Reports, 209. V. TERRITORIAL EXPANSION OF THE UNITED STATES. 1. DECLARATIONS OF POLICY. "It will be objected to our receiving Cuba that no limit can then be drawn to our future acquisitions. Cuba can be defended by us without a navy, and this develops the principle which ought to limit our views. Nothing should ever be accepted which would require a navy to defend it." Mr. Jefferson to President Madison, Apr. 27, 1809, 5 Jeff. Works, 443. "Time is acting for us; and if we shall have the wisdom to trust its operation, it will assert and maintain our right with resistless force, without costing a cent of money or a drop of blood. There is often, in the affairs of Government, more efficiency and wisdom in non-action than in action. All we want to effect our object in this case is a wise and masterly inactivity.' Our population is rolling towards the shores of the Pacific with an impetus greater than what we realize. It is one of those forward movements which leaves anticipation behind. In the period of thirty-two years which have elapsed since I took my seat in the other house, the Indian frontier has receded a thousand miles to the west. At that time our population was much less than half what it is 'now. It was then increasing at the rate of about a quarter of a million annually; it is now not less than six hundred thousand, and still increasing at the rate of something more than 3 per cent. compound annually. At that rate it will soon reach the yearly increase of a million. If to this be added that the region west of Arkansas and the State of Missouri, and south of the Missouri River, is occupied by half-civilized tribes, who have their lands secured to them by treaty (and which will prevent the spread of population in that direction), and that this great and increasing tide will be forced to take the comparatively narrow channel to the north of that river and south of our northern boundary, some conception may be formed of the strength with which the current will run in that direction and how soon it will reach the eastern gorges of the Rocky Mountains. I say some conception, for I feel assured that the reality will outrun the anticipation. In illustration, I will repeat what I stated when I first addressed the Senate on this subject. As wise and experienced as was President Monroe, as much as he had witnessed of the growth of our country in his time, so inadequate was his conception of its rapidity, that near the close of his administration-in the year 1824-he proposed to colonize the Indians of New York and those north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi, in what is now called the Wisconsin Territory, under the impression that it was a portion of our territory so remote that they would not be disturbed by our increasing population for a long time to come. It is now but eighteen years since, and already, in that short period, it is a great and flourishing territory ready to knock at our door for admission as one of the sovereign members of the Union. But what is still more striking, what is really wonderful and almost miraculous is that another territory (Iowa), still farther west (beyond the Mississippi) has sprung up as if by magic, and has already outstripped Wisconsin, and may knock for entrance before she is prepared to do so. Such is the wonderful growth of a population which has attained the number ours has-yearly increasing at a compound rate--and such the impetus with which it is forcing its way, resistlessly, westward. It will soon, far sooner than anticipated, reach the Rocky Mountains, and be ready to pour into the Oregon Territory, when it will come into our possession without resistance or struggle; or, if there should be resistance, it would be feeble and ineffectual. We should then be as much stronger there, comparatively, than Great Britain, as she is now stronger than we are; and it would then be as idle for her to attempt to assert and maintain her exclusive claim to the territory against us, as it would now be in us to attempt it against her. Let us be wise and abide our time; and it will accomplish all that we desire with more certainty and with infinitely less sacrifice than we can without it." 66 Speech of Mr. Calhoun, on the Oregon bill, in the Senate, Jan. 24, 1843; 4 It is our policy to increase by growing and spreading out into unoccupied regions, assimilating all we incorporate. In a word, to increase by accretion, and not through conquest by the addition of masses held together by the cohesion of force. No system can be more unsuited to the latter process, or better adapted to the former, than our admirable Federal system. If it should not be resisted in its course, it will probably fulfill its destiny, without disturbing our neighbors or putting in jeopardy the general peace; but if it he opposed by foreign interference, a new direction would be given to our energy, much less favorable to harmony with our neighbors and to the general peace of the world. The change would be undesirable to us, and much less in accord with what I have assumed to be primary objects of policy on the part of France, England, and Mexico." Mr. Calhoun, Sec. of State, to Mr. King, Aug. 12, 1844, MS. Inst., France, XV. 8, 12. This passage seems to have suggested the title of § 72 of Wharton's Int. Law Digest-" Accretion, not colonization, the policy of the United States." It appears, however, that the idea of Mr. Calhoun was accretion by means of colonization, as opposed to the increase of territory by conquest. Indeed, "accretion" and "colonization," instead of involving opposite conceptions, rather represent different aspects of the same principle, accretion being the result of the colonizing process described by Mr. Calhoun in his speech on the Oregon bill, supra. "Until recently, the acquisition of outlying territory