National Life and Character/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I
THE UNCHANGEABLE LIMITS OF THE HIGHER RACES
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. Central and Southern America, the 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 field-hand, 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.
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 qualities—seem 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 races—different 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 have been covered with a population of several millions, such as no modern European power would have attempted to displace. We may say even more certainly of the Red Indians, that if they had chosen to learn agriculture from the first European settlers, they would soon have been numerous enough to bar all progress to the West. The Indians of Mexico, of Central America, and of Peru, who had attained to this level were not exterminated, though they were treated for generations with the most atrocious cruelty. At this moment pure or half-caste Indians predominate in all the Spanish colonies that lie to the north of Chili, and their predominance is becoming more marked every year. Without wishing to deny or depreciate the fine qualities of a race that has produced such men as Juarez and Mejia, and the heroes who fought at Humaita, we may surely say that the Indians whom Cortez and Pizarro conquered were not civilised up to the level of modern Hindoos or Chinamen, and had not the physical stamina of the negro race. All the more remarkable is it that they have survived and multiply.
How far climate has co-operated in circumscribing the spread of the European race in America seems difficult to determine. We can hardly suppose it is accidental that the proportion of pure whites should be smallest in the tropical parts of America, Guatemala and Nicaragua, and largest in temperate latitudes. At the same time, considering the great flexibility of the human constitution, and the fact that whites can and do labour in Texas, in Mexico, and in the districts of the Lower Plate, we may probably say, that the character of the population of America has been determined more by the varying adaptability of its primitive races for civilisation than by climatic conditions. Had the native Indians of Mexico and Peru been as untameable as the Araucanians were or the Apaches are, the white man could not have existed side by side with them. He must either have exterminated them or have been driven out. In fact, however, if the Indians whom Cortez or Pizarro found had been essentially warlike, they would not have been as numerous as they were, and the work of destroying them, tribe after tribe, would have been comparatively easy, as it has been easy for the people of the United States to make a clearance of Narraganset, Mohegan, Seneca, and Seminole Indians.
It is probably safe to say, that the Chinaman, the Hindoo, and the negro are in no danger of anything like the fate that overtook the aborigines of the New World at the hands of a foreign conqueror. A compact nation of 400,000,000 may be endangered by revolts like that of the Tae-Pings or that of the Mahommedans of Yunnan—for in both those cases the war waged was one of extermination—but has little to dread from a civilised power, except temporary humiliation or tribute. Now that massacres on a large scale are not sanctified by religion, there exists no reason why a conqueror if we can suppose a foreign conqueror of China—should do more than levy taxes, or exact a levy of conscripts or of forced labourers. India left to itself might be rent for a time by the war of Mussulman and Hindoo, but India is too populous for any large part of its people to be exterminated; unless indeed wars were waged in the Chinese fashion. That either Russians or Frenchmen, or indeed any European race, could colonise any province accidentally left desolate seems on the face of it impossible. The climate would be fatal in a generation, except in the hills; and that a remote province like Cashmere could be cleared of its present people, settled by Europeans, and kept free from the intrusion of native labour, seems the most fanciful of speculations. There remain therefore only Central Asia, Malaysia, and Africa as possible outlets not yet used for the surplus population of Europe, and of these Africa is naturally that which is especially attracting the attention of Englishmen at the present moment. It has been opened up very much by English enterprise; its resources prove to be vaster than was at one time supposed; and the climate of large tracts appears to be tolerable. We have arranged its partition with the most important of our neighbours; and the posts we hold along the Western Coast, in the Cape and Natal, and in Egypt, are so many points of vantage for our empire. It seems as if England for the moment was a little weary of India, and disposed to regard the Colonies as rather troublesome allies than dependencies, but was actively sanguine of possibilities in the Dark Continent.
We may put aside the Portuguese and French settlements of Mozambique, Angola, and Senegambia. No one of these has succeeded in attracting colonists; but the failure may be explained by climate or by an administration that aimed rather at commerce than at settlement. The case of the Cape and the sister colonies seems to be more in point. The Dutch occupation of the Cape dates from 1652, and the early colonists were to a great extent picked men; many of them French Huguenots. The natives with whom the settlers came in contact were Hottentots and Bushmen, weak races, of whom the Bushmen were not fitted to be slaves, while the Hottentots were not very valuable. Practically the Bushmen were exterminated; and when the English conquered the colony in 1795 the Hottentots were only as 14,500 to 21,000 whites.[1] Nevertheless, the convenience of slave labour had been found to be so great that the coloured population of the colony altogether was roughly as two in three, and that proportion has been maintained ever since or increased, though slavery has been abolished, though thousands of British settlers have been poured into the country, and though the diamond-fields have attracted thousands of immigrants. As many as 30,000 Kaffirs are said to have taken refuge under British rule during the governorship of Sir George Grey alone.[2] Meanwhile it must be borne in mind, that the outlying parts of the Cape colony have always been very largely peopled by Dutch Boers, who have to some extent stemmed the influx of free coloured settlers by their constant wars with the natives, and by their disinclination to admit them except as slaves. The Cape therefore shows us European influences at their strongest in Africa; and their strongest is for the most masterful of European races to be a decided, though at present a governing minority. Still the influx of blacks at the Cape is not yet so great as to have made manual and unskilled labour discreditable to white men.
The case of Natal is more instructive for what may be expected in Africa generally. Natal was seized by the British in 1842, the Boers who had occupied it, and to whom it was valuable for its sea-board, being a mere handful of men among natives who accepted them for the moment as deliverers from the Zulus. Nevertheless, the number of black inhabitants at that time, though great in comparison with the Dutch, was so inconsiderable as to be only five to the square mile.[3] The new possession offered great advantages of soil and climate. A great deal of it is rich land, and it rises in plateaus from the coast, so that several varieties of temperature may be enjoyed. During the first years of settlement there was no danger from the Zulus, whose warriors had almost been exterminated in Dingan's wars. From time to time assisted immigrants were poured literally in thousands into the country. In 1878-79 the presence of a large British army made the fortunes of contractors and farmers. For years the diamond-fields and gold-diggings of the Orange Free State have reflected prosperity over Natal. Nevertheless, in 1891, nearly fifty years after its first settlement, Natal has only 36,000 Europeans out of 481,000 settlers, the remainder being chiefly Zulus, though partly Hindoos and Chinamen. The lower races have nearly doubled in proportion since 1863, when one-seventh of the population was European. The reasons of this are not far to seek. British rule means order and peace, industry and trade, and the enjoyment of property under fairly equal laws. To the African native the establishment of a colony like Natal is like throwing open the gates of paradise.[4] He streams in, offering his cheap though not very regular labour, and supplying all his own wants at the very smallest expenditure of toil. Where he multiplies, however, the British race begins to consider labour of all but the highest kinds 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.[5] 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 companies will employ the cheapest labour they can secure, which will always be that of the native and inferior race.[6] 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 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.[7]
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 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.[8] 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 the hot damp climate which is deadly to the native of the Temperate Zone. That any great number of European immigrants could be acclimatised in them seems more than doubtful; that even if they came they could compete with the Chinese labour, which follows the English rule everywhere in Malaysia, is not to be believed. The work of the European in this archipelago is to organise government, maintain peace, make roads, and form plantations.
There is a vast tract of country in Central Asia that offers great possibilities for settlement. Eastern Afghan, and Western Turkestan, with an area of 1,500,000 square miles, have a population which certainly does not exceed 15,000,000, or ten to the square mile. Were they peopled as the Baltic provinces of Russia are—no very extreme supposition—they would support 90,000,000.[9] It is conceivable that something like this may be realised at no very distant date, when railroads are carried across China, and when water—the great want of Turkestan—is provided for it by a system of canalisation and artesian wells. Meanwhile, it is important to observe that whatever benefit is derived from an increase of population in these regions will mostly fall to China. That empire possesses the better two-thirds of Turkestan, and can pour in the surplus of a population of 400,000,000. Russia can only contribute the surplus of a population of about 100,000,000; and though the Russian is a fearless and good colonist, there are so many spaces in Russia in Europe to be filled up, so many growing towns that need workmen, so many counter-attractions in the gold-bearing districts of Siberia, that the work of peopling the outlying dependencies of the empire is likely to be very gradual. Indeed it is reported that Russia is encouraging Chinese colonists to settle in the parts about Merv.
Thus far the argument has aimed at showing that the most highly civilised races of the world, being those at present which are more or less purely Aryan, are not likely to wrest any large tracts of territory from half- civilised or savage peoples. That the races which now occupy the United States and Canada will people the countries they are in, with some possible exceptions to be noted hereafter, seems scarcely to be doubted. It may be hoped that this population will be numbered by hundreds of millions. That France and Italy will gradually Europeanise Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli, seems very possible. It may even be that Morocco will be absorbed. These countries are rich and sparsely ininhabited, and their native populations of Arabs and Kabyles may easily be assimilated to their European conquerors. In the south-east of Europe it seems certain that the Turk will sooner or later die out or cross back into Asia. His failure to establish himself permanently is incidental evidence how hard it is to change the population of a country. The Osmanli made life almost unendurable to the subject people for centuries, but though he depopulated the country, and paralysed its progress, he stopped short of extermination. The inevitable result has been that the industrial races have increased, while the military race has declined; so that the Turks proper in Europe, who were numbered at from 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 in the reign of Solyman I. (1520-1566)[10] can only now be estimated at a little more than a million and a half. The succession of the Turk at Constantinople is certain to devolve upon a civilised people, and whether it fall to Russia, Austria, or one of the emancipated states, will mean that the higher race has entered again upon part of its natural habitat, from which it had been irregularly expelled. Beyond this it is possible that Russia may contribute a large immigration to Western Turkestan; that English settlers may reinforce the white population of the Cape, so as to keep it dominant; and that the Australian feeling against Asiatic immigrants may keep Northern Australia free from any overwhelming influx of Chinamen or Hindoo coolies.
