However unjustly the American people may treat its own self in respect of tariffs and other issues deeply affecting its welfare, it may be taken for granted, and is so taken here, that in foreign relations the desire of the people is to do what is right.  The right determined, a duty is imposed.  Clearly, then, we must first try to discover in this case what is right—­what is right for us, what is right for the Islanders.  It may be that what is theoretically right, or regarded as theoretically right, shall turn out to be practically wrong; or that what is right for the one shall be wrong for the other.  Again, some common standing-ground may be found, where the right of each, converted into the rights of both, may so far overlap as substantially to coincide.

The idea is held by a vigorous few, and incessantly expressed, that the American people, through force of arms, is holding in subjection and depriving of liberty another people; that this state of affairs is wrong, bad for both sides, and should come to an end by an immediate grant of full independence to the Filipino people, because no one nation is good enough to hold any other in subjection.  It is pertinent to remark, that these ideas so far have found no nation-wide expression:  as already said, they are the expression of only a few, but they may be the private opinions of many.  Taken together, they constitute what may be called the purely abstract view of the case.  This view takes no account of attendant conditions; it asserts that the right is one and only one thing, and can not be anything else; that is to say, it defines the right and refuses to admit that any other definition will hold, or that any elements can enter into the definition other than those which it has seen fit to include.  If no other aspect of the case be correct, our duty is indeed plain.  But it is conceivable that this view may not be correct, or at least that so many other factors have to be considered that what might be true in the abstract is subject to very considerable modification when applied to things as they are.

Of this, no better illustration can be given here than the error committed when it is asserted that we, one people, are holding another people, the Filipino, in subjection.  As a matter of fact, there is no Filipino people.  A certain number of persons, about eight millions, inhabit, the Philippine Archipelago, but it is no more correct to call these one people than it is to call the Europeans one people, because they happen to inhabit the European continent.  It is well to keep this point in mind, because, unless a grave error is here committed, the impression prevails that it is one single, homogeneous people whom we are unjustly depriving of independence.  At any rate, if not categorically expressed, the connotation of the idea of homogeneity exists.  How far this is from the truth is so evident to any person having the slightest real acquaintance with the Philippines,