It is a pleasure to say that it is hardly more necessary to report as to Puerto Rico than as to any State or Territory within our continental limits.  The island is thriving as never before, and it is being administered efficiently and honestly.  Its people are now enjoying liberty and order under the protection of the United States, and upon this fact we congratulate them and ourselves.  Their material welfare must be as carefully and jealously considered as the welfare of any other portion of our country.  We have given them the great gift of free access for their products to the markets of the United States.  I ask the attention of the Congress to the need of legislation concerning the public lands of Puerto Rico.

In Cuba such progress has been made toward putting the independent government of the island upon a firm footing that before the present session of the Congress closes this will be an accomplished fact.  Cuba will then start as her own mistress; and to the beautiful Queen of the Antilles, as she unfolds this new page of her destiny, we extend our heartiest greetings and good wishes.  Elsewhere I have discussed the question of reciprocity.  In the case of Cuba, however, there are weighty reasons of morality and of national interest why the policy should be held to have a peculiar application, and I most earnestly ask your attention to the wisdom, indeed to the vital need, of providing for a substantial reduction in the tariff duties on Cuban imports into the United States.  Cuba has in her constitution affirmed what we desired:  that she should stand, in international matters, in closer and more friendly relations with us than with any other power; and we are bound by every consideration of honor and expediency to pass commercial measures in the interest of her material well-being.

In the Philippines our problem is larger.  They are very rich tropical islands, inhabited by many varying tribes, representing widely different stages of progress toward civilization.  Our earnest effort is to help these people upward along the stony and difficult path that leads to self-government.  We hope to make our administration of the islands honorable to our Nation by making it of the highest benefit to the Filipinos themselves; and as an earnest of what we intend to do, we point to what we have done.  Already a greater measure of material prosperity and of governmental honesty and efficiency has been attained in the Philippines than ever before in their history.

It is no light task for a nation to achieve the temperamental qualities without which the institutions of free government are but an empty mockery.  Our people are now successfully governing themselves, because for more than a thousand years they have been slowly fitting themselves, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, toward this end.  What has taken us thirty generations to achieve, we cannot expect to have another race accomplish out of hand, especially when large portions