Meanwhile, the small triumphs which the Aryan race may achieve in these directions are likely to be more than balanced by the disproportionate growth of what we consider the inferior races. China is generally regarded as a stationary power which can fairly hold its own, though it has lost Annam to France, and the suzerainty of Upper Burmah to England, and the Amoor Valley to Russia, but which is not a serious competitor in the race for empire. There is a certain plausibility in this view. On the other hand, China has recovered Eastern Turkestan from Mahommedan rule and from a Russian protectorate, is dominating the Corea, and has stamped out a dangerous rebellion in Yunnan. No one can doubt that if China were to get for sovereign a man with the organising and aggressive genius of Peter the Great or Frederick the Second, it would be a very formidable neighbour to either British India or Russia. Neither is it easy to suppose that the improvements, now tentatively introduced into China, will not soon be taken up and pushed on a large scale, so that railways will be carried into the heart of Asia, and large armies drilled and furnished with arms of precision on the European model. In any such case the rights which China has reluctantly conceded or still claims over Annam and Tonquin, over Siam, over Upper Burmah, and over Nepaul, may become matters of very serious discussion. At present the French settlements arrest the expansion of China in the direction most dangerous to the world. Unfortunately, the climate of Saigon is, such as no European cares to settle in, and the war to secure Tonquin was so unpopular that it cost a French premier his tenure of office. It is difficult to suppose that France would make great sacrifices for such a possession. It seems not unlikely that she might consent to sell her rights, or to exchange them for some commercial advantage, or for some territorial equivalent, such as China might have to offer in the future. Should some arrangement of this kind ever be made, China will incontinently resume the old protectorate over Siam, and will become very much more formidable than she is even at present from her inherent strength.
Whatever, however, be the fortune of China in this direction, it is scarcely doubtful that she will not only people up to the furthest boundary of her recognised territory, but gradually acquire new dominions. The history of our Straits Settlements will afford a familiar instance how the Chinese are spreading. They already form half the population predominating in Singapore and Perak, and the best observers are agreed that the Malay cannot hold his own against them.[11] They are beginning to settle in Borneo and Sumatra, and they are supplanting the natives in some of the small islands of the Pacific, such as Hawaii. The climate of all these countries suits them, and they commend themselves to governments and employers by their power of steady industry; and they intermarry freely up to a safe point with the women of the country,[12] getting all the advantages of alliance, yet not sacrificing their nationality. Several causes have retarded their spread hitherto: the regions enumerated have mostly been too insecure for an industrial people to flourish in, until the British or the Dutch established order; the government of China has hitherto discouraged emigration; English administrations have been obliged to be rather wary in their dealings with a people who showed at Sarawak and Penang that they were capable of combining for purposes of massacre;[13] and the Chinese superstition about burial in the sacred soil of the Celestial Empire made the great majority of the emigrants birds of passage. All these causes are disappearing. Malay piracy is becoming a thing of the past; the policy of China is being modified; and it can hardly be supposed that the regard for a family burial-place will long continue to keep millions of not very imaginative men from making their homes in the countries in which their labour will be most valuable. Lastly, it is more than conceivable that some of these countries will pass under Chinese rule. The alternatives are that they should be left under foreign protectorates, as at present, till Malays and Dyaks have increased in the same proportion as the Javanese, or that they should be peopled by emigrants from Europe.
Now, the former of these is the only imaginable alternative to Chinese settlement. Europeans cannot flourish under the Tropics, and will not work with the hand where an inferior race works. What we have to consider, therefore, is the probability that the natives who are giving way to the Chinese in the Malay Peninsula will be able to make head against them in Borneo or Sumatra. Borneo is nearly six times as big as Java, and if it were peopled like Java would support a population of nearly 100,000,000. It has actually, by recent estimates, less than 2,000,000 upon it, and these are distributed among several different races. Of these, the tribes in the interior are more likely to be exterminated than reclaimed; and the Dyaks and Malays, numbering between them about 1,500,000, are the only races strong enough to compete in industry with Chinamen. Obviously there is at present room for both in the island, and the British North Borneo Company is stimulating the immigration of coolies, both from China and from the Malay Peninsula. In the long run the Chinese, who outnumber the Malays as sixteen to one, who are more decidedly industrial, and who organise where they can in a way that precludes competition, are tolerably certain to gain the upper hand. They may not destroy the early settlers, but they will reduce them to the position of the Hill tribes in India, or of the Ainos in Japan. Assume fifty years hence that China has taken its inevitable position as one of the great powers of the world, and that Borneo has a population of 10,000,000, predominantly Chinese, is it easy to suppose in such a case that the larger part of Borneo would still be a dependency of the Netherlands? or that the whole island would not have passed, by arms or diplomacy, into the possession of China? Assume England or it might be Germany, as administering the inheritance of Holland to possess a nominal suzerainty, would Borneo any the less be Chinese, to all practical purposes, in its commerce, in its political sympathies, in its civilisation, and in its influence upon its neighbours? The expansion of China towards the south and south-west seems most probable, because there is here most natural wealth to develop, and because the circumstances are specially favourable: administrations guided by commercial principles, and populations too weak to resist immigration.[14] Nothing but the vigilant opposition of the Australian democracies has kept the Chinese from becoming a power on that more remote continent; and at one time within the last forty years the Chinamen actually in Victoria numbered something like 13 per cent of the adult male population.[15] It cannot be held, however, that the Chinese are debarred from gaining territory to the north or west. Even if we choose to regard the Corea and Thibet as already Chinese, there is Nepaul, which might easily be annexed on the Indian frontier if England were crippled or occupied; and there are parts of Turkestan which might be wrested under some similar conjuncture from Russia; or, more naturally still, China might first people and then occupy the provinces along the lower course of the Amoor, which she ceded very reluctantly under pressure, at a time when she was in dire need. There are those who believe that the Chinaman is likely to supersede Spaniard and Indian alike in parts of South America.[16] Without assuming that all of these possibilities are likely to be realised, there is surely a strong presumption that so great a people as the Chinese, and possessed of such enormous natural resources, will sooner or later overflow their borders, and spread over new territory, and submerge weaker races.
It is difficult to suppose that the motley populations which occupy India and British Burmah can ever be welded into anything as homogeneous as the Chinese Empire. Meanwhile, it is important to observe that British rule, so far as it has any effect, is tending to obliterate the religious differences between Mahommedan and Hindoo, and the racial differences between the Bengalee and the Ghoorka, the Sikh and the Madrassee. Whether England retain her rule or be superseded by some other power, or give place to an independent state or states, it is permissible to hope that the old days of sanguinary misrule, when whole tracts were desolated by Pindarees, are never likely to recur. Even if we assume a state of things such as has been witnessed in South America, a cleavage into a number of small states, incessant revolutions and wars, there seems no reason why the Peninsula should not recover itself, as South America has to some extent done, so that population and wealth might increase in it. It can maintain a much greater population than it has within its own borders 50 per cent more if it be peopled as China is; and it is barred from any great increase to the east by the fact that its people could hardly hope to contend against the Chinese. To the west, however, there is a possibility of expansion over Beluchistan, which is not all desert,[17] and over Afghanistan, which is not all mountain. An industrial race coming in gradually under the protection of British arms may easily reclaim large portions of these districts, and swamp the military tribes now settled in them. Those who bear in mind that Persia, with a territory three times as large as that of France, has a population not half as large again as that of Belgium,[18] will perhaps incline to believe that here also in the southern and eastern provinces are regions which may ultimately come to have their fields tilled by coolies, and their commerce carried on by Banyahs.
Some who admit the possibility that the Chinese and Hindoo races may spread over new territory and absorb other populations in Asia may doubt the future of the American Indians, and hold that Southern and Central America are as much the destined inheritance of the white man as the greater part of Northern America seems already to be his estate. Wiener, who travelled among the Indians of Peru and Bolivia, declares that the fine qualities of the aboriginal race have been destroyed beyond the power of recovery by the degradation of centuries of misrule, that the half-caste Indian is fit for nothing but servitude, and that the free Indian has reverted to savagery.[19] Professor Orton, who saw the Indian in Ecuador and along the Amazon districts, where he is perhaps at his lowest, declares that "yet a little while and the race will be extinct as the dodo." [20] Meanwhile Wiener goes so far as to say that the acclimatisation of the white man has only given good results where there is a cross with native blood. "Families of pure white race generally begin to die out in the third generation, and become the hopeless victims of scrofula."[21] Orton makes the admission, that few of the whites in the Amazon valley "are of pure Caucasian descent." A later American traveller, Mr. Curtis, declares that the interior of Brazil is unsuited to Europeans. "The climate is so enervating that, after an experience of two years, the German colonist will be found by his Portuguese predecessor sitting in the shade of the fig-tree, and hiring a negro to do his work." Mr. Curtis adds, that even in the southern provinces the success of colonists has been very small. "Most of the colonies have broken up," and many of the members " have succumbed to the influences of the climate and died of fever."[22] If these statements are true, and there is a good deal to support them, it would seem as if Southern and Central America, north of Uruguay, are never likely to be the home of the white man in dense masses. If the Indians are dying out, like the pure-blooded Spaniards, the country will be peopled by half-castes or by negroes, or it may be by Chinamen, who have got a footing in Peru, or by coolies, such as are working profitably in British Guiana.
