ESTABLISHMENT OF PACIFIC COAST REPUBLIC 197
disunion and the formation of three separate republics, and that the formation of a Pacific Coast Republic was broached and advocated in case of a dissolution of the Union by Senator Latham of California. In December, 1860, fairly complete details of the plan were given. 1 The Pacific Republic was to be an aristocracy after the model of the ancient republic of Venice, all the power being vested in an hereditary nobility, the chief executive being elected on a very limited suffrage. Slaves were to be procured by inviting coolies, South Sea Islanders, and negroes to immigrate to California, and then reducing them to slavery. Gwin, it appeared, favored a sep- arate republic on the Pacific Coast because he feared that the aggressive policy of the southern leaders would be likely to involve the other states in continual difficulties. While the details of the plan might excite suspicion as the elaborations of a journalistic imagination, the truth of the main outline ap- pears to have been fairly well substantiated.
In commenting on the plan Bush of the Statesman said :
"What a ridiculous figure would the Pacific Republic cut among the nations. With a population of little more than half a million scarcely able to protect ourselves from the inroads of the Indians upon our borders, hardly rich enough to sus- tain the expenses of our economical state governments, and dependent upon the bounty of the general government for military protection, mail facilities, and for the salaries of a large number of our public functionaries, what would be our fate were we to cast ourselves loose from the protection and assistance which we receive from it. Burdened with a host of new officers and salaries, poor, feeble, defenceless contemptible, we should become the spoil of arrogant officials at home, and be at the mercy of every petty rival abroad. Now we rejoice in the pride of our strength the strength of a great and powerful nation. Sundered from our parent states our pitiable weakness would render us a bye-word and a reproach among
i Statesman, December 10, 1860; other references in Argus, Aug. a$. 1860; Argus, Dec. ao, 1860; Statesmen, July 31, 1860.
