Of late years men have unthinkingly assumed that new territory is, in the very nature of our Government, merely and necessarily the raw material for future States in the Union. Colonies and dependencies, it is now said, are essentially inconsistent with our system. But if any ever entertained the wild dream that the instrument whose preamble says it is ordained for the United States of _America_ could be stretched to the China Sea, the first Tagal guns fired at friendly soldiers of the Union, and the first mutilation of American dead that ensued, ended the nightmare of States from Asia admitted to the American Union. For that relief, at least, we must thank the uprising of the Tagals. It was a Continental Union of independent sovereign States our fathers planned. Whoever proposes to debase it with admixtures of States made up from the islands of the sea, in any archipelago, East or West, is a bad friend to the Republic. We may guide, protect, elevate them, and even teach them some day to stand alone; but if we ever invite them into our Senate and House, to help to rule us, we are the most imbecile of all the offspring of time. [Sidenote: The Constitutional Objection.] Yet we must face the fact that able and conscientious men believe the United States has no constitutional power to hold territory that is not to be erected into States in the Union, or to govern people that are not to be made citizens. They are able to cite great names in support of their contention; and it would be an ill omen for the freest and most successful constitutional government in the world if a constitutional objection thus fortified should be carelessly considered or hastily overridden. This objection rests mainly on the assumption that the name "United States," as used in the Constitution, necessarily includes all territory the Nation owns, and on the historic fact that large parts of this territory, on acquiring sufficient population, have already been admitted as States, and have generally considered such admission to be a right. Now, Mr. Chief Justice Marshall--than whom no constitutional authority carries greater weight--certainly did declare that the question what was designated by the term "United States" in the clause of the Constitution giving power to levy duties on imposts "admitted of but one answer." It "designated the whole of the American empire, composed of States and Territories." If that be accepted as final, then the tariff must be applied in Manila precisely as in New York, and goods from Manila must enter the New York custom-house as freely as goods from New Orleans. Sixty millions would disappear instantly and annually from the Treasury, and our revenue system would be revolutionized by the free admission of sugar and other tropical products from the United States of Asia and the Caribbean Sea; while, on the other hand, the Philippines themselves would be fatally handicapped by a tariff wholly unnatural to their locality and circumstances.