The Leeward Islands have 701 square miles. They have 123,000 people, 5,000 of whom are Europeans. It is another English colony.

British Guiana, on the north coast of South America, has 109,000 square miles and a population of 280,000 peoplenegroes, contract laborers, coolies from India raising sugar, with 2,533 Europeans, including the garrison.

Haiti has a population of 600,000 people. It has 10,204 square miles. The language is French. Nine-tenths of the population are negroes, and the rest are mulattoes. You can say a thousand things about Haiti, about its healthful climate, about its wonderful productiveness, about its desirability. White men will not live there because of the climate.

New Guinea, a British colony, lies between 8° and 10° of the equator, has 88,000 square miles and a population of 350,000 people, 250 of whom are Europeans.

New Zealand has an area of 104,000 square miles. It is near New Guinea. It is between the thirtieth and thirty-fifth degree of south latitude, and therefore outside of the Tropics. I give this illustration for the purpose of showing that it is a question of climate whether the white race will occupy a locality or not. Its population is 628,000 Europeans, 41,000 natives, and 4,400 Chinamen. It is in the Temperate Zone. So the Anglo-Saxon went there and settled, and he built up a government freer, in my opinion, and better than ours, because untrammeled by interference, untrammeled by older influences. This colony was planted later than ours, and, unhindered by greed, by a combination of circumstances which have oppressed us and the English people, the people of New Zealand have worked out what Anglo-Saxon men untrammeled will always work out a free government participated in by all the people. In my opinion they have better laws. In fact, they furnish about the only example of a first-class English government on the globe to-day.

The Straits Settlements are within the Tropics. There is there a population of 512,000 natives. Singapore, the commercial city, is a great city, one of the emporiums of the East,

right under the equator. It is on the route from the Suez Canal to China and Japan. It contains 512,000 natives, 6,500 Europeans and Americans. The Europeans are the English garrison and the English officeholders. The few Americans who are there are engaged in trade and business with the East, and they go away in the summer. They go up to Japan; they go to the health resorts of that delightful country to escape the evil effects of a tropical climate.

It was supposed that the French people would occupy the Tropics, but they do not. The Latin race, more or less, has occupied the Tropics, but the frost of winter has touched the veins of the Frenchman. It has overcome the tendency of his Latin blood to live within the Tropics, and although they have conquered Tonquin, with 9,000,000 of people, and Cochin China, with 3,000,000 more, there are only 3,000 Frenchmen in the whole country, including the officers and the garrison. The rest of the troops are natives.

Martinique is an island on the north coast of South America, of which we have heard much of late. Martinique has 187,000 people, and only 1,307 Frenchmen and Europeans of all classes. The balance of the population are blacks. French Congo has a population of 7,000,000, and only 300 Europeans, besides the garrison.

So it goes the world over. Look where you will, tropical countries are not inhabited by the people of our race.

There are no American laborers in Hawaii, and there never will be. Annex the islands if you will. A number of American laborers who were taken there years ago to work upon sugar plantations have abandoned the business, and to-day not one is employed in any of the tropical industries. Between 1895 and 1897 even the eighty-seven Americans who were put down in the census of Hawaii as being engaged in the sugar industry as employees have disappeared entirely. They turn them off. They were foremen, they were bookkeepers, but the Jap came in, skilled as he is in every art and in every business. He would work for $12 a month, and the American who was being paid $50 and $75 was dismissed. So even in Hawaii, since 1895, every American employed as

a laborer on these plantations has been dismissed and his place filled by an Asiatic.

It is argued by the friends of annexation that these islands, although in the Tropics, have a very salubrious climate and that Americans flourish and grow and reproduce their kind and are wonderfully happy. Without investigation they give the climate of these islands an average temperature and say that the trade winds have modified it so that it is an exception to the rule of countries within the Tropics. This subject will bear investigation on the part of those who oppose annexation, and I propose to show the temperature of various tropical countries in comparison with Hawaii to see whether the claim is well founded. I quote from the Hawaiian Annual, by Thrum, a book issued in the interests of annexation, containing many falsehoods in furtherance of the designs of the gang of sugar planters who own that country. Therefore statements upon subjects which are against them can at least be supposed not to contain untruths which are to their disadvantage. It is the only possible indorsement the book is entitled to from anybody, and, with this apology, I quote from it:

For seven years the average temperature of Honolulu, which is one of the most northern points in these islands, was 74° 32′ (for the whole seven years, taking them altogether) and the thermometer ranged from 54° to 88°. I have not the observations from the other portions. The main portion of these islands is embraced in the Island of Hawaii, which is very much nearer the equator and, along the coast, undoubtedly very much hotter.

