western end and the only end of the island that ever had any prosperity and is really but a trifle more than the small city of Portland, Maine, sends annually over the Grand Trunk railroad. Yet it is the prop for sixteen hun. dred vessels and a hundred millions of exports in the past and in expectancy!

DOMINICAN EXPORT BUBBLES.

Let me call attention to the fact that the greatest number of people in Santo Domingo at the time of the greatest amount of commerce was 400,000 slaves, 25,000 whites, and 25,000 mulattoes, and then bear in mind the fact that the United States in 1830 contained a popula tion of 12,866,020. No one will deny our own activity, whether as to production or trade, and yet our whole exports then amounted only to $73,819,508, or less by more than twenty-six million dollars than 425,000 working tatterdemalions in Santo Domingo are represented to have exported in 1789! With a population of 17,069,453 in 1840, our exports amounted to only $104,805,891, and yet it is assumed that in proportion to numbers the Dominicans in 1789 exceeded the United States in its products exported in the ratio of thirty eight to one. Need I say more touching the Dominican bubble, or the hundred millions of exports which would gush forth by only hoisting the American flag?

Even by the coercion of the military police of Toussaint L'Ouverture, when every man not a proprietor was compelled to hire himself as a laborer to some agricultural proprietor, and to work from sunrise to sunset, they were only able to raise the value of the products to one third of the amount of 1789, and when the restraint was removed in 1825, under Boyer, the exports for the entire island dropped to the pitiful sum of four shillings two pence for each inhabitant.

It may be a proper question to ask, what does the trade of this part of the island now amount to? Is it not curious that even British statisticians, proverbially painstaking, make no separate account of it, but include it with that of Hayti, of the two by far the most considerable? Like gold dust it has first to be caught up with something else, or by quicksilver, before you can find or estimate it at all. The latest returns I have found of the trade of Hayti and Santo Domingo combined, in British documents, are as follows:

even one quarter belongs to Santo Domingo. In 1868 the imports of Santo Domingo from the United States, according to our own records, were $83,363, and the exports to the United States $64,110. Yet, with these beggarly but indisputable facts before us, it is seriously argued that a few dashing Americans would work out the miracle of giving us a trade only surpassed at present in its vast magnitude by that of the United States with Great Britain! I may say with the Prince of Denmark

"They fool me to the top of my bent.'

It appears also that a firm in New York, Spofford Brothers, now own and run a line of steamers under a grant to a Mr. Funkhouser, with a provision that five per cent. of the import and export dues on all merchandise carried by said line between New York and New Orleans and the Dominican republic be allowed to the owners of the steamers. Pray, how would such a grant be disposed of by us?

The Senator from Indiana, in a former debate, took pains to quote from an official document the amount of our trade with Cuba and Porto Rico, and to contrast it with that of the British American possessions and Mexico. It is large, it is true, and somewhat larger than the latter altogether. The figures of the first, including exports and imports, were $88,102,670, and of the last only $72,000,000. But for what purpose does the Senator array thesc figures? Santo Domingo will not blo'. out of supply the place of Cuba and Porto Fico, and if such a result were possible it could give us no larger market for our products. The torrid zone everywhere furnishes only limited markets. They consume little, and that little, it happens, can be mainly obtained elsewhere at less cost than from us. If the contrast was intended to be unfavorable to the trade of the British possessions and Mexico, then it was a mistake, fər the reason that while our exports to Cuba and Porto Rico are small, they are in proportior to imports much larger to the Dominion and other North American British possessions. So far as they concern the Santo Domingo ques. tion, the figures so prominently put forth are without any logical significance. I fancy they were intended to give the impression that the balance of trade would be made all right through the annexation of Santo Domingo, and in that view they are entitled-I say it with all respect-to about as much consideration as we should give to the toy blocks of children, with which they sometimes build barns, forts, or churches, as it may best please juvenile architects. The Dominican block-house is of about equal substance and of equal ingenuity.