Meanwhile, it must be borne in mind that some observers take a much more promising view of the prospects of the Indian than M. Wiener and Mr. Orton. Mr. Curtis distinguishes the races in Ecuador as divided into a Spanish aristocracy, half-caste artisans and mechanics, and Indian cultivators and servants.[23] Something like this seems to be the general division, and if it embraced all the inhabitants of the country, it would mean that the families of Spanish descent were an insignificant minority who must sooner or later be absorbed into the inferior population. Statistics, in fact, show that the whites so-called are only as one in eight of the whole nation of Ecuador. Now Ecuador is a good specimen of a country in which the white race holds its own. When we go farther north, we find Mr. Boyle, a very acute observer, and who spent some time in Central America, declaring his conviction, "that the descendants of the Spaniards, after the lapse of three centuries, are still but squatters in the land; round them on every side are the sons of the old races."[24] Mr. Boyle estimates the free Indians of Guatemala at 1,000,000 at least; and official statistics declare that in the capital itself only one-tenth are pure-blooded whites. That anything like an accurate census has been taken, or is possible in these countries, may be doubted. Wild Indians will not give in returns; and among the free the tendency till lately must always have been to claim affinity with the dominant caste. Meanwhile, it may be noticed of the capital of Guatemala, that Whetham declares few of the inhabitants to have Spanish blood,[25] and of Mexico, that the Europeans, who in 1810 were classed as one in six of the population, are now set down as little more than a twentieth. If we take the popular estimates, we find Humboldt in 1790 putting the pure Indians in Mexico at two-fifths of the population;[26] while Alison, taking the date 1810, calculates the Spaniards in Mexico, Guatemala, and Caracas at about 1,600,000 in a total population of 8,500,000, or rather less than 20 per cent.[27] The numbers given for this year in the Statesman's Year-Book make the descendants of the Spaniard at most 1,200,000 out of a population of more than 12,000,000 in those countries. On the whole, I believe, that in Spanish America, excluding Chili[28] and the Argentine Confederation, the pure or nearly pure descendants of the conquerors are not as one in four to half-castes and Indians, and that these latter amount to about 25,000,000, pretty evenly divided.[29]
It may be admitted at once that the position of those of Indian blood is still very secondary. Still, the evidence is, that they are conquering a place for themselves in other ways than by increasing and multiplying. "General Porfirio Diaz," says Mr. Curtis, "the foremost man in Mexico to-day, and one whose public career will fill pages in the history of that republic, is the representative of mixed Spanish and Aztec ancestry, like all of the famous native leaders of the last half-century."[30] In fact, however, the most distinguished of all, Juarez, was a pure-blooded Indian, as were also Mejia and Mendez, two of Maximilian's best generals. In Guatemala the pure-blooded Indian, Carera, defeated the ablest revolutionary leader, the Spaniard—with a dash of Corsican blood—Morazan; and having been raised to power by the Church, had the sagacity to discard it, and establish a secular polity. The most distinguished of his successors, Barrios, was a half-caste. Guardia, one of the best presidents of Costa Rica, was a half-caste; and even in Peru, where the tradition of Pizarro's brutality was long maintained, and assisted to depress the natives, there has been a half-caste president, Castilla. There, too, the old rule that reserved office and the priesthood for the descendants of the conquerors has fallen into disuse.[31] Wiener stayed with a half-caste priest, and Orton carried a letter to an Indian governor. Even in Mexico the ruling class is still essentially white; and everywhere the whites are fighting and intriguing for the spoils of office, while the native people remains passive and seemingly unobservant, and barely contributes here and there a successful leader to a popular movement. Meanwhile, the general level of the autochthonous race is being raised; it is acquiring riches and self-respect, and must sooner or later get the country back into its hands. The Guaranis of Paraguay, whose race is widely diffused over the south, cannot be very inferior to the Aztecs. Literature is the last growth of a new country, but more than two centuries ago a descendant of the Incas, Garcilasso de la Vega, conquered an honourable name for himself in Spanish literature.[32]
However, the question whether the Indians will people part of South America, and the whole of Central America again, is comparatively an unimportant issue. What seems certain is that no European race will take their place. The weakest of the American states, be it Honduras or Nicaragua, is protected by climate from the Anglo-Saxon or German immigrant. M. de Lesseps in 1880 defended the climate of the district through which his canal was to pass by the statement, that out of 2000 Chinamen engaged on the construction of the Panama Railway only 500 had died during the work, and that of these half had committed suicide; but even this mortality of adult males will appear considerable to most men; and M. de Lesseps was compelled to admit that the mortality among the Irish had been much greater. He explained this away as the effect of drunken habits.[33] It seems proved that Europeans who are naturally strong, and who commit no excess, have a fair chance of life in the higher parts and in the reclaimed parts of Central America. This, however, is as much as can be maintained. M. de Verbrugghe, who has vindicated the reputation of the district marked out for the Panama Canal, admits that many parts on the Nicaragua route, such as Grey Town, the mouths of the Atrato, and the marshes of the Trinidad are absolutely pestilential.[34] Generally it may be said that immigrants from the Temperate Zone are likely to repeat the experience of Paterson's party, until the jungle and the swamp have been brought back into cultivation. The work of reclaiming them, however, can only be done by races tolerant of heat, and more or less insensible to fever, and when these have established themselves in large numbers, there will be no place left for the white man. The southern planters who subsidised Walker, intended to turn Nicaragua into another Louisiana. Now that slavery is abolished, the country can only be developed by free Indians or by free negroes coming in from the states. These are the two natural sources of the coloured labour that is indispensable.
Of the other countries—one and all—that have been classed as predominantly Indian, it may be said that they are not likely to encourage European immigration on a very extended scale, or, if they did encourage it, to attract it. The circumstances of the Argentine Republic are exceptional. "It is estimated," says Mr. Curtis, "that the extent of agricultural land in the Argentine Republic equals 600,000 square miles; an area equal to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, and Wisconsin, and capable of producing every crop in these states."[35] Let it be added that these enormous tracts lie fairly near together, that they are traversed in great part by railways, that the climate is that of Southern France, and that Indians are hardly a more real danger than in the United States. It is easy to understand 600,000 immigrants pouring into such a paradise in the space of ten years. Contrast Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, which are in a great measure tropical Switzerlands; Quito, for instance, being 2000 feet higher than the Hospice of the Great St. Bernard in Europe, and Cuzco and Potosi and the capital of Bolivia higher still. The fertile niches of these countries are already occupied by Indians. The reclaimable parts can only be developed by irrigation, and lie at a distance from one another, so that foreign immigrants could not enjoy congenial neighbourhood. There remain, of course, the states of Colombia, Venezuela, and the three Guianas. The richest parts of these, the valleys of the Orinoco, the Magdalena, and smaller rivers, are all either swamps or liable to inundation: districts that may, at some future day, maintain a population of many millions, but in which small bodies of foreign immigrants would find, under worse climatic conditions, what Dickens painted in his sketch of Eden. Venezuela is graphically described by Eastwick as "a forest larger than France, steppes like those of Gobi, and mountain tracts which it would take many Switzerlands to match."[36] Last of all, it must be remembered that it is more than doubtful if native governments or populations would encourage or tolerate immigration on a large scale. The Church would oppose an influx of heretics, and the Spanish governing caste would hesitate lest they should see the precedent of Texas repeated.
Brazil stands by itself among South American states in one important particular. Its indigenous Indians were to a great extent less docile and reclaimable than the Aztecs, the Quichuas, and the Guaranis of Paraguay have proved themselves. Brazil accordingly has a large element of negro population; how large may be estimated from the fact that, in 1850, the slaves were set down at 2,500,000. It seems probable that negroes and negro half-castes compose the better half of the 12,000,000 who are calculated to people Brazil; the pure Indians are estimated by a liberal calculation at 1,000,000; while the Portuguese, Germans, and half-caste or civilised Indians make up the remainder.[37] What all observers are agreed upon is that there are very few families of pure Portuguese blood, and the climate of Brazil, except in the Highlands, is opposed, as has been noticed, to the perpetuation of any European people in its full vigour. It seems difficult to doubt that Brazil will pass more and more into the hands of the negroes; the Indians, perhaps, maintaining themselves, and spreading in the northern and more inaccessible central parts; while the white may continue for a long time to be numerous in the cities, and in parts of exceptional healthiness.
