Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/35

Rh being—it cannot long play the King over subject populations without creating in itself ways of thinking and habits of action most dangerous to its own vitality—most dangerous especially to those classes of society which are the least powerful in the assertion, and the most helpless in the defense of their rights. Let the poor and the men who earn their bread by the labor of their hands pause and consider well before they give their assent to a policy so deliberately forgetful of the equality of rights.

I do not mean to say, however, that all of our new acquisitions would be ruled as subject provinces. Some of them, the Philippines, would probably remain such, but some others would doubtless become states. In Porto Rico, for instance, politicians of lively ambition are already clamoring for the speedy organization of that island as a regular territory, soon to be admitted as a State of the Union. You may say that they will have long to wait. Be not so sure of that. Consult your own experience. Has not more than one territory, hardly fitted for statehood, been precipitated into the Union as a State when the majority party in Congress thought that, by doing so, its party strength could be augmented in the Senate and in the House and in the Electoral College? Have our parties become so unselfishly virtuous that this may not happen again? So we may see Porto Rico admitted before we have had time to rub our eyes.

You may say that little Porto Rico would not matter much. But can any clear-thinking man believe that, when we are once fairly started in the course of indiscriminate expansion we shall stop there? Will not the same reasons which induced us to take Porto Rico also be used to show that the two islands of San Domingo with Hayti, and of Cuba, which separate Porto Rico from our coast, would, if they were in foreign hands, be a danger to us, and that we must take them? Nothing could be more