The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-01-28
SAN DOMINGO.

speech by Hon. william d. KoiIey-The Ad-
/ yantakes OF the Acquisition of san Domingo
by the United states.
In the course of his speech on the San
Domingo question in the House of Represen-
tatives yesterday, Judge Kelley said-
The people of the United States have
waded through sea of blood and ineumbered
themselves and their posterity with noun
taips of debt to abolish human slavery and
make our institutions throughout our broad
limits homogeneous and harmonious with the
fundamental principles that underlie them.
And yet, sir, we are to-day the support and
buttress of slavery wherever it exists upon
the continent or islands of America, as we
must continue to be until we shall acquire
tropical territory, on which to grow coffee
and sugar, and tobacco equal to that of Cuba.
BY the acquisition of San Domingo, and by
no other peaceable means, we can overthrow
both slavery and Spanish supremacy in Cuba,
for we consume fully seventy per cent. of her
exports, every pound of which might be pro-
duced by free labor in San Domingo.
Few gentlemen have probably considered
the question in this connection, and beg
leave to invite attention to few facts Illus
trative of its importance. But before doing
80, permit me to suggest that San Domingo
produces large grained white coffee equal to
that of Java, and vastly superior to the green
equal in quality to those of Cuba and tobacco
which compares favorably with the best
smoking tobacco from the finest fields of that
island; and that, were the production of
these articles stimulated by the sense Of secu-
rity that would be impaired by our acquisi-
tion of her territory and by the admission of
her productions to our ports free of duty, it
would cause the transfer of the American and
other foreign capital now employed in Cuba
10 c., n.1 Sla
latter and increase her productions and de-
priye Cuba of the power to support the
Spanish army, which now holds her in sub
lection, or to make the contributions towards
the support of the Spanish monarchy,
which now regards her as its most profitable
appendages.
Cuba owes its commercial importance to
the fact that San Domingo has been dis
tracted and desolated by war and oppression
from the year of its discovery to the present
date. Hispaniola, as San Domingo was first
called, was once the most fertile, most highly
cultivated and most productive of all the
West India islands; but she has relapsed into
Wilderness and would present to the enter
prise that would seek her fields, under 8
sense of security derived from American Law
and administration, as fertile and virgin 9
soil as she did TO the followers of Columbus
more than four centuries ago.
In a recent conversation with an intelligent
merchant of Philadelphia, who has spen
many years in Cuba and San Domingo, / saiC
TO him, ''What would be the effect of Anne
rican occupation of San Domingo, or it's ac
auisiLion by us, upon the productions ant
commerce Of the island?" Te which he re
Piled
nIn I'VE wears from the occurrence OF such a
event San Domingo will have resumed her forme
station among the producing and commercial cour
tries OF the world, and Will nave become the wealth.
est and most pros porous island Ia the Archipelago
Under such new circumstances n will far exceed th
(,uDa of tu-,iay Ian DOuIInxO 10 AZ I.iy u1suIel
worth I'VE times what Cuba u WoTth rTioT 70 ID