Usually the Register of the United States appears to follow the British example in making up the report of the trade of Hayti and San Domingo, and combines them together, not considering the latter worthy of any separate

notice; but in 1868 a separate account was kept, and we find our domestic exports to Hayti were $2.956,983, and of foreign goods reëxported $299,619, while our domestic exports to Santo Domingo were only $64,110, and but $2,091 of foreign goods reëxported. Our imports for the same year from Hayti were $760,087, and from Santo Domingo only $83,363; the trade with Santo Domingo thus || leaving a balance of about twenty thousand dollars to be paid by us in gold, while the Haytien trade was exceedingly healthful, leav ing a balance of $2,196,896 to be paid to us in gold. A critical examination of the trade of Santo Domingo has been provoked, and its absolute nullity, therefore, deserves to be fully exposed. Its consequence has been magnified by being confounded with that of Hayti, although the trade of that little republic is quite restricted. Of coffee we imported in 1868 from Hayti 4,631181 pounds, and from Santo Domingo only 21.815 pounds. From Hayti we imported 30,827 pounds cocoa and 219,098 pounds of cotton, but none from Santo Domingo. Of sugar we got $20,092 worth|| from Hayti, and $10,111 worth from Santo Domingo. Of dye-woods we received from Hayti to the amount of $419,442, and how much do you think, Mr. President, from Santo Domingo? Remember the immense forests we have been told about, only requiring a few blows of the woodman's ax to ship countless cargoes! The amount, all told, was to the value of $15,988!

Nearly half of all our imports from Santo Domingo were in two items-$16,326 in mahogany, and $22,029 in lignum-vitæ. Why, sir, some of the farmers not many miles from this capital do nearly as large a business every winter in cutting and selling cord-wood! It would be eclipsed by the trade of mere boys in Michigan or Maine! Of tropical fruits and here certainly we ought to find a surfeit, their growth is so luxuriant, so entirely laborless !the amount we have to acknowledge is twentyone dollars for ripe fruits and eight dollars for preserved fruits! The owner of a California garden would feel himself treated unhandsomely if a single visitor should not consume Dr carry away more than our whole year's importation from Santo Domingo! Here are the facts taken from our own documents. Mr. President, contrast them with the hundred million theory-"the house that Jack built,”. which grave Senators have indorsed in this Chamber! Do they warrant such extravagant predictions?

COCOANUTS AND BANANAS WILL NOT PAY OFF THE PUBLIC DEBT.

If we may accept the theory of the President in his annual message, the annexation of Santo Domingo would be the appropriate plaster, not only for nearly all our national sores, but for those of other lands. It would

he a cure for many evils at home-naval, military, financial, moral, commercial, and political-as well as the precursor of reforms greatly needed abroad. A panacea of such extensive pretensions is commonly found upon trial of small virtue anywhere, and certainly cannot be counted upon where it has signally failed when tested by other parties, as Santo Domingo often has been by other nations.

The opinions of the President of the United States, official and personal, are entitled to great consideration; and having given them that consideration, both from duty and inclination, I feel that they must be adopted or rejected, with perfect independence, as God enables us to see the right. The message asserts of this measure that

"It is to provide honest means of paying our honest debts without overtaxing the people.

But how? The President is too much in earnest to deal in jokes, and this must be treated as a serious matter. It seems to be argued that annexation would enable the United States to obtain from Santo Domingo all of our sugar, coffee, tobacco, and tropical fruits; and it is then stated that

"The production of our own supply of these articles will cut off more than one hundred millions of our annual imports, besides largely increasing our exports. With such a picture it is easy to see how our large debt abroad is ultimately to be extinguished."

The colors of this picture are positive and very brilliant, but can they be warranted not to fade when exposed to the sunlight of facts and figures? How would it do for a Secretary of the Treasury to entertain such speculative visions? Treasury estimates must be built upon the solid data of ascertained facts. The imagination agination is a poor financier, wholly without thrift and great only in gigantic disbursements. Let alone the grand assumption as to the capacity of Santo Domingo to produce all the articles enumerated-eclipsing Cuba, Porto Rico, and all the sugar countries of the worldnot stopping even to deny the averment of the message that it is "capable of supporting ten millions of people in luxury," how are these vast products when grown to be covered into the Treasury of the United States?

Supposing the fertility of the soil and the disposition to labor not to be overstated, when annexation shall come to pass, the sugar, coffee, tobacco, and tropical fruits produced there, much or little, would nevertheless be the property of private owners, and must be paid for accordingly, and the price would be the average price of such articles in the chief marts of the world, but not less than the cost of production in Santo Domingo. If the world's supply of coffee and sugar were to be so largely increased, however, by a hundred millions, then it is plain to see that the price might be greatly diminished; so much so, perhaps, as to make the cultivation of such crops,

even in Santo Domingo, unprofitable, and then their curtailment or total abandonment must speedily follow. Sugar has been a profitable crop in Cuba when cultivated by over six hundred and fifty thousand slaves, the slave trade replacing the enormous losses caused by the annual mortality of the laborers; but it has not been profitable in Hayti since Haytien independence, nor in the British West Indies since emancipation. Is it to be expected that Americans in such a climate can successfully compete with the cheap labor of Cuba, Brazil, or India?

