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Then it would be merely the cost of protection to the additional territory, the transfer of some portion of our own people to the new locality, and the risk of their too probable speedy dete. rioration of character. But when embarrassed with a population, having, too, a most unattractive history and character, we have a more serious and complex proposition to consider and determine. Will the population elevate or depress the standard of American civilization? Will it prove such an enterprise as to attract the good or the bad? Will it tend to secure or imperil the life of our republican institutions? I would not speak disrespectfully of the Dominicans, if there was anything of which I could speak respectfully. I would not speak of them at all if it were not proposed to take them into our Union as equal copartners.

THE POOR CHARACTER OF DOMINICANS.

But the people of Dominica are confessedly in the lowest state of poverty, and must remain so forever, because they will not work. They are grossly ignorant; and must remain so, because they have no aspiration to be otherwise, have attended no schools themselves, nor will they provide any for their children. They are a foreign, incompatible race, and never can become homogeneous, in manners or customs, language or religion, with our people; because, having a diverse and incoherent origin, and a climate always tending to effeminacy, they have also for ages been intermixed with a stock which neither learns virtues nor forgets vices, and which clings with the sublimest faith to revolutions and the Catholic priesthood of Santo Domingo. There can be no attraction here for any other class of emigrants than those to be found in a similar latitude, where numbers may have diminished the spontaneous supplies of food, or a class unwilling to starve and yet not quite willing to work.

If

The Dominican people have been represented to be of such inferior and flexible material that they could be at once molded and governed by a thousand, or even fifty, Americans. that were so, what fifty, of what city, would be likely to land there first? Would they pour forth from the fertile loins of Mackerelville or Northern Liberties? Would they be of a character fit to be intrusted with equal powers as a State in peace or war to checkmate' Massachusetts or New York or Ohio? Surely such a consummation no more commends itself to the older States than to the younger, and could give us neither strength nor renown at home nor abroad. Let us thank God that our patriotism does not yet teach us to love Dominica as we love New York, Massachusetts, or Ohio.

graceless tyrants of any race, but they seem to be utterly destitute of that noble ambition which seeks to elevate their people, or which enthrones liberty, justice, and law as the highest aim of human government.

A people wholly without education, led in factions by unprincipled and desperate chiefs, destitute of all ambition which a high civilization inspires, reeking in filth and laziness, re|| gardless of marriage or its binding power, who never invented anything nor compre. hended the use of the inventions of others, whose virtue is indexed by a priesthood elevated by no scrap of learning and wretchedly debauched in morals, would prove a serious political and moral as well as financial incumbrance. It cannot be reckoned statesmanship to add to the complications of the hour by going abroad after fresh elements of inevitable vexation and discord. By any treaty Santo || Domingo must be permitted to come into our system on an equal footing with other Territories to be admitted in due time as a State; or if admitted by joint resolution it must take position at once as a State. It must have Representatives and Senators in due time,

or at once.

We cannot have even the poor privilege of starting a plan of government with a military satrap at its head, clothed with such prerogatives as might be necessary to control a people, if not barbaric, at least unaccustomed to a free Government or a free religion, and wholly illiterate and superstitious. Whether we were to permit such a population, wholly incapable of governing themselves, to a share in governing us, and we have no constitutional precedents for anything else, nor will anything else be authorized, or whether we alone were to govern them, it would be found equally objectionable and inharmonious. We cannot afford to dilute the aggregate intelligence of our own people below its present standard while we are striving to elevate that standard; nor ought we to embark in a wild scheme of planting colonial governors around the world, in an age when they have almost ceased to be tolerated. Let us educate and train the four million pupils which Providence has recently placed in our charge before we take up a much more hopeless class, that is to say, the ragged school of Dominica. Honor most clearly does not lie in pushing American institutions in the direction of the equator, where even freedom's purest metal yields to the fervent heat. Even the American Republic cannot American Republic cannot "lie immortal in the arms of fire.'

NO ANNEXATION TOLERABLE EXCEPT NORTHWARD.

The Santo Domingo chiefs, judging them by But let us for a moment turn our eyes from their public acts, seem to be not greatly in a land congenial to monkeys and parrots to advance of their subjects, and are ready to something of more substantial value. Let us sell their country when in power, or to fight for forego the seductions of sugar and coffee plantit when out of power. Their love of despotic Their love of despoticatious, rising so luxuriantly in some tropical rule and lust for gold equals that of the most "imaginations, though scarcely to be found now

even in the narrow cul-de-sac they once filled, improvements, upheld by forty million hearty and face the north.

