Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/115

Rh the assimilating force. And what will be the consequence? Inevitably this: that in the course of time and by the process of assimilation the Anglo-Saxon will lose more than the Africo-Indo-Latin mixture will gain. This will be assimilation indeed, but it will be assimilation downward. Do you want any proof of that? I have already been adverting to the descendants of those Englishmen who had settled the West Indian colonies. Now go there and examine the point of degeneracy they have reached. To be sure, some of the wealthy, who in early childhood were sent to England to be educated there, and who spent there perhaps the greater part of their lives, may have preserved the native vigor of their race; but I refer to the multitude born on West Indian soil, and their children who had continually inhabited it. Have they not become a race, if possible, as miserable as that mixed element which is acknowledged as the indigenous one of the American tropics? You will find that fact confirmed by every intelligent traveller.

But will you be able to obtain a large and valuable quantity of Germanic immigration for those tropical possessions?

Look at the history of migration from one part of the globe to another and you will see how certain laws operate. It is a well-ascertained fact that the masses migrating from any given country show a tendency to keep always—not strictly, but nearly—between the same isothermal lines. You will notice that the Germanic element never goes en masse into tropical regions. To be sure, individual speculators go there to amass rapid and large fortunes in a very short time, then to go home again and to enjoy them. You see also, here and there, colonies established by speculators, which have hardly ever been known to prosper. But they do not go there in great masses to found commonwealths upon the basis of the political