other, it would meet the real responsibilities of the case.  There is no disposition here to burke the fact that these responsibilities are serious, if not onerous; that they call for administrative statesmanship of a very high order.  But we should also recognize the fact that these responsibilities are ours, created by us, and that our rejection of them is sure to be followed by consequences disastrous, not to us, but to the Filipinos themselves.  If, on the other hand, we accept these responsibilities, then sooner or later Americans and Filipinos together could bend their energies to the development of a country in which they would now have the same interest.  And if, under the prevailing uncertainty, so much has already been accomplished in preventing disease, abating epidemics, building roads and bridges, erecting telegraphs and telephones, lighting the coasts, establishing courts of law, equalizing taxation, conserving forests, founding schools and colleges, encouraging commerce and agriculture, what may not unreasonably be expected if all shall feel that the foundations of order, system, and justice are permanent, that life is secure, liberty assured, and the pursuit of happiness possible?

Surely there is significance in the effect at once produced in the sugar-raising islands by the passage of the Payne Bill:  idle fields were planted to cane, and the elections took an unmistakable americanista trend.  There is no better peacemaker than the pay-master.  The Assembly, it is true, fulminated against the bill:  success, prosperity, contentment under its operation might mean the dissolution of a dream.  So they might; but the bill also categorically established the possibility, and more than the possibility, of permanently profitable relations under the aegis of the United States.  It might even ultimately greatly reduce, if not entirely destroy, the racial issue.  Here is already common ground, limited though it be, on which Americans and Filipinos may and do stand together.  If any doubt should exist on this score, we have but to look at Porto Rico, whose total external commerce has grown, in round numbers, from 17 1/2 million dollars in 1901 to 79 millions in 1911.  During this same interval that of the Philippines has risen from 53 million to 90 million dollars, nearly 20 millions of the increase being due to the Payne Bill.  The population of Porto Rico (census of 1910) is 1,120,000; that of the Philippines, 8,200,000:  the area of Porto Rico is 3,606 square miles; that of the Philippines, 128,000 square miles.  This comparison is frankly commercial; but thriving commerce means prosperity, and prosperity spells content.  After eliminating certain natural and social advantages enjoyed by Porto Rico, and not by the Philippines, the vast economic difference between the two can be accounted for only by the different relation they respectively bear to the United States, a conclusion confirmed by the effect of the Payne Bill.  In the case of one, this relation is defined; in that of the other, undefined.  We intend to remain in Porto Rico; we do not know what we shall do with the Philippines.