Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/106

86 The Anglo-Saxon race established itself on the West India islands, did it not? the same race which peopled this country. They had the government of affairs there. Will the Senator tell me what became of the English colonies in the West India islands? Will he tell me what has become of the descendants of the original Anglo-Saxon immigrants there?

Yes.

Well?

They had a miserable system of slavery that degraded and destroyed them. They never tried the experiment of free institutions there until the people got entirely degenerate. The original stock started in on the basis of slavery, and they never have had a fair chance under free institutions.

I will give the necessary explanation to the Senator from Nevada of the facts he adduced. In the first place, the Anglo-Saxons on the West India islands started with a no more miserable system of slavery than they did here. Does the Senator from Nevada see the difference in the results? I presume he is acquainted with the fact that slavery was long ago abolished on the island of Jamaica, and that the condition of things in Jamaica is very far from satisfactory, and at any rate has not led to anything that might in the remotest degree be compared with the beneficial results of self-government as we observe them here.

If I do not interrupt the Senator, I will say that at the time of the abolition of slavery there the people were so demoralized that there was not a nucleus to form an organization of society sufficiently strong to maintain free government. There were not enough free people there for the purpose; there were just a few slaveholders and a mass of slaves, and not enough free people of the right kind to form a nucleus for the