Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/430

4IO HARVARD LAW REVIEW. If we should be unable or unwilling to hold them permanently as a colonial dependence, how could we get rid of such possessions ? It would seem logical to hold that the treaty-making branch of the government, by which they were acquired, could by similar proceedings convey them to some other power. So far as a transfer of sovereignty is concerned it could not be accomplished otherwise, unless successful revolt or other poHtical change had made the Fil- ipinos an independent people. To make a grant, there must be some one with whom to close the contract. But it is the right of Congress to dispose of the territory of the United States, considered in the character of property. To sell or give away any part of the national domain reduces by so much the national resources. As all measures to raise revenue must originate in the House of Representatives, and to stop the revenues from any territory by its alienation would require raising more revenue by taxation, it would seem proper, if not necessary, that the whole of Congress and not merely the President and Senate should concur in any measure that reduced the area of the republic. Could such a reduction be made either through Congress by law or the President and Senate by treaty, or both together, if it took the shape of a gift to the Filipinos, under which our ownership and sovereignty would pass to them as an independent power? No authority for such a transaction is expressly given in the Consti- tution. If imphed, it would probably have to rest on the assump- tion that the Philippines had proved a damnosa hereditas. There would be greater difficulty in defending it on the ground that we had taken them as an act of humanity to spread the blessings of independent liberty over an oppressed people, after we had elevated and educated them sufficiently to make them fit to use it aright. For foreign missionary work of this kind in another continent, our Constitution contains no provision. The case of Cuba is, of course, far different. That lies at our doors. It has not been ceded to the United States. Spain has re- linquished her sovereignty, but she has not transferred it to us. Our position is to be that of a custodian, or receiver. The sovereignty is, in effect, in abeyance, but it is to pass, by our pledged consent, to the Cuban people, whenever they organize a government for themselves, and show that they can maintain it, and with it the peace and order to which Cuba has been so long a stranger.