'The blood more stirs

To rouse a lion than to start a hare.”

At the north there is a country interlocked and dovetailed to our northern boundary, through out its whole magnificent extent, with a people of kindred stock and tongue, which, without money and without price, and with their own consent, will at some time surely show, perhaps in the second term of General Grant, that they are ready to join and improve their fortunes by going hand in hand and abreast with the Great Republic. Let them do this, and their advancement will be assured, while our own will not be retarded, but perhaps made more complete. This would reflect honor upon all parties, banish Fenianism, and blot out the name of the Alabama.

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The British provinces are of age, and Great Britain daily hints to the bashful youngsters that, although she will not forbid them all || shelter under the paternal roof and will not wholly cease the great baby perquisites of soft caresses, yet she feels chagrined that they have not discovered it to be quite time for them to shift for themselves and to cease teasing her for bonbons and pocket-money. She does not tell them in plain words, as Isaac told Jacob, where and when to go and wed, for she is altogether too clever not to know what alliance has been foreordained and determined. What the laws of the universe join together cannot be kept asunder. It will not be a runaway match, for there is no shame and need be no secrecy about it; but some fine morning, the last of the "Queen's Own" having departed, the New Dominion will muster its manhood and pop the question. After that, at Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, and Quebec, we shall hear from more than four million throats, "Hail Columbia!" Here is the true field of honor. But, if we show an indiscriminate and promiscuous desire to annex anything and everything, even a slice of a tropical island, a match of the cheapest and most dubious character, how can we expect our proud and fastidious AngloSaxon neighbors on the north, ripe in experience and liberal culture, with their solid and extensive patrimony, to join such a union with any alacrity or affection?

I am sincerely apprehensive that the project for Dominican annexation will seriously jeopardize our prospects in the North, and perhaps postpone the interests and happiness of millions of people indefinitely. The northern field || of enterprise, which might attract our people and capital, would be one of assured health and profit, and contribute to the power, certainly not to the weakness, of the nation. The New Dominion, once infolded by our flag, would find the blood coursing in its veins with a swifter current and fuller pulsation, and with all her industries, her commerce, and national

coadjutors, would also find such security and prosperity as have not been reached even in the dreams of its most sanguine citizens. Its population and wealth would be doubled in a single decade. Why should we, then, barricade the entrance to our Union against the provinces on the north by any rubbish tumbled in from the West India Islands? We urge nothing-are in no hurry-but let us not snatch at half an island and lose a continent.

THE SEWARD BATCH OF TREATIES ALL BAD.

The present Administration was so unfortunate as to receive as a legacy from the late versatile Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, a series of great treaties for petty annexation and petty reciprocity, which contributed, perhaps, more to the self-satisfaction of the Secretary than they appear destined to contribute to that of the country he officially represented. Not one of these infelicitous treaties had its origin with the present Administration, which owes to them no original fealty whatsoever. That with Denmark, for the annexation of St. Thomas-in close proximity with Santo Domingo-seems to have been vulnerable to the first ocean earthquake, and has been, perhaps not inopportunely, swallowed up by a series of those great disturbers of "the best laid plans" of diplomacy, while little Denmark, unwittingly trusting to an unadvised treaty and the fair words of our Secretary, suffers the shame of those who stumble and then hastily look around to see if the world's fingers are not pointed at them. Our national position has been awkward and ungracious; but what could we do? One thing was clear; we did not want St. Thomas, unless we were to take it, as we might Santo Domingo, and throw it back again into the sea.

The inception of these treaties under President Johnson was widely at variance with the course pursued by Jefferson in 1803 in the case of Louisiana, and of Monroe in 1819 in the case of Florida. They started with legislative concurrence. They got the consent of Congress beforehand, and, to quote the language of the late Senator Benton, "the treaty-making power was but the instrument of the legislative will." Besides, the subject then in hand underwent public discussion. There were no secrets. The people understood what they wanted and what was on foot.

Manifestly, in so important a step this was and is now the proper course. If the treatymaking power, working in secret and wholly irresponsible, may totally disregard the public judgment, then republican or popular government is a farce.

