Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/228

204 it remain the prevailing element and the assimilating force. American influence might succeed in modifying somewhat the character of a few commercial towns, but not of the country and its population at large.

Imagine now fifteen or twenty, or even more, States inhabited by a people so utterly different from ours in origin, in customs and habits, in traditions, language, morals, impulses, ways of thinking—in almost everything that constitutes social and political life—and these people remaining under the climatic influences which in a great measure have made them what they are, and render an essential change of their character impossible—imagine a large number of such States to form part of this Union, and through dozens of Senators and scores of Representatives in Congress, and millions of votes in our Presidential elections, to participate in making our laws, in filling the Executive places of our Government, and in impressing themselves upon the spirit of our political life. The mere statement of the case is sufficient to show that the incorporation of the American tropics in our National system would essentially transform the constituency of our Government, and be fraught with incalculable dangers to the vitality of our democratic institutions. Many of our fellow-citizens are greatly disturbed by the immigration into this country of a few hundred thousand Italians, Slavs and Hungarians. But if these few hundred thousand cause apprehension as to the future of the Republic, although under the inspiriting influence of active American life in our bracing climate the descendants of the most ignorant of them in the second or third generation are likely to be Americanized to the point of being hardly distinguishable from other Americans in the same social sphere, what should we fear from the admission to full political fellowship of many millions of the inhabitants of the tropics whom under the influence of their climatic