I refer to the course pursued by us towards Mexico in the year 1848, and again in 1866; towards Hayti for seventy years back; and towards Venezuela as recently as three years ago. It is said that the inhabitants of the islands of the Antilles, and much more those of the Philippine archipelago, are as yet unfitted to maintain a government; and that they should be kept in a condition of "tutelage" until they are fitted so to do. It is further argued that a stable government is necessary, and that it is out of the question for us to permit a condition of chronic disturbance and scandalous unrest to exist so near our own borders as Cuba and Porto Rico. Yet how long, I would ask, did that condition exist in Mexico? And with what results? How long has it existed in Hayti? Has the government of Venezuela ever been "stable"? Have we found it necessary or thought it best to establish a governmental protectorate in any of those immediately adjacent regions? What has been, historically, our policy--the American, as distinguished from the European and British policy--towards those communities,--two of them Spanish, one African? So far as foreign powers are concerned, we have laid down the principle of "Hands-off." So far as their own government was concerned, we insisted that the only way to learn to walk was to try to walk, and that the history of mankind did not show that nations placed under systems of "tutelage,"--taught to lean for support on a superior power,--ever acquired the faculty of independent action.