THE "MONROE DOCTRINE" INTERPReted. There has been so much loose talk on the subject of the "Monroe doctrine,” so called, that President Grant may have been justifiedI think he was-in making an earnest experi

ment to find out its practical meaning or how it is to be understood by the present generation. It has by some been held to include much more than I think the simple declaration warranted. As read by me it only declared "America no longer open to European colonization;" not that we wanted to colonize. President Monroe only desired that all parts | of America might have a chance to be independent and republican if they chose, without || any European hinderance or interference, and those refractory Spanish-American colonies, which Spain was then striving to coerce, were objects that challenged our own as well as a world-wide solicitude. The doctrine was not that we were to seize all the land adjoining us, nor was it by any means susceptible of the selfish interpretation that European vultures were to be driven away in order that the Amer. ican eagle might swoop down and clutch the

prey.

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The wise founders of our Republic contemplated a simple form of government, one imposing the smallest possible burdens, upon which it would be wholly incompatible to ingraft a system of colonies or outlying dependencies. A large navy, without which the defense of colonies or distant States would be impos sible, was regarded by our fathers with great || distrust. Jefferson, in his simplicity, only wanted gun-boats; but Jefferson never sought to colonize or to annex distant islands. sought to make bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh the great delta of the Mississippi. It remained for our late Secretary of State, always grand in his conceptions, even when wrong, first to grasp the north pole, and then to leap back almost to the equator, or to alternate between icebergs and earthquakes. In his world traveling eye not only the whole boundless continent" was ours, but all of its was ours, but all of its outlying incoherent dependencies were equally to be coveted. Strange that any Republican administration should have been lured by such doubtful baits!

But Jefferson only coveted Louisiana, holding the great outlet of the Mississippi and our most magnificent domains lying west of that river, which it was desirable to have at any cost, even at the price, he said, of an amendment to the Constitution, if necessary.

In the case of Florida, it was the home of the Seminoles, whose predatory warfare could not be repelled without following them within the boundaries of a foreign Government, involving a double war, and, therefore, this territory, contiguous to our southern boundary, had to be acquired as a measure of prospective peace rather than of aggrandizement, though it resulted in a most expensive Indian war.

Texas was largely settled by our own people, and the geographical homogeniety between that country and the United States made it a tempting acquisition. The people of Texas were

unanimously in favor of annexation, and being an independent State it was claimed, with more adroitness than integrity, that Congress had the constitutional right to admit such States into the Union. Annexation was an issue made at the presidential election, and the candidate in favor of annexation had succeeded, whether that was the decisive issue or not. The people of the North and West, it is true, opposed it because the message of President Tyler in December, 1843, "squinted at war with both" Great Britain and Mexico, in order to obtain it. Beyond that our people were vehemently opposed to it on the ground that it was a sinister and premeditated extension of the area of slavery. They were opposed to it on account of the sham proposal to "reanterritory which never belonged to us. They were opposed to it because " an army of observation," not a fleet in the bay of Samana, was sent into it, and then a false declaration made that "" war existed by the act of Mexico." They were opposed to it because of the threat of South Carolina that, if not annexed to the United States, it should be annexed to the slave-holding States.

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Our treaty with Great Britain, commonly known as the Clayton and Bulwer treaty, made April 19, 1850, fully illustrates the American construction of the Monroe doctrine, so called, when it was restrained by the limits of sanity and sound statesmanship. Although the particular object of this treaty was to secure a ship-canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean, yet it declares that the high contracting parties "not only desired, in entering into this convention, to accomplish a particular object, but also to establish a general principle," and if they had not in words so declared the compact then made established a precedent upon which a general principle finds an impregnable basis. It was provided that neither Great Britain nor the United States will ever occupy or fortify or colonize, or assume or exercise any dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito coast, or any part of Central America. This is a most important and emphatic enunciation of the general policy of the United States, and evinced our willingness to be excluded from all dominion over territory in the direction of the tropics, outside of our present limits, provided European nations were also to be excluded. It is a positive renunciation of the wild policy of territorial expansion in the direction named. Here a bit was put in the mouth of our own prancing nag of manifest destiny," and Great Britain was forced to abandon her legacy from the pretended Mosquito king, of laced-coat and cocked-hat memory; and that was all and just what we most desired. Who ever heard that treaty denounced as any violation of the Monroe doctrine? Nobody!

