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14 Pol. Sci. Q. 1 (1899)

handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry14 and id is 1 raw text is: Volume XIV] POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY. HOW MAY THE UNITED STATES GOVERN ITS EXTRA-CONTINENTAL TERRITORY? THERE is a feeling in the air that this nation has reached, or is at least approaching, a great crisis in its history. Although I make no claim to extraordinary sensitiveness and no pretense at prophecy, yet I must confess that I share, in some degree, this apprehension. After considerable reflection upon the cause of my feeling, I have made it reasonably clear to my own mind that the danger lies not so much in the mere possession of extra-continental territory as in the manner of its government. I am not of those who think that the United States ought never to have colonies or dependencies. When this people shall have fairly populated this country; when they shall have arrived at a consensus of opinion in regard to the fundamental principles of rights and policy; when they shall have planted the laws, customs and institutions of civilization throughout this land which they now partially inhabit - when, in short, they shall have brought their national development to a condi- tion of reasonable perfection, then I agree that they may right- eously and properly take up the world-duty of carrying their civilization into the dark places of the earth by the establish- ment of colonies and dependencies in such places. But so long as we do not inhabit two-thirds of the territory which we now possess on this continent; so long as we have not explored, Marck, 1899. [Number I.