471 J IN INTERNATIONAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 1 73 



to the United States in future transactions of a similar 

 nature. The result of the plebiscite, a vote of 1,244 against 

 22 in favor of annexation,^ seems to indicate that the favor- 

 able outcome of the plebiscite could safely be anticipated, 

 and thus its application with unofficial consent could at 

 least do no harm. But there can be no doubt that even this 

 unofficial consent would not have been given if the result 

 had been in any way in doubt. W. F. Johnson seeks to 

 explain Seward's stand on the basis of constitutional rather 

 than international law. He admits that " Seward was fol- 

 lowing the precedents established by Jefferson in the pur- 

 chase of Louisiana and by John Quincy Adams in the an- 

 nexation of Florida, under which the people of those ter- 

 ritories were not consulted any more than cattle would be 

 over the sale of their pasture," but he continues, " this, at 

 least in Seward's case, was not an expression of disregard 

 for popular rights. It was simply intended to forfend 

 against any possible demand for Statehood by the annexed 

 territory. If the people of the islands were consulted on 

 the question of annexation, he cogently argued, they could 

 logically demand to be consulted concerning the status of 

 the islands after annexation. He preferred to follow the 

 old precedents, and thus to be able to insist upon the con- 

 stitutional rights of Congress to fix the status of the islands 

 and to govern them as it pleased, without consulting any- 

 body. So while he was reluctantly willing that a plebiscite 

 should be taken, he insisted that it should not be mentioned 

 in the treaty or be recognized in any way by the Govern- 

 ment of the United States." In the absence of documentary 

 evidence bearing out Johnson's interpretation of the motives 

 which prompted Seward to refuse official recognition of the 

 plebiscite, it seems just as plausible to adhere to the view 

 that he might have been led by the same considerations which 

 moved Secretary of State John Sherman, in his reply of 

 August 14, 1897, to the Japanese Minister, Toru Hoshi, 



" W. F. Johnson, The Story of the Danish Islands, in The North 

 American Review, Sept., 1916, pp. 384-385; see also Wambaugh, 

 p. 151. 



