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 Florida. When one of the most respected in the long line of our able Secretaries of State, Mr. William L. Marcy, negotiated a treaty in 1854 for the annexation of the Sandwich Islands, he provided that they should be incorporated as a State, with the same degree of sovereignty as other States, and on perfect equality with them. The schemes prior to 1861 for the purchase or annexation of Cuba practically all looked to the same result. Not till the annexation of San Domingo was proposed did this feature disappear from our treaties. It is only candid to add that the habit of regarding this as the necessary destiny of any United States Territory as soon as it has sufficient population has been universal. It is no modern vagary, but the practice, if not the theory, of our whole national life, that would open the doors of our Senate and House, and give a share in the Government to these wild-eyed newcomers from the islands of the sea.