fields for American enterprise; let us suppose—a violent supposition, to be sure—that we could get all these countries without any trouble or cost. But will it not be well to look beyond? If we receive those countries as States of this Union, as we eventually shall have to do in case we annex them, we shall also have to admit the people inhabiting them as our fellow-citizens on a footing of equality. As our fellow-citizens they will not only govern themselves in their own States as best they can the United States undertaking to guarantee them a republican form of government, and to protect them against invasion and domestic violence—but they will, through their Senators and Representatives in Congress, and through their votes in Presidential elections, and through their influence upon our political parties, help in governing the whole Republic, in governing us. And what kind of people are those we take in as equal members of our National household, our family circle?
It is a matter of universal experience that democratic institutions have never on a large scale prospered in tropical latitudes. The so-called republics existing under the tropical sun constantly vibrate between anarchy and despotism. When we observe there a protracted period of order and quiet, we find almost always something like martial law at the bottom of it. President Porfirio Diaz has succeeded in establishing in the republic of Mexico a tolerably stable government; but he has bodies of soldiers constantly marching through the country and shooting down disturbers without ceremony. The rule he exercises there with so firm a hand may, all things considered, be a blessing to his country, but it hardly corresponds to our principles of Constitutional government. We would regard it as little, if at all, short of a military dictatorship. Under a government less vigorous in the employment of drastic measures the Mexican
