Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/533

Rh United States so as to embrace the inter-oceanic canal, and hence the annexation of the Spanish-American republics down to the Isthmus, and of as many of the West Indian and Caribbean islands as possible, for the sake of safety. These annexations bring on the problem of determining the status in the Republic of large masses of tropical people—perhaps some twenty-five millions of them—who are utterly different from the Americans in origin, language, traditions, habits, ways of thinking and feeling,—in short, in everything that is of importance in human intercourse, with no hope of essential assimilation, owing to their tropical home. A large number of seats in Congress will be filled with Senators and Representatives from the Spanish-American countries, who will take part in making laws and in determining the character of the government for all of us. The Presidential elections will largely depend upon the Spanish-American vote, which will become a great force in our politics, and not seldom hold the balance of power. The Philippines and other islands, inhabited by many millions of Asiatics, will have to be governed as subject provinces. Our old democratic principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed will have to go overboard. Greedy speculation will inevitably seek to seize upon those new possessions, and as inevitably invade the politics of the whole country with its corrupting influence. That spirit of speculation will strive to push the Republic into new adventures, and, the United States being then entangled in the jealousies and quarrels of the old-world Powers, and in the struggles for colonial acquisition, new wars will be threatening. Very large armies and navies will be needed to maintain what has been won by conquest and to win more. Enormous expenditures will be a matter of course. As has been said of the army-and-navy-ridden countries of Europe, every American worker, when