Well, what is our lesson from all this? What would be the result of our annexing either Mexico, Canada, or Cuba, for instance, to say nothing of the small republics in the Caribbean Sea and in Central America, toward which some of our demagogues have occasionally pretended to cast longing eyes, and found a few fools to encourage them in doing so? It would be utterly impossible under the spirit of our institutions for us to treat any such land as a conquered country. The Declaration of Independence would have to be completely overturned before we could consistently enter upon any such custom. The most that we could do would be to admit these countries as portions of the Union. We would scarcely pretend to obtain them by force for this purpose, but if we were to want to get them peaceably, what would be the only method? Why, by granting them equal rights with our own citizens. Successful annexation would depend upon the acquiescence of the majority of the inhabitants of the countries alluded to. These people, like people everywhere else, have leaders of their own. All leaders have aspirations and personal ambitions, and personal pockets which never are sufficiently full. We would have to provide for them first before we could be certain of the people. We would be obliged to divide each country into States bearing some proportion of population to those which we already have. We would be obliged to give them representation in both Houses of Congress, provide judicial systems for them, and in every way recognize them as our equals. Now, the truth is, no sane American believes the people of any of those countries to be equal to those of our own. There are intelligent Mexicans and Cubans and Canadians, but we as a body have very little respect for the general run of people in those countries; no more respect than their own rulers have, and that is very little. Some exception must be made in the case of Canada, which is inhabited, so far as the whites are concerned, mainly by intelligent people. But Mexico, according to its own statesmen and according to all travellers who have been in it, is practically a semi-civilized country. The most of the inhabitants are deplorably ignorant. Freedom of ballot is an utter farce. Law is a matter of barter, and life and property, while nominally secure, are frequently threatened by uprisings which no local government has yet been able to promptly suppress, and which certainly could not be suppressed by a central government three thousand miles away with an army of the conventional size of that of the United States.