Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/33

Rh by sending Senators and Representatives into our Congress to help make our laws, and by voting for President and Vice-President to give our National Government its Executive. The prospect of the consequences which would follow the admission of the Spanish Creoles and the negroes of West India islands and of the Malays and Tagals of the Philippines to participation in the conduct of our Government is so alarming that you may well pause before taking the step.

But this may be avoided, it is said, by governing the new possessions as mere dependencies, or subject provinces. I will waive the Constitutional question and merely point out that this would be a most serious departure from the rule that governed our former acquisitions, which are so frequently quoted as precedents. It is useless to speak of the District of Columbia and Alaska as proof that we have done such things before and can do them again. Every candid mind will at once admit the vast difference between those cases and the permanent establishment of substantially arbitrary government over large territories with ten millions of inhabitants, and with a prospect of there being many more of the same kind, if we once launch out on a career of conquest. The question is not merely whether we can do such things, but whether, having the public good at heart, we should do them.

If we do adopt such a system, then we shall, for the first time since the abolition of slavery, again have two kinds of Americans: Americans of the first class, who enjoy the privilege of taking part in the Government in accordance with our old Constitutional principles, and Americans of the second class, who are to be ruled in a substantially arbitrary fashion by the Americans of the first class, through Congressional legislation and the action of the National Executive—not to speak of individual