A Senator Speaks in Support of Empire (short version)

In this 1900 speech to Congress, the Republican Senator from Indiana, Albert J. Beveridge, strongly advocates the annexation of the Philippines. The term Malay refers to people from the Malay Peninsula, the Maylay Archipelago, and nearby islands in southeast Asia.

...[J]ust beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets... We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee of God, of the civilization of the world... Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus?... China is our natural customer... [England, Germany and Russia] have moved nearer to China by securing permanent bases on her borders. The Philippines gives us a base at the door of all the East... They [the Filipinos] are a barbarous race, modified by three centuries of contact with a decadent race [the Spanish]... It is barely possible that 1,000 men in all the archipelago are capable of self-government in the Anglo-Saxon sense... The Declaration [of Independence] applies only to people capable of self-government. How dare any man prostitute this expression of the very elect of self-government peoples to a race of Malay children of barbarism, schooled in Spanish methods and ideas? And you, who say the Declaration applies to all men, how dare you deny its application to the American Indian? And if you deny it to the Indian at home, how dare you grant it to the Malay abroad?