It would make the helpless Filipino the football of oriental politics, tinder the protection of a guaranty of their independence, which we would be powerless to enforce.
Bill Taft
The Public Record
William Howard Taft was the 27th President of the United States, serving from 1909 to 1913. A member of the Republican Party, he was known for his trust-busting policies and efforts to promote international trade. After his presidency, Taft continued to serve the nation as the 10th Chief Justice of the United States from 1921 until his death in 1930, making him the only person to have held both the presidency and the chief justiceship. His tenure as Chief Justice was marked by a commitment to judicial restraint and the rule of law.
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On our part it would be a disingenuous attempt, under the guise of conferring a benefit on them, to relieve ourselves from the heavy and difficult burden which thus far we have been bravely and consistently sustaining.
A present declaration even of future independence would retard progress by the dissension and disorder it would arouse.
We should do all this with a disinterested endeavor to secure for the Filipinos economic independence and to fit them for complete self-government, with the power to decide eventually, according to their own largest good, whether such…
Such a course will be as cruel to those people as it would be shameful to us.
To confer independence upon the Filipinos now is, therefore, to subject the great mass of their people to the dominance of an oligarchical and, probably, exploiting minority.
Disregarding even their racial heterogeneity and the lack of ability to think as a nation, it is sufficient to point out that under liberal franchise privileges only about 3 per cent of the Filipinos vote and only 5 per cent of the people…
No such foundations for self-government, let alone independence are now present in the Philippine Islands.
Popular self-government ultimately must rest upon common habits of thought and upon a reasonably developed public opinion.
It takes long time and much experience to ingrain political habits of steadiness and efficiency.
If the task we have undertaken is higher than that assumed by other nations, its accomplishment must demand even more patience.
I am happy to say that the Filipinos have done well enough in the places they have filled and in the discharge of the political power with which they have been intrusted to warrant the belief that they can be educated and trained to…
The ideal which has been kept in mind in our political guidance of the islands has been real popular self-government and not mere paper independence.
By their progressive participation in government the Filipinos are being steadily and hopefully trained for self-government.
Concurrent with the economic, social, and industrial development of the islands has been the development of the political capacity of the people.
If freed from American control sanitary progress is bound to be arrested and all that has been achieved likely to be lost.
Freed from American control such development is bound to decline.
An enormous increase in the commercial development of the islands has been made since they were virtually granted full access to our markets three years ago, with every prospect of increasing development and diversified industries.
Freed from American control the integrating forces of a common education and a common language will cease and the educational system now well started will slip back into inefficiency and disorder.
Over half a million Filipino students are now in the Philippine schools helping to mold the men of the future into a homogeneous people, but there still remain more than a million Filipino children of school age yet to be reached.
Our duty to the Filipinos is far from discharged.
We are seeking to arouse a national spirit and not, as under the older colonial theory, to suppress such a spirit.
Through the unifying forces of a common education, of commercial and economic development, and of gradual participation in local self-government we are endeavoring to evolve a homogeneous people fit to determine, when the time arrives…
In the Philippine Islands we have embarked upon an experiment unprecedented in dealing with dependent people.
A thorough and unbiased knowledge of the facts clearly shows that these assumptions are absolutely without justification.
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