We should have a good navy, and our sea-coast defences should be put in the finest possible condition.  Neither of these cost much when it is considered where the money goes, and what we get in return.  Money expended in a fine navy, not only adds to our security and tends to prevent war in the future, but is very material aid to our commerce with foreign nations in the meantime.  Money spent upon sea-coast defences is spent among our own people, and all goes back again among the people.  The work accomplished, too, like that of the navy, gives us a feeling of security.

England’s course towards the United States during the rebellion exasperated the people of this country very much against the mother country.  I regretted it.  England and the United States are natural allies, and should be the best of friends.  They speak one language, and are related by blood and other ties.  We together, or even either separately, are better qualified than any other people to establish commerce between all the nationalities of the world.

England governs her own colonies, and particularly those embracing the people of different races from her own, better than any other nation.  She is just to the conquered, but rigid.  She makes them self-supporting, but gives the benefit of labor to the laborer.  She does not seem to look upon the colonies as outside possessions which she is at liberty to work for the support and aggrandizement of the home government.

The hostility of England to the United States during our rebellion was not so much real as it was apparent.  It was the hostility of the leaders of one political party.  I am told that there was no time during the civil war when they were able to get up in England a demonstration in favor of secession, while these were constantly being gotten up in favor of the Union, or, as they called it, in favor of the North.  Even in Manchester, which suffered so fearfully by having the cotton cut off from her mills, they had a monster demonstration in favor of the North at the very time when their workmen were almost famishing.

It is possible that the question of a conflict between races may come up in the future, as did that between freedom and slavery before.  The condition of the colored man within our borders may become a source of anxiety, to say the least.  But he was brought to our shores by compulsion, and he now should be considered as having as good a right to remain here as any other class of our citizens.  It was looking to a settlement of this question that led me to urge the annexation of Santo Domingo during the time I was President of the United States.

Santo Domingo was freely offered to us, not only by the administration, but by all the people, almost without price.  The island is upon our shores, is very fertile, and is capable of supporting fifteen millions of people.  The products of the soil are so valuable that labor in her fields would be so compensated as to enable those who wished to go there to quickly repay the cost of their passage.  I took it that the colored people would go there in great numbers, so as to have independent states governed by their own race.  They would still be States of the Union, and under the protection of the General Government; but the citizens would be almost wholly colored.