Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/123

Rh is not, properly speaking, a colony; it is an empire. Do you want to rule the West India islands as England rules India?

That is not the question.

I know. But let me tell the Senator from Indiana that we have had in India but one symptom of the storms which are brewing, one puff of smoke from the volcano which may break out at any moment there. Does he forget the Sepoy insurrection? Does he not know that worse things than happened then may happen any day again? I was going to speak of India with out being reminded of it. England has not seen the last days yet of her Indian dominion, and the Senator is certainly not prepared to assert that the wealth which was gained from India will not be consumed again by the conflagrations for which the fuel lies already mountain high.

Will my friend allow me to interrupt him?

Yes, sir.

The question of the Senator was: What country had drawn wealth or grown rich from tropical possessions? I might refer him to the possessions that England has in India, and from which she has drawn countless millions, I might say billions of wealth, for the last one hundred and twenty-five years. I might further say that the Anglo-Saxon race have not failed in India. While about one-half or two-thirds of India, perhaps, is within the tropics, yet nearly all of India has a tropical climate and tropical productions; but the vigor of the Anglo-Saxon race in that country is such that a few thousand or a few hundred thousand govern two hundred and fifty millions of native Hindoos.

I am very glad to hear the Senator make that statement, for I was going to come to that point myself. He has merely anticipated me. I was pointing