If Porto Rico, instead of belonging to us, is a part of us, so are the Philippines.
Whitelaw Reid
The Public Record
Whitelaw Reid was an American politician, diplomat and newspaper editor, as well as the author of Ohio in the War, a popular work of history.
gutenberg.org
First, then, you are proposing to open the ports of the United States directly to the tropical products of the two greatest archipelagos of the world, and indirectly, through the Open Door we have pledged in the Philippines, to all the…
You guarantee directly to the cheap labor of these tropical regions, and indirectly, but none the less bindingly, to the cheap labor of the world, free admission of their products to this continent, in unrestricted competition with our own…
Is that the real inwardness of the Trojan horse pushed forward against our tariff wall, in the name of humanity, to suffering Porto Rico?
But if the question thus raised at the bar of politics may seem to some only food for laughter, that at the bar of patriotism is matter for tears.
If the islanders are already citizens, then they are entitled to the future of citizens.
If the territory is already an integral part of the United States, then by all our practice and traditions it has the right to admission in States of suitable size and population.
Reasons all for consideration, certainly, for care, for generosity--but not for starting the avalanche, on the theory that after it has got under only a little headway we can still stop it if we want to.
Who thinks he can lay his hand on the rugged edge of the Muir Glacier and compel it to advance no farther?
Who believes that we can admit this little island from the mid-Atlantic, a third of the way over to Africa, and then reject nearer and more valuable islands when they come?
The famous law of political gravitation which John Quincy Adams prophetically announced three quarters of a century ago will then be acting with ever-increasing force.
It will make an end forever of Spain in this hemisphere.