From the foregoing considerations may be inferred the importance of the Hawaiian Islands as a position powerfully influencing the commercial and military control of the Pacific, and especially of the Northern Pacific, in which the United States, geographically, has the strongest right to assert herself.  These are the main advantages, which can be termed positive:  those, namely, which directly advance commercial security and naval control.  To the negative advantages of possession, by removing conditions which, if the islands were in the hands of any other power, would constitute to us disadvantages and threats, allusion only will be made.  The serious menace to our Pacific coast and our Pacific trade, if so important a position were held by a possible enemy, has been mentioned frequently in the press, and dwelt upon in the diplomatic papers which from time to time are given to the public.  It may be assumed that it is generally acknowledged.  Upon one particular, however, too much stress cannot be laid, one to which naval officers cannot but be more sensitive than the general public, and that is the immense disadvantage to us of any maritime enemy having a coaling-station well within twenty-five hundred miles, as this is, of every point of our coast-line from Puget Sound to Mexico.  Were there many others available, we might find it difficult to exclude from all.  There is, however, but the one.  Shut out from the Sandwich Islands as a coal base, an enemy is thrown back for supplies of fuel to distances of thirty-five hundred or four thousand miles,—­or between seven thousand and eight thousand, going and coming,—­an impediment to sustained maritime operations well-nigh prohibitive.  The coal-mines of British Columbia constitute, of course, a qualification to this statement; but upon them, if need arose, we might hope at least to impose some trammels by action from the land side.  It is rarely that so important a factor in the attack or defence of a coast-line—­of a sea frontier—­is concentrated in a single position; and the circumstance renders doubly imperative upon us to secure it, if we righteously can.

It is to be hoped, also, that the opportunity thus thrust upon us may not be viewed narrowly, as though it concerned but one section of our country or one portion of its external trade or influence.  This is no mere question of a particular act, for which, possibly, just occasion may not have offered yet; but of a principle, a policy, fruitful of many future acts, to enter upon which, in the fulness of our national progress, the time now has arrived.  The principle being accepted, to be conditioned only by a just and candid regard for the rights and reasonable susceptibilities of other nations,—­none of which is contravened by the step here immediately under discussion,—­the annexation, even, of Hawaii would be no mere sporadic effort, irrational because disconnected from an adequate motive, but a first-fruit and a token that the nation