for your example. I believe--nay, I know--that in general our officers and

soldiers are humane. But in some cases they have carried on your warfare with a

mixture of American ingenuity and Castilian cruelty.

 

Your practical statesmanship has succeeded in converting a people who three

years ago were ready to kiss the hem of the garment of the American and to

welcome him as a liberator, who thronged after your men, when they landed on

those islands, with benediction and gratitude, into sullen and irreconcilable

enemies, possessed of a hatred which centuries cannot eradicate.

 

Mr. President, this is the eternal law of human nature. You may struggle against

it, you may try to escape it, you may persuade yourself that your intentions are

benevolent, that your yoke will be easy and your burden will be light, but it

will assert itself again. Government without the consent of the

governed--authority which heaven never gave--can only be supported by means

which heaven never can sanction.

 

The American people have got this one question to answer. They may answer it

now; they can take ten years, or twenty years, or a generation, or a century to

think of it. But will not down. They must answer it in the end: Can you lawfully

buy with money, or get by brute force of arms, the right to hold in subjugation

an unwilling people, and to impose on them such constitution as you, and not

they, think best for them?

 

Senator Hoar then went on to make another sort of appeal--the appeal to fact and