The possibilities for Brazil may be illustrated by what is taking place before our eyes in the southern states of the Union. In 1790 the coloured population of the Union was about three-quarters of a million in an estimated population of less than 4,000,000—that is, it numbered nearly 20 per cent of the whole nation. Fortunately for the world, the American Government adopted the policy, first, of prohibiting the importation of slaves, and then of encouraging white immigration with a result which can hardly be estimated at less than an influx of 16,000,000 whites in the century. Accordingly, the proportion of the coloured population to the American people has decreased decade by decade, till it is now only about 13 per cent of the whole. Meanwhile, it is important to observe that, till lately, the negroes have increased, after a fitful and uncertain fashion, not only absolutely, but relatively in the seven states that are sometimes known as the Black Belt, that stretch from North Carolina to Louisiana inclusive, that were the seats of the old slave plantations, and that are eminently favourable to the black race by climate or the opportunities of congenial toil, while they are at least a little dangerous or debilitating to the white man. Briefly, it may be stated that the whites were as 7 to 6·25 in those states in 1860; that they were as 19 to 18·25 in 1880; and that they are as 23 to 21·24 in 1890. The forecast of the Statistical Bureau in 1860 estimated that, in 1880, the blacks would be 6,618,350 in a total population of 56,450,241.[38] As a fact, when that year came, the blacks were as 6,577,151 in a population of 50,152,166. They had multiplied in spite of the Civil War almost up to a sanguine estimate; the whites had fallen short of expectation by 13 per cent. It was believed, for a time, that the "extinction of slavery in widening the field for white labour and enterprise will tend to reduce the rate of increase of the coloured race;" and that "the coloured population in America is doomed to comparatively rapid absorption or extinction." No such anticipations are entertained now. Professor Gilman believes that, in 1920, the blacks in the eight old slave states will be at 17,400,000 to 9,390,000 whites—that is, within measurable distance of being two to one. It is, of course, possible that the causes which were expected to operate twenty years ago in reducing negro increase will be more effectual when education is diffused, and that the black will multiply more slowly as he acquires a higher standard of comfort. On the other hand, there is also a possibility that whites will find it more and more uncongenial to live in negro states, controlled by negro legislatures, subjected to the competition of negro labour, and sometimes, it may be, overshadowed socially by negroes. In that case, the Black Belt will deserve its name year by year more distinctively.[39] Its people of course are bound to remain a part of the Union, so that, in this case, a black commonwealth will not be constituted politically. What is remarkable is, that the blacks should be increasing so rapidly in a country where they are outnumbered vastly by the whites altogether; where the conditions are incomparably more favourable to white enterprise than in Brazil or Africa;. and where the negroes possess no other advantage than immunity from fever up to a certain point, and a readiness to live cheaply. The first of these advantages must not be exaggerated. Mr. Olmsted, in 1862, brought a great deal of evidence to show that whites were really healthier than negroes in every part of the southern states, except perhaps the Kice Coast.[40] What made the negroes dense in early days was that, while they were slaves, field labour was considered dishonourable, except on a man's own land, and the whites accordingly congregated in the towns. What keeps the blacks numerous is that, in many kinds of labour, they can undersell the whites, because their standard of requirements is not high, and again, because neither race can endure to live with the other on equal terms. The blacks find the north uncongenial; the white immigrant goes to the west, or to Manitoba, rather than to the more fertile south, where he has to measure himself against the negro. If the negro increases to an extent that makes the southern states of the Union too small for him, the chances perhaps are that he will overflow in the direction of Central America rather than add a new unit of population to the north and Canada.
The result of all these considerations seems to be that by far the most fertile parts of the earth, and which either are or are bound to be the most populous, cannot possibly be the homes of what it is convenient to call the Aryan race, or indeed of any higher race whatsoever. ' In Asia the population of India and China, with the countries inextricably bound to them, is already incomparably greater than the collective sum of Russians, Persians, Turks, Arabs, and Syrians, and the disproportion is likely to increase. A conquest by Russia of Turkey in Asia would hardly affect the populations of Syria and Karamania, except by giving Syrians and Armenians the opportunity of increasing under orderly rule. In Africa the vast regions between the Tropics, abandoned to barbarism and anarchy, as with trifling exceptions they have been, have none the less five times the population of the north and south, parts of which have enjoyed English and French administration.[41] In America, taken as a whole, the white population is at present larger than the coloured, almost as two to one, and this proportion seems likely to be maintained for a time, till the western parts of the Union and Canada, and the undeveloped tracts of the Argentine Confederation, are settled in after a fashion. Meanwhile, the mere fact that the white race naturally prefers these parts is giving the Indians and the negroes time to increase in the tropical and semi-tropical parts of America, so that nothing short of extermination on too great a scale to l^e even dreamed of will be able to dispossess them. Neither must it be forgotten that the lower races of men increase faster than the higher; so that fifty years of absolute peace might mean as much for Honduras or Benguela as a hundred years for England or Italy. On the whole, it seems difficult to doubt that the black and yellow belt, which always encircles the globe between the Tropics, will extend its area, and deepen its colour with time. The work of the white man in these latitudes is only to introduce order and an acquaintance with the best industrial methods of the west. The countries belong to their autochthonous races; and these, though they may in parts accept the white man as a conqueror and organiser, will gradually become too strong and unwieldy for him to control, or if they retain him, will do it only with the condition that he assimilates himself to the inferior race.
There is perhaps one consideration which may be regarded as an offset to the enormous probabilities of Chinese and Hindoo expansion. Both China and Hindostan afford ample space for growth within their own limits. China proper, for instance, is as large as twenty-two Englands, or by some estimates as twenty-six, and, on the same basis of population, might maintain at least 650,000,000 or even 750,000,000, or, in other words, might increase for fifty years before it required to relieve itself by an exodus. In fact, it is supposed that from its superior fertility, China could carry more than England to the square mile, and might double its numbers before it needed to trouble its neighbours. Putting, on the one hand, the sufficiency of land at home, and, on the other hand, the conservative genius of the administration, which discourages emigration, and of the people who do not readily accept it, it may be argued that half a century, or a century hence, we shall find China no further advanced than she now is r while the English, French, and Dutch settlements in the Indian Ocean will have consolidated themselves. Those who argue in this way may be reminded that a Tae-Ping rebellion, which lasted fourteen years, is estimated to have cost China from 20,000,000 to 50,000,000 of population; and that, while the inhabitants of a single province, Szechuen, increased by 45,000,000 between 1842 and 1882, there was a loss by official estimates of 100,000,000 in the other provinces. The nation altogether is calculated to have decreased by at least 30,000,000 in this period.[42] Yet China was able during the whole time to spare colonists to Siam, to the Straits Settlements and Malaysia, to the United States and Peru, and to Australia, besides those whom the Government poured into Hi. The settlement in Siam took place under the disadvantage that Chinamen forfeited the rights of citizenship in their own country, and were not protected in case of injury; nevertheless, the Chinese element of the population is now 3,000,000, or about one-fourth. If this has taken place during a period of conservatism and decadence, what are we to expect as year by year the population of the Celestial Empire increases, and its rulers adopt the aggressive policy of the West?
It must be borne in mind, too, that a country may often find its numbers too large for it when it is very far from having reached the limits of its productivity. England in 1840 had a population of 16,000,000, and was over - peopled, so that except for America and Australia it is difficult to see how a great part of her people could have supported life. England in 1890 has a population of 29,000,000, and maintains them, if anything, more easily than she did the smaller number. No one supposes that the extreme limits of her possible increase have been reached. There can be little doubt that a large emigration from China would remove the congestion of some of its districts, and powerfully stimulate Chinese trade, as colonies needing Chinese products were formed. There seems no reason why millions of Chinamen should not pass over into Borneo, as freely as they transferred themselves to Siam or to Szechuen, and make themselves new homes a little outside of the empire as well as within it. Englishmen never dream of settling in Ireland, though Ireland has sometimes offered very good openings. They will have a warmer welcome and more chance of bettering themselves in America or Australia. As the provinces of China fill up gradually, that great displacement of the population which has been going on within the empire is bound to die out, and men who have to carve out new homes will naturally seek the countries where there is waste land.[43]
It is, no doubt, matter of extreme difficulty to predict what the rate of increase in any particular country, or at any given time, will be. Gibbon has estimated the number of Roman subjects under Claudius at 120,000,000.[44] If this population had doubled once in every 150 years, it would long ago have reached a total which no one supposes the world capable of maintaining. As a fact, the population of the countries that constituted the empire is not more than about 200,000,000.[45] Misgovernment, war, and pestilence have perpetually foiled nature, and it is only within the last century that anything like the annual increase, upon which we are now apt to count, has been attained. In Gibbon's time these same countries could not have mustered much more than half the population of the old empire.[46] Even now there is a great difference perceptible between them. The increase of France is very slow, and the Turkish provinces are almost stationary. England has added largely to her population in the last fifty years, and Ireland in the same period has lost one-fourth of her numbers. Neither are these changes always coincident with national advance or decline. France, for instance, though nearly stationary, is still one of the richest countries in Europe, and England has not been impoverished by her increase. The wealth of France appears to attract immigrants from other countries; but not—just now, at least to stimulate the growth of the native French population.
