lves
with the thought that this is only the beginning, that it opens the
door to unlimited expansion? The door is wide open now, and has been
ever since Livingston in Paris jumped at Talleyrand's offer to sell him
the wilderness west of the Mississippi instead of the settlements
eastward to Florida, which we had been trying to get; and Jefferson
eagerly sustained him. For the rest, the task that is laid upon us now
is not proving so easy as to warrant this fear that we shall soon be
seeking unlimited repetitions of it.

[Sidenote: Evasion by Embrace.]

That danger, in fact, can come only if we shirk our present duty by the
second of the two alternative methods of evasion I have mentioned--the
one favored by the exuberant patriot who wants to clasp Cuban, Kanaka,
and Tagal alike to his bosom as equal partners with ourselves in our
inheritance from the fathers, and take them all into the Union as
States.

We will be wise to open our eyes at once to the gravity and the
insidious character of this danger--the very worst that could threaten
the American Union. Once begun, the rivalry of parties and the fears of
politicians would insure its continuance. With Idaho and Wyoming
admitted, they did not dare prolong the exclusion even of Utah, and so
we have the shame of seeing an avowed polygamist with a prima facie
right to sit in our Congress as a legislator not merely for Utah, but
for the whole Union. At this moment scarcely a politician dares frankly
avow unalterable opposition to the admission of Cuba, if she should
seek it. Yet, bad as that would be, it would necessarily lead to worse.
Others in the West Indies might not linger long behind. In any event,
with Cuba a State, Porto Rico could not be kept a Territory. No more
could the Sandwich Islands. And then, looming direct in our path, like
a volcano rising out of the mist on the affrighted vision of mariners
tempest-tossed in tropic seas, is the specter of such States as Luzon
and the Visayas and Haiti.

They would have precedents, too, to quote, and dangerous ones. When we
bought Louisiana we stipulated in the treaty that "the inhabitants of
the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United
States and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of
the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights,
advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States." We made
almost identically the same stipulation when we bought F