Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/531

We are told by imperialists of a very optimistic disposition that the British have carried on a policy of territorial aggrandizement on the grandest scale but have succeeded in maintaining an honest and decent government; that the very necessity of providing for good methods of governing their distant possessions brought on the reform of their civil service, and that we can do the same. The fact is, however, that under the policy of conquest and territorial aggrandizement the British Government did fall into a very grievous state of profligacy and corruption, from which it emerged only after a long period of effort. Whether, or how, our democratic government would emerge from such a state is, to say the least, an open question. In speculating upon what we may be capable of in comparison with other nations, we should never forget that monarchies or aristocracies can do certain things which democracies cannot do as well, and that democracies can do certain things which monarchies or aristocracies cannot do at all. A monarchy or an aristocracy can govern subject populations—it sometimes does it badly, sometimes well—in perfect harmony with its reasons of being, without going beyond the vital conditions of its existence. In doing so it exercises a function suited to its nature. But it cannot institute and maintain among its people complete self-government on the basis of equal rights without breaking itself down. A democracy can maintain complete self-government on the basis of equal rights, for that is its natural function; but it cannot exercise arbitrary rule over subject populations without doing a thing utterly incompatible with the fundamental reason of its own being, without giving up its most vital principle and faith. It will be like a man who has lost the sense of right and wrong. This is in itself utter demoralization, which cannot fail to breed corruption and decay. It never has failed, as history