has not been regarded as desirable by us. The purchase of Russian America and the proposed purchase of the Danish West India islands of St. Thomas and St. John may seem to indicate a reversal of the policy adverted to. Those measures, however, may be presumed to have been adopted for special reasons." But, in any event, it appeared to be unadvisable to decide upon an offer of other distant territory while the question of St. Thomas and St. John was pending, and, even if that question were disposed of, the President, before making up his mind in regard to such an offer, probably would prefer to consult Congress in regard to it, either directly or indirectly. Mr. Fish, Sec. of State, to Mr. Bartlett, min. to Sweden, June 17, 1869, MS. It is not the policy of the United States to undertake in Africa the management of movements within the particular range of private enterprise. Mr. Fish, Sec. of State, to Sir E. Thornton, Apr. 8, 1873, MS. Notes, Gr. Brit. "The policy of this Government, as declared on many occasions in the past, has tended toward avoidance of possessions disconnected from the main continent. Had the tendency of the United States been to extend territorial dominion beyond intervening seas, opportunities have not been wanting to effect such a purpose, whether on the coast of Africa, in the West Indies, or in the South Pacific. No such opportunity has been hitherto embraced, and but little hope could be offered that Congress, which must in the ultimate resort be brought to decide the question of such transmarine jurisdiction, would favorably regard such an acquisition as His Excellency proposes. At any rate, in its political aspect merely, this Government is unprepared to accept the proposition without subjection to such wishes as Congress and the people of the United States through Congress may see fit to express." Mr. Frelinghuysen, Sec. of State, to Mr. Langston, June 20, 1882, MS. Inst. "A conviction that a fixed policy, dating back to the origin of our constitutional Government, was considered to make it inexpedient to attempt territorial aggrandizement which would require maintenance by a naval force in excess of any yet provided for our national uses, has led this Government to decline territorial acquisitions. Even as simple coaling stations, such territorial acquisitions would involve responsibility beyond their utility. The United States have never deemed it needful to their national life to maintain impregnable fortresses along the world's highways of commerce. To considerations such as these prevailing in Congress the failure of the Samana lease and the St. Thomas purchase were doubtless due. During the years that have since elapsed there has been no evidence of a change in the views of the national legislature which would warrant the President in setting on foot new projects of the same character.” Mr. Frelinghuysen, Sec. of State, to Mr. Langston, Feb. 1, 1884, MS. Inst., "The policy of the United States, declared and pursued for more than a century, discountenances and in practice forbids distant colonial acquisitions. Our action in the past touching the acquisition of terri tory by purchase and cession, and our recorded disinclination to avail ourselves of voluntary proffers made by other powers to place territories under the sovereignty or protection of the United States, are matters of historical prominence.' Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, to Mr. Pendleton, Sept. 7, 1885, MS. Inst., Germ. "Maintaining, as I do, the tenets of a line of precedents from Washington's day, which proscribe entangling alliances with foreign states, I do not favor a policy of acquisition of new and distant territory, or the incorporation of remote interests with our own." President Cleveland, First Annual Message, 1885. 2. LOUISIANA. § 101. The treaty and two conventions concluded at Paris under the date of April 30, 1803, by Messrs. Livingston and Monroe on the part of the United States, and M. Marbois on the part of France, in relation to the cession of Louisiana to the United States, were laid by President Jefferson before the Senate on the 17th of October, 1803, and the circumstances of the transaction were at the same time explained in a message to both Houses of Congress. Am. State Papers, For. Rel. II. 506. The treaty ceded Louisiana to the United States. One of the conventions provided for the payment by the United States to France of 60,000,000 francs; the other, for the payment by the United States of “debts" due by France to citizens of the United States to an amount not exceeding 20,000,000 francs. (Moore, Int. Arbitrations, V. 4434.) See Howard, The Louisiana Purchase (Chicago, 1902); Hosmer, Hist. of the Louisiana Purchase (New York, 1902). "On different occasions since the commencement of the French revolution, opinions and reports have prevailed that some part of the Spanish possessions, including New Orleans and the mouth of the Mississippi, had been or was to be transferred to France. The whole subject will deserve and engage your early and vigilant. inquiries, and may require a very delicate and circumspect management. What the motives of Spain in this transaction may be, is not so obvious. The policy of France in it, so far, at least, as relates to the United States, cannot be mistaken. Although the two countries are again brought together by stipulations of amity and commerce, the confidence and cordiality which formerly subsisted have had a deep wound from the occurrences of late years. Jealousies probably still remain, that the Atlantic States have a partiality for Great Britain, which may, in future, throw their weight into the scale of that rival. It is more than possible, also, that, under the influence of those jealousies, and of the alarms which have at times prevailed, of H. Doc. 551-28 |