affection, but the performance of our duty toward the Philippines is a
more difficult and debatable matter. We can satisfy the obligations of
generous justice toward the people of Porto Rico by giving them the
ample and familiar rights and privileges accorded our own citizens in
our own territories and our obligations toward the people of Hawaii by
perfecting the provisions for self-government already granted them, but
in the Philippines we must go further. We must hold steadily in view
their ultimate independence, and we must move toward the time of that
independence as steadily as the way can be cleared and the foundations
thoughtfully and permanently laid.

Acting under the authority conferred upon the President by Congress, I
have already accorded the people of the islands a majority in both
houses of their legislative body by appointing five instead of four
native citizens to the membership of the commission. I believe that in
this way we shall make proof of their capacity in counsel and their
sense of responsibility in the exercise of political power, and that the
success of this step will be sure to clear our view for the steps which
are to follow. Step by step we should extend and perfect the system of
self-government in the islands, making test of them and modifying them
as experience discloses their successes and their failures; that we
should more and more put under the control of the native citizens of the
archipelago the essential instruments of their life, their local
instrumentalities of government, their schools, all the common interests
of their communities, and so by counsel and experience set up a
government which all the world will see to be suitable to a people whose
affairs are under their own control. At last, I hope and believe, we are
beginning to gain the confidence of the Filipino peoples. By their
counsel and experience, rather than by our own, we shall learn how best
to serve them and how soon it will be possible and wise to withdraw our