Constitutional Aspects of the Government of Dependencies

With the acquisition of Hawaii, Porto Rico and the Philippines, three novel and interesting problems in the government of dependencies confront the United States.First, we are called upon to govern what yesterday was a white man's oligarchy, resting upon the ruins of a semi- savage monarchy, with a basis of native Pacific islanders, a stratum of Japanese and Chinese, another of Portuguese, and an upper crust of domiciled Americans and Englishmen and Germans.Second, we are called upon to govern an ancient Spanish colony, densely populated, with a proud and impatient Latin race as the dominant factor.Third, we are called upon to govern an ancient Spanish satrapy, densely populated with native islanders of varying races, in varying stages of development, and lying in tropical latitudes alleged to be unfit for Caucasian colonization.In some respects the problems are totally different from those which have confronted any other government in its dealings with dependencies.Even Hawaii, least difficult of all the problems, presents some novel features, as, for example, the presence of so large a body of subjects of foreign states as to whom our policy has been one of exclu- sion.Porto Rico, on the other hand, presents to us the difficult task of reconciling an influential class of intelligent Europeans to a change of rulers, of educating the Span- iards, bred in the habits of political thought common to the Latin races, to the notions underlying the American form of government, and, at the same time, preserving the dis- tinctions between the independent form of government of our states and organized territories and that necessary for a dependent outlying island possession.I am not sure but this is, after all, our hardest problem.Whether it is or not must depend upon the attitude of the dominant class in the island.As to the Philippines, I content myself with quoting from the Hon.James Bryce (Century Magazine, March 1899, p. 726): &dquo; Probably no task has been presented to the

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