SEIZURE OF WAR POWERS BY OUR GOVERNMENT.
All this is preliminary, although pointing the way to a just conclusion. Only when we enter into details and consider what has been done by our Government, do we recognize the magnitude of the question. Unless the evidence supplied by the agents of our Government is at fault, unless the reports of the State Department and Navy Department are discredited, it is obvious beyond doubt, most painfully plain and indisputable, that the President has seized the war powers carefully guarded by the Constitution, and without the authority of Congress has employed them to trample on the independence and equal rights of two nations coëqual with ours,—unless, to carry out this project of territorial acquisition, you begin by setting at defiance a first principle of International Law. This is no hasty or idle allegation; nor is it made without immeasurable regret. And the regret is increased by the very strength of the evidence, which is strictly official and beyond all question.