Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 December 1900 — PORTO RICO CASE UP. [ARTICLE]

PORTO RICO CASE UP.

Arguments Begun in the United States Supreme Court. Monday morning in the Supreme Court of the United States began one of the most interesting aud important debates that has been held before that tribunal for years, and the principle involved is whether the constitution of the United States follows the flag; or, in other words, whether the Filipinos atul Porto Ricans are citizens of the United States, or, of not, what their relation is to this government. Attorney General Griggs argued the negative. Ex-Secretary Carlisle, Charles 11. Aldrich o? Chicago, YY'illiaui Edmund Curtis of New York aud other famous lawyers sirnke in the affirmative. The question comes before tlie court on a remonstrance against the payment of duties upon goods imported from Porto Rico aud the Philippine Islands and iuvolves the constitutionality of the Porto Iticau law that was passed Inst session. It will be remembered that the committee of ways and means submitted to the House of Representatives a report declaring that neither Porto Rico nor Hawaii nor the Philippines nor Alaska nor Arizona nor any of the other territories ■ were part of the United States, and that Congress had the light to establish custom houses on their borders, notwithstanding that clause iu the constitution that forbids embargoes upou the commerce between tlie States. This is one of the greatest cases that the nation’s highest tribunal lias ever considered; greater than the Died Scott case, greater than the legal tender ease, greater than the income tax case. Those enses respectively involved the question of the extension of slavery, the power of the government to issue paper money and force Its acceptance, and the power of the government to tax incomes, but this caae involves the very structure of the government Itself.