The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-12-17

vivid and erect in Spain for these considerations
to produce their full effect upon her rulers.
But since the Czar and the Russians, whose
boast for years it has been that their terri
tory has always advanced and never receded,
have brought themselves to part with their
American domain, Isabella and her subjects
may, perhaps, be satisfied to give up decently,
with dignity, and of their own free will, the
remnant of an empire, all the rest of which
has been wrenched from Spain by the humili-
ting hand of triumphant rebellion.
Whether Spain would do well or i'll to part
with her West Indies, however, is neither so
interesting nor so profitable matter for Ame-
ricans to reflect upon as whether the United
States would do well or i'll to purchase them.
In q general way and under the ordinary con-
ditions of our national life, therewould be little
or nothing to be said against the acquisition
in friendly spirit and for reasonable sum
of possessions so noble in themselves, so near
to u.s. and so important to our complete supre-
macy in American waters.
But for the opposition of the men now most
conspicuous in the Republican party, indeed
this acquisition might already have been
made, for successive Democratic administra-
tions purt ued it through many years, and
President Pierce brought negotiations to ac-
compish it up to point at which they must
have succeeded had not the whole force of the
then incipient Republican organization and
sentiment been thrown against the work. The
annexation of Cuba was thus prevented pre-
cisely as Mr.. Seward and his confederates in
the Senate by collusion with Mr.. Toombs and
other Southern revolutonists, defeated the
treaty for Mexican protectorate which was
successfully negotiated by Democratic envoy
to President Juarez seven years ago. But
Just at this precise time it may be fairly ques-
toned whether there are not other territories
oNi
us geographically, and far more important to
us, both in peace and war, which it behooves
us to secure before we lay hands upon the
Queen of the Antilles.
Between the Potomac river and the Misss-
sippi, the Ohio and the Rio Grand, there
stretches vast expanse of fertile and desira-
BILE regions, the possession of which has been
thought to be so essential to our national
greatness and prosperity, that to retain them
we have incurred a national debt practically
equalling that OF Great Britain, but which are
to-day as much out of our control for all bene-
fetal purposes as if they belonged to the king
dom of Spain or the republic of Mexico. An
area half as large as that of all Europe, in
habited by population not foreign to us,
like that of the Spanish Americas by race and
speech, but of our own blood, and bred in
our own traditions, is steadily and swiftly
slipping away from us into decrepitude and
anarchy. What with the Freedmens Bureau,
the military governments" the centralized
administration generally, and the taxation
system now extended over the South, we are
spending annually more than the amount of
the interest on the proposed purchase money
of the islands of Caba and Porto Rico, to
ALLEVIATE and make worthless to us the superb
territories on which the vast fabric of our
commercial wealth and Importance once most
surely rested. AS measure Of practical
statesmanship, then, which should take pre-
cedence, the outlay of millions to make Cuba
valuable to us, or the retrenehment of mil
lions to keep the South from being valueless
to usY
This question is the more timely, that if we
buy Cuba at this moment, and under the
domination of the temper now paramount at
Washington, in what we call with sarcastic
courtesy our National Legislature, we simply
buy an enormous reinforcement of the centri-
fugal and disintegrating forces which the
radical policy is generating at the South.
Under the radical reconstruction theory the
ten Southern States of the Union are being
rapidly converted into foreign republics, to
be inhabited by mongrel race as foreign to
| the white population of the rest Of the Union
| as are the present inhabitants of Cuba and
Porto Rico and Mexico. To suppose that the
| white inhabitants of the South will remain in
the South under the supremacy of the ne
| groes is simply childish, and to do the more
intelligent of the radicals justice, they are not
so silly as to suppose that this will be So
They look forward avowedly and with exulta-
| tion to the creation at the South of new COM
munities to be as predOminatingly African as
those by which the British West Indies and
| Hayti are now occupied. All things under the
existing rule at the South are working out
this result. But those who most noisily
clamor for it do not seem to have reflected
| that so soon as ii has been attained these new
parti.colored republics will find themselves
drawn by natural afinities away from the
white States of the Union as it now exists, and
into close political sympathy with the
mopgrel inhabitants of Spanish America and
the West Indies. Ten African States most
assuredly will not long continue to be repre-
sented at Washington by Americans not ''of
African descent" Senators and Representa-
tives of their own complexion will at no dis
tant day be despatched to meet on the floor OF
the National Legislature and on footing OF
perfect equality with the white Senators and
Representatives of the North and West. Does
anybody in his senses suppose that the people
of the North and West will tolerate such a
spectacle or submit to be ruled by the legIsla-