Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/112

92 argument's sake, although the history of those people which lies open before our eyes—a history of interminable and bloody civil feuds, of murder and devastation—stands in rather striking contrast to this poetic description. Still I will let the Senator from Indiana have the full benefit of all the magnificent things which he has been telling us about the people of that island. I will not even dilate upon the experience of Spain; Spain, who was invited as we are to take possession of San Domingo, who attempted to do so, and then was compelled to give up the attempt after having suffered a loss of $40,000,000 and ten thousand soldiers.

There are the Dominican people, such as they are; what will you do with them? It is said they are few; that you can absorb them; that you can turn a powerful stream of immigration into that country. Absorb them! How? What kind of immigration is it that will go into that country? We know the men who first drift into those places where at great risk rapid gains are to be made. It is the adventurous, the reckless element of our population. They will be the first to go to San Domingo, to take fraternal care of the colored people who, with such a confiding spirit, are inviting our embrace! They are going to confer upon them the blessings of free government and of that enlightened, humane and philanthropic spirit which has been so eloquently described by the Senator from Nevada! Why, gentlemen, do you know what fate you prepare for those poor people? Do you know that there is no race on the face of the globe more grasping than the Anglo-Saxon, and of that race no part more unrelenting than the adventurous characters, who most readily rush into newly opened, especially tropical countries? Do you not know that no sooner will immigration of that character numerously flow in there than it will try to crowd out the inhabitants, or to press them forcibly into the service