Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/57

Rh upon their tories in their revolutionary war. But we, too, threw our tories into hideous dungeons during our Revolutionary war and persecuted and drove them away after its close. They may have bloody civil broils. But we, too, have had our civil war which cost hundreds of thousands of lives and devastated one-half of our land; and now we have in horrible abundance the killings by lynch law and our battles of Virden. They may have trouble with their wild tribes. So had we, and we treated our wild tribes in a manner not to be proud of. They may have corruption and rapacity in their Government, but Havana and Ponce may get municipal administration almost as good as New York has under Tammany rule; and Manila may have a city council not much less virtuous than that of Chicago.

I say these things not in a spirit of levity, well understanding the difference; but say them seriously to remind you that, when we speak of the government those islands should have, we cannot reasonably set up standards which are not reached even by the most civilized people, and which in those regions could not be reached, even if we ourselves conducted their government with our best available statesmanship. Our attention is in these days frequently called to the admirable and in many respects successful administrative machinery introduced by Great Britain in India. But it must not be forgotten that this machinery was evolved from a century of rapine, corruption, disastrous blunders, savage struggles and murderous revolts, and that even now many wise men in England gravely doubt in their hearts whether it was best for the country to undertake the conquest of India at all, and are troubled by gloomy forebodings of a calamitous catastrophe that may some day engulf that splendid fabric of Asiatic dominion.

No, we cannot expect that the Porto Ricans, the