Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/124

104 out to him that England has not yet seen the last days of her India dominion, and when finally the balance shall be cast he cannot foretell where will be the profit and where the loss.

But the Senator says that England has not failed in India. In what has she not failed? She has not failed in starting and carrying on a rapacious tyranny. Does the Senator call that success? It is the kind of success characteristic of tropical latitudes. Is it the kind of success the Senator desires to achieve in the American tropics? Is it the kind of rule he desires us to succeed in establishing over the West India islands? Yes; England has not failed in India in extorting with an iron hand from the laboring masses by force, illy if at all disguised, the fruits of their labor. But has England succeeded in developing there the blessings of free government? She has not even attempted it.

Will my friend allow me to say that he evades the point? His proposition was that Anglo-Saxons had failed from deterioration in tropical climates and that they had never drawn wealth from tropical possessions. Now he refers to the form of government. That was not the proposition which he made and to which I replied.

I do not think that the Senator from Indiana desires to misrepresent me.

Certainly not at all.

But most certainly he does so at the present moment. What I was proving was this: that whenever the Anglo-Saxon race went into a tropical climate it did fail to establish those institutions which we are here enjoying upon our soil; and if there is a glaring proof of it he will find that proof in the very country of which he now is speaking—India; for I repeat there never was a more rapacious despotism than the one carried on in that country. There never was a more heartless and