Filipinas! Beloved daughter of the ardent sun of the tropics, commended by Providence to the care of noble Spain, be thou not ungrateful; acknowledge her, salute her who warned thee with the breath of her own culture and civility. Thou hast longed for independence, and thine emancipation from Spain has come; but preserve in thine heart the remembrance of the more than three centuries which thou hast lived with her usages, her language, and her customs. It is true she sought to crush thine aspiration for independence, just as a loving mother resists the lifelong separation from the daughter of her bosom; it only proved the excess of affection, the love Spain feels for thee. But thou, Filipinas, flower of the ocean, delicate flower of the East, still weak, scare eight months weaned from thy mother's breast, has dared to brave a great and powerful nation such as is the United States, with thy little army barely disciplined and shaped. Ah, beloved brethren, all this is true; and still we say we will be slaves to none, nor let ourselves be duped by gentle words.

Source of Treaty Texts: The Statutes At Large of the United States of America from March 1897 to March 1899 and Recent Treaties, Conventions, Executive Proclamations, and The Concurrent Resolutions of the Two Houses of Congress, Volume XXX, published by the U.S. Government Printing Office, 1899. Copy courtesy of the U.S. Library of Congress, Asian Division.