The Executive Council of Porto Rico

Extract

The problem of devising forms of government for the insular dependencies that came to the United States as a sequel to our war with Spain presented, among others, this very special aspect; that the governments to be created should at one and the same time provide for a maximum of efficiency and carry with them the largest possible grant to the people governed of powers to manage their own affairs. The securing of either one of these considerations alone would have been a simple matter. Had the United States acquired Porto Rico and the Philippines under no moral obligation to extend to them the principles of self-government, the maximum of efficiency could easily have been attained by simply vesting all governmental powers, legislative, executive and judicial, in a few appointed officials, and holding them to a rigid accountability for the manner in which they might perform their duties. Or, the grant of self-government could have been attained by providing for a liberal form of government under which the islands would be left free to work out their own destinies with all of the dangers of misrule and inefficiency that the experience of other Latin-American countries has demonstrated to be present. To accomplish both, meant that means had to be devised for harmonizing these two considerations, which in their nature were more or less antagonistic, and that, in consequence, the problem to be solved was vastly more complicated and delicate than it otherwise would have been.