What, however, we seem able to say is, that in the long run the lower civilisation has a more vigorous life than the higher, the unprivileged gains upon the privileged caste, and the conquered people absorbs the conqueror. There is no perceptible trace of ancient Greek or Roman blood in Asia Minor or in Turkey in Europe. The Turk—himself a barbarian—has destroyed or driven out or depressed all the higher races he came across, and the population under him is now Syrian or Armenian, Albanian or Bulgarian. The Greece that has been restored represents a very small portion of the country in which Greeks were superior by numbers, or by social influence and commercial activity, under Alexander, or even under Claudius. In Transylvania the Saxons are being crowded out by Roumanians, and in Hungary the Magyars[47] and Germans can barely stem the uprising nationalities of Slavs and Roumanians. In Northern Africa the Carthaginian, the Greek, the Roman, and the Vandal were successively effaced, and until the French conquest of Algiers the country was given up to Arabs of a not very pure breed, to Berbers, and to blacks. The Irish were reckoned by Petty in 1672 at 1,100,000 in their own country,[48] and there cannot then have been many outside Ireland. They are now probably from 16,000,000 to 20,000,000, counting only those who can be distinctly recognised as of Irish descent. Before the time of their great dispersion to America and Australia, they had increased within the British Isles from being about a sixth to being nearly a third of the population.[49] Compare the increase of Sweden, with a population of the highest type, at once warlike and industrial, during a rather longer period, and it will seem very small indeed. Sweden with its old province Finland has increased at most fourfold; the Irish people at least fifteenfold.[50]
Lest it should be supposed that these are speculative calculations, or based upon casual instances, it may be pointed out that under present conditions of society, a class or a people which values comfort and position highly cannot possibly increase as rapidly as the class that contents itself with bare existence. The English aristocracy is a typical example of the way in which a close corporation dies out. Its members are almost always wealthy in the first instance, and their estates have been constantly added to by favour from the Crown,[51] by something like the monopoly of the best Government appointments, and by marriages with wealthy heiresses. They are able to command the field sports and open-air life that conduce to health, and the medical advice that combats disease. Nevertheless, they die out so rapidly that only five families out of nearly six hundred go back without a break, and in the male line, to the fifteenth century.[52] It is sometimes thought that the untitled landed gentry represent a more permanent aristocracy, better blood, and longer connection with land than the peers. This is only the conceit of county notabilities. The late Mr. Evelyn Shirley made a list of all the families in England who could show unbroken connection with the squirearchy since the Wars of the Roses terminated, and though he was most liberal in his inclusions his list went easily into a single thin volume. It is perfectly true that a certain number of Englishmen with large landed estates descend from ancestors who held land anciently somewhere; but it will generally be found in such cases that the ancestors were yeomen, or at most squireens. An analysis of modern landowners in a county will habitually prove that not more than six or eight, owning 3000 acres,[53] descend from ancestors who owned as much in the time of Elizabeth. The peers, modern as they are, represent a larger average of old families than the country squires. The great device for perpetuating untitled families has been the law of entail, which has really been a most potent engine for destroying them, by forcing successive generations to saddle the land with encumbrances. On the other hand, the fascination of a title for Englishwomen is so great that peers, beggared by the prodigality of their ancestors, are constantly able to retrieve their fortunes by marriage with heiresses.
Now, if we inquire why it is that noble families die out, we shall find that the reason lies in the desire of all their members to maintain themselves in the class they are born into. It is an unwritten law that they must marry money, or not marry at all; and the result is, that when the heir to the title, marrying perhaps late in life, finds his wife sterile—and heiresses are the outcome of families that tend to be sterile—it may easily happen that his younger brothers have not married at all. Often, of course, it is not too late for them to take wives; but if the peer in possession has daughters on whom the unentailed property will be settled, a man confirmed in bachelor habits will often hesitate before he marries only to continue the title. Now it is the boast of Englishmen that our aristocracy is a supremely reasonable one, that there is no nobility clinging to the children of cadets, and that the highest peer marries freely into the commercial classes, and has done so for centuries past without requiring sixteen quarters in a wife, or even two generations of gentility. All the more noteworthy is it that family after family passes away as if it were laden with a mysterious curse. The instance cited above, which shows how few of our nobles are as old as the first Tudor, may seem an unfair one, as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were times of unsettlement, when many families were deprived of the peerage by attainder, or ruined by confiscations. An example from comparatively modern times will therefore be more instructive. 155 peers were summoned to the first Parliament of James II. In 1825, only 140 years later, only forty-eight of these nobles were represented by lineal descendants in the male line. The family has in several instances been continued by collaterals begging the peerage, which they could not have claimed at law, and in this way the change may seem less than it has really been; but the broad result appears to be that left to itself from 1688, with new creations absolutely forbidden, the House of Lords would by this time have been practically extinguished. Of Charles II.'s six bastards, who were made dukes, only three have perpetuated the race. Three peerages have been lost to the Howard family, three to the Greys, two to the Mordaunts, two to the Hydes, two to the Gerards, and two to the Lucases. A religiously-minded antiquary of Queen Elizabeth's time attempted to show that a curse attached to all the families which had been enriched by sharing the spoils of ecclesiastical property. At the present day, we know that a normal percentage of those families is still enjoying the fruits of the Parliamentary settlement, which it has pleased divines to call sacrilege. What was really valuable in Sir Henry Spelman's researches was the proof they afforded, that men high placed enough to enjoy court favour are rarely the founders of long-lived families. It is in the lower strata of society that we have to seek for the springs of national life.
It is a very small matter to the world at large whether titled and landed aristocracies show a tendency to gradual extinction, but it cannot be accounted matter of indifference if the higher races increase very much more slowly than the lower. Even if we assume higher and lower to be merely relative terms, and that the negro is capable of becoming as fine a specimen of humanity as the Englishman or the Frenchman, it has to be recognised that very favourable conditions and a long period of time are required for the transmutation, which, after all, is more than a little doubtful. Now to take two extreme instances, the French, who are a very important factor in civilisation, will only double themselves in two centuries if they retain the rate of progression of the last seventy years; while the negroes of the Southern States are doubling themselves once in forty years. Wealth is supposed to have increased more than fivefold in France since the peace of 1815.[54] This wealth is to a great extent distributed by the stringent law of succession; and the position of the small landowner, and of the artisan, is incomparably better than it has been at any previous time. The population does not emigrate to avoid the conscription, or because the pressure of the taxes is intolerable. It shows its sense of enhanced national burdens, if indeed it shows it at all, by increasing from decade to decade more slowly. Perhaps, what really retards the growth of families is the tacit but universal resolve on no account to submit to a lower standard of food or clothing, or of whatever conduces to comfort and self-respect.[55] At any rate, for one reason or the other, either because the State, or because the family and the individual make greater claims on economy now than they made in past times, France is receding, year by year, from her old high place among populous states. In a more or less small degree, what is true of France is true of Continental Europe, taken as a whole, exclusive of Prussia; and, if we allow for immigrants of the white population, in America. At the end of a longterm of prosperous years, none of the great nations have increased in numbers, as negroes and Hindoos have increased, or, as there is reason to think, Chinamen would have multiplied under similar circumstances.
England has been a singular instance of an old country that has increased its numbers at something like the Oriental rate of progression, while it has carried on exhausting wars, and sent out millions of emigrants. It may be contended, therefore, that an equally wise administration, promoting manufactures and colonies and adopting free trade, may do for Europe in general what England has achieved. On examination, it will be found, however, that precisely the poorest and most backward part of the British Isles, Ireland, is the part that increased most rapidly, till its progress was arrested by famine and wholesale emigration. The population of Ireland is given by Mulhall as 2,373,000 in 1752. In 1841 it was 8,195,000, that is, it had increased between three and fourfold. During the same period, England had increased from 7,000,000 to 16,000,000, or from two to threefold, and Scotland from 1,265,000 to 2,620,000, that is, had just about doubled itself. The most thrifty and progressive of the three countries showed the smallest increase. Such as this increase was, however, it was undoubtedly due in part to an immigration from Ireland. Since the peasantry of Ireland have earned higher wages, and acquired a larger proprietorship in their native land, they have ceased to increase at any rapid rate. England, therefore, is now the capital example of a highly civilised country that doubles in sixty years; for even Germany cannot exhibit anything like the same rate of progression. The average for all Europe is to double in about a century.[56] Against this, we have the negro doubling in forty years, and the Hindoo in about eighty,[57] under circumstances which have no doubt been highly favourable, but which are not unlikely to last. China, down to 1842, doubled at the rate of once in eighty years. Her progress was then suspended by a gigantic calamity. If she can preserve peace and benefit by the outlets which England offers her in the Indian seas, is there any reason why she should not increase even more rapidly than in the best period of the past?
It has been no part of this argument to consider whether an inferior race may not to some extent displace a superior in a country where the superior race has been supreme in power, and unapproached in numbers for centuries. Such a case as that of the Mauritius, where the French colonists are dwindling away, and where such civilisation as they had established is giving place to the inroads of Chinamen and Hindoos, who are gradually acquiring land and trade, may be regarded as on too small a scale to be conclusive.[58] Russia shows us the curious spectacle of a race that is credited with the possession of high qualities, that has not been outrageously ill-treated in the immediate past, and that is only slightly inferior in concrete civilisation to its rulers, increasing so rapidly as to be thought a danger to the Empire. The Jews have spread into Russia from Poland, where they enjoyed exceptional privileges, and though they suffered in 1832 for their supposed complicity in the Polish War of Independence, they have generally been protected by the law, and only restricted from settlement in certain parts of the Empire. They were for a time encouraged to colonise parts of the Ukraine, and though it may seem futile, and even tyrannical to settle Jews on the land as agriculturists, it must be remembered that instances were on record in which Jews had taken to a country life of themselves, or had been induced to adopt it. Clarke, who travelled through Poland in 1778, tells us that there "Jews cultivate the ground, and we frequently saw them engaged in sowing, reaping, mowing, and other works of husbandry."[59] Maria Theresa actually established Jewish agricultural colonies with partial and temporary success in Bohemia. Therefore, we need not assume that the race is incapable of husbandry; and that the Jews in Russia have generally abandoned or sub-let their land in the Ukraine[60] is probably due to the fact that they have seen more profitable and congenial employment open to them in the cities. Their position, though not a dignified or pleasant one, has been, till lately, tolerably endurable to a people that has no recent memories of independence. As long as they retained their faith they were shut out from the court, from office, and from society; but as contractors, merchants, tradesmen, money-lenders, middlemen, and smugglers, they have been able to do a great deal of profitable business. They were trusted and employed by the police during the unsuccessful Polish rising of 1864-65; and now and again some of the brighter of them, such as Jessy Helfman and Aaron Zundelevitch have sympathised with the plans of the Nihilists, and have worked with Russians for reforms, as the more ardent Russians conceive them. It is almost needless to add, that in a country like Russia it has always been possible to evade the laws restraining Jewish industry or settlement by bribing officials.
