Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/104

84 have heard the Senator from Nevada [Mr. ] declaiming about our duty to confer the blessings of our institutions upon them. What do they want? Are they not independent? Can we make them more so? Are they not their own masters? Do they not freely dispose of their own destinies, just as freely as we? Look at Mexico, at the Central and South American republics. Is there any foreign Power that holds them under coercion? Is not every man there a freeman? Are not those States nominally republics? What is there that interferes with the free disposition which they might make of themselves? Do they not possess all the rights and forms of popular sovereignty? What is it that prevents them from building up a stable political system, resting upon the basis of self-government, like ours? Certainly no foreign Power or influence prevents them. If they are prevented at all they are prevented by themselves, for they are their own masters. And how is it that they are prevented by themselves? Simply because they are laboring under natural difficulties which cannot be overcome by adopting certain political forms. You cannot mention any other reason for it. Say not that it is that failing of the races living there alone, for I will prove to you that the Anglo-Saxons have been tried under the tropical sun, and have, in the main points, failed in every instance.

I should like to inquire of the Senator from Missouri if there was any better condition of government in California than in any other part of Mexico while it was a portion of Mexico; and if the change of allegiance has not entirely changed the condition of the people, and greatly for the better?

What does the Senator desire to prove: that there were some disorderly countries also under a temperate climate? I have never denied that. There are other things than climate exercising an influence upon