NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER

INTRODUCTION

The greatest statesmen have constantly failed to predict the immediate future. Yet there have been many successful prophecies of distant and great events. In other words, we are fairly successful in ascertaining a general law of progress, but cannot define exactly how or when it will be worked out. The statesman, moreover, prefers dealing with the immediate future, which he can influence, to taking precautions against great changes, which are most likely inevitable.-For instance the transportation of an inferior race, like the negroes of the United States, to a country where they would be harmless, is too vast, and of too uncertain benefit, to be readily attempted. Again, the tendency to increase the powers of the State, and invite its interposition, is so strong that it would be difficult to check it. Still, we may reduce the dimensions of a danger, which we clearly see, though we cannot avert it.This book was first suggested by the observation, that America was filling up. Later study has added the conviction, that the higher races can only live in the Temperate Zone. If, however, emigration, which is the rough substitute for the organisation of labour, becomes impossible, the tendency to State Socialism, which is already strongly marked in certain British colonies, will become more and more powerful.—Moreover, the tendency to entrust the State with wider functions has long been adopted in Continental policy, and is being acclimatised in England. This inquiry does not assume that State Socialism will be pushed to its furthest development, but only that some of its simplest applications will become law. Kings may easily put themselves at the head of a movement for State Socialism, but personal rank and transmitted wealth are likely to be viewed with jealousy in the new order.-The change from one form of

political life to another is not likely to be so momentous as the effects of the general change on character.-The world may gain something to balance what it loses, even in the direction of individualism; but (present conditions of growth continuing) it cannot gain much.-Perhaps, the best it can hope will be a general low level of content, and an exaltation of the patriotic sentiment.

EVER since men have committed their thoughts to record, it has been a commonplace, exulted in or deplored, according to the temperament of the moralist, that it is impossible to predict the future. History abounds in memorable instances of the rash forecasts made by men, whose genius and experience entitled their opinions to the highest respect. Lord Shelburne was one of the ablest of English statesmen; and he predicted that, whenever the independence of America should be granted, "the sun of England would set, and her glories be eclipsed for ever." Lord Shelburne was fated to be the instrument of negotiating the peace by which American independence was recognised; and he lived till the year when the battle of Trafalgar established England in the position of the only maritime power. Burke, in the language of his greatest eulogist, "had in the highest degree that noble faculty, whereby man is able to live in the past and in the future, in the distant and in the unreal." 2 He was ripe in years and experience of men when the French Revolution broke out, and his counsels contributed largely to the part which England took in opposing the French Republic.

1 Mahon's History of England, vol. vii. p. 204. Compare "Fox on the King's Speech," December 5, 1782. Lord George Germain used very similar language in the debate of December 12, 1781.— Wraxall's Historical Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 289.

2 Macaulay's "Essay on Warren Hastings," pp. 642, 643.

Yet Burke so entirely misconceived the nature of the changes that were passing under his very eyes, that in 1793 he was most concerned lest France should be partitioned, like Poland, between a confederacy of hostile powers. Burke's distinguished contemporary, Fox, parted from him on the question, how the conduct of France ought to be judged; and where Burke was absolutely wrong, it might be supposed that Fox would be at least relatively right. He told Parliament, in 1803, that he had opposed war with France because of its tendency "to effect the total destruction of the influence of this country on the Continent." 2 In the day of her greatest humiliation, France was never in danger of being partitioned; and the longer the war lasted, the greater was the increase of English influence on the Continent. The most eminent of the Parliamentary generation that succeeded to Burke and Fox, Mr. Canning, was fascinated by the prospects of the South American colonies, anticipated that they would grow up as the United States had grown, and being challenged for his support of them, declared that he had "called a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old " (1826). "3 (1826). We who live two generations later are painfully aware that the South American "new world" has produced little but civil wars, national bankruptcies, paper constitutions, and examples of declining civilisation.

The

1 "Remarks on the Policy of the Allies."- -Burke's Works, vol. iii. P. 447. Burke had said in the House, as early as February 9, 1790, that he considered France as "not politically existing," and as expunged out of the system of Europe.'

2 Fox's "Speech on the Mediation of Russia," May 27, 1803. 3 Canning's "Speech on the Connection of England and Portugal," December 12, 1826.