Now the conditions just described are precisely those which are most favourable to an increase of population. Given security to life, limb, and property, which there has been till very lately, the power to enjoy wealth being limited, while its value as a safeguard is enhanced, and all the checks of self-restraint being removed, the Jewish population has had no motive to limit its reproductive powers. There is reason to think that the Jewish people is exceptionally healthy and fertile; but any race would increase which had the wit to make money a strong stimulus for making it in the need to purchase protection and no private use to spend it on, except food, and the rearing of a family. The Jew has no reason for living in a palace, for keeping up unnecessary servants, or for spending extravagantly on social pleasures; and is, indeed, wise if he avoids all ostentation. His risk of attack from the populace, and the percentage he pays to officials, will be less in proportion as he is shabbily dressed and poorly housed. Naturally he accumulates money, and naturally, also, he marries young and does not dream of limiting his family. Is it wonderful if the rapid increase of the race has begun to provoke alarm? In 1778 the Jews of Poland and Lithuania cannot have much exceeded from 300,000 to 400,000.[61] Those in the other parts of Russia were at that time an inappreciable quantity. The smallest estimate now puts the Jews of Russia at more than 3,000,000, and the highest makes them amount to 6,000,000.[62] Rejecting as extravagant the calculation which makes them double every fourteen years,[63] we may surely admit that the ruling powers have some cause to be alarmed if a race that dislikes agriculture, mechanical industry, the life of a sailor, and the profession of arms, that does not intermarry with its neighbours, that does not share their traditions, or aspirations, or faith, increases, let us say, twice as rapidly. Eighty years ago it might have been sufficient to deal with the Jews of Russia, as the wise policy of Napoleon dealt with those of France, and to give them absolute social and civil equality. The Jews of France are Frenchmen of another faith, and show no tendency to disproportionate increase, being, in fact, as nearly stationary as the rest of the population. The remedy is not as simple in Russia, because the Jews are now a nation in themselves—herding together, too numerous, and, it may be feared, too detested to be absorbed into the general population. However, it is not an object in this place to discuss how the Jews in Russia ought to be treated. What is desired is to show that since it has become impossible to deny inferior races the protection of the law in civilised communities, they are bound to increase faster than the privileged part of the nation. The case of the Jews in Russia is peculiarly instructive, because they were a mere fraction of the population when Lithuania and Poland were first incorporated, and are now numerous enough to appear a danger to the Empire. Nevertheless, even now they would hardly provoke any general hostility if they were not swamping the middle-class in cities. Were they content, like the Roumanians in Hungary, to do field drudgery, their increase would hardly have been noticed till it had become irresistible.
It may be said that the arguments of this chapter assume the progress of the world to be henceforth in an opposite direction to that which has been pursued in the past. Taking Europe, for instance, we find here and there the remnants of inferior peoples, whose ancestors were once widely spread, and whom invaders of a higher type have exterminated or supplanted. The Basques, the Lapps, the Letts are familiar instances; and a very superior race, the Kelts, though they continue to exist, and have always been an appreciable element in Europe, have been Romanised and Teutonised into partial conformity, with more vigorous conquerors. It may seem to some as if we might expect the same process to be repeated in Asia and Africa; even if we concede what has been contended for above, that under the conditions which exist in a British or Dutch colony in tropical zones, the native is bound to increase faster than the European. Those who argue in this way must bear in mind that the modern world differs so entirely from the ancient in certain conditions of primary importance, that we are bound to expect a different evolution. For instance, Cæsar is said to have killed a million Gauls, and made slaves of another million.[64] Even if we reduce these estimates by half and allow for Gaul having been a fourth larger than France, it will yet seem probable that a fourth of the male population was either killed or sold out of the country. The last war of modern times, conducted as pitilessly as war was by a Greek or Roman general, was the Thirty Years' War in Germany; and it cost that country four-fifths of its population. "Wurtemberg, which before had a population of half a million, was reduced after the battle of Nordlingen to 46,000."[65] Now it may be rash to say that the world is really better than it was; but it is undoubted, that for more than two centuries—and even in countries where regulars were fighting against partisans—nothing has occurred to parallel or recall these horrors of old time. Neither is this mitigation of war confined to Europe. Burke tells us that when Hyder Ali ravaged the Carnatic, "a storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed every house, destroyed every temple." When the British armies traversed this district eighteen months later, "through the whole line of their march they did not see one man, not one woman, not one child, not one four-footed beast of any description whatever."[66] Less than a century later, when there was a mutiny in India, which roused the worst passions of religious fanatics and the ferocity of insurgent soldiers, fighting with the halter round their necks, neither the Sepoy outrages nor the terrible reprisals of English soldiers were even comparable to Hyder Ali's style of warfare. The last specimen of the old style of war was seen when the Chinese troops stamped out rebellion in Yunnan and in Ili. Now, although it would not be wise to calculate that there will be no revival of the old savagery, it is reasonable to expect that the accepted practice of civilised nations will on the whole maintain itself, and will influence the procedure of conquerors in Southern Asia, in Africa, and in South America. Meanwhile the effect already produced has told visibly in favour of the growth of population; and its chief effects have naturally been seen in the increase of those who suffered most from war formerly. China and India are the two most striking instances. The Tae-Ping war, which cost China many millions of people, was put down practically by British aid. Our policy could not allow the Chinese trade to be paralysed, and our humanity was horrified by the news of massacres which Gustavus Adolphus, Cromwell, or Turenne would have looked upon as the regrettable but necessary consequences of war. Then, again, in India, for one war that we have waged, we have prevented twenty by the mere establishment of a strong central authority. Accordingly the population of India has increased at least fourfold, probably fivefold, within a century.
There is another way in which we are the blind instruments of fate for multiplying the races that are now our subjects, and will one day be our rivals. We carry the sanitary science and the engineering skill of Europe into the East. The Indian official who wishes to obtain favourable notice at headquarters is very apt to promulgate a new plan of some crowded native town, by which broad streets are to replace the sinuous alleys, and before which the worst quarter will disappear. No native can be compelled to build in conformity with the new regulations, but every native who refuses to do it knows or thinks that he will be a marked man with the police, and compliance is very general. The system does not make our "Raj" popular, but it compasses great good for the people at a comparatively small cost, and familiarises the masses with elementary notions of decency. Five years ago a Governor of the so-called "benighted Presidency," Madras, Sir M. E. Grant Duff, put it on record, that "nearly all municipalities are now willing to undertake the" (sanitary) "conservancy of private dwellings for a small fee."[67] Accordingly, though India is still the breeding-place of cholera, its epidemics are much more manageable than they were; and this though the conditions of health in an increased population are more difficult to compass. Anciently, there were periodical famines, sweeping away, it might be, millions at a time. At present, what with irrigation works and enhanced security, the produce of the country is far greater than it used to be, and railways enable it to be more rapidly distributed. A famine, like that which destroyed three-quarters of a million and one-fourth of the population in Orissa as lately as 1866,[68] is becoming every year more and more improbable. Meanwhile, the people, as is only natural, are taking advantage of the prosperity by multiplying rather than by raising their standard of comfort. The education, the contact with other people, that could make the present form of existence appear deficient, are wanting. The ryot asks for little more than to be freed from the worst exactions of the money-lender, to be secured a continuance of peace and reasonable prices, and to be let alone by the English official.
The day will come, and perhaps is not far distant, when the European observer will look round to see the globe girdled with a continuous zone of the black and yellow races, no longer too weak for aggression or under tutelage, but independent, or practically so, in government, monopolising the trade of their own regions, and circumscribing the industry of the European; when Chinamen and the nations of Hindostan, the States of Central and South America, by that time predominantly Indian, and it may be African nations of the Congo and the Zambesi, under a dominant caste of foreign rulers, are represented by fleets in the European seas, invited to international conferences, and welcomed as allies in the quarrels of the civilised world. The citizens of these countries will then be taken up into the social relations of the white races, will throng the English turf, or the salons of Paris, and will be admitted to intermarriage. It is idle to say, that if all this should come to pass our pride of place will not be humiliated. We were struggling among ourselves for supremacy in a world which we thought of as destined to belong to the Aryan races and to the Christian faith; to the letters and arts and charm of social manners which we have inherited from the best times of the past. We shall wake to find ourselves elbowed and hustled, and perhaps even thrust aside by peoples whom we looked down upon as servile, and thought of as bound always to minister to our needs. The solitary consolation will be, that the changes have been inevitable. It has been our work to organise and create, to carry peace and law and order over the world, that others may enter in and enjoy. Yet in some of us the feeling of caste is so strong that we are not sorry to think we shall have passed away before that day arrives.
