territory must be held, and these conditions the court must now prescribe. On the one hand it may hold that wherever power is exercised under the Constitution there the limitations of the Constitution must be obeyed — that wherever the Executive undertakes to administer, or Congress to legislate, there the judiciary must enforce upon both respect for the organic law to which they owe their existence. If this doctrine be established it is clear that no scheme of forcible conquest will ever be undertaken by this government, for the simple reason that there can be no profit in such an enterprise. On the other hand the court may decide that Congress can hold newly-annexed territories on any terms that it chooses — that it may govern them according to the Constitution or independently of it-that they may be administered to establish justice among the governed or for the glory and profit of the governors. If it be held that government for profit can be maintained under the authority of the United States, conceive the extent to which it may be carried and the consequences which it may portend. If it be possible to maintain two forms of government under our Constitution, it is possible to establish twenty in as many different places. Territory may be annexed to the North, to the South, to the East and to the West. The President of the United States may be vested with imperial powers in one place, with royal prerogatives in another, and perhaps remain a constitutional magistrate at home. He may be made a military autocrat in some South American state, an anointed emperor in some Northern clime, a turbaned sultan in some Eastern island. Nay, more, Congress can move itself and the seat of gov ernment from Washington to some newly-annexed territory governed by officers of its own creation, subject to

its own unlimited power, and thus take both outside the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.

Has the world ever before seen - could the framers of this Constitution have conceived-a bench of judges exercising such a power amid the universal submission and approval of the whole people. And more extraordinary than all, this submission remains unanimous though the decision of the court may seriously affect its own position in the structure of our goverment. For if it be held that the Constitution does not extend of itself over newlyannexed territory, then clearly the authority of the court cannot extend to it except by the action of Congress and the Executive. If the authority, that is to say, the existence of the court in any part of the territory of the United States, depends upon the other departments, then it is idle to contend that it is an independent and coordinate branch of the government. To decide that the executive and legislative departments have the right to govern territory outside the Constitution the court must deliberately renounce the importance which it has heretofore enjoyed and accept for itself an inferior place in our political system.

To me this is the most sublime spectacle ever presented in the history of the world. Think of it! A war has been waged with signal success, vast territory has been exacted from a conquered foe; a great political campaign has been fought and won upon the policy of taking this territory and governing it at the pleasure of Congress and the Executive, yet if the court should hold that what the Executive has attempted, what Congress has sanctioned, and what the people appear to have approved at the polls is in contravention of the Constitution, not one voice would be raised to question the judg

ment or to resist its enforcement. I have said the spec tacle is sublime; my friends, even a few weeks ago it was inconceivable. Before the late election I confess I believed and said that the success of the present administration would be interpreted as a popular indorsement of its foreign policy and that the popular verdict would very probably be made to exercise a strong if not decisive influence on the court. I admit now that I was mistaken. It is evident that this question will be decided on its merits without the slightest attempt to coerce, intimidate or influence the judges, and I say now with all frankness that whatever may be the judgment it will be the very best outcome for the people of this country, for the peace of the world, for the welfare of the human race.

I cannot tell what this outcome may be, but I know that whenever a crisis has arisen in the pathway of the republic, the statesmanship of the common people has always met it with justice and solved it with wisdom. Before the close of the civil war, who that paid attention to the utterances of journalists, politicians and publicists who that heard the famous declaration that treason must be made odious; or read the journalistic demand for punishments disguised under pleas for precautions against any renewal of rebellion; or listened to the popular songs proclaiming a firm purpose to "hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree," could have realized that peace would be restored without the infliction of a single penalty or the exaction of a single sacrifice that the pacification of the country would be accomplished by pardon and not by punishment and that five years after the end of the conflict the reconciliation of the combatants would be so perfect that victors and vanquished would alike rejoice

at the result? And so, my friends, while no man can predict the solution of the question which now perplexes this government and this people, the whole history of the United States forbids us to fear that it will prove an insuperable obstacle to the progress of liberty, but commands us to believe firmly and implicitly that it will become a stepping-stone to higher achievements from which, under the Providence of God and the wisdom of the judiciary, this republic will diffuse the light of justice still more widely throughout the world.

I have nothing to recant of what I said on the hustings; no apology to make for my course during the last election. Under similar circumstances my words and my actions would again be the same; yet, if the court decides now, as I hope it will, that the Constitution and the Flag are inseparable; that where one waves the other must govern, then, indeed, am I prepared to admit freely and cheerfully that the people in deciding as they did were wiser than if they had followed my advice. For, from my point of view, it will clearly be better for the peace of the world and for the happiness of mankind if it be established now that the American people can never violate justice anywhere than if it had been decided at the ballot box last November that this generation of Americans had no disposition to perpetrate a single act of injustice in the Eastern seas.

When this momentous question shall have been decided, when this great service shall have been rendered to civilization, will the American judiciary have fulfilled its mission as an independent department of government? Shall the judges hereafter be the mere arbiters of private disputes? Will they no longer be required to display that constructive capacity, that judicial statesmanship which

has proved the safety of our Government by fixing the limitations within which its power is absolute, beyond which it may not pass? Great as have been the services which the American Judiciary have rendered already to civilization, I do not believe, my friends, that the wisest man can measure the contributions which it will make to the science of government in the years that are to come. What is the purpose of government? I believe it was Lord Brougham who said that the English government with all its ramifications, its king and its officers of state, its Houses of Parliament and its courts of justice, its lords, its commons, and its judges, its armies and its navies, all culminated in bringing twelve good men into the jury box. That statement is striking and original, but inadequate. The jury is but an incident,—perhaps the most important incident,- but still merely an incident of government,- not its ultimate object. The ultimate aim and purpose of government is to promote the effective cultivation of the earth that by an increase in the volume of its product the number of human beings may be multiplied that can be supported upon its surface. The first essential of abundant production is the preservation of peace.

The American judiciary has been the most effective agency ever evolved from human wisdom for the vindication of justice, and justice is the only reliable foundation of peace. By establishing peace among the States it has obviated the necessity for standing armies and increased immeasurably our national prosperity by directing every pair of human hands to the productive employments of industry, diverting none to the destructive and wasteful enterprises of war. Never has a population increased so rapidly while every increase in the number of