dishonourable; and from the moment that a white population will not work in the fields, on the roads, in the mines, or in factories, its doom is practically sealed. It is limited to supplying employees, merchants, contractors, shopmen, and foremen to the community. Sooner or later the black race will be educated to a point at which it will demand and receive a share in these employments and in the government.1 Whenever that happens, the white race will be either absorbed or disappear. The mass will gradually depart, but a few, who have lost the sense of superiority, will remain, intermarry, and be perpetuated in the persons of a few hundred, or it may be a few thousand, mulattoes and quadroons. Now the fate of Natal is bound to be the fate of those parts of the African Continent which lie north of Natal and south of the desert of Sahara. It is quite conceivable that tracts will be discovered with rich gold-fields, like those of California and Australia, and with a climate allowing white men to labour. Tens of thousands of diggers may be attracted there, and may determine to keep the gold deposits to themselves, and to debar blacks or Chinamen from working them. Even in this case the blacks will still press into the country that they may enjoy the security of English rule, and will be field-hands, domestic servants, and generally drudges of every kind, reinforcing the original negro population, so as to keep it always superior in numbers to the whites. Before long the surface and easily worked deposits will have been exhausted. Independent miners will be replaced by companies, and 1 This is already the case, to some extent, at the Cape. Mr. Theale remarks, that as landholders the Fingoes "are entitled to vote for members of Parliament, and large numbers avail themselves of this privilege."-South African History, chap. xxvii. て companies will employ the cheapest labour they can secure, which will always be that of the native and inferior race.1 Let it be remembered that a country as big as Great Britain, which would be a mere patch on the Continent of Africa, would have a native population of half a million if it were peopled as Natal was when the British Government took it over. Can it be conceived that England could send out half a million settlers to balance these, unless the attraction were as great as that of Australian gold was for a time? And even assuming the half-million to come, where would they be at the end of a century with the black race increasing faster by births, and recruited by constant accessions from the populous interior of the continent? Can it be supposed that such a state would fare better than Georgia or South Carolina has fared? The best chance for a community so constituted would be to declare itself independent, as the Boers of the Transvaal have done, and so maintain the supremacy of the white race. Such a country, however, would not escape the fate of all countries into which an inferior people is admitted in large numbers. Its colonists would soon be divided into a wealthy ruling caste, planters or miners, and mean whites; while the blacks, servile or semi-servile, would increase year by year, because their labour was necessary to maintain and extend the fortunes of the governing caste. Such a community might last for generations, but its chance of perpetuity would be far smaller in Africa, where it was surrounded by dense masses of an unfriendly population, than it was in Louisiana, where slavery might 1 " In capacity the African is fit to work; in inclination he is willing to work; and in actual experiment he has done it." -Drummond's Tropical Africa, p. 65. 7 have lasted to this day if slave-owners had been content to obey the law, and had not been infatuated with the arrogance which is the curse that avenges unrighteous domination. So far the argument has only sought to establish that no emigration of the English people, or of these reinforced by other races, can make any such impression on any part of the African Continent as to transform regions that are now peopled however sparsely by blacks into regions peopled by whites. To take an extreme assumption, however, we may suppose the whole emigration that now leaves Europe for America and Australia diverted suddenly to Africa, either because prospects in Africa became suddenly so attractive as to kindle the popular imagination, or because the people of America and Australia had restricted the influx of settlers by legislation. The whole excess of emigrants over immigrants from Great Britain may be put roughly at a quarter of a million; and the settlers carried from French, German, and Italian ports can hardly exceed 200,000 more. In the course of twenty years this would mean that a population of 9,000,000 had been transported to a new home, and the most favourable estimate of the natural increase of these settlers will not raise their number above 12,000,000. It must be admitted that a great settlement of this kind would involve organisation and administrative capacity of a very rare order. The colonists will not bear to be discharged by steamers at the rate of nearly 1200 a day at a single port, and left to find work and sustenance as they can. They will have to be distributed by railways over different parts of the continent; and the work of clearing the jungle, building roads, draining swamps, and developing mines may of course find employment for any number. Meanwhile, wherever they penetrate they will bring security and employment to the black races of the interior. These are now roughly estimated for Central Africa alone at 100,000,000. If they increase only at the rate of one per cent a year during the twenty years that have been assumed, the increase will be more than double the influx of whites. If they multiply as the blacks in the United States were once multiplying, they will have grown at the rate of 50,000,000, while the whites by an impossible rate of progression will only number 12,000,000. Under these circumstances, can we conceive any large part of the continent where the whites will be able to settle down, and develop an industrial civilisation, such as is found in any part of America and in Australia? In all this discussion it has been assumed, for purposes of argument, that our imaginary European immigrants will be able to spread and establish themselves everywhere. No one can seriously expect this. There must be large tracts more or less like Senegambia and the parts about Sierra Leone, where only white men of exceptional constitutions, and submitting to a very strict regime, can live and do work. In the struggle for existence the African race, which can flourish everywhere in its native habitat, is bound to have an advantage over the race that can only thrive in the best parts of the continent.1 It has seemed important to argue out the case of Central Africa at some length, because no other part of the world is supposed to furnish so magnificent an 1 "The really appalling mortality of Europeans is a fact with which all who have any idea of casting in their lot with Africa should seriously reckon. The malaria spares no man no prediction can be made beforehand as to which regions are haunted by it and which are safe."— Drummond's Tropical Africa, p. 44. Y outlet to the teeming myriads of Europe. The assumption is, that it is to be another Australia, an assumption which leaves out of account the fact that the Australian aborigines have been weak and few, and that the climate of the settled parts of Australia is magnificent. Next in importance to Africa for western Europeans are the islands of the Malay Archipelago, which cover an extent of land equal to half Europe, and which are at present most imperfectly peopled by a population which may be roughly put at between 30,000,000 and 40,000,000. It cannot be extreme to say, that an additional 200,000,000 might easily settle in those of the islands which, like Celebes, Sumatra, New Guinea, and Borneo, are not peopled up to one tithe of what they could support.1 It is almost equally certain that these colonists cannot be white men. After holding Java for centuries, the Dutch are still nothing more than a garrison, a civil service, and a collection of foreign traders. They number about 30,000, while the native population has more than quadrupled during the century, and is now nearly 20,000,000. Settlement by Dutchmen in Java is not prohibited, and a good many old employees live in the hills; but the climate is better suited for natives, and this is even truer of Borneo and New Guinea, the countries which offer most attraction to immigrants. These, except in favoured parts, have 1 The four islands specified have alone an area of 837,000 square miles, and a population roughly estimated at about 8,000,000. Java and Madura with less than a sixteenth of this area have a population of 20,000,000. But besides these islands, there is Luzon as big as Ireland; "eighteen more islands are on the average as large as Jamaica" (4193 square miles); "more than a hundred are as large as the Isle of Wight" (135 square miles). - Wallace's Malay Archipelago, p. 3. Five years ago, Obi Major, with an area of 600,000 acres, and "apparently both fertile and healthy," was still uninhabited. -Guillemard's Cruise of the Marchesa, vol. ii. p. 235. |