- ↑ Theale's Compendium of South African History, chap. xiv.
- ↑ Wilmot's History of the Cape Colony, p. 83.
- ↑ "Before the Dutch occupied it, the blacks were only as one to six square miles."—Aylward's Transvaal, p. 5.
- ↑ Although the Dutch rule is far less tender to the natives than the British, the immigration of natives began from the establishment of government by the Dutch in 1839. "In their own expressive way of speaking, they could sleep without fear under the shield of the white man."—Theale's South African History, chap. xxxi.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ "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.
- ↑ "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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Marvin in the second chapter of his book on Merv brings evidence to show that the districts between the Atrek and Goorgan, and the Atrek and Sunbar rivers, the country between Astrabad and Meshed, and between Meshed and Herat, are for the most part eminently fertile. He adds on good Russian authority that great parts of the steppes that are called desert could be transformed into excellent pasture by irrigation! Schuyler says of the valley of Shahrisubs: "Kitab, Shaar, and even Yakrbak and Tchirakahi with their surrounding villages looked like forests rather than cities from the number of gardens and orchards" (Turkistan, ii. p. 62). Of the district between Bukhara and Varganzi, a distance of thirty miles, he says: "The whole road led through well-cultivated gardens and fields" (Turkistan, ii. p. 114). Bukhara, however, is one of the least promising parts of Turkestan; and Schuyler notes elsewhere, that the desert is gaining upon the cultivable land (Turkistan, ii. p. 312). Of Eastern Turkestan, a region containing at least 250,000 square miles, and only 1,000,000 inhabitants, Boulger says, that it has been called "the garden of Asia" (Life of Yakoob Key, p. 2).
- ↑ Creasy's History of the Ottoman Turks, p. 199.
- ↑ Baron von Hübner says: "On my first visit to Singapore in 1871, the population consisted of 100 white families, of 20,000 Malays, and of a few thousand Chinese. On my return there, in the beginning of 1884, the population was divided, according to the official census, into 100 whites, 20,000 Malays, and 86,000 Chinese."—Von Hübner's Through the British Empire, vol. i. pp. 387, 388. Previous attempts by the Chinese to settle had failed from time to time, in consequence of the hostility they invariably provoked. Thus Miss Bird says of Sungei Ujong: "In 1828 the number of Chinese working the mines here was 1000, and in the same year they were massacred by the Malays. They now number 10,000, and under British protection have nothing to fear."—Golden Chersonese, p. 188. "Throughout the length and breadth of Malaysia," says Dr. Guillemard, "the Chinaman has made his way. How he swarms in Singapore we are all aware; but that he is equally at home in the Aru Islands, and bids fair to monopolise the trade of the Philippines, is perhaps not so generally known. At Macassar he shares the mercantile plum with the German. In the Moluccas the vast amount of graves around Ternate testify to the number of his race who have lived and died there. In New Guinea alone he is not to be found; for neither white man nor Malay has as yet fairly established himself there, and the Celestial is rarely or never a pioneer."—Cruise of the Marchesa, ii. p. 126. "Every town from Northern Burmah south, and throughout the vast Indian Archipelago," says Mr. Harrison, "has already fallen into his (the Chinaman's) hands. Even the farms and gardens about the towns are becoming his."—Race with the Sun. Of Bangkok Mr. Harrison says (p. 134): "The wily Chinese monopolise the gambling-houses, as indeed they do nearly all the avenues of wealth, and nearly all kinds of business which require industry and skill." "A considerable portion of the population" (of Palembang, in Sumatra) "are Chinese and Arabs."—Wallace's Malay Archipelago, p. 122.
- ↑ "Les premiers Chinois, qui se sont établis à Malacca, ont épousé des Malaises. Aujourd'hui ces families ne s'allient plus qu'entr'elles. En observant rigoureusement cette coutume, ces hommes singuliers sont parvenus a confectionner des femmes parfaitement semblables à celles de Fokien, et de Kuan Tong."—Yvan: De France en Chine, p. 237.
- ↑ Mr. Thompson points out that the Chinese guilds are not only a menace to political administration, but are apt to make war with one another.—Malacca, Indo-China, and China, p. 15.
- ↑ " Necessity has made the law" (against emigration) "a dead letter." — Williams, Middle Kingdom, vol. i. p. 278 (c. 1883).
- ↑ In 1857 Victoria had a total male population of 297,547. Of these the Chinese numbered 34,874.—Hayter's Statistical Summary of Victoria from 1835-81 inclusive; Fairfax's Handbook to Australasia for 1859.
- ↑ Or, le Chinois, ce me semble, dominera un jour ce monde, qui des maintenant dépend cle lui.—Wiener, Pérou et Bolivie, p. 36.
- ↑ Of the five provinces forming Beluchistan, Makran, the ancient Gedrosia, seems to be the worst, but the others have large patches of good land, the area of which might be increased by irrigation. Brahmi Khan (1755-95) introduced gardens with considerable success (Oliver's Across the Border, chap, ii.) Captain Christie says of the little district of Seistan: "The country, although now inhabited by Afghans and Beloochees in felt tents, still bears the marks of former civilisation and opulence, and there are ruins of villages, forts, and windmills along the whole route from Podbar to Dushak, the capital."—Travels in Beloochistan, Appendix, p. 407. Seistan is no doubt more Afghan than Beluch. However, even of Makran, Marco Polo speaks as a country where the people had abundance of food, and to which many merchants resorted by sea and land.—Book iii. chap, xxxiv.
- ↑ This is taking the largest estimate—that adopted by the Almanack de Gotha of nearly 8,000,000 souls. It is characteristic of the uncertainty attaching to estimates of population in countries like Persia that the Statesman's Year-Book puts the population at only 4,400,000, or 20 per cent less than that of Belgium.
- ↑ Wiener's Pérou et Bolivie, pp. 731-738.
- ↑ Orton's Andes and Amazon, p. 316.
- ↑ Wiener's Pérou et Bolivie, p. 30.
- ↑ Curtis's Capitals of Southern America, p. 706.
- ↑ Curtis's Capitals of Southern America, p. 329.
- ↑ Boyle's Ride Across a Continent, vol. i. p. 157.
- ↑ Across Central America, p. 22. Mr. Boyle says that in Masaya, 4 miles distant from Granada, out of 18,000 inhabitants nine-tenths are pure-blooded Indians. He adds a striking testimony to the thickness of the old Indian population: "In no part of the country, savannah, shore, or forest, can you dig without encountering pottery."—Ride Across a Continent, p. 7.
- ↑ Humboldt, La Nouvelle Espagne, livre ii. chap. vi. Stephens says that the Indians constituted (c. 1842) "three-fourths of the inhabitants of Guatemala."—Central America, vol. i. p. 305.
- ↑ Alison's History of Europe, vol. ix. p. 185.
- ↑ Even in Chili the population is far from being of pure European descent. "The Chilian soldier is by race more than three parts Araucanian," says Mr. Morris (Dark Days in Chili, p. 283).
- ↑ See Appendix A.
- ↑ Curtis's Capitals of Southern America, p. 30.
- ↑ L'Église est devemie, en effet, à Pérou depuis pen de temps seulement endurante à l'égard des métis, qui veulent embrasser la carrière ecclésiastique. Jadis tout horn me de couleur en était effectivement exclus.—Wiener, Pérou et Bolivie, p. 299.
- ↑ "His commentaries are a striking and interesting book," says Ticknor (History of Spanish Literature, vol. iii. p. 190).
- ↑ Lanier's L'Amérique, p. 348.
- ↑ Verbrugghe's Le Canal Inter-Océanique de Panama, cited in Lanier's L'Amérique, pp. 347-350.
- ↑ Curtis's Capitals of Southern America, p. 584.
- ↑ Eastwick's Venezuela, p. 25.
- ↑ The Census of 1872 gave an estimate of less than 4,000,000 of European descent; less than 500,000 Indians; and about 6,000,000 negroes and half-castes of all kinds.—Almanack de Gotha.
- ↑ See note on the Tenth Census of the United States, by F. J. Mouat (Journal of the Statistical Society, 1880, p. 579).
- ↑ For fuller statistical details on this subject see Appendix B.
- ↑ "There are grounds for doubting the common opinion that the negroes at the south suffer less from local causes of disease than whites." Mr. Olmsted goes on to show that, by the vital statistics of Charleston, the average mortality during six years has been of blacks alone, 1 in 54; of whites alone, 1 in 58.—Journeys and Explorations in the Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. pp. 258, 259. The United States Census for 1880 says, p. 1706, "In a population of 43,402,970 whites there are recorded 640,191 deaths, giving a death-rate of 14·74 per 1000. In a population of 6,752,813 coloured there are recorded 116,702 deaths, giving a death-rate of 17-28 per 1000."
- ↑ I have adopted the calculations supplied by Mr. Ravenstein to Mr. Silva White for his Development of Africa, and have deducted
Algeria and Tunis 5,370,000 Egypt and Tripoli 7,980,000 Cape and Natal 1,730,000 Dutch Free States 513,000 Morocco 6,076,000 Total 21,669,000 From Mr. Ravenstein's total estimate of 127,038,370 for Africa, this leaves 105,369,370 for Tropical Africa. About a tenth of this, under French and English rule, like Senegal and Sierra Leone, or under a moderately good native government, like the Azores and Madeira, is not abandoned to barbarism and anarchy.