HAYTI WANTS SANTO DOMINGO; WE DON'T. Santo Domingo is a portion of an island

greatly coveted by Hayti, from which it was violently wrenched in 1844, and to which it geographically belongs, as truly as Louisiana, Florida, and Texas belonged to the United States. Hayti wants it, claims never to have abandoned it, and in due time might probably have it, unless prevented by extraneous interference. Our good will might be profitably extended to both; we might fairly encourage legitimate commerce, of which we should get little, but not an illegitimate, entangling, and indissoluble alliance, of which we should get too much. The addition to us would be poor indeed; but, added to Hayti, it might tend to build up a home and a Government of greater promise to the liberty and welfare of a large portion of the colored race in the West India islands. To aid such an enterprise would be a mission worthy of our high position. The colored race are entitled to try the experiment of practical independence. Their civilization should not be cramped and overshadowed by holding them forever in contact with a superior race.

For

us to rob them of their only opportunity in the West India islands puts the risk of their final || shipwreck upon us, and gives to them no scope for the exercise of self-reliance or for the development of their natural growth.

We stand in no need of it because of any surplus population from which it is desirable to be disincumbered. If there is any purpose to have the colored race expatriated from the continent at least it is not now avowed. Emigration to the new States now draws heavily upon the older States. These new States and Territories, upon which we expend and must expend millions for their development and protection, and the southern States, which have recently had a new birth, have a right to every surplus man, and every surplus dollar which can be spared from all the other States. They should not be made to stand back for an unnatural flirtation in the tropics, discreditable to our age and dignity. Our affection, as well Our affection, as well || as our interest, should constrain us to husband all our resources, not at present any too abundant, for the improvement of our broadly extended but unsettled estates. Do we want sugar and cotton lands? Have we not got them in abundance in Texas, in Arkansas, in South Carolina, in Mississippi, in Louisiana, in Alabama, and in Florida? Who wants to build up a foreign insular El Dorado to compete with these States, and proclaim, as we must if we are in earnest, that they are worthless in comparison with Santo Domingo? Is it to be preferred that the tide of people from the North and East, now setting so strongly toward the West, and which would tend south ward also if the States there would respond to the President's hearty desire and "let us have peace," is it to be referred, I say, that this tide should be diverted by the fiction of crops without labor, spontaneous sugar, coffee, and tobacco-forgetful that light labor in the torrid

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zone is more exhausting than heavy labor in the temperate zone, and that any crops must be intermingled with black vomit and yellow fever, with poisonous insects, and other pests too numerous to mention, all equally the spontaneous fruits of Santo Domingo? Justice to ourselves requires that we should take care of what we have at home before we scatter abroad.

OUR FUTURE GROWTH.

Some speculative political economists indulge in predictions about the future vastness of our population; but is it not preposterous to expect our past ratio of increase for an indefinite length of time? When the best lands shall be exhausted, as we may find at some time they will be, and certainly when our population becomes dense, it would be unphilosophical and contrary to all history to expect the same ratio of increase from births, nor could we hope the same increase from immigration.

There will be a declension in the power to absorb as well as in the sources of supply. During the fiscal year 1870 we received 387,098 immigrants. Since 1847, only twenty three years, the number of foreigners who have made our country their home amounts to 4,297,980. Our present population, but for such accessions, would amount to only one third of what it is now. The difference between receiving and sending out annually 300,000 men is marvelous, and it is a point deserving especial attention. The average cost of raising a man in any civilized country is rather over than under $1,000, and of a woman rather less; but the average is still not less than $1,000. Upon a removal to a new country they augment its capital by the trans-. ference of their economical value as future producers and the exchangable value of all property which belongs to them. Our country has been exceptionally enriched by the capital and labor of vast numbers who were reared at the sole expense of others. That greatly enhances the present prosperity of western States, filled with able-bodied men which have not yet been taxed for their infancy or old age. We have thus brought to us annually from abroad a capital of $50,000,000 by persons who add each year by their labor frora two to three hundred millions more. To-day portions of Germany sorely feel a comparative loss, and are studying-certainly Austrian statesmen have been studying-how to prevent this annoying depletion which may so disastrously affect their wealth and power as a people.