Still keeping the "picture" before us, that all of our sugar, tobacco, and tropical fruits might be obtained exclusively from the east end of Santo Domingo, it follows then that we must surrender millions of revenue which is now obtained from these sources. How would such a deficit be made up? Manifestly it could only be done by levying an equal amount upon tea, salt, or some other articles imported from foreign countries. A certain amount of revenue is indispensable to the existence of the Government. Remove duties from one quarter and they must be put on in some other. If our supply of sugar, coffee, tobacco, and tropical fruits could be obtained free of duties something else must then assume the burden. If our imports of dutiable articles should be diminished one fourth, then a proportionate increase of the tariff upon the remainder must follow or internal taxation must again be resorted to for means to supply the deficiency. No one proposes to resort to the latter at home, and therefore it could not be imposed upon Santo Domingo. With no duties upon our exports to or from Santo Domingo, and no revenue from internal taxation, what becomes of annexation as "an honest means of paying our honest debts ?" Beyond all doubt it would cripple our Treasury, and be the signal for the imposition of new taxes at home, and of no insignificant amount, if the dream of cutting off $100,000,000 of imports should ever come to pass. The milk in free cocoanuts will not pay the public debt. I am inflexibly opposed to any increase of taxation and in favor of reducing the present burdens at the earliest day.

The fallacy of expecting any revenue from Santo Domingo may be fitly shown by the example of Cuba with respect to Spain. Spain needs and ever has needed more revenue, and no one will question the zeal with which she has attempted to obtain it. We denounce the Spanish impositions upon Cuba and would not be likly to imitate such rapacity; yet the sum total of that taxation is less than half that borne by the city of New York, and for the latest years I bave found prior to their present civil war amounts for maritime to $6,721,250, and for internal to $5,527,462, or a total of $12,248,712. Nearly all of this is exhausted

by the civil, military, naval, and miscellaneous Cuban expenses, Spain only nibbling annually about fifteen hundred thousand dollars, and this sum is really transmitted to Spain in support of legations, pensioners, and employés connected with the island government.

Only nominally has she secured this pitiful sum of $1,500,000 of annual revenue, and has actually already sunk a capital in her latest inconclusive effort to suppress the Cuban rebellion, which she cannot hope to recover, or even the interest thereon, from all the future revenues of Cuba, though her sovereignty were to be prolonged for coming ages. Cuba has a population of 1,443,381, of which 662,587 are slaves and 216,176 free colored. Santo Domingo is estimated to contain 120,000 inhabitants, though the late commission estimates it higher, which, if we were to oppress with equal rigor, would yield in proportion, it will be seen, a net revenue of about one hundred and twentyfive thousand dollars. But instead of even this paltry credit we should have millions of expenditures, such as it has cost Spain to establish a doubtful supremacy in Cuba, or Great Britain her less doubtful despotism in Jamaica. Truly, if while our present Administration has been so successfully paying off over $100,000,000 of debt annually, the annexation of Santo Domingo has suddenly become the only mode by which the public debt can be extinguished without overtaxing the people, as the idea would appear to be entertained in most respectable quarters, then our condition is deplorable enough, as that measure, by increasing our expenditures and diminishing our receipts, would really only plunge us into difficulties far deeper and more inextricable than those we are now called upon to confront.

THREATENING INCREASE OF TAXES.

The possession of Santo Domingo would heavily increase national taxes, as it would be absurd to suppose that a country without an acre of public lands, of one hundred and twenty or one hundred and sixty thousand poor Dominican men and women, unaccustomed and unwilling to labor, could or would make even the smallest contribution to the payment of the public debt or even to their own defense. The tracks would all be outgoing from the Treasury, and none incoming. The first thing to be done would be to appoint a Governor, whose staff and surroundings must be equal to those of the captain general of Cuba, and Governor of Jamaica, or he would rank only as one of the "poor white trash, poor white trash," and turn out to be no Governor at all. The judiciary and other branches of the civil service must be furnished, and there would be plenty of room for all the discontented culls thrown out of custom-house employment at home.