- ↑ The population of China is said by official records to have been:—
201,013,344 in 1760.
414,686,994 in 1842.
382,078,860 in 1879.Dr. Williams treats as specially authentic the censuses of 1762 and 1812:—
1762 198,214,553. 1812 362,467,183. These seems to show that the population under favourable conditions doubles in less than sixty years. Dr. Williams regards the census of 1879 as too high by 25,000,000.—The Middle Kingdom, vol. i. pp. 263-270. Mr. Smith treats every Chinese census as fanciful.—Chinese Characteristics, pp. 235, 236.
The population of Szechuen was 22,256,964 in 1842, and 67,712,897 in 1882.—Arbeiten der Kaiserlichen Russischen Gesandschaft, 1852-1857, übersetzt von Abel, Band ii. S. 193; Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 1887, pp. 688-694.
- ↑ It may be noticed that there is one strong reason in the genius of the Chinese people to limit fresh settlement within the empire, at least in districts that have already been settled. "Immense tracts in the north and west of the province (Yunnan) have lain waste since the Mahommedan rebellion, and owing to the antipathy of the Chinese to settle on lands which they look upon as the property of people who may still be living, or whose descendants may still be living, it must be many years before the agriculture of the province is properly developed." Hosie's Three Years in Western China, pp. 205, 206.
- ↑ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. ii.
- ↑ The countries reckoned in are: Italy, 29,000,000; France, 37,000,000; Belgium and Holland, 10,000,000; Great Britain, 33,000,000; Spain and Portugal, 21,000,000; Turkey in Europe, 15,500,000; Hungary, Dalmatia, and Bosnia, 17,250,000; Turkey in Asia, 16,000,000; and North Africa, 14,000,000; altogether about 202,000,000.
- ↑ Gibbon compares them with the population of all Europe, and puts it at 105,000,000 or 107,000,000. Excluding Germany, Russia, and Poland, Scandinavia, and Ireland, this would be reduced to about 60,000,000. The African provinces would hardly exceed 5,000,000 at that time. Napoleon says that Egypt, when he knew it, had only from 2,500,000 to 2,800,000 souls.—Mémoires de Napoléon, ed. 1823, tome ii. p. 206.
- ↑ As the Magyars are of the same race as the Turks, though with a larger admixture of Aryan blood, it seems desirable I should point out that from first to last I use the words "higher" and "lower" with no reference to the essential value of a race, which it would be hard to determine, but with regard to its actual position in the world. The Slowack may have finer natural capabilities than the Magyar. At present, I believe, it is correct to say that the Magyar population has a larger proportion of educated men, and of men owning property, and is more capable of self-government.
- ↑ Mr. Hallam calls Petty's conjectures "prodigiously vague" (Const. Hist. vol. iii. p. 392, note y); but Swift in 1729 says, that the popular estimate then was 1,500,000 (" Letter on Mr. M'Culla's project about halfpence"). Macaulay seems to follow Petty, and estimates the Catholics at 1,000,000 in 1686, whom Petty had put at 800,000 in 1672 (History, chap, vi.) I have estimated their present numbers at 5,250,000 for Ireland, 1,000,000 for England and Scotland, 800,000 for Australasia, 1,000,000 for the Dominion of Canada, and from 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 for the United States. They are also well represented at the Cape and in South America.
- ↑ By the highest estimate, Mulhall's, they were as 1·2 to 64 in 1672. In 1849 they were as 8·19 to 18·65.
- ↑ "It has been calculated," says Fryxell, "that at the beginning of Charles XI.'s reign the population of Sweden and Finland of those times consisted of 1,775,000 persons."—Svea Rikes Historic, xviii. s. 155. Sweden and Finland—the latter enormously benefited by the neighbourhood of St. Petersburg—contained in 1880 a population of about 6,500,000. The emigration from these countries will not add more than half a million to this estimate.
- ↑ It is generally supposed that William III.'s grants to Bentinck, Keppel, and the husband of Lady Elizabeth Villiers, are the last instances of royal gifts on a large scale to favourites. This, however, is not quite the case. Mme. de Walmoden had a peerage and money from George II. Lord Bute is supposed to have received at least £300,000, which the Princess of Wales had saved out of her large revenue (Walpole's Last Journals, i. p. 19), and Greville says of Lady Conyngham, whom George IV. admired: "The wealth she has accumulated by savings and presents must be enormous" (Memoirs, vol. i. p. 212). George III. wrote to Lord North in 1777: "I must insist you will now state to me whether £12,000 or £15,000 will not set your affairs in order; if it will, nay, if £20,000 is necessary, I am resolved you shall have no other person concerned in freeing them but myself."—Letter 410, ed. Donne. But this is a very small part of what the North family got from royal favour. Compare George III.'s letter of December 12, 1778: "Lord Barrington is to wait on Lord North to know what can be done for him. I therefore authorise you to make such a provision as you may think fit."
- ↑ Stanley (of Derby), Neville (of Abergavenny), Courtenay (of Devon), Lumley (of Scarborough), Stourton (of Stourton).
- ↑ 3000 acres is the amount taken by Mr. Bateman in his Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland to be the qualification of a great landowner.
- ↑ From £1,800,000,000 in 1815 to £9,070,000,000 in 1882. Fournier de Flaix on the national wealth of France.—Statistical Journal, March 1886, p. 197.
- ↑ Mr. Hamerton mentions thrift and luxury as two causes that retard the growth of population in France.—French and English, pp. 252, 253.
- ↑ In 1849 Alison wrote that the population of the Russian Empire was about 64,000,000, and was likely to be 130,000,000 by natural increase before 1900. In 1887 it was returned as 107,000,000, but of these 5,000,000 are accounted for by acquisitions in Central Asia. Russia, however, confirms the general rule that nations with a low standard of comfort increase faster than nations with a high standard under fairly similar conditions of peace and order.
- ↑ In 1881 the population of British India amounted to 198,790,853 persons. In 1891 it was estimated at 220,500,000. The acquisition of Upper Burmah accounts only for 3,000,000.
- ↑ In 1832 the population of the Mauritius was 89,610, of whom 63,500 were slaves, Africans by race, the rest being mostly of European descent, pure or mixed. In 1888 the population consisted of 260,000 Hindoos and 117,000 of all other nationalities, including Chinamen, who are a new and noticeable element. It is evident, that in fifty-six years there has been no increase of the original population; and all who know the island are aware that a great deal of the land has passed from its old French proprietors to companies, and is passing from companies to the Hindoos.—Lanier's L'Afrique, p. 862; Colonial Year Book, 1890, p. 354.
- ↑ Clarke's Travels in Poland, book ii. chap. vii. p. 237.
- ↑ Wallace's Russia, pp. 374, 375.
- ↑ According to the last capitation there were 166,871 Jews in Poland, exclusive of Lithuania (c. 1778) Clarke, Travels in Poland, book i. chap. vii. p. 119. The population of Lithuania was probably about half that of Poland at this time. This would make the number of Jews about 250,000; but it is safer to put it higher, as they were reputed to be skilful in evading the capitation tax.
- ↑ The Statesman's Year-Book for 1891 gives the number of Jews in Russia as 3,000,000, but the calculation is manifestly inadequate, as only 80 per cent of the population of the Empire is accounted for in the table of faiths. Lanier puts the Jews at 3,100,000, but his calculation is defective in the same way. M. Metchersky, as quoted in the Contemporary Review (March 1891, p. 320) declares that there are 6,000,000 Jews in Russia. It seems as if 4,000,000 would not be an excessive estimate. In that case they have increased tenfold, while the rest of the population has increased rather less than threefold. If this rate of relative progression is continued, they will be one-ninth of the population, instead of as now one-twenty-sixth, in 110 years.
- ↑ Prince Metchersky, indeed, goes further, and says: "There are already in Russia 6,000,000 Jews; in twenty years time there will be 20,000,000 Jews."—Contemp. Review, March 1891, p. 320.
- ↑ The estimates given are Appian's, but according to Pliny (lib. vii. cap. 20) Cæsar used to boast that 1,192,000 had fallen in battle against him, besides those who perished in the civil wars.—Hume's Essay on Population. Cæsar tells us that 368,000 Helvetii entered Gaul; and that the survivors allowed to return home were 110,000. In the case of the Nervii their senators were reduced from 600 to 3, and their fighting men from 60,000 to 500.—De Bello Gallico, i. 29; ii. 28. Procopius declares that the wars of Justinian destroyed 1,500,000 persons in Italy alone. "Μυριάδας πεντακοσίας ἐν Λιβύῃ … Ἰταλὶα δὲ οὐχ ἧσσον ἤ τριπλασία Λιβύης οὖσα ἐρῆμος ἀνθρώπων πολλῷ μᾶλλον," etc. Anecdota, c. 18. Even if we admit the compiler of the Anecdota to be not Procopius, as seems probable, it is noticeable that he writes of Africa, where he estimates the losses at 5,000,000, from personal observation, and in language that might almost have suggested Burke's description of the Carnatic.
- ↑ Niebuhr's Lectures on Ancient History, vol. ii. p. 234.
- ↑ Burke's Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts, vol. iii. pp. 160, 161, Bohn's ed.
- ↑ Review Minute of 20th September 1886, by H.E. the Governor.
- ↑ Hunter's Orissa, vol. ii. p. 185.