A wholly new problem was thus suddenly presented to the people of the United States. On the one hand, it is asserted that, by destroying Spanish government in these islands, the United States has assumed responsibility for them, both to the inhabitants and to the world. This is a moral obligation. On the other hand, trade and commercial inducements are held out which would lead us to treat these islands simply as a commencement--the first instalment--in a system of unlimited extra-territorial dependencies and imperial expansion. With these responsibilities and obligations we here this evening have nothing to do, any more than we have to do with the expediency or probable results of the policy of colonial expansion, when once fairly adopted and finally entered upon. These hereafter will be, but are not yet, historical questions; and we are merely historical inquirers. We, therefore, no matter what others may do, must try to confine ourselves to our own proper business and functions. My purpose, therefore, is not to argue for or against what is now proposed, but simply to test historically some of the arguments I have heard most commonly advanced in favor of the proposed policy of expansion, and thus see to what they apparently lead in the sequence of human, and more especially of American, events. Do they indicate an historic continuity? Or do they result in what is geologically known as a "fault,"--a movement, as the result of force, through which a stratum, once continuous, becomes disconnected?