Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/224

200 republic, even now frequently discomforted by little insurrectionary outbreaks, would certainly have relapsed into the old revolutionary disorder; and it is the chronic character of this revolutionary disorder, the tendency to effect changes by force instead of the peaceable and patient process of discussion, that is characteristic of the tropics. It cannot be said that the people of the American tropics have lacked opportunity for the progressive development of democratic institutions. Ever since they threw off the Spanish yoke they have been their own masters. They have long been as free and unhampered as the people of the United States to rule their home affairs and to shape their own destinies. Why have they not succeeded, as we have, in developing the rich resources of their own countries and in building up stable democratic governments? The cause is obvious to every unprejudiced observer.

Democratic government cannot long endure without the maintenance of peace and order through the ready acquiescence of the minority in the verdict of public opinion as expressed in the manner provided by law—the minority, if it continues to consider that verdict wrong, reserving to itself only the right of seeking to change it by another appeal to public opinion through the means of peaceable discussion. This presupposes a state of society in which peace and order are felt by the masses of the people to be needed for their everyday occupations, their regular activities—in other words, a state of society in which everybody, or nearly everybody, being steadily at work for his own sustenance or benefit, feels himself interested in the maintenance of peace and order to insure to himself and those dependent upon him the fruit of his labor. Such a state of society is not found where, on the one hand, nature is so bountiful as to render steady work unnecessary, and where, on the other hand, the