Then a permanent naval squadron would be ornamental and contingently indispensable. Docks, arsenals, hospitals, and navy-yards

must follow as a matter of course, as Santo Domingo is surrounded by dangerous rivals as well as by dangerous reefs, and our naval squadrons would be in constant dread of barnacles and constant need of repairs. Forts, martellotowers, and other fortifications, would have to bristle up around the whole circuit of the shore lines. How many regiments of soldiershorse, foot, and dragoons-would find employment and graves there the experience of Governments having similar dependencies sufficiently discloses. Revenue cutters would find an ample field for their prowess, as smugglers would replace ancient buccaneers. Rivers and harbors would require improvements; railroads, with subsidies, would turn out to be postal or military necessities. An assay office and mint could hardly be refused to a land of so much undiscovered gold, where they are now compelled to use paper money instead of pieces of leather, such as were in vogue when the mines of Cibao were most productive, and yet yielded but half a million dollars annually to the labor of wretched miners. More than all, schools and school-houses would need to be established with laws making attendance compulsory.

This long catalogue of requirements may seem extensive. But there is not one of them, if a treaty were ratified, that would not at once be loudly called for; and our home people would have to foot the bills. Spain kept an army in Cuba, prior to the late civil war-including infantry, cavalry, and artillery-of twenty-eight thousand men, or nearly as large as that now maintained by the United States, and a navy made up of four frigates, fifteen steam-ships, and thirty-two smaller vessels. This indicates the climate into which it is sought to plunge American institutions!

Such an annexation would expose the peace of the country to new complications and to constant peril. Revolutions and civil discord seem to be the normal condition of the tropics. The doors of the Temple of Janus are never closed near the equator nor in Spanish American republics. The defense in case of war of this patch in the ocean would involve an outlay | of men and money greatly in excess of the importance of the territory or of its people; and after all our expenditures, any naval Power, having the most iron-clad vessels at hand, in case of war, would at once become its master; any improvement made by us would only make the prize the more glittering and valuable to || the captors.

At home we may be invincible; but as defenders of out-lying dependencies we should drop to a third or fourth-rate Power, because we have not and ought not to have a large navy, for the mere glory of naval supremacy, or the vanity of a comparison with the royal and imperial navies of the Old World. We might, indeed, follow the advice of Mackenzie, who

says, "the yellow fever would effectually secure the island in case of an external attack if the policy of abandoning the coasts and destroying the towns were acted on." But will it not be far better not to put ourselves in a position where we must depend upon such dolorous auxilaries, or where municipal suicide would be the best of available defenses? A TROPICAL CLIMATE NEVER EXEMPT FROM TROPICAL DISEASES.

There is a question of some gravity as to the salubrity of the climate in Santo Domingo. If it is really healthful why is it that its population has been forever on the wane? Its colored population, without thrift or fertility, steadily diminishes in number, and whites never go and stay there with any purpose to make it a family home. Concede that the soil is fertile and hot in its fecundity, then may it not be asked whether it is not true everywhere under a tropical sun that a country, rank to rottenness in its vegetation, is equally rank in its malarial diseases?

True, it would seem to cost nothing to raise children in Santo Domingo, because until they are five or six years old they go forth like our first parents in Paradise, without shame, as naked as they came into the world. Even adults are often content with little more than one garment, and are not very fastidious whether that is a shirt or a coat, a pair of pantaloons or a hat. Why is there no increase? In the first place, from universal and unconquerable indolence, no extensive crops are grown, and when any are grown the owners are in such constant dread of military raids and the periodical hurricanes, with both of which they are so often visited, as to make subsistence precarious. In the absence of these, droughts not unfrequently destroy large tracts of vegetation. A regular supply of food is necessary for any increase of population; and for this end tropical fruits, though ever so abundant in their season, are an insufficient substitute. But the hot seasons of every year are as fatal in their ravages as famine and epidemical diseases are sure to be active and vigorous, though the people are not. Malte Brun, speaking of the bay of Samana, says: 'The banks of that vast basin are unhealthy, and Europeans are unwilling to reside there."

