Yet, even with those from whom we must thus part company there are elemental truths of the situation on which we must still agree. Some things reasonable men may take for granted--some that surely have been settled in the conflict of arms, of diplomacy, and of debate since the spring of 1898. Regret them if you choose, but do not, like children, seek to make them as though they were not, by shutting your eyes to them. The new territories in the West Indies and the East are ours, to have and to hold, by the supreme law of the land, and by a title which the whole civilized world recognizes and respects. We shall not speedily get rid of them--whoever may desire it. The American people are in no mood to give them back to Spain, or to sell them, or to abandon them. We have all the power we need to acquire and to govern them. Whatever theories men may quote from Mr. Calhoun or from Mr. Chief Justice Taney, the uniform conduct of the National Administration throughout a century, under whatever party, justifies the triumphant declaration of Daniel Webster to Mr. Calhoun, over half a century ago, and the consenting opinions of the courts for a long term since, down to the very latest in the line, by your own Judge Morrow, to the effect, in a word, that this Government, like every other one in the world, has power to acquire "territory and other property" anywhere, and govern it as it pleases.[17] [17] Over a month after the above was delivered came the first recent judicial expression of a contrary view. It was by Judge William Lochren of the United States Circuit Court at St. Paul, in the case of habeas corpus proceedings against Reeve, warden of the Minnesota State Prison at Stillwater, for the release of a Porto Rican named Ortiz. He was held for the murder of a private soldier of the United States, sentenced to death by a Military Commission at San Juan, and, on commutation of the sentence by the President of the United States, sent to this State Prison for life. Judge Lochren denied the writ on the ground that the conviction took place before the Treaty of Paris, by which Spain ceded sovereignty in Porto Rico to the United States, had been ratified by the Senate. The Judge went on, however, to argue that Ortiz could not have been lawfully tried before the Military Commission after the ratification of the treaty, because the island of Porto Rico thereby became an integral part of the United States, subject to the Constitution and privileged and bound by its provisions. As this point was not involved in the case he was deciding, this is, of course, merely a dictum--the expression of opinion on an outside matter by a Democratic judge who was recently transferred by Mr. Cleveland from a Washington bureau to the bench. It clearly shows, however, what would be his decision whenever the case might come before him.