Honolulu being on the southwest side of a range of mountains, the trade winds blowing from the northeast lose their moisture against the face of these mountains. Consequently the climate of that locality is dry for the Tropics, but its temperature ranges about the same as that of tropical countries generally. The range is from 54° to 88° and the average is 74° 32'.

We will take Havana, Cuba. For ten years the mean temperature was 76.8°; the range was from 49° to 100°. It gets slightly colder and slightly hotter in Havana. That is

no indication of unhealthiness, but the contrary, for in Dakota it ranges between 40° below and 110° above. It is the even temperature, the continuing temperature at the same range, that makes these countries unhealthy and unfit for the habitation of the white race. At San Fernando, Cuba, the average is 75°; the highest range was 87°, and the lowest 51°. In Hawaii the highest range was 88°, the lowest 54°, average 74.32°; while at San Fernando, Cuba, the range was from 51° to 870, and the average was 75°. The range in Kingston, Jamaica, was, lowest 66°, highest 89°; there being only 1° of difference between that and Hawaii, and the average was 78°.

San Juan, Puerto Rico, another tropical country, and almost the same distance from the equator as the Hawaiian Islands, the average was 78.9°.

The climate, then, of Hawaii is not different from the climate of every tropical country. The climate of tropical countries is pretty even throughout the year. The thermometer ranges but little. There is scarcely a tropical country on the globe where the thermometer ranges above 88°, but the continuous heat, the perpetual heat, the average heat from one year's end to the other, of 73° or 75° or 76°, which is about the average of every tropical country on the globe, is what tells upon the people who are born in the north. Therefore our aggressive, eneregtic, active, dominating race will never inhabit those islands. If they would, why have they not gone there?

Mr. President,1 for a century the United States has held a position in relation to the other nations of the world different from that of any other nation that ever existed. One hundred years ago we promulgated the first written Constitution. We said that governments derived their just powers from the consent of the governed; and, copying after that Constitution, 400 other constitutions have been made during these 100 years, and the name of this great Republic has gone forth throughout the world as a beacon of light to all nations struggling for liberty.

1. Speech in the Senate, July 2, 1898.

We occupy a position on this continent reaching from ocean to ocean, lying between the civilization of Europe and that ancient civilization across the Pacific. On the one hand, to the people of Europe we have furnished an asylum. Downtrodden as they have been in the past, our example has liberalized their governments and conferred a measure of freedom on their inhabitants. On the other hand, we have furnished to the people of Asia an example of just government; an example of a government founded on right; an example of a government which has abandoned the old doctrine that might makes right, that what you can do it is lawful to do, and set up a new doctrine as protectors of the oppressed as a pattern to those who desire individual and national liberty.

So great has been the moral force of this grand position that no American can travel in any Asiatic country without being constantly reminded of it. No American can travel in those countries without being constantly assured that he is welcome, that his nation is admired; and when you seek the reason you are told that it is because the United States recognizes and respects the rights of other nations and is not engaged in a career of conquest.

The people of China and Japan fear England, fear Russia, fear Germany; but they love and respect the United States. Shall we break down this splendid position? Shall we abandon the policy of a century? Shall we conquer and govern an unwilling people because we have the power?

The people of Hawaii do not seek this alliance. Their Government was overturned by the armed forces of the United States. We landed our marines and our guns and our armed men, and we seized and abrogated a government satisfactory to those people. We did this in the interest of a small body of sugar planters, sons of the missionaries, who believed their financial interests would be promoted thereby; and the friends of this measure dare not submit it to a vote of the people of Hawaii, because those people are nine to one opposed to annexation.

Where is our long-time boast that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed? Some one says