Of course an excursion party, traveling on the bounty of the Government, with something of the pomp of Antony visiting Cleopatra, sped along by the imperial clarion of music, and leaving the stern frosts of a northern winter for the soft and sunny lap of the tropics, where the earth is all clad with greenest verdure, would be pleased and in smiles with everything; with the birds of the air, beasts of the field, and even with creeping things. They are happy. Severe and irreverent critics they cannot be. They are there for the purpose of being pleased; nobody expected anything less;

and they would be careful not to stay so long as to encounter the perils of the climate. How much knowledge, untinged by "the animated particles of the rainbow," would such an excursion party obtain as to the statistics of mortality in the fraction of five weeks of time, devoted to all the objects of their mission, not excluding social enjoyments and ceremonies, and, under the adroit manipulation of Baez, bankrupt, as he is in money, and with no repu tation to spare? Birds of passage, even the wild geese, which go south in the winter and fly northward with the earliest breath of spring, might as well be summoned to testify about the dog days they had never seen under the equator, as such a February party to testify touching the summer solstice at Santo Domingo.

The commissioners will be recognized as most intelligent and highly respected gentlemen, but their time was too short and their task too great. They will undoubtedly be able to state that tropical plants grow in tropical countries, and to refute all such stories as that related in the only joke ever perpetrated by Washington, as to Newark, that the mosquitoes are so fat and large as to "sting through the thickest boot;" but in the brief time they expended they must have been so hurried as to be obliged to follow in large measure the "memorandum for a tour" in New Jersey, to be found in Salmagundi, as follows:

"A knowing traveler always judges of everything by the inn-keepers and waiters-set down Newark people all as fat as butter-landlord member of the Legislature-treats everybody who has a vote mem. all the inn-keepers members of Legislature of New Jersey-saw a large flock of crows-concluded there must be a dead horse in the neighborhood-mem. country remarkable for crows-won't let the horses die in peace.

Mr. President, I would take the word of the commissioners for £5,000, but I would not take their indorsement of the climate of Santo Domingo for more than five weeks.

But the fate of French and Spanish armies, early and late, disclose the facts. We know that, with the aid of the climate, a few ignorant, ill-clad, ill-fed, and ill armed Dominicans have destroyed large and well-appointed armies. Army statistics show what is the rate of mortality, when we compare the South with the North within the extreme limits of our own country, and these prove the mortality in the South to be nearly four times greater than in the North and East. The number constantly on the sick list from malarial fevers and dysentery is also vastly greater. Nobody will question that Jamaica is as healthy as Santo Demingo, and yet the average deaths there of the British army, from 1837 to 1855, were as great as at Bombay, or over sixty annually in every one thousand men, while in some years they reached the rate of three hundred men out of one thousand in a single year. This is a rate which destroys a whole regiment in about three

The colored race withstand the climate and the yellow fever somewhat better than the white race, but the bulk of our Army-three fourths at least-are recruited north of the Potomac, or from the cities of New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago, and are almost entirely white. At Key West we know the fearful fatality that attends our troops. It may be said that when sent to Santo Domingo they might be stationed in the interior, among the mountains, but there they would be useless, except in cases of insurrection. They must be placed on the coast and around harbors. These would be the places requiring defense, requiring a constant military police, and here our troops must lay their bones in obedience to laws they have no power to resist. Jamaica, Cuba, and Santo Domingo for years were called the graves of Europe. Do we want to make the latter the grave of America?

Eighty years ago there were twenty-three British forts in Jamaica, besides fourteen posts or batteries, with officers and men. How many there are now I know not, but probably there are not less. And how is that island held and Great Britain still holds the governed now?

island, but its industry has perished, and she would probably be glad of an excuse to cut loose from it forever. Since the late rebellion there, resulting in such fearful tragedies, the entire authority is vested in the governor, assisted by a privy council, appointed by himself, consisting of six members, and a legislative council, consisting of the privy council and six nonofficial members. This shows conclusively that a West India government must be supported by an army, and also shows the arbitrary style of government which is still necessary after an occupancy of the island by the British ever since the time of Cromwell. Such men as Governor Eyre only can maintain order. It is also to be noted that when slavery existed there were, in a population of three hundred and forty thousand, thirty thousand whites, but in 1861 the whites were reduced to less than fourteen thousand. Is there not some proof in this that there is no health in the West India archipelago for white people? Who will say that Santo Domingo can be governed with less sacrifice of life or treasure than Jamaica? And Jamaica is much smaller than Santo Domingo.

The history of Santo Domingo, early and late, shows the climate to be incompatible with labor. It is a sad reflection that its million or