Supreme Court, but will give a reason why they are right. It will,
too, I believe, give a reasonable basis for our holding that the power
of the American Union over the Insular regions, while ample for the
maintenance of a just and proper permanent relationship with them
under our control, is not absolute even as respects their political
rights.

I have said that I shall discuss this question upon American
principles. I shall not base myself on the Constitution of the United
States, though I shall try to show the relation of that document to
the question, as I understand it. I shall assume it to be settled by
the decisions of the Supreme Court,--as it seems clearly to be,--that
with the exception of the "Territory" clause of that instrument, it
is, and of right ought to be, the Constitution of the thirteen
original States of the American Union and of the other States which
they have admitted into their Union, and of no other States or
communities; and that therefore it does not extend of its own force
outside the American Union in any constitutional or legal sense, but
only in a metaphorical sense--this being as I understand it, the
meaning of the Court when they hold, as they do, that, though the
"Territory clause" is of present and universal significance as
respects all the regions annexed to the Union, yet, with this
exception, only "the applicable provisions of the Constitution" or
"the fundamental principles formulated in the Constitution" are in
force in the annexed regions. "Extensions," so-called, of the
Constitution by Act of Congress, are of course mere Acts of Congress,
and whether such metaphorical "extensions" are permanent will depend
upon the terms and conditions of the "extension."

But though I shall not base myself on the Constitution of the United