Santo Domingo could not be of the slightest value to us unless repeopled and supplied with capital, to be subtracted from our home stock or accepted as questionable foreign gifts-the spawn of the Caribbean sea and the Mexican Gulf. Any gain there would be either so much positive loss at home or a gain of numbers

with a loss of character. Although the task is as hopeless as would be the resuscitation of Tyre or Sidon, Carthage or Babylon, if it were possible, could we afford it? Shall we postpone the great destinies of Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska, of Colorado and Montana, and the youthful and vigorous States on the Pacific coast, until we can plant and hatch out a new brood of States in distant seas? New Orleans and Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, Boston and San Francisco, are very considerable sea-ports. Can we expect to rival them in Santo Domingo? Does any one suppose that our people would add anything to their own wealth or length of days by going there, rather than by accepting the opportunities to be found in our own rich and many-sided domains? Here experience is our guide, and we do not risk all on an experiment, already, time and again, exploded.

Here we stand on terra

firma, with no ghost of failure rising up to confront our faith and progress. Let us remember, even if we forget many earlier destructive visitations, that so late as 1842 the shures of Santo Domingo to the extent of sixty miles were submerged in consequence of earthquakes. In 1770 an earthquake in Hayti destroyed Port au Prince. What has been may be again. But these shocks, however much to be dreaded, are not more portentous than the shock to be apprehended to our political system from a misalliance with one or all of the West India islands. The annexations, safely tolerated in the youth of the Republic, may not be so freely indulged as we reach maturity, when the accumulated debt of all the toil and excesses of both youth and age, past and present, must be met and paid at the same moment.

STATISTICS EXCELLENT IF TRUE.

We have been cited in most respectable quarters to some chronicles as to the ancient magnitude of the trade of Santo Domingo, and I may be pardoned for saying that we might just as well be cited to those concerning ancient Venice or Carthage. When commerce has once forsaken any place, does history show that, under any circumstances, it has ever returned? But are there not good reasons for suspecting the solidity as well as the veracity of any history which puts forth a claim to one hundred millions of exports at any time past, present, or to come, for Santo Domingo? By exposure to a little criticism such figures will shrink up amazingly, and what in magnitude appeared to be a camel may turn out after all only a very small weasel.

Let it be admitted that at one period of time, and about 1789, the trade of Santo Domingo was quite large, but of course it included that of Hayti, for Santo Domingo only dates its independence from 1844, which is yet unac knowledged by Hayti. The articles produced there were luxuries, to some extent of only recent extensive use, and being in great demand bore enormous prices. To make up the

gross amount of their exports it will be seen, from the table I give, that cotton is reckoned at thirty-four cents per pound, muscovado sugar at seventy four cents per pound, and coffee at eighteen and a half cents per pound. The number of ships engaged, it is also true, was large, (sixteen hundred it has even been claimed,) but their size must have been very small. Their great port, the city of Santo Domingo, adunits nothing else, or ships only of the fourth class or less. One steamship of the present day would be equal to a score and more of the vessels then ordinarily employed. The island was then the great distributing point for French commerce and exchange, or the commercial metropolis of the New World, just as St. Thomas has recently been the seat of a considerable trade from being practically a free port, although itself actually producing nothing; a trade that would be annihilated by the imposition of even the most trivial taxation.

Statistics are excellent if they are truthful, but when embellished with fictions or distorted by the wrinkles of age they are merely mathematical monstrosities. I might quote Malte Brun, James Redpath, who resided there for some time, and many other authorities, but McCulloch's Geographical Dictionary is accounted rather higher statistical authority than the work, so often quoted and relied upon in this case, of the malignant Tory author of Alison's History, which, it will be remembered, so elaborately libels America and the Americans. The historian who identifies republicanism with the powers of hell may have been a prodigy in conic sections and fluxions, but he is not therefore to be always trusted in the simpler forms of facts and figures. "What is history," said Napoleon, "but a fiction agreed upon?" But this of Sir Archibald's, relied upon by the Senator from Indiana and also by the Senator from Michigan, I may say, is not agreed upon. I will therefore give McCulloch's table of "exports of the French part of Santo Domingo during each of three years ending in 1789," including the very year when the exports were largest, and when they have been, as Senators will remember, claimed to be a hundred millions, or a greater amount than we find to have been exported by nearly all of North America thirty or forty years afterward:

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.58,642,214

41,049,549

34,619.931

..71.663,187

71,663,187

6,698,858

12,397,716

951,607

8,534,463

23,061

2,767,320

2.600

312,000

6,500

52,000

7,900

118,500

.171.544.666

£1,765,129

$8,825,625

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This, it should be noted, was in the years of the very highest prosperity-embracing the

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