Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/137

Rh Our country extends at present to a region which is already in some degree infected by the moral miasma of the tropics. The influence of Northern civilization in close contiguity may, by its preponderance, be strong enough to control the disturbing elements, and thus to impart to our South, in its present limits, a reasonable measure of the peculiar blessings we enjoy. But to secure that beneficent result it is absolutely necessary to preserve the preponderance of Northern civilization to such an extent, that the Southern weight cannot seriously disturb the balance. That balance was disturbed once, and the Republic was in danger of perishing. That balance is sufficiently disturbed now to put our republican institutions sometimes to a dangerous strain. Disturb it still more by adding to the Southern weight the burden of the tropics, and in the same measure in which the anarchical element will grow in one part of this Union, in the same measure the development of our political life will tend to the arbitrary assumption of power by the National Government, and perhaps to military usurpation. In fact, the very acquisition of that territory would put us on the high road to military rule. And here I do not hesitate to express my profoundest conviction: incorporate the tropics, with their population, with their natural influences, in our political system, and you introduce a poison into it which may become fatal to the very life of this Republic.

What, then, is the true American policy? It seems to me clear. Let the American people devote their great energies to the vast domain we possess, to that magnificent field of labor and of enterprise where the genius of our race, as I said before, is fed by the very atmosphere. Do we feel cramped in our domain? Let us expand, then, where we are healthy and strong. Is not there a magnificent field left for our ambition of aggrandizement? Yes, and it