small portion of the field of human enterprise. Meanwhile, it is surely in the interests of all that the poorest', man in the country should feel that he owes inestimable blessings to the political order under which he lives: not only protection from foreign enemies, but equality before the law, the certainty of employment in bad times, education for his children, security for the purity of his household life, and a fair chance of rising out of the ranks if he possesses the requisite ability. If this ideal has not been absolutely attained in the civilised countries of the world, it is not because the best statesmen of all times have not been habitually working towards it, but because individualism has meant privilege-privilege for rank, for wealth, and for influenceand because the outworks of individualism have been guarded accordingly. More and more as we approach the stationary state-as there are no countries to receive immigrants; as war is more and more dreaded for its chances, or recoiled from for its barbarity; as commerce and invention are restricted because there are no new regions to open up-will the old outlets for discontent or unsatisfied ambition be closed. What are now the governing classes will have to arrange reasonable compromises, by which the condition of the poor is made endurable. It may be that there will be less enthusiasm in those days, because there will be less hope; but it may be assumed that there will be less misery, more resignation, and it may even be more content. Life in itself is an inexhaustible delight to all but a few; and the conditions of life will be more tolerable, though the sky above may be more gray. CHAPTER I THE UNCHANGEABLE LIMITS OF THE HIGHER RACES There is a general belief that the higher races are bound to gain more and more upon the lower.-North America, the Argentine Confederation, and Australia furnish the grounds of this belief. The races exterminated have not been industrial races. - The character of a race determines its vitality more than climate.-Chinamen, Hindoos, and negroes cannot be exterminated. - The Cape Colony is not predominantly white, though settled under the most favourable conditions.-Natal is already not a white man's colony, and is bound to pass more and more into the hands of the coloured race. -Much more are the parts of Africa north of Natal bound to remain negro. -Were the whole emigration of Europe turned into Africa, it could not build up a white people there. The negro would increase faster. -Practically, too, there will always be parts where the white man cannot live. Malaysia is uninhabitable by the white man, as a colonist, building up families. - Central Asia is likely to be peopled chiefly from China. - The Aryan race can only make small gains in Europe, and in the Temperate Zone districts of Asia, Africa, America, and Australasia. - China is a serious competitor for empire; even in Tonquin and Burmah. - Chinese colonisation of the Straits Settlements shows what the race is capable of. -The Chinese are bound to people, and probably to rule Borneo. There is a possibility of Chinese expansion to the North and West. - It is conceivable that the Hindoo race may spread over Beloochistan and Southern Persia. -Great parts of Southern and Central America cannot be peopled by the white race. The autochthonous races are gradually growing upon the descendants of the Spaniards, and will absorb them and possess the country. These Indians are showing themselves capable of self-government. If the Indians do not supersede men of European descent, negroes or, Chinamen will. Only the parts of America from which Indians have already been driven are fitted to be the homes of the white race. - Brazil will pass more and more into the hands of the negroes, as certain of the United States are believed to be passing. The most fertile and populous parts of the earth are therefore the inalienable freehold of the inferior races, though the higher races may contribute, and be needed in the first instance, to organise and develop them. The development of a race within the 1 limits of a country-India or China-is no impediment to its expansion abroad. Emigration abroad will often stimulate the growth of a population at home. -The increase of population in Europe has been retarded for eighteen centuries by misgovernment and internal wars. The general law is that the lower race increases faster than the higher. The English aristocracy is favoured by a great many circumstances that would seem calculated to promote increase. Its families are constantly dying out. - The French and the negroes of the United States furnish characteristic instances of slow and rapid growth.-England is an apparent but not a real exception to the rule that a race with a high standard of comfort increases slowly.The condition of the Jews in Russia has been one of inferiority, but not of intolerable hardship. - Having a strong motive to make money, and no temptation to spend it freely, they have increased so rapidly as to become a danger to the Empire. - The increased humanity of war is telling in favour of the weaker races. So are sanitation, and the increased means of transport afforded by railways. Therefore, when we are swamped in certain parts of the world by the black and yellow races, we shall know that it has been inevitable. It seems to be generally assumed that the higher races of men, or those which are held to have attained the highest forms of civilisation, are everywhere triumphing over the lower. North America is almost occupied by men of European ancestry, and in South America the European element has received notable accessions in Brazil and the Argentine Republic. Australasia is British; Central Asia is being Russianised; and the Turk is being driven out of Europe, where his heritage is bound to fall to some race that has assimilated modern ideas better than the Ottoman. In Africa the North-west is passing under French influence, and has received a leaven of French or Spanish colonists. Egypt is practically part of Europe; South Africa is English or Dutch; and it seems scarcely questionable that England and Germany will divide Central Africa. We are perpetually assured that countries which till now were assumed to be unfitted for European colonists, will really allow them to multiply and prosper if they will only comply with such reasonable conditions as the climate exacts. regions of the Congo, of the African Lakes, and of Matabele and Mashonaland, Northern Australia and Borneo, are among the parts which have been recommended for European colonisation at various times; and it is not uncommon to hear those who know India declare that the Hill districts offer great opportunities for European settlement. No one, of course, assumes that the Aryan race to use a convenient term-can stamp out or starve out all their rivals on the face of the earth. It is self-evident that the Chinese, the Japanese, the Hindoos, if we may apply this general term to the various natives of India, and the African negro, are too numerous and sturdy to be extirpated. It is against the fashion of modern humanity to wish that they should suffer decrease or oppression. What is assumed is that the first three of these races will remain stationary within their present limits, while the negro will contribute an industrial population to the states which England and Germany will build up along the Congo or the Zambesi. The white man in these parts of the world is to be the planter, the mine-owner, the manufacturer, the merchant, and the leading employee under all these, contributing energy and capital..... to the new countries, while the negro is to be the fieldhand, the common miner, and the factory operative. Here and there, in exceptional districts, the white man will predominate in numbers, but everywhere he will govern and direct in virtue of a higher intelligence and more resolute will. Central and Southern America, the If we ask on what these calculations are based, we shall probably be referred to the experience of the past in America and Australia. In Canada and the United States the red man is little more than a memory. The Carib has practically disappeared from the West India Islands. In the Argentine Confederation the Indians are a powerless minority, and the number of European immigrants to that country and to South Brazil seems likely to increase year by year. In Australasia, and in the islands of the Pacific, where Europeans have settled, or where they trade much, the Maori, the Kanaka, and the Papuan are dying out. We cannot close our eyes to the fact that certain weak races-even when, like the Kanaka, they possess some very high qualitiesseem to wither away at mere contact with the European. Modern legislation tries to protect them; missionaries endeavour to seclude them from fatal influences; but the good as well as the bad in civilisation tells mischievously for a time upon unaccustomed constitutions. The mere wearing of clothes, as savages do it without changing them, and the disuse of artificial tribal restrictions on the inter-marriages of relations, are believed, by some of those who know the Australian aboriginal best, to be almost as much responsible for his decay as the diseases of European origin that scourge immorality. It will be noticed that these evanescent racesdifferent as they are in many respects have two features in common, that they have never been very powerful numerically, and that they have never been able to settle down in any steady way to industry. The Kanakas (among whom we may include the Maories) were of course limited by area. They could not do much in the small islands they peopled. The best of them, however, have conciliated the respect of Europeans rather as soldiers and politicians than by any aptitude they have displayed for regular work. Had Chinamen or Japanese descended upon New Zealand instead of the Maories, those islands would long ago |