Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/98

78 necessity which you cannot escape; the logical consequence of your beginning; and before this one consideration all others, that of money, of the Dominican debt, of Baez and Cabral, of sugar, coffee, cotton, salt, gold and precious stones, dwindle down into utter nothingness.

The grave question arises: Is the incorporation of that part of the globe and the people inhabiting it quite compatible with the integrity, safety, perpetuity and progressive development of our institutions which we value so highly? If it is not, is the price which we are to pay worth the bargain? Let us look at the history of these islands; and that history, I would respectfully suggest, we know without the report of this commission, and I do not think the gentlemen to be sent to San Domingo will be able to give us much new light upon it. Read that history, read that of all other tropical countries and then show me a single instance of the successful establishment and peaceable maintenance, for a respectable period, of republican institutions, based upon popular self-government, under a tropical sun. To show me one, do not confine your search to the West Indies; look for it anywhere else on the face of the globe in tropical latitudes. I challenge Senators to point their fingers to a single one. There is none, sir. But, more than that, show me a single instance in any tropical country where labor when it was left free did not exhibit a strong tendency to run into shiftlessness, and where practical attempts to organize labor did not run in the direction of slavery. Show me a single one, not only in the West India islands, but any where in any tropical country under the sun. You find none.

Sir, have we read history in vain? Shall I give you an example of this tendency? There was Toussaint L'Ouverture, the great emancipator on that very island of San Domingo